Eating frozen-cold home made ice cream and drinking really hot Gumboot Tea at the same time. The trick is to take a big mouth of scalding hot tea, swallow and while your mouth is still hot add a spoonful of ice-cream. I love it!
Yesterday the girls took over the kitchen (as well as their usual farm chores) so we ate very well and I got lots of things done outside. Sammie even got her Grandmother on the phone and got her recipe for latkes. She will make them again so I can share this old family recipe with you too. (This is one of my favourite parts of having Resident Farmers in the house – the food they teach me.) 
Lady Astor and her calf Bobby T are happy in the fields with Txiki and Alex. Lady is coming in to milk beautifully and finally her udder is emptying right out at each milking. I think the swelling is all gone now. Once baby starts to drink more we will go down to once a day milking.
This boy is so big and strong that he will not be drinking from his mother as long as Naomi did. Maybe two and a half/ three months. He will quickly become too big for Lady’s fragile udder. He is already nibbling on grass and I have good lush fields with lots of clover. If he carries on growing at this rate it won’t be too hard to wean him and then he can go hang out with Txiki.
He is easy to train, when I milk his mother he just walks quietly to the sun-room and lies in there until she is finished. I am not locking him away from her in the afternoons until he starts drinking more milk which he should do in the next week or so. He is still only a new born after all. But amazingly tall – up to my hip.
My next trailer day will be bringing the two gilts and Aunty Del (Ayrshire heifer – hopefully pregnant – if all goes well I will milk her too) back to the home farm, and taking Poppy over to the boar at the West barn for another try. And Alex to hang out with the bull (we will have to make blinders for that baby!) But before any of that happens we need to get the Plonkers out of the barn and onto the grass.
There is a jig saw in my head.
I hope you have a lovely day.
Love celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
53 responses to “I Love it.”
Manu’s a lucky boar – so many girlfriends and nice place to live 🙂
Yes. Lets hope he can get someone pregnant soon! c
Indeed! Poppy has proved herself to be fertile and evidently liked hanging out with Manu recently. I wonder if there’s anything specific food wise, to increase a boar’s sperm count?
I can’t help but recall all your very difficult challenges with, was it Daisy’s? problematic udder, and how you have masterfully managed Lady Astor’s problem. Well done you!
Yes. Daisy’s detached udder was a terrible shame. At least we are dealing with a healthy cow this time.. c
That Bobby looks amazingly healthy and happy. What great pictures today showing off the lushness of your fields. I love spring.
You have so many balls to juggle – you are a genius for keeping them all in the air. The calves are looking good and healthy.
How nice to have someone to cook exciting food.
I take it you don’t have sensitive teeth, eating icecream and hot stuff together!
Is it warming up yet? It isn’t here, and now it’s pouring.
love,
ViV xox
I think we are on a upward warming cycle now – it is getting every so slightly warmer each day. At the very least I am down to one long sleeved layer! c
I am down to 3, but then I’m a chilly morsel. I hope the warming cycle continues for a bit.
You must have tremendously strong gnashers: one minute ice cold, the next boiling hot. The tea, I have to say, looks delicious; I’m a great fan of a nice strong cuppa, and while I like a dash of milk, not too much or the taste changes too much. I don’t know where it came from, but our family has an expression for strong tea: tea you can trot a mouse on! I’m looking forward to the latkes recipe, I adore them, fresh and hot, with apple sauce.
Your family’s expression for strong tea made me smile. 😃 I’ve never heard that one before!
Too funny Kate! c
I’ve never heard it anywhere else either, but it does evoke the image of a pretty strong brew, doesn’t it?
It’s attributel to Mary Francis fisher, and American food writer, who, as well as writing a number of books on food and eating, also wrote The Tea Lover’s Treasury and published her own journals and reminiscences where this phrase often pops up, usually when she’d been served tea to her liking. It’s a great expression kate, and is exactly how I like my tea. Or in Aussie idiom….wharfie’s or bullocky’s tea.
Thank you for that, I think it must have been my father who discovered the phrase; my mother was exclusively a coffee drinker! So many names for the same kind of brew… I also like the one which asks for tea ‘strong enough for the teaspoon to stand up on its own’!
Yes, the fields looks green and gorgeous! How is the special field seed mix growing? Is it coming in thickly?
Kind of – i think it is waiting for a good hot day. Though it is all sprouted and looking very interesting at this point. c
What the heck is Gumboot tea?
Ordinary tea. Working mans tea. Builders Tea. hot and strong with a swipe of milk. c
I must say I have never seen cleaner cows!! I grew up next to a farm and those cows were always dirty. I love reading about your daily adventures and seeing your photographs. 🙂
I think because my cows live on the fields they stay nice and clean – cows in pens are not so lucky.. c
Quite a bit of juggling for you to do. Hope the girls will be treating you to a few more meals. It is good for them to learn to cook a good meal. Looking forward to the latkes recipe.
Morning Nadia, it is all about the timing – this is the hardest bit to learn i think.. c
Beautiful pictures and your description of how things operate, makes me feel like I’m sitting around drinking tea and planning the moves with you. Kind of like the opening to Game of Thrones, all the mechanisms moving smoothly in rotation. Enjoy your company/workers, they sound like wonderful help!
They are! great company.. c
You are good at the jig saws…..
My best. c
I love a strong black tea. I get mine in Germany where it is called Ostfriesentee , it is a mixture of Assam , Darjeeling and other . My other favorite herbal tea mixture is called Schitwettertee ( shit weather tea ) and at night I love a cup of fennel tea. But I will have to try ice cream and tea.
http://germanfood.about.com/od/drinks/tp/German-Tea.htm
fennel tea – goodness – that sounds interesting.. c
It helps with digestion.
your photos of the babies are so splendid- so sweet they take my breath away! How can you not have a lovely day with these babies around!
There sure are beautiful babies on the farmy this spring. 😀
Just gorgeous babies! I just love a brown cow! It’s too bad they don’t produce chocolate milk! 🙂
Chris when my neighbor Ava was a wee lass I almost had her convinced one day that brown cows did give chocolate milk. Then she went to school and tried it on her teacher who told her mom who mentioned the story to me a short time later and I fessed up I was the guilty party who had told her daughter the silliness