The sons have spent many happy hours ridding my larder of ancient jars and packets that have been there since they were little. However yesterday I discovered they had not been entirely successful when a packet of pudding rice surfaced with a sell by date of 2002. Undaunted I cooked it and after six hours rather than the required two, it is almost rice pudding.
Chas and Andrew have been putting the netting up in the new field all week so I’ve been in charge of alpaca feeding. It takes me three hours as I have to bring the two nursery fields up into the yard for their grub. All the rest are fed in the field, then I go round all the hay mangers and check our badger fences for any attempt at digging their way in – none so far. Yesterday I also managed to shoot two pheasants and a rabbit after days of missing because I couldn’t get the sights right and could hear the shot whistling over their heads. Seems to be OK now though as the threesome went over with one shot each. Andrew was immensely impressed with how easy it is to skin a rabbit. He stood there saying ‘it’s so easy’ over and over. He’s obviously never gone in for game in the Czech Republic.