Enjoying the Sun

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, really must try to keep up, we have had a very busy few weeks enjoying the lovely weather and spending most of our free time outside. During the week we went to the seaside by train, and we happened to pick the most glorious day for it, apparently it was the hottest day of the year so far. 

We spent half the day on the sandy part of the beach, looking at the things that had washed ashore and intended to visit Amazonia, a reptile house, in the afternoon but unfortunately it had not opened for the season yet so we will have to visit again another time. Not wanting to waste the rest of the day we walked through the sand dunes to have a closer look at the offshore wind farm and the sand bank, which usually has seals on. 

We have been for nature walks in our local woodland and spent a few days exploring our local nature reserve, on one day it was so lovely we walked round the entire great broad. There were so many swans here that some times it got a little scary when they came charging up to you, especially with the little ones about. My daughter however, was not phased at all being surrounded by about 7 or 8 swans much taller than her! We had to throw food at them and make a hasty retreat.

On the home front we now make our own yoghurt all of the time, and we have also been experimenting with cheese production. My son has been fascinated with the whole concept of making these things ourselves and has helped out too. So far we have just used a simple recipe to make cream cheese, but my husband is hoping to increase our range so that we can also make mozzarella and ricotta too. We will be posting soon about how we make these things in more detail.

As you can see in the above photograph some of the things we have planted are coming along very well, the children have been watching the new vegetable plants as they come up very closely. We have had good results so far from the peas and beans, and due to the lovely weather some of the other things like the corn and potatoes are also starting to show. The lovely wooden row markers that you can see were made by my husband, who has been very busy and has also made raised vegetable beds, a new desk and a new book shelf for a wall I'm hoping to turn into a wall of books. If you would like to see how some of these things are made visit his blog here.