Wink’s porch is piled with empty boxes and her cupboards are filling up. There’s still a long way to go – unpacking boxes of books and hanging pictures, for the most part – but all the main living area is clear of boxes now. She took us out to lunch today, at the restaurant at the local farm shop.
It’s a very good place with high standards of animal husbandry. Rebecca has a herd of Jersey cows, known as the Goddesses, and their calves stay with their mums. So they can only be milked once a day, the cows, but they are happy and so are the little ones. You can see them at this time of the year when they’re eating haylage in the barn and are not out to pasture. Beautiful animals eating dried grass. So no soya, nothing bought in. Milk and yoghurt are sold raw, unpasteurised, which a lot of people say is better for allergies, intolerances and so on. We are very lucky here because there are other farms with similar high standards.
I am still having internet problems and will have to get on to BT in the morning. If I check the speed it says it’s the expected speed, but it’s not as good as it was a few days ago. In addition, it drops connection and the hub has to reload several times a day. I used so much data on Thursday that I’ve had to turn mobile data off, so that my phone doesn’t go over the 5 GB a month capacity I pay for. I got up to 3.7 in a couple of days, with a Zoom meeting and so on, because it happened to be the day they were working on it and had to keep switching it off. I’ll let them know that and I’m fairly sure they’ll offer me a top up. I only have 5 GB because they gave me extra, I often don’t use 1. Especially this year, of course, when I haven’t really gone anywhere.
I really have nearly finished Christmas shopping. I should start writing cards soon.