I took the tractor down to “Piggy Corner” to retrieve some more dead trees. We gave this field its name because the wild boar have created a mud wallow next to the drainage ditch. Due to the dead-tree-clearing operation, one is now able to drive around the entire perimeter of this field. (Only with a tractor, mind you. It’s very boggy in places!)
The next batch of beer (a Victorian bitter) is ready for bottling. I may do an Irish stout next. The beer brewing needs to be complete by mid-May because that’s when the fermentation buckets will be needed for this year’s batch of elderflower champagne. That is, presuming there are lots of elders in flower; last year we weren’t so lucky because a late frost finished them off.
Cat brought five new little friends home. Unfortunately it would appear that the tick season is once again upon us. The tick-removing tweezers were swiftly applied, and cat is very annoyed. “But they were my friends,” she meowed. “That was Tom, Tricia and Tina. I hadn’t yet got around to finding out the names of the other two. Now I shall have to go and find some more.” Good luck with that; I’ve sprayed under her chin with an ectoparastic spray called Effipro. Unfortunately it has to be re-applied every two weeks, which is an operation the cat does not enjoy. At all.