We're in the midst of christmas preparations here - bought a few presents, working on making/finishing a few more, and coming up with the Christmas Eve menu - it'll be Trinidadian this year, along with the traditional Puerto Rican roast pork and pastellas. Grilled marinated red snapper, calaloo soup, roastbake, sorrel.... My folks surprised us yesterday with a new dishwasher for Chirstmas, so that will certainly make a houseful of guests easier to handle!

The last of the pumpkins will go out to the pigs tonight, and then we'll set up the (fake) Christmas tree and bring in some holly for the mantel. The temperature finally dropped and we've been reading in front of the fire every night - very nice.

Georgia finally took the leap and started walking on Thursday, though she still thinks it's more of a novelty then anything - most of the time she still crawls from point A to point B.  

Ouside the hens are in full moulting mode - the barn is covered in an inch of feathers. We didn't have any eggs laid yesterday, three the day before. We have a mix of older hens and spring chicks, so hopefully if we tweak the amount of light they have in the barn, we can keep some laying all winter. With about thirty dozen in the egg fridge, I'm not worried about running out, but I like to get at least a few eggs a week for the amount of food we're putting into the flock. The pigs have been a bit less active, spending most of their time in their house with this cold biting wind that kicks up every day. We've started a serious search for a Toggenburg buck since we're having trouble getting stud service. I'd still like to lease a buck this year, but if we can't then I'm hoping we can at least buy one. Our last resort would be to breed them to a registered Nigerian and sell the resulting "Mini-Toggs", but we'd like to avoid that if at all possible since we'd like to keep a doe on to add to our herd. The girls still give us as much milk as we need, so hopefully they will continue to produce well for a few more months, and we can get them bred by the end of January....