Woodlands is now back online - hoorah! We have been without Broadband for over a week - didn't realise that our life is centred around the bloomin' computer - it's been a nightmare!
We had some bad news last week. We had a visit from a mink last Saturday and he ate 5 of our beautiful call ducks. Nige was distrort. They were his favourites. We now realise that the mink is what took the duck and her 13 eggs that went missing back in May. Apparently there used to be a mink farm a couple of miles away from us and a couple of years ago animal activists, in their wisdom, released them and it looks like they have ventured over to us. We think they are getting up to the pond via a stream that runs through our woods. We have re-inforced the area and hope this will deter him. The 3 remaining ducks looked very sorry for themselves so we have now bought them 6 other friends to play with and they are settling in nicely. Just have to hope they stay out of the way of the mink or he doesn't come back for a while.
We have also bought 5 more chickens as we were running out of eggs each day as guests were buying them from us. Now 17 chickens in total. Pigs are happy, but making a total mess of their field... a real mud bath, but I suppose there is nothing happier than a pig wallowing in mud.

My minibus driving for the Bude Jazz festival week went well. I actually really enjoyed it and had good fun with the passengers. We had no near misses so that was a bonus!