"I’m glad to report that our piglets are settling in well. They now recognize that the sound of a rattling bucket and a shout of “Pig, pig, pig” means food, and come running. They will also take apple, pear and banana slices from my hand – very gently – and two of the three will accept a brief scratch. Strawberry, who is a strawberry blonde as opposed to ginger, is playing hard to get, but she’ll give in eventually. Meg, one of our collies, decided to join us in the pen, but the pigs ganged up on her and she soon skedaddled.

The lambs are growing well. The long awaited rain has brought the grass on now. We don’t have a lot of ground and have to make the best use of what we have, so the sheep have been grazing the roadside of our track. This means that we have to park at the end of the track and bring the shopping along in a wheelbarrow. Roadside grass is so much tastier than field grass – and you get to browse the hedges too!

We’ve managed to get quite a lot of vegetable seeds sown but are now held up until we get more netting in place, otherwise the hens scratch everything up. We may fence the vegetable garden over the winter as putting up nets and so on is a real pain.

The fruit trees are in full blossom and are looking lovely – I just hope the bees are in action. I’ve just joined our local beekeeping association and hope to get bees next summer when I’ve done my training.

We dispatched the last of our Hubbard meat chickens this weekend. I enjoy the end product immensely, but I don’t relish the killing. As we become more experienced, the process is smoother and our confidence grows – our main priority is to ensure a swift and stress-free end for the birds. So it was roast chicken on Sunday, curry on Monday and my favourite soup - cream of chicken with lemon and tarragon - on Tuesday.

The rain has also brought the weeds, so I’m off hoeing now – nice and relaxing before the sun goes over the yardarm and it’s time to relax.”