Ellie's Dairy wins Award!!!

Hurrah!!!!  Yes indeed ... David and I got dressed up in our posh frocks last night to attend the Taste of Kent Awards dinner and came home with a rather nice trophy of our very own.  We beat off some stiff competition to win the Food, Farming and Landscape Award.  The purpose of this award is to recognise exemplary achievements where a a food producer or farmer makes a real contribution to the conservation and enhancement of Kent's fine landscape.  Hurrah!!!

And for sheer entertainment value - here's a couple of 'before' and 'after' shots:

This was taken as had finished with a couple of difficult kiddings (more later) and left the barn to go and get ready:

And this was us a few hours later with our award ...

Note the change in height between me and him indoors ... Might have something to do with the absolutely ridiculous 5 inch heels I was wearing .. And I managed to get on and off the stage without breaking my neck!
Jane the Cheese won Best Food Product (Food Service) for her Canterbury Cobble.  Hurrah!  And Karen the Cheese won Best Food Product (Retail) for her Kentish Bluebell.  Hurrah!  The three of us had our photo taken together as it's quite something to have 3 women cheesemakers all winning awards.

Anyhow - enough of that .. back to more serious matters.  Babies ..

So, where did we get to .... Noone did anything on Thursday night so a relatively quiet night for me.  I was out doing my usual deliveries on Friday and so David was on maternity callout for Francesca who was left 'home alone' with a barn full of pregnant ladies!

Our lovely Whoopi produced the first black and white kids of the year around lunchtime (1 male and 1 female), whilst big fat Footsie goat was happily munching her way through her 4th hayrack.  We had moved Footsie into her own pen early Friday morning as she looked like she would be on her way fairly soon. 

However, when I got home on Friday afternoon, she had still not done anything.  Nor was she pushing at all.  Bad sign as I would have expected her to have done something by then.  Time to go in and have a feel about to see what was holding up proceedings.  As I suspected, we had problems and I had to haul the first kid out from his rather odd position.  Unfortunately, he is an only child as I then pulled out a little mummified creature, followed by a rather messy 'nothing in particular'.  Poor Footsie.  But she is a very proud mum to her little man.

Dolores, one of young British Alpines, also looked as if she may also be in trouble and so I had to sort her  out as well.  2 little chaps.  And then it was a quick change and off to the Awards!

This morning. Perdita decided to have her triplets a few days early.  Her second kid is the tiniest little man you have ever seen!  I am a bit behind on taking pictures of babies but I promise that I will make up for it over the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, here's a quick phone shot of Perdi's tiny little man: