Happy Birthday David!

So what does a farmer do for his birthday?  Well, we had a day off.  Yes, that's two this year.  Standards are certainly slipping here at Ellie's Dairy.

After we had done all the usual feeding, milking, chasing naughty goats around the parlour, dealing with exceedingly stinky boys, packing up milk for the courier and other exciting goatie type chores, we drove to Ashford Market to the Tuesday livestock sale. 

David wanted to see the calves and cows going through and we had also heard a rumour that there may be some goats for sale.  Not that we had any intention of buying them, but we were interested to see why there were goats being sold at market (very unusual) and what kind of price they were fetching.  As it happened, there were none there.  Something for which I was quite grateful actually as I don't really enjoy the livestock market.  Lots of nervous and frightened animals being herded in and out of pens.  Not my kind of thing at all.

We had a quick walk round to look at the lovely piggies waiting in their pens - they actually looked pretty content and many were lying there fast asleep!  We watched the very young calves being sold - some very tiny ones at only a couple of weeks old.  Those huge eyes!  Beautiful little creatures.

Then it was time for the afternoon's excursion .. over to Birchington to a tractor demonstration day.  Whoooooeeeee!  We certainly know how to enjoy ourselves!!!

In a very exposed field with a cracking view of the Reculver Towers:

David is getting very nervous about his current tractor as it is getting increasingly unreliable and, with the price of diesel continuing to soar, we need to look at getting something more fuel efficient as well.  So, he had a chat to the nice man from Case tractors, picked up some information and had a sit in a couple of shiny red tractors.  Just what a boy needs on his birthday.

Must admit, we were glad to get back in the van and out of the howling wind!  It had been a very long time since breakfast and so we stopped off at Macknade Fine Foods in Faversham on the way home and enjoyed a very pleasant late lunch in their wonderful cafe.

Macknade is one of the finest foodie shops on the planet.  I love it!

Then back home to more feeding, milking and chasing naughty goats.