These were our first pigs and were called Alf and Maggie and they are still with us today and part of our family. They have grown enormously and have had so many offspring that we have lost count. Maggie used to come up into The Farm House when she was younger and would sleep in front of the T.V. but then she started to get very big and the floorboards started to crack and she was banned! Today Alf and Maggie are huge and look so ferocious but they are great big softies at heart! Scratch behind their ears or scrub their backs and they just close their eyes and grunt with delight!

This year, after spending the first day of the holiday ‘playing water’ amongst the chaos in town, we will all (including the village!) celebrate Songkran, the Thai New Year 2557 and Water Festival on the farm….and so last weekend, in preparation, we built a miniature dam on the river by the ford so as to create a small lake where the kids can safely play and where we can all get wet!
We’ll set-up a BBQ, put on some traditional Thai music and in true Thai-style party throughout the holiday! In all of this our animals are never forgotten and special treats for all of them are bought for the occasion.

May we take this opportunity to wish all our families and friends, past and present, a very Happy Holiday and very best wishes for the New Year!

Well here is one of the two tables that I also found in the old wood shop. They cost a pittance! They were in really bad shape but with a bit of t.l.c, sanding, repairing, staining and fitting thick clear glass tops they have turned out quite stunning. There is so much detail in the carving and they are so heavy that it must have taken someone, a long time ago, an age to make.

We will put one in the new Kennel Sala and the other in The Farm House on the Chinese Day Bed verandah….quite something don’t you think?!

One of the things that I like to do if I have to go into Chiang Mai and if I have time to spare, is to rummage around in antique markets and junk shops!

Last week I found a small, dilapidated wooden shed that seemed, at first glance, to be selling aged wood from traditional Thai houses. On closer inspection, once I had parked the truck, I noticed with surprise that much of this old wood was, in fact, ornamental and that there were even some from Temples! What a find! So much interesting wood in furniture, carvings, beams and so on but after much deliberation I settled on part of a battered and broken carved wooden fascia.  I was told it probably came from a Temple outbuilding. It was faded gold, broken and twisted…what a challenge! So with much painstaking work repairing, sanding and supplementing the wood and then bringing it back to its’ former golden glory it is finished! We have all decided that it will look fantastic in the new Sunset Room and we have the ideal place to hang it! I also found two stunning carved wooden tables…but that’s another story!

Later that very same day (as when Sally gave birth) I went to feed the Geese and was happily surprised by three little yellow heads peering very wondrously from under their mothers’ wing! Of course I knew that one of our Geese had laid four eggs and I presumed that the time for hatching had passed five days ago and that the eggs were infertile….so it was really exciting that these little Goslings had hatched!...better was yet to come as the next day the last egg also hatched so we have four new baby geese! They are currently safely tucked away with their mother in a comfortable, warm room in the bird barn and are on a special high protein diet. Talk about cute!

We thought that Sally, Dangs’ mother, was just putting on healthy weight as with the rest of our small herd…but it wasn’t until I was awoken at 2.00 am the night before last by loud bellowing and rushed to the cow shed on the bike that I realized that Sally was, in fact, in labour!

So I called Liam (who takes care of the cows, buffaloes and horses for us) and he rushed to the farm from the village and between us we safely delivered a very healthy baby heifer. He’s a boy and so he will be able to stay with us for a year, or a little more, and then we can find him a good home for breeding.

We never realised that Sally was pregnant which must have happened when she strolled off to the village that day and got infatuated by one of Liams' own cows!

Nouy, one of the girl buffaloes, is particularly protective of the new calf and we think it’s probably her maternal instinct!

P.s. The snaps were taken in the late afternoon of that morning!