ALL CHANGE FOR SUMMER

Hi Everyone

I hope you are all well and starting to enjoy the sunshine - although I must say today seems a little grey here in Wales but I can't complain because we have had quite a few days of glorious sunshine although a little on the windy side.

Well we have been busy here as usual. What with the kiddings continuing to go well - loads of boys this year but I am sure the girls will catch up soon, they normally do end up being just about equal.

The guys on the farm are really busy at the moment preparing extra field shelters ready for all the new youngsters to go outside during the summer. All our goats here like to be out as much as possible in the summer although they hate rain so we need to make sure there is adequate shelter for them.

On the food side I have been busy re-vamping some of our packaging. We now have new brown bags for our fudge (As above) with some fantastic bright coloured labels with the help of Chris our designer. We are really pleased and so far the comments from you, the customer, are great - keep the comments coming we love to know what you think! Also our chocolate is taking a little face lift but this is ongoing as we are frantically designing our chocolates with some really wonderful, non nut, centres. Hopefully some of them will be really eyebrow raising creations - watch this space!

We will also shortly be sending out our monthly newsletter so if you haven't done so already, sign up to subscribe - there could be some great offers coming up in the next few months!!

Anyway enough from me now. Lets hope the sunshine keeps coming!

Loraine

Happy Easter

Hi there, it is finally Good Friday and once again we are out at shows. As usual you will find us in the Bay at Mermaid Quay in Cardiff for the whole weekend and today in Carmarthen. Sunday we are going to visit Bluestone Holiday Park near Haverfordwest.

Our children are rather excited. We have a new edition here in the house. Dolly the puppy!! She is a Dalmation Collie Cross and she is very special as she is deaf. Not that that stops her from being into everything and doing all the normal puppy things. Our other dogs find it a little confusing when they growl to tell her off and she seems to think it is just a game!! Here she is in the picture looking so innocent!

We have a had a very busy time recently having had a fantastic feature in Country Living magazine in the April edition - just right for Easter. I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who emailed and wrote in with comments. Thank you. It makes all our hard work worthwhile!

We are still kidding here on the farm, another 6 arrived this morning which means the milk is flowing nicely from the parlour. All our new farm workers are settling in well and we have recently had some vet students coming to learn about goats. So we have had a lot of fun and laughter here - just what the doctor ordered to come out of the winter and into the spring.

Hope you are all keeping cheery out there. Will try and blog again soon.

Loraine

WELCOME 2009

Many apologies for the delay in writing. We had a busy time towards the end of the year with many shows and lots of making!!!

Well here we are in 2009. Kidding has started and already we have many kids running around. We have started with mostly first kidders and last year's dry stock. So far majority of the first kidders have had singles whilst the older stock have come in with twins. We will be kidding through to July time with majority of the herd kidding around March/April.

We have just started back at markets so please have a look at our calendar to see where we are going to be and when.

We will have two new products to launch this year so keep looking to see what is new!

Signing off for now.

Loraine

BEST NEW CHEESE!!!!!!!!!!!

What a weekend!!!! We have just come home from the British Cheese Awards set in beautiful Cardiff Castle and would you believe we have won the Best New Cheese for our Talley Mountain Goats Cheese! Wow!!! Mike and I were absolutely stunned when our name was announced.

We must thank Carmarthenshire Cheese Company who contract make our cheese. Fittingly they won the Best Welsh Cheese with their own Pont Gar Garlic and Herb, soft white cheese. So a brilliant weekend all round.

I have been out and shown the goats their trophy and I have to say they were more interested in the stand (which is made out of wood of course) rather than the cheese iron that sits in the top. Monty felt that this was a little hard for his pallet! So the girls are all having a rich tea biscuit after their tea during evening milking, and the boys are having their usual treats of dried pasta - only one piece of penne each of course! Well, it is a treat! I will post a picture of our wonderful award as soon as I have a copy to hand.

AWARDS and NEW CHEESES GALORE!!!

Hi everyone

We have great news - We won first and second prize in the Goat Cheese class at the Royal Welsh Show for our Talley Mountain Goats cheese and Kid Me Not mild goats cheese respectively. We then came second and third in the new cheese section at the Royal Welsh, in the same order - we are absolutely thrilled and thank our cheesemakers at Carmarthenshire Cheese for a wonderful job! We also had a fifth place at the Great Yorkshire Show in the Celebrity Special class which was judged by no other than "Paddy" from Emerdale - who liked our Talley Mountain goats cheese - thanks paddy!

We have also launched three new cheeses to tantalise the taste buds over the summer. Great for picnics and barbecues to impress friends and relations with a new cheeseboard!!!

Firstly we have our Blue Talley Mountain - a blue version of our award winning Talley Mountain Goats Cheese. Mild with a delicate blue taste, simply delicious.

Secondly, Smoked Talley Mountain - yes, for those cowboys out there who love that natural smokey taste. Not over the top but a real Ye Ha moment!!!!

Thirdly, Smoked Mild - we have taken our Mild Goats cheese and again naturally smoked with a mix of oak and beech chippings for a light barbecue taste, a mouth watering morcel.

So you see we have been a little busy here in the hills and mountains of Wales. We are also out and about every weekend so do check our calendar and see if we are going to be near you over the next few weeks. If so, come and try all our cheeses, and not forgetting our fudge and chocolates!

Happy Bloggings. Loraine

New for the web site!

Hi everyone, well we have had a busy time here. You may have noticed changes to our web site - the kids page should be going live soon, we are having a little game put on for our young members!

By popular demand we have also been busy putting our bags of fudge onto the web site. Yes, that's right, especially for all those of you who want to buy our fudge without the gift packaging, this is now available! Do have a look for all your favourites!

Well, as I am writing this I am looking out of the window at our wonderful summer - yet again the rain is pouring, I have visions of another muddy Royal Welsh Show! Last weekend I was in Yorkshire and we had a fantastic welcome and wonderful weather on Friday but then Saturday and Sunday were wet, in fact our stand was a little like the singing in the rain set - We were standing on a sheet of corragated iron, kindly loaned by Newby Hall, (thanks guys) which eventually had a large puddle on top. So Mike and I slushed our way from one end of the table to the other singing and splashing mud everywhere - great fun!

Having said that we did take our three new cheeses with us for their first outing and I have to say that we are extremely pleased with the reaction so far. This weekend I can be found at the Woodcote Steam Rally, Nr Reading, so please do come and say hello. Mike and my eldest daughter Kiri will be at Cardiff International Festival so pop along and say hello to them.

Our three new cheeses are two smoked and a blue - keep looking at the web site, they should be there towards the end of the month.

Festivals Galore

Hello Bloggers

Well so much has happened since my last blog. Unfortunatley I have lost my polish couple who help me on the farm, Wiktor and Aneta. They have had to go back to Poland because of family commitments so we wish them well. In their place I have two new Polish men, Marek and Jozef who are extremely helpful but speaking very little English at the moment so hopefully with my several Polish dictionaries and a awful lot of laughter etc we will get there in the end!!!

We are now in full swing with the craft and food festivals all over the UK and are enjoying meeting everyone. I am doing my usual snail impression (travelling slowly with my home on my back) that's right driving with the caravan. Apologies now to anyone who gets stuck behind me, I do try to pull over to let you pass whenever possible! This weekend we are off to sunny Staffordshire to visit Shugborough which I have to say is very beautiful, although hopefully it will be sunny as it is not so much fun when it is raining.

I look forward to meeting more of you over the summer months, do come and try our wonderful products.

Well that said I am going back to my polish dictionary to see if I can find the nearest word to fudge.