Resuming transmissions

Happy New Year for 2011! Er, and 2012! Yes, a bit behind aren't we? Today is actually the Spring Equinox (in the Southern Hemisphere anyway) and while the blog has been long thought of so has my beautiful young cousin, Lisa, she of the sea-turtle-saving, Thai-elephant-rescuing globe trotting adventures. Lisa lost her battle with cancer earlier this year, at the tender age of 28. Today would have been her 29th birthday. 29 was also the brand of the Greatest Horse Who Ever Lived who has also since departed this life for the great pasture in the sky, so it's as good a time as any to resume the record of life in this valley and various other related places.

Life is too short and too wonderful not to record it. The hectic events of the past two years have left us a little worse for wear, a little scruffier, but we're still here.

What actually happened is that the firefighter turned farmer who writes these pages was told the vet bills were too much, so she set out to fix this by turning vet student and every waking minute has been taken up with study on top of the regular goings-on. Something had to go and the blog drew the short straw. For two years anyway.

Where to start again poses a bit of a problem, so much has happened. We've made new friends,

said goodbye to some dear old ones,

had some nice visitors,

and some complete disasters.

We've had many adventures,

so from now until the end of this year we'll play catch up with the news and events of our little part of the world, maybe even with some current news along the way. If anything interesting happens...