Sunday, August 22, 2010

Thank You Mr Postman!


The last two weeks have been hectic in the McGrath family household! We had Marsie & Parsie come and stay and Jack and Leo went to hospital to have grommets inserted in their ears, which has not left much time for me to keep up with my blog, let alone attend to my veggie garden and another distraction has come in the form of a lovely, shiny new iMac! As you can imagine any spare minute available has been taken up with learning how to use this beautiful piece of computing machinery! Now that I am back on track and everyone has settled down, I can focus on Spring which is fast approaching. This week the postman delivered 3 packages from Diggers, I was so excited as they contained 3 thornless loganberries, 3 rhubarb crowns, dutch cream potatoes, "up to date" potatoes (a Scottish heirloom variety) and lots of seeds. The next few weeks I will be in a planting and sowing frenzy, Dan and I started on the area for the potatoes today, I just need to add more soil and manure and then they will be ready to plant! I planted the rhubarb a few days ago and next will be the loganberries it is such an exciting time in the garden and my list of jobs to do gets longer and longer.......

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Free range or cage eggs?

Recently while standing in the supermarket, I happened to be near the eggs, I was searching for a brand of milk that I normally buy but could not spot it, what I did spot was a lady pick up a carton of cage eggs, she didn't hesitate or even mull over the free range eggs.  No she was very definate about her choice, so I decided to watch a few more customers, I was astounded they nearly all chose cage eggs. In total I watched seven people, now I know this is not a lot and not nearly enough to consider it a survey of such; but it did get me wondering who buys cage eggs and what are their reasons? Is it purely price driven, and given this if free range were cheaper would they purchase these instead.  Or is it a case of "animal welfare does not rank high on their agenda? What are your thoughts I would love to know? Do you buy cage eggs or do you buy free range?