Every year is the year you're going to make a Christmas Pudding of your own, and not buy one in, and every year you stare at the recipes and think "Oh, I can't be bothered to steam for 2 days and then store for 6 months".

 Why is it so necessary to steam over steam for so long? I mean, a Christmas Pudding is basically a classic suet-based steam pudding. Suet-based steam puddings do remarkably well in a microwave, so why can't you do one in the microwave?

You can.

Yup, you read that right, you can. I'm not saying it's perfect, but compared to the realistic alternative - the shop bought mass produced special - it's a big improvement. This will take you less than half-an-hour from start to finish.

It's based on several recipes, mainly a Raymond Blanc (yup, a Frenchman's Christmas Pudding recipe), Mrs Beeton and a few others, plus a healthy dollop of what I liked spice-wise and fruit-wise in a pudding. 

We've recently got a cream separator from Ebay Germany. It's a Russian model. But by buying it in Germany, and buying a Russian one, we've saved many hundreds of Euro. The Russian one cost about €200.

It's been a difficult for farmers in Skåne. The stock movement freeze has made things hard for everyone. Finally there is some progress - bluetongue vaccinations are being scheduled now for small farmers, and so soon we'll be able to get a billy onto the farm to make the goats very happy.

Otherwise, life continues on the farm. The geese, ducks and chickens continue to thrive, and this year our major push is to get the numbers of Skånegås and Gul ankor up. Both are highly endangered species of local fowl, and we want to make sure that the breeds have a better year in 2009 than they had in 2008. 

As with much of Europe, Bluetongue is causing problems to farmers here in Skåne. For us it's causing us some major headaches...

As of 1st June the farm has become "real".

Sounds strange? Maybe, but read on...