Month: September 2012

The Farmer sits in the kitchen by the nice warm fire with her head in her hands, the sky is heavy with, as yet, unleashed waterfalls of rain to accompany the previous 24 hour deluge. The farm is slowly disappearing under a vast volume of water and the animals must make thier survival decisions quickly! Ha ha not quite but it feels like it this morning, the rain is relentless and no amount of wet weather gear is going to keep you bone dry in this, I had my long waterproof coat my waterproof leather boots and my leather hat on, still got wet at the back of my legs. The hat is the type that the Aussies wear and I know why they have corks all around it, not to keep flies off but to remind you where the edge of your hat is is that you don’t keep bashing it into things.

As already mentioned Rosie the Rayburn was lit during the week, I think we timed it just right, although the first meal cooked in her was disappointing. I had put some braising steak in at about ten o’clock and then added veg later in the afternoon but I don’t think enough heat was generated because it was only just edible despite smelling great. Subsequent meals have been great though and on a day like this it is lovely to be able to keep the kettle simmering for a cuppa when you come in from outside.

The contrast in the weather today compared to Saturday is drastic to say the least. We had a beautiful day and we were lucky enough to have a day off and go to the races, we left Mum in charge and my middle daughter and her BF kindly came over and gave her a hand. It was great to have a day off and a thoroughly enjoyable day at that, although Lionel Ritchie was supposed to be playing but cancelled, shame as we had a great view of the stage and it would have been an awesome finish to the day.

We must have had quite a bit of Sun in the past week as on one of the days I decided to do a bit of blackberry picking. I don’t have to go far as there are some very prolific bushes on the perimeter of the farm, I picked three big punnets within an hour and they were sweet, and plump, probably one of the best years I have encountered. We always used to go blackberry picking when we were kids and I always took my kids picking too, the blackberry is one of natures finest little packages and free, which is a bonus. There are plenty of them this year, which in some circles would indicate a hard Winter ahead, however I think it is more likely to be because of all the rain we had during the Spring and Summer, being a late fruit they would have benefited enormously from that. I have noticed that the birds are stripping fruit quite quickly though, my plums were one, and the elderberries and sloes are another, maybe they are storing up now because there have not been many insects around during the wet summer. When I had finished picking I set about making Jam which is one of the best things you can do with blackberries, I picked the few apples that I have on the tree this year and decided to make Apple and Blackberry Jam, the apples have a high pectin content and help to set the jam very easily without too much effort and no disappointment 🙂

We finally got round to worming the sheep, hurrah, I had quite a sense of achievement when we had finished, strange how little things can give so much satisfaction. We took the advice of an old hand and made a triangular pen with the hurdles to catch them one at a time in. You drive the sheep into the corner and shut the gate behind it and because sheep like to move forward you have them nicely caught in order to give them the wormer. I thought this would be like giving the dog or the horse wormer, both usually protest and spit a large portion of it out, not the case with the sheep, they actually liked it! Why don’t they make every wormer that easy to administer, or maybe the sheep are just a bit stupid, who knows. Having got them cornered it was a good time to take a look at thier feet and check for any sores and cut back any excess hoof. We also checked over the under bellies to make sure there was no fly strike and then they were let go back into the flock ( oo I am getting carried away now as there is only two) one day maybe and I feel that I would be more than able to keep up some good husbandry after completing our first ever worming and sheep pedicure! They are now ready to go to the Tup whenever are called for and fingers crossed he does a good job.

A rainy day is a baking day in this establishement and it is definitely raining today! A chicken dish of some description will be going into the oven and I think a cake will be well received on a day like this, probably a Victoria sponge with the fresh jam as a filling. I will probably do a bit of batch baking as the rain does not look like it is going to let up at all for the next few hours 😦

Assuming it does stop raining at some point and we don’t get washed away in a muddy torrent of water, I will be back next week 🙂

We finally got the elusive trailer that will make life easier, we decided on a horse trailer, that way it is duel purpose. We found it on eBay and Hubby and Daughters BF went to have a look and bought it back with them from Northampton. It is now in the process of having some TLC, not that it is in bad condition but if we tart it up a little it will be splendid! That means we are free to carry livestock whenever we need to and are not restricted to borrowing anymore 🙂

The tack room overhaul is coming along nicely, Hubby has built some new cubby holes and fitted the kitchen units, it will be so much nicer in there now. It was dark, dingy, dusty and downright depressing before, now it will be somewhere that is of an acceptable condition to make a cuppa for the farriers and even one for ourselves when we are outside working.

The chicken ark has also had its overhaul, been sprayed for red mite and had a coat of creocoate, the chooks were moved back out there this morning and they look happy to be back outside. The stable has been made ready for the next lot to come in while we do the same to thier ark.

Mia is finding life fun on the farm, everything is a game, from the water coming out of the hosepipe to the apples falling off the trees. She is easily entertained and is at this moment having a ball with a piece of bale string, she has been on yet more antibiotics, looks like she is going to be high maintenance!

I was reminded that it was four years ago today when we arrived here in the morning to find that we had been robbed! The livery yard was full at the time and they had stolen all of the saddles and tack belonging to the girls, it is also my eldest daughters birthday and I was so relived that I had decided not to buy her a new saddle and leave it with a bow on for her to find, that would have been heartbreaking. It was a heartbreaking and distressing time for everyone who lost property, the police were great but said that in all honesty we would probably never get the stuff back and they were right. The girls even went to the local Gypsy fair so see if they could find thier stuff on sale but with no luck. People are under the misconception that if you have horses you are well off, this is not the case, in most circumstances the girls work hard to be able to fund a hobby that they enjoy and for someone to think they can just nick it is disgusting in my book.

That was part of the run of bad luck we had when we first bought the place, we had a second robbery just a fortnight later, they decided to come back for anything they left the first time round! It was something that played on my mind for a couple of years and I have only just stopped thinking that we are a potential target for any nighttime visitors. My motto had to become, don’t let the b……s get you down, cos if they do, they have won.

Rural crime is a real threat, and I am glad we have the dogs here, I never make any apology for the din they make whenever anyone arrives, for us they are a real necessity and the best alarm I can think of 🙂

We are still under discussion about when to light the Rayburn, once it is lit we don’t want to let it out and so the timing is crucial. At the moment with the sun shinning in it would make the place feel like a furnace, but at night the temperature is dropping quite a bit so we are using the little electric heater just to take the chill off the air.

We had a lovely meal of stewed rabbit yesterday, our middle daughter took one home that we had previously shot and invited us over to share. She cooked it in the slow cooker and it was quite delicious so I may put that on the menu more often from now on. We had a discussion about homeless people and if they ever catch rabbits and eat them, it’s pretty good free food after all.

Another free food that I am very much looking forward to are blackberries, the lack of cultivated soft fruit means that I don’t have enough jars of jam to see us through to next summer so the blackberries will be very useful. Although without a decent amount of apples to go with them I dont think there will be very many pies going in the oven 😦

We have a birthday to celebrate today, our eldest is 27 this year,so we will have a houseful of family later on. it’s always nice to have a bit of sunshine on a birthday, we will probably put the BBQ on for the last time this year, actually with the terrible weather we have only had it on twice anyway! Let’s hope next spring and summer are better and that the winter coming is not too harsh!

I seem to have lots to blog about this week, not sure why, just one of those weeks I suppose.

We have had two main jobs to do this week, the first was concreting the tack room floor which we did on Saturday morning. It went better than I had thought and within three hours it was completed, it probably would have taken less time with a better cement mixer as ours is a bit tired, three shovel fulls and it won’t rotate any more, I know the feeling! Mia decided to investigate and walk straight into it, all four paws, up to her knees covered in wet concrete, I had to get her straight into the sink and wash it off before she ended up with concrete boots, plus it burns the skin. The floor set overnight and is now being left for a few days to ‘go off’. We were lucky enough to be given some kitchen units that someone was taking out, they will fit just right, slightly worried about the colour though as they are White, we did joke that we should paint them dust Grey as that is how they will look most of the time probably.

The second big job of the week was undertaken after we discovered red mite in the old coops, we have never had it in these before as they have been soaked in old engine oil over the last one hundred years and that usually keeps them away. We decided not to use oil because of environmental issues and the result is an infestation of red mite 😦 No wonder our egg numbers were down, I decided drastic measures were called for and made a stable ready for the birds. We caught them all one night, doused them with louse powder and transferred them to the stable, within two days the eggs went from 6 a day to 14! Proof that they were not happy in thier coop, I ordered a strong chemical, which I dont like to use but needs must, I also ordered a power washer. Read carefully ladies, if you want a job doing buy a power tool and the Hubby can’t help himself, he was immediately attracted to the job because he got to play with a ‘boy toy’ brilliant! I left him alone for a couple of hours and voila the coop was cleaned out spick and span, maybe I will tell him he can use it to clean the bath out after him 😉 the next step is to spray the coop with the dreaded chemical and then creocoat it and hopefully that will sort it out for a while. Red mite are notoriously difficult to eradicate and this year has been a great year for them, the weather, wet and humid, makes for ideal breeding conditions. I will need to treat the rest of the coops too, the little blighters migrate and we would just be going round in circles if I don’t.

The baby quail have been moved outside, one of them has been feather pecking, you can always tell which one as its the only one with any feathers left. The culprit has been segregated and I have sprayed the backs with anti peck spray, they are beginning to grow new feathers back again now. Most of these birds were sold before I even hatched them out, so I just need to ring people up and tell them that they are ready for collection.

On the wildlife side we are having regular visits from the Woodpeckers, we spotted a greater spotted woodpecker and a green woodpecker on the same day which is fabulous. Not so great is the visit from the crows and magpies, earlier in the week I noted that the Victoria plums were ready for picking. I went up the ladder and picked as many as I could reach safely, the chickens below soon realised that any movement of the tree caused a few of them to fall on the floor and they swarmed round to greedily pick any of these over. One other thing I noted is that there was not a wasp in sight, normally I have to be careful grabbing hold of the plums in case I get more that I bargained for. I mentioned to Hubby that I needed help next time because I needed someone at the bottom of the precariously balanced ladder, I went out the next day and the whole tree had been stripped of every single remaining plum 😦 not happy and that was the only fruit we had in abundance. The magpies have been stealing the duck eggs, I caught one at it this morning, the ducks lay regularly so it’s odd when there are none. Three of the ducks live in an old dog cage and the magpies have been hooking them out of the bottom, they leave the remnants in the school, I need to wire the bottom of the cage so they can’t get to them anymore. At one time we had more duck eggs than we could sell but since I have been putting them out in the little shed they have been selling well, mostly because if people turn up and there are no hen eggs they just buy duck eggs instead.

I had a lovely visit in the week from my youngest sister and her friend, the friend reads the blog ( good morning ) and wanted to be able to visualise what she was reading about, I am always happy to show people round if anyone else wants to pop up for a cuppa you would be most welcome. I can’t guarantee there will be cake though as I have not had much time lately to do any baking, one friend who has though, won first prize in a local show for her Victoria sponge cake which she puts down to using our eggs 🙂 so I can now claim we have prize winning eggs can’t I 😉

We had a farm meeting, actually it was just me and Hubby, we walked around and discussed what needed doing urgently and, the most important bit as far as I was concerned, where we were going to put a permanent pig pen. Pigs can be kept in a small area such as a traditional pig pen, but it’s nice to let them have a bit of ground for natural behaviour as well, so we needed to identify an area that could be half concreted for easy washing out but that they could also be let out for rooting and rolling. The area at the back of the stable block has a row of conifers that will perfectly suit them. We did use part of this area to keep pig before but without much experience they soon trashed the place and we don’t want to make the same mistake again. Hubby has come up trumps with regards to the Ewes and their potential mate, no funny comments please, a chap he knows from his regular trips to the burger van during work time, has a flock of sheep that are due to be tupped soon and he has offered to have our two in with his, he even gave Hubby some wormer to give them before they go for a vist, excellent, fingers crossed the ram does his job and we will have lambing to blog about next Spring.

The end of the veg season is in sight, the foliage is beginning to die back on the pumpkins leaving them to ripen, and the runner bean plants are beginning to look tired, although strangely enough this is when they produce most of thier fruits. I am picking over 6lbs of beans every other day, I did have a blanching and freezing session in the week that included carrots and sweetcorn as well, but there is only so many hours you want to spend doing that. The sweetcorn has been successful again this year, it is obviously suited to the ground conditions here because the weather has been different two years running and they still have done well. I intend to double the amount of sweetcorn I grow next year as it is my favourite crop and I am reluctant to share it! Those that have been privileged enough to have had some this year agreed that it was the best they had ever tasted, once tried you will be very reluctant to go back to shop bought, fresh or tinned, I know I was.

I can’t remember if I mentioned missing out on a livestock trailer on eBay last week or not but I am still gutted about it. I put in my top offer and was pipped at the post by 20 quid in the last minute. A trailer will take us one step further to being able to regularly turn livestock over, trying to organise abbatior dates and then borrowing a trailer is a bit hit and miss and I have had to cancel the abbatior before now. This is why the pigs gots a bit too big and started to destroy thier surroundings and also why the sheep are still here in the field instead of in the freezer! Our own trailer will mean that the livestock can go at the optimum time without too much fuss, if you know anyone that has one for sale let me know 🙂

We will be selling Christmas trees this year, when I get round to ordering them, we are ordering in 5 & 6 ft trees of the non drop variety, we will have around 120 of them this year just to see how it goes, we don’t want to be left with any! It will be quite a big outlay, they are not cheap to buy in, so get your Christmas trees here, I will make Hubby wear a Christmas hat for added humour. We did get a bit carried away when planning it and had reindeers and Santa in mind also, but I think we better walk before we run don’t you?

Nearly forgot to give you an update on Mia, apart from her concrete boots, she is settling in very well, she has a laid back nature and takes everything in her stride, she even comes back when you just whistle her. She has taken to stalking the chickens though and I am not sure if it is just because they move and she is playing or if she sees them as potential dinner, she is a greedy puppy. I decided cure her by putting her in a pen full of hens, great, she spent her time eating chicken poo and ignoring the chickens, I need another plan!

Time in general seems to be flying past, the day, the week, the month, the year, life! As I have Said before, one reason for writing this is to be able to look back years from now and remember what we did, what we learnt and the laughs and tears we had on the journey.

One of the the most unpleasant days is septic tank emptying day, it gets emptied once a year and I always forget just what a stench it is, luckily it was not a hot day this year. The lorry has to park close to the kitchen window in order to be able to reach the pipes to the tank, it begins sucking up the contents and the stink begins. If you are one of those that think your s..t doesn’t stink, think again lol, and the smell does not leave once the lorry has gone, it lingers for hours, opening the doors and windows does not relive it. Luckily I had a phone call inviting me out for coffee and I quickly took the offer up!

Little Mia, the puppy, has been poorly this week, we thought at one point she would not make it through the night even though she had had an antibiotic shot, luckily she did and is well on the way to recovery, in fact she is full of beans this morning 🙂 Consequently she has not been up to much this week but I am sure she will make up for it very soon.

We have an escaped duck that is sat the other side of the the fence, as I write, up in the back paddocks. It was my aim to move the young ducklings that we were given from the local hotel a while back, they are getting big and making a mess of the paddock so it was time to move them to the duck pond area. I managed to catch two of them but the third was on a mission not to be caught, she went through the only gap in the livestock fencing, up and over the wall into the next farm. We spent the best part of yesterday morning trying to get her back from the thick undergrowth of the hedge, we failed, she spent the night out and luckily is still there this morning,I have tried coaxing her back with a bread trail but as yet that is unsuccessful. The thing with ducks is they are quite nervous and so the minute you take a step towards them they shoot off, I am hoping she comes back through the hole of her own accord otherwise she is likely to be fox food!

Hubby has at last finished the cladding on the front of the building and it looks very smart indeed, I used to be a bit embarrassed to say the least about the state of the building we lived in, but now I look at it and think wow, that looks good, I don’t mind saying That’s our home now 🙂 I think people think we are a bit mad actually, moving from all the mod cons to what was at best a shed with accommodation, but over the years we have made it warm and cosy, decorated it and made it home. If an opportunity presents itself to you in life then take it that’s what I say, you never know what adventures you will have along the way.

The air temperature is definitely falling in the mornings and evenings, Autumn is just around the corner and it seems to be catching us unawares because of the lack of Summer. The plums and the walnuts appear to be ready and I keep thinking that’s too early but of course it’s not, it just we are not ready for it yet. I have noticed one sign that indicates the nuts are ready, dead squirells on the road, obviously run over while they have been out collecting. I have not seen ours yet but I am sure he will be making an appearance soon. We have cleared all the suckers and and debris from under the nut trees so that we can collect them when they begin to fall.

Good news, one of the liveries has just come and knocked on the door to say that the duck is back this side of the fence, now I just need to catch her and put her in with the others, easier Said than done!

The amount of jobs to do seems to have overtaken the amount of hours to do them in again, it is a busy time again, after waiting for everything to grow, it’s now time to harvest and process everything, but it all comes at once. I need to check the sweet corn and see if they are ready and they will need cutting off, blanching and freezing. I was determined to have more sweet corn this year because the taste was sooooo good last year, seemed like a good idea at the time, now I am thinking, thats a lot of corn to process. The greenery on the pumpkins is beginning to die back and reveal just how many pumpkins we have managed to grow and how big some of them are. It’s all about preparing for the Winter months now, including cleaning out the Rayburn ready to fire her up when it gets too cold. I am quite looking forward to having it lit though, nice warm kitchen and long slow cooking stews mmmmmmmm what am I saying, as if life does whizz past as it is, I am wishing it away.