Month: February 2013

It has been very cold hasn’t it but at least the ground is hard and dry, much easier to walk on, it’s almost like everything has been freeze dried!

Our Fox is still being a total nuisance and the birds are all own total lockdown at the minute, we have tried in vain to catch the thing, even had eldest daughters boyfriend sat inside a hut with a cockerel as bait to lure it but to no avail. It is about all the time though, I had seen it only half an hour before he arrived but it must be a very wily fox, it is appearing at various times of the day, if the dog is out she will bark furiously at it but it does not run until it sees me. Some of the birds have been moved to the front, some are in the stable unable to come out, and the rest are in pens or behind electric fencing. Hopefully it will get desperate enough to want the bait in the trap or move on to better pastures, it is a waiting game but I am determined not to let it get any more birds! The girls obviously don’t mind too much as they are continuing to lay a huge amount of eggs, at one point we had over twenty dozen on the side and that was only a few days worth! Luckily we sold around fourteen dozen in one day so they are not around very long, we have now managed to separate the cockerels from the laying hens, they had got all mixed up when they were free ranging because of the wet, the larger ones will be used to fill the freezer and the others will be fed to the dogs once they have been dispatched.

The frozen ground has meant that I still can’t get on the garden, although I have been doing some tidying up, it is amazing how many broken pots you keep, for what reason, just in case lol. As we have the skip at the minute I may as well make use of it and get rid of anything that is not useful such as netting with holes in or broken buckets etc. Preparation is key or so I keep telling myself, so if I can get everything tided up and ready to go then as soon as the weather is better I won’t be sidetracked by other jobs when the time comes.

The Snowdrops have been out for a while and the daffodils have buds on them so we can’t be far away can we 🙂 quite a few of the shrubs and trees have small buds on them ready to burst into life at the first chance they get and the grass has started to come through, we know this because the horses and the sheep are mostly head down when they are out grazing, a good indicator, this means that the ground is warming up at least, even if the air temperature is not!

Hubby has been busy chopping wood as we seem to going through a lot of it at the moment, the store that we had for next Winter has been severely depleted, hopefully we will get offers of trees that people have chopped down and we have a few very tall conifers to top out at some point in the Spring which should help. The aim is always to run the place as economically as possible and wood is usually a free source of heating and hot water, our next serious investment will be PV solar panels on the stable block roof, this will generate electricity for us and reduced our outgoings further, with the cost of energy rising all the time this can only be a good thing and one I am looking forward to having installed. Saving water will be the thing to look at after that, we are on a meter and its pretty good but there are still ways we could save, we have a large water butt of about 1000 gallons, we use this to provide water to the birds and wash our boots off! We have had a tap that has been leaking and fixed that, it’s surprising how much you pay for a leaky tap, we need to check all the others and check any packing glands to make sure we are not losing unused water. We have water butts at almost every available outlet and there are even some in the fields which provide the horses with rain water, much better for them than tap water, the outside dogs are given water from the butt next to their kennel, so we are doing fairly well but as in many an old school report, ‘could do better’!

The news that horse meat has been found in the food chain has been a constant topic in our house, it’s not the meat that is a problem, if it was farmed for that purpose it would be safe to eat, but it is the criminal activity that goes with this food scare, the fact that many of these horses have been stolen and moved with a false passport means that we have no idea what kind of medication they may have been on and how long for. The implication of this is that we are ingesting goodness knows what along with the horse meat and that is a worry, the constant food scares within the industry just goes to show that the system they are using does not work, it is not regulated enough after the meat has left the abattoir. I am not a great fan of processed foods and prefer to cook from scratch, if I can’t make it, we don’t eat it. There are some things I had not even considered though and that includes stock cubes which are the next item to be tested, I wonder what that will reveal 😦

We are off to visit our cow later tonight and we are purchasing half of another which will also have arrived by then, we have not seen her for a while and I am told she has grown a fair bit over the winter although the feed costs will probably reflect that! The first will probably go off for slaughter in the Autumn and the other will go through the Winter until next Summer. We are lucky to have friends that we can share this with but there are small farms out there that will do the same for you if you fancy investing in your own meat source. It may seem like a lot, purchase price, feed costs, slaughter costs but you get a lot of prime quality meat for your investment, the taste is so much better than shop bought, commercially bred meat, I like to think the added extra is TLC and one to one attention 🙂 if we had more acres it is certainly something I would like to be able to do, maybe one day!

We are getting closer to lambing time and the sheep feed has been increased in order to give the lambs and ewes the best chance possible, I have my lambing box ready and my fingers crossed that everything will go well, we will also be buying in some store lambs to raise by hand so if you want to pop down and have a go at feeding them do come along, preferably for the 6am feed so I can have a lie in 😉

It is glorious outside this morning, just like being on your holidays, fresh but sunny and full of promise, let’s hope it stays like this for a while. There are still very wet and muddy areas but it is beginning to dry up thank goodness.

This week has been a very busy one, mostly sorting out loft offerings from the other house, we have now nearly filled the skip with years of junk, we have a pile to car boot and a pile to keep although we may have to go through that again and be more ruthless. My valentines present was a kitchen that was being taken out of a job that hubby was on, it is now installed in the back barn to use for storage, so romantic lol, very useful though.

We have a continuing problem with the fox at the moment, he is using the hedge line like a sushi train, just picking them off at his leisure. The chickens were out because of the mud and so roaming all around the place, I think the fox has set up home nearby, who can blame him really it is easy pickings. Today they are all kept locked in as a precaution although they don’t like it much, I have given them some greens to placate them for a while. He must be close by most of the time as I can smell him, I though I was becoming a bit paranoid about the smell but each time I got a whiff, sure enough half an hour later there he would be, even hubby saw him on Saturday stood about 3 feet away on the other side of the fence, and he does not run when you shout, hubby chased him across the field but not before he had one of our girls. There are feathers all along the hedge so he has had a fair few over the last week, we did set the trap but as yet he has not gone for the bait so it’s a bit of a waiting game, meanwhile all I can do is protect the birds as best as possible from further attacks.

At the weekend one of our egg customers asked if it would be ok to shoot rabbits in our fields, we said yes if you can find any after the flooding, they came that night and set up in the field for a few hours but didn’t see anything except the fox nicking one of our chickens! Unfortunately they only had an air gun and so were unable to do anything about it. On their way back to the car they spotted a ferret, you never know what is going to turn up here sometimes. It was quite tame and so we were able to catch it, at the moment it is in a cage outside waiting for someone who keeps them to come and collect it. I know nothing about ferrets except that they are used for putting down rabbit holes to flush them out, I guess this one got lost and carried on roaming. It’s quite a sweet little thing but has a punchy smell and I had to ask around to find out what to feed the poor thing, it seems to like eggs and cat biscuits but not fish!

The farm itself, apart from the animals, has been put on the back burner while we sort out the sale of the other house, we left it 4 years ago but left everything we didn’t need behind as we had no room for it here. Every year we vowed to sort the stuff out bit by bit but never did and so now it is a major task to undertake all at once and there is not much time to do anything on the farm. Today’s weather may tempt me to sort out some of the veg garden though, even if its only putting rubbish in the skip, that and burning 20 years of paperwork is all I have done over the weekend I would like a change 🙂
I had a muck heap sauna at the beginning of the week, the pile is working really well at the moment with all the rain we have had and now a bit of sun it is steaming away. I got on top of it to level it out a bit, picked up a heap on my pitchfork and a great gush of steam caught me square in the face, not bad except it stinks and so I was perfumed at the same time, oh the luxuries of farming, work out, sauna and perfume all for free! We have put some rat poison down this week as we thought we might have a rat, not that we have ever seen one, but holes had appeared, on retrospect though it may have been the ferret as none of the bait has been eaten and it has been down all week.

I hope you all had pancakes earlier in the week, we certainly did, it is one of the best days of the year, I like mine with good old lemon and sugar. We have plenty of eggs so it was good to use some of them up, the chickens are laying about 3 dozen a day, it’s amazing, past winters we have struggled to keep supply going but this year they have just kept laying and laying. I am convinced it is because we bought them in before the onset of winter and got them into prime condition before turning them back out, I will certainly do it again next year as a comparison.
Easter is next on the calendar, a lovely time of year, daffodils, tulips, primroses and hints of the trees beginning to burst into blossom, and of course chocolate! Spring will finally be here, and that can’t come soon enough for me this year.

Enjoy your day and I hope the sun shines in, wherever you are 🙂

Apologies for stating the obvious but the weather is shite again! It was just beginning to dry up nicely during the week and one of the afternoons I was even working in a t shirt, but we have gone back to square one with the downpour that occurred over the weekend and now more snow on top. What have we done to deserve this lol, where shall I start! To top it all this morning Rosie has decided to down tools, she is always difficult to get going when it snows but that’s when you need her the most, there are a few pops and crackles coming from the corner now but that has taken a good couple of hours to get her going. I don’t like the usual firefighters as the smell tends to linger long after the fire is going and we used to get the little twists of environmentally friendly wood firefighters but they seem to have stopped supplying them either that or everyone gets a store before winter and there are none left.

I had to give her a quick clean out during the week as we had a small chimney fire, the soot deposits seem to build up so quickly, it does not seem that long ago that we cleaned the flue all the way through. When I opened the damper there was a deposit that was glowing nicely, typically I had just put more logs on and she was going a treat so I had to shut her right down and wait for her to go out so that I could clean her out, luckily it was not a freezing cold day.

The new fencing stakes and electric tape arrived in the week and so I began to make the front paddock escape proof, looks a bit like Fort Knox now but it did the job, not that the horses have been outside much this week. We have turned them out on the sunny days but to be honest in the wet days they just stand in the corner of the field looking miserable so they may as well stand inside in the dry, not so good because they are not getting any exercise but then if they are just stood around outside I suppose the only stretch they get is walking to and from the field.

The sheep also came in for a break from the mud and rain, they definitely do not like being in though but I think as Humans it makes us feel better if we can do something nice for them even if they don’t appreciate it! The chickens are once again wallowing in mud pools but there is not much we can do about it for the time being, I had been letting them out to free range but we had a daytime fox attack on Saturday and so can’t risk it until we catch the culprit. I think Mia would normally keep the fox away when she is running around outside but it was pouring with rain that day and she was shivering while standing waiting for someone to throw her a ball, so we bought her in for a few hours and that’s when the fox struck. Having them in the pens does make egg collection much easier though, when they free range they lay all over the place, in a bucket that is on its side in the trailer, in an old tyre in the hay barn, in the stables, even when the horses are in and even on top of an old sideboard in the back stables, it’s like going on an Easter egg hunt every day.

On the two good days we had I did manage to get a few jobs done, clean and disinfect the dog kennels, clean out the chickens in the breeding runs, scrub all the water buckets, put up the electric fencing, charge up the batteries etc. The trouble was I fell for the false sense of security and thought Spring was indeed Springing, big mistake, I should have known better especially after my battle with the wind on Wednesday. The panels were blowing out of the greenhouse roof at a great rate of knots and I was trying to put them back and make them stay there all while it was blowing a gale, I was losing and the wind was winning, the last straw was when I reached down to get a nail from the tub I had bought out with me and they had gone, blown away in the wind never to be seen again, at that point I promptly burst into tears and had a complete meltdown wondering what the f****** hell I was doing here battling, seemingly without end, against the elements. At that precise point I seriously considered giving it all up and going back to normalville, I was a broken Woman, for a least an hour, after a couple of pep talks with my girls I got up dusted myself off and thought, you don’t get me that easily, so what if the whole bloody roof blows off, we will put it back on when the Sun comes out! The Winter has been long and the absence of a Summer last year has not helped, I guess you have to sink all the way to the bottom in order to start climbing again, I am not the kind of person to stay sitting at the bottom, I am not a victim but a survivor and so I will get back on my ladder and start climbing, until the next melt down anyway!

Our other house is on the market and we have had two offers already, both have been accepted and who ever is able to proceed will get the chance, we won’t get our hopes up too much as we have been here before and people pull out for all kinds of reasons so there will be no celebration until exchange of contracts. Because we have got a little closer to selling we have started to clear out our junk which is still there, the contents of one garage is now sat in our out building here, what a lot of old crap we keep, why do we stuff our garages and lofts full of stuff that will never see the light of day until you move again! Some of the boxes were from the time we moved before which was in 2001, they were never unpacked so we can’t possibly need the contents, I feel a few car boot sale trips coming on so that someone else can hoard our junk!

My seed order arrived in the week and the one place I will be able to start on sooner rather than later is the poly tunnel, I have identified what can be planted early and should do ok despite the lack of warm weather and the soggy ground. We have discussed the fact that we may only be able to grow enough for ourselves this year depending on how the seasons pan out, I really hope that is not the case.

That’s about it for this week, the dog is barking to come in, Rosie has just about got her slovenly arse into gear and it has stopped snowing for the time being at any rate, have a good week, keep looking to the horizon and let me know if you spot the yellow object in the sky that has been missing for far too long.

This last week has been quite a busy one with various jobs finally getting sorted out. The utility room was in desperate need of a clean especially after the dogs had come in from out side covered in wet mud and wrestling in there. There were dirty tail marks on every surface you could see, so I set about cleaning and tidying it thinking it wouldn’t take long, it’s funny how we don’t notice how much junk we pile up and then walk past on a daily basis. Finally after a few hours, everything that had been just put down for one reason or another, had been put back in its rightful place and the area was once again clean and tidy. It was so nice I couldn’t help but keep walking in there just to marvel at the job I had done 🙂

As I was on a roll I decided to defrost one of the big freezers, we have two big chest freezers and two small square ones, the idea is that in times of plenty the two big ones are full and as the food is used up we move down to a big one and a small one and so on as needed. As with most things it didn’t get done when it should have and the two big freezers were both running half full, I moved the contents of one freezer into the other and turned on one of the smaller ones, both are now crammed to the lid! It gave me a good chance to see what I had in them though and have been planning our meals around what I found. The outdoor dogs enjoyed half a pig head each and we had wild duck and gooseberry crumble, everyone’s a winner. I still have a small freezer full of fruit to use up and quite a lot of root veg and fennel to get through so I will be searching for recipes to use them up in the coming weeks.

I also got round to putting my seed order in and they should be on the way to me as I write, this year I have decided not to be too keen to get things going as they are usually ready to go in before the weather is up to speed, though the temptation to get started is always strong for gardeners! I downloaded an ap that will help me to plan the rotation for the veg, normally it is done on paper but the time has come to use technology, beside it highlights problems such as planting a similar crop in the same place as the year before. The Dutch oven arrived about half an hour after I published last weeks blog, together with that I also have a kettle, frying pan and enamel mugs so I am all set to do some cooking out side 🙂
My lambing technique book also arrived this week, it is an excellent reference book, with plenty of pictures to show you how things should look and how they look when things are going wrong, I have yet to read all of it but it filled me with much more confidence than I had before. Yesterday we bought the sheep in, just for a day or two to give their feet a break from the wet conditions, the last thing I need at the moment is a case of foot rot. It will also give me a chance to check the condition of them, using the book I will also try the techniques to find out if they actually are in lamb, they will need to have the back end clipped in readiness if they are.

The wet conditions have been causing problems for farmers up and down the country, they are calling it the 18 month Winter, watching Countryfile last night it was good to see that it’s not just us and we have not been doing anything wrong it is affecting everyone. Yesterday with the help of our eldest daughters boyfriend and his quad bike, we managed to move the chicken hut in the paddock and the pig ark that the sheep have been using for shelter, to drier areas of the paddock, making life much easier for them and for us, they are no longer paddling around in mud although we still have to get through the gateways to get to them. The chicken hut in the small paddock we were unable to move, it was too muddy and the axle has snapped making it impossible to move and so they will have to stay where they are for the time being.

I did shoot a bit of video footage so that you can see exactly what I am talking about when it comes to the mud. Hopefully I will have been able to upload it into this blog if not i will put it directly onto my Facebook page and you can have a look at it there.
We have had a few days of dry weather since I shot the video and it is beginning to dry up an bit, I just hope it carries on staying dry and windy for a few more days so that we can at least regain some sanity!!