Month: March 2013

Morning bloggers, I am surprisingly chipper this morning despite the continued cold weather, could be because we had practically the whole weekend off, apart from the feeding routine morning and evening we didn’t do very much at all. Who wants to work out in zero temperatures and wet mud, not me, besides there is nothing that won’t wait until the weather turns although that does not look like it will be any time soon.

The veg garden is still untouched, the ground is at saturation and then frozen solid on top of that, not worth putting anything in, it will only rot away. Traditionally, potatoes would go into the ground on Good Friday, I can’t see that happening at all although I have just checked the soil in the poly tunnel and we may well be able to plant some earlies in there, I have ordered some fleece to warm the ground a little bit more so we will see how it goes. My Mum came over one day last week and we set about repairing the one of the greenhouses that was wrecked by the high winds during the winter months. We have put all the panels back in the roof and used wire and bungies to keep the panels on with a bit of luck. We also put bubble wrap all around the bottom half and fleece on the soil in an attempt to warm it up, we are doing all that we can and now it’s going to be up to Mother Nature to pull her finger out and bring us Spring!

We still have something lurking in the roof despite putting bait boxes down, I have refilled it a couple of times so it is being eaten, I can only think that this is a new lodger! I found what I think is the rats nest outside by one of the chicken houses but even though I have put bait boxes in various places they have not been touched so I wonder if that is an old nest and they have moved into the roof instead.

I bought the sheep in at the weekend, not because they started to lamb but because the weather forecast was so awful that I didn’t fancy lambing out in the field if they started, I thought that lambing at the beginning of April would be ideal as the temperatures are usually good, ha, just another one of the obstacles thrown at us, I try not to take it personally 😉 I am beginning to wonder how we will manage the orphan lambs though, normally the horses would all be turned out and we would have spare stables to house them, at the minute that does not look like it will happen in time and so I need to find a space to rig up a couple of pens to put them in. It needs to be fairly wind proof for the lambs and for me, it’s either that or I turn the Shetland pony out no matter what the weather is, and use his stable.
I can’t help thinking about how the cost of everything is increasing as a result of the weather and it will only get worse, we are still feeding large amounts of hay to the horses and the sheep, also straw for bedding, which would normally have stopped on all but the worst of days by now. The cost of veg is looking set to rise a) because of the very wet summer last year and b) the late planting that will happen this year. I know my local farmer has managed to plough a few acres but he was out in his tractor well after dark a couple of weeks ago in order to get it done. It has been a disastrous 12 months for many farmers and I wonder how many will go into early retirement as a result and they will be the lucky ones, I imagine a great many will have been forced into bankruptcy as a result of poor yields and unusable land that is still under water 6 months on. Bleak outlook, and we could really do with some Sun to help bring us out of the doldrums.

Ha ha, I just re read what I have written so far, I started off chipper and am now in the doldrums, it didn’t take much did it! On a more positive note the hens are still laying like billyo, there has been no drop in egg numbers all Winter really and we continue to sell them and make a profit after deducting food costs, we are waiting for the Quail to come back into lay which should be any time time soon, and the ducks are back up to laying a full compliment. The sale of the latter two is intermittent and so I feed duck eggs to the dogs when we get too many stacking up, the dogs love them and it means that we are constantly putting out only fresh eggs.

I was thinking the other day that I should be washing my Winter coats by now and storing them away for next Winter, instead, I am still wearing it and even having to put it on to walk down to the post box. I even ordered new pegs in readiness, plus a new washing line spike, I ran over the other one with the lawn mower last year and mangled it! I also keep thinking, it always used to be cold in March when we were kids, maybe we have just been a bit spoilt with the Spring weather over the last few years, and hopefully what will follow are those glorious long hot Summers that we also used to get, although in reality it was probably only one 1976 I think, and we just keeping pulling that one back to the forefront of our minds lol.

This is how I remember it: I lived in a village in the days when cars only came through now and again, so much so that when playing ‘chicken’ you might have to wait for over an hour for a car to come! We, that is most of the children in the village, except the ones that went to boarding school, played for hours and hours on the local recreation ground, we went out early and came home at dusk, we spent our hours playing ‘houses’ in a little copse by the stream, we fished for crayfish, minnows, and some fish that began with bull but the rest of the name escapes me now. The water in the stream was clear enough to be able to spot the fish then. Lazy summer days when the only noise to disturb us was the lawn mower running over the cricket ground getting it ready for Sundays when many of our Dads would put on their whites, and we changed the scoreboard in exchange for some of the tea and sandwiches prepared by the wives. We often wandered out of the village past the RAF runway and to what was then an old abandoned railway track and station, it is now an industrial estate. We took our sandwiches and squash with us and played all day without a bit if technology in sight. The walk home was dusty and leisurely, tea, bath, bed and do it all again the next day. Sometimes we played in the cornfields at the back of our houses, we knew we shouldn’t but the temptation was too great, rolling around making shapes and patterns out of flatted crops (naughty). We would also stand and watch when the crop was finished and they burnt off the stubble, it often got out of control and set fire to a hedge and the fire brigade would have to turn out to get it back under control. Just before the beginning of May we would walk from school down to the woods and pick Bluebells and flowers to decorate the May cart, we had a wonderful procession through the village and everyone turned out to watch the May Queen and her attendants, that was followed by Maypole dancing, weaving the ribbons in and out to make multicoloured webs of pure delight, I loved that and country dancing, ‘take your partner by the hand and do the dosey doe’ lol, where did it all go wrong, why have we lost so many of our country traditions. Ours all went out of the window when a new head teacher was installed, she had come from London, Londonitis spread slowly through the streams and rivers and engulfed the country folk, gone were the days of making straw dollies at harvest time, the Mummers play at Christmas time, making butter by shaking cream in a jam jar in springtime and collecting walnuts from the tree in the playground in Autumn. We all became part of the rat race, ironically now many of the Londoners buy second homes in our villages, pricing those young couples that choose to stay, out of the housing market because they want a slice of country life! I know change is inevitable but we should have tried harder to hang on to some of the old ways, after all what we have moved onto is nothing to be proud of , binge drinking, credit card debt and a very demanding generation who have more rights than the parents that bought them into this world!

The world as I remember it and as I see it now, could be a whole new blog! It’s Easter this weekend, enjoy your well deserved long weekend, sadly it does not look like the Sun will be coming out, but if you are confined to indoors, why not revive an old tradition just for the fun of it, make a simnel cake, or paint some hard boiled eggs, find a small hill to roll them down, you could even have a go at hot cross buns, not as difficult as you might think, look up an old tradition that would suit you and yours, I guarantee if you give it a go you will have a sense of achievement which will lift your spirits until the Sun makes an appearance!

Happy Easter 🙂

I was awake and up before the alarm went off this morning! Most unusual for me, normally I am still in bed half an hour after it has gone off, however I need to get used to the earlier mornings as we are only a couple of weeks away from early morning feeds for the lambs 🙂

It is a hard frost this morning but that is a more welcome sight than yesterday morning when we were greeted with snow, the wet slushy stuff that just made the ground wet and luckily didn’t settle. We have had a good bit of rain in the last few days and as a consequence the fields are back to being muddy again, the only difference this time of year is that when we a have a few dry days the ground dries quicker, that’s how I console myself anyway. It meant that any plans to drag and roll paddocks, were not going to happen, instead Hubby chopped wood, just as well because we are running out and finding, with the weather all over the place, we still need a fair amount to get us through.

I have set a clutch of eggs in the incubator this week, Cream Legbars, I found an app called ihatch which shows you day by day how the egg is developing and sets reminders for keeping the humidity up etc, today is day six and the legs and wings begin to develop, it takes twenty one days for chicks to hatch , that is a pretty quick growth rate! The laying hens are still popping them out at a great rate, luckily we have sold sixteen hens this week alone but the egg pile is growing daily and now the ducks are also back in full lay I have more than I know what to do with, I think I may have to make a few Madeira cakes, they use a fair few eggs and are yummy for Easter.

The veg garden is the main cause for concern at the moment, it is still too wet to do much, I think we have been spoilt by the lovely weather during March in previous years, most seeds are not due to be sown until April or May anyway so I should stop worrying. The tomatoes and pepper seeds have gone with my Mum to be started off on her windowsill, it’s too cold here, the greenhouse roof is still not back on yet and my windowsills are draughty. I might consider putting as much as I can in the poly tunnel, it might be all we get this year if we have another awful one like last summer.
There is still plenty of tidying to be done and a bit of mending, so for the time being that’s about all we can do, traditionally the potatoes go in on Good Friday but I think the ground will still be too wet, we have a couple of weeks yet so who knows the weather may take a turn for the best for a change. Plenty of signs of Spring, tiny buds on the nut trees, the daffy are still tightly wrapped in green at the minute but I can see they are just waiting for the right day, some of the perennials are beginning to put on some growth so it’s all warming up for sure.

Mia can’t work out why, some days she does not have to have a bath and then other days, sometimes two or three in a row, she is forced into the torture room called ‘bathroom’, she absolutely hates having a bath, she would rather walk around with dried mud clinging to her looking like a street urchin. She has got the the age where all she wants to do all day is play ball, no matter what job you are trying to do she is throwing the ball at your feet, or anyone who happens to be here, she would carry on all day if you indulged her, I wish I had that much energy. It is lovely to start with then becomes a nuisance when you are mucking out stables and she is tossing the ball in among piles of poo you are trying to rake up. She loves the farm life so much though, she spends all day outside, she has a good bond with the sheep that consists of 50% affection and 50% teasing, its quite funny to watch the sheep chase her when they have had enough of her. Normally when I go out to call her she comes pretty quickly but one day last week I called her because I was having hay delivered and didn’t want her in the way of the trailer, I called her and called her, nothing, I started to worry a bit and walked around the from to look in the front paddocks and in next door, nothing, then I heard one tiny yap, she was around somewhere and shut in, I checked all sheds and rooms etc and eventually found her sat in the fox trap, I should have guessed that would be the obvious place to look really!

Halfway though writing I stopped and opened the back door where I saw……….A RAT! I was quite wrong about the squirrel obviously lol, that is the first time ever I have seen a rat here, I checked the bait box and sure enough it’s all gone, so I have re baited them and hopefully there will be no more uurrghh.

It makes such a difference to the start of the week when you wake up to sunshines doesn’t it. Unlike most of the country I actually like Mondays, after what is usually a hectic weekend, it’s nice to get back to routine and quiet!

This weekend has been a busy one and a long one as Hubby had the Friday off from his usual plumbing work, we are still clearing rubbish, the scrap man came on Friday to take away all the bits of metal that have accumulated, we took bags of clothes to the charity shop and also to the textiles and shoe bins, gradually we are clearing everything we don’t want or need anymore.

I am continuing the preparation process and the stable has been cleaned, disinfected and made ready for the event of lambing, I have set up two separate pens in the stable as the ewes will need to have their own stalls so they don’t worry each other. I took a quick look at their nether regions which have gone pink and puffy, I am told that is a good sign, we counted exactly 151 days from a week after they went in with the Tup and the date comes out at 1st April lol I hope it’s not a joke!
I have also rung the farm where we usually get our store lambs from and ordered seven, day olds, they usually lamb at the beginning of April too so we should get a call then to say they are ready to be picked up, it will then be a very busy and tiring six weeks while they are bottle fed four times a day!

We have also discussed this weekend, and more importantly agreed, about where the pig sty should be sited and how it will be constructed, we also decided that we would have two sets of pigs, one in the Spring (although not this spring) then rest the pen for the two hottest months of the year and then have two more to take us through to the end of October when the produce from the garden will feed them and of course any apples that are not quite up to scratch will be great for them to finish on as well.

On Sunday, I had a day off from the farm and went to the NEC to the wedding fair, it was a bit like going to a cattle market to be honest lol. While we were away, Hubby and our eldest daughters boyfriend, did some muck spreading on one of the paddocks. This paddock is normally just full of plantain, not a blade of grass in site, so we have set down a plan to rejuvenate it, first it is fertilised with the muck and dragged to get an even spread, the next step would normally be to seed it and then spray it to get rid of the weeds once the grass was established. We are going to do it the other way round though as the weedkiller used for the first process is very toxic and any muck to come off that field in future years cannot be used to put on the garden, so we will use a gentler, systemic weedkiller, that will be sprayed on the whole field to kill everything off and then seed it. I was not comfortable using a weedkiller that was so destructive, goodness knows what it would do to the horses having to eat grass that had any residue left in it, never mind what would happen to any wildlife. The way I have chosen may not be conventional but certainly safer for all concerned including the sprayer!

I have managed to do a bit of gardening this week although not on the veg patch, we have a ‘lawn’ to the left hand side of the building, but over the last couple of years the rabbits have lived on it and dug holes all over it. Now the rabbits have gone I set about bringing it back to something more than a dirt patch with holes. I raked it over to get out any thatch, then filled in the holes with earth and raked it level again, I also cut back some of the conifers that were beginning to grow out too far and now that little area is all ready for spring, one less job to do later on when the work load begins to increase. I still have plenty more of these areas to sort out, one of the bigger areas is the driveway, I noticed a far amount of litter trapped in the hawthorn hedge which needs picking up and the grass verge has crept further and further onto the driveway over the Winter so that needs chopping back while the ground is still soft enough. I have bulbs that were supposed to go in at the end of last Autumn but never got round to planting them, it’s not too late they will still grow although probably won’t produce any flowers this year. A tray of primroses are also waiting for their time to flower and they will need to go in fairly soon as well. Luckily we are forecast a few more days of nice weather and then rain at the end of the week, but generally speaking it can only get better now, can’t it?

We still have not managed to catch the fox, although I have not actually seen him for a few days so perhaps someone else in the vicinity has had better luck although I won’t let my guard down. The chickens are all still on lockdown and we have sorted them back into the correct runs, I don’t like not letting them out but it is for their own good, plus it does make life a whole lot easier. They will all be moving in the Spring as we are swapping them into different paddocks as soon as the grass begins to get thicker, they will be out in the front paddocks where I can keep a better eye on them. We are also going to move them out of the orchard and give the ground in there a rest for a year or two. All ground needs a rest from having the same species grazing on it all the time, it’s the same as vegetable gardening really, if you leave something on the same ground you run the risk of a build up of pests and disease so it’s good management to give the areas a change and a rest. I wonder if that would work with Humans too, we should all be given a good rest from work now and again, about 6 months should do it, I will begin a petition to send to 10 Downing Street, you never know, if you don’t ask you don’t get 😉