Month: April 2013

I confess to being totally knackerd this weekend, it’s been a busy week altogether.

The lambs are still taking up lots of my time, I ordered in some wormer, who knew what a minefield that would be, mainly to worm stumpy who is still not progressing too well. In the week I decided to tube him, which meant pushing a tube down his throat and into his stomach to try and release the air that is causing him to bloat. It was much easier than I had anticipated thank goodness and although it did let out some air it was soon followed by the contents of his stomach! So the next step was to worm him in case it was a huge worm burden he was carrying, I can’t worm one without doing all the others and so they all had a dose even the two ewes and their lambs. The lambs were easy to do, the ewes not so much, resistance was futile however and we managed to get a dose down them as well as a bit of it over us. Next weekend the lambs are due to be weaned, that means total, sudden withdrawal of milk, should be a noisy few days. To prepare for this they have been on small amounts of hard feed and water alongside the milk but from now I will increase the hard feed available to ad lib, hopefully once the milk bar is empty after each feed they will move over to the feed, I hope they get the idea otherwise they will be going hungry. This will be make or break for Stumpy, he will either improve on hard feed and grass or continue to lag behind in which case there is nothing more we can do for him sadly. I have continued to spray, purple spray on their sores and it looks like the worst of it has passed, all except for Betty who has a large sore on her bottom lip that is pulling the lip down, it’s not infected though so that is a bonus. Frankie is doing well, although we gave up trying to catch his Mum to feed him, he has gone on to a bottle instead, the pasture they are on at the minute is poor and so Mabel’s milk should dry up gradually without problems, he still goes out into the field with them during the day and we bring him in at night because Mum is not very maternal and if there was a threat I doubt very much she would protect him, so until he is big enough not to look like a tasty snack for a fox he will come in to bed each night and go out again in the morning.

On the veg side of the farm, the weather still is not giving us very much to work with, the wind is still cold although the weeds have begun to appear and so the ground must be getting warmer. The seedlings in the poly tunnel are doing well and some potato shoots are beginning to show through, there are loads of flowers on the strawberry plants in there, mmmm can’t wait for those to develop. Outside, the asparagus is also starting to appear and the rhubarb is growing strongly, I have not checked the root veg seeds we planted yet as they are under fleece and I don’t want to let the cold in unless absolutely necessary. The greenhouses went on Thursday and the new poly tunnel arrived the same day so that was good timing. We have not started on the poly yet though as we have been busy doing other things plus it has been too windy, but that is a project I can get started on this week hopefully. We planted up a new bed in the week, well I say new bed, it is a bed that was already there but difficult to grow anything in as it is mostly clay. We decided to make it a permanent bed with a difference, we have planted patio fruit trees, cherry, dual pear and an apple that has red flesh, we also planted some black currant bushes and alpine strawberry plants. Two golden hops are at the back in pots and we will be putting in a Japanese honeysuckle, elderberry and a grape, the ground underneath will be left with beneficial weeds for the the bees, so we are calling it the birds, bees and beer bed. It will need some maintenance to keep the thistles out but not too much, at least, that’s the plan.

The completion of sale on our other house is set for 24 of May and we still have furniture there that will need to be stored so we have been taking out the walls of the caravan that used to be my Dads workshop. This weekend we have filled a skip full of junk that he hoarded over the years, I don’t think he ever threw anything away and it was interesting guessing what half the contraptions were. I spoke to him on Sunday and had to ask why he kept bucketfuls of bent rusty nails, for the scrapman, was his reply although he couldn’t have ever got round to taking them because there were at least 4 buckets of them all mixed in with perfectly useable new nails and bolts! We also went over to the other house to start tidying up the garden, that garden was mostly borders with a small veg patch and for a number of years we opened it up for charity, I used to spend hours and hours keeping it immaculate. Over the time it has been rented out the garden has become a little overgrown, I could never expect anyone to keep it the way I did, and now needs a little TLC before the new owners arrive, so we began to collect and tidy up and make use if the skip back at the farm.

We still have rats lurking around, one evening when I bought Frankie down for his last feed before bed, I spotted one out of the corner of my eye, since then I have filled and refilled the bait trap three times and each morning it has been empty. They are probably breeding at this time of year and so I need to get rid of them as soon as possible, the one in the roof is no longer there so that’s one victory at least. Over the last four years we have never seen any evidence if rats but this year they are living too close for comfort, I can only think that the wet has driven them closer to food sources which is why we are seeing them. The recycle bins seem to be an attractive area for them and so now I have started to wash everything before it leaves the kitchen, it’s great that the country recycles but does cause other problems.

The chooks, quail, cats, dogs and horses are all ambling along doing whatever it is they do best, plenty of eggs from the hens and the quail, the cats lazing around for most of the day, the dogs barking to let me know someone is around and the horses eating plenty of grass and making lots of poo! No sign of any foxes at the minute so everything is harmonious for the time being, just need the air temp to warm up and it would be a perfect farming life, lol.

We did let Rosie out the other week when it looked like Spring was here to stay but we have had to relight her, it was too cold and just a little bit damp in the evenings, I hope the weather warms up before we run out of wood, I don’t really want to buy a load in. She could run all year on a different set up but the kitchen gets much too warm when the sun is shinning in as well, I will just need to make the most of her while she is lit.

I thought I would take a photo or two of the veg garden before it gets growing and then one later in the year as a comparison, also one of the area where the greenhouses were and then one of the poly tunnel when it eventually goes up. Have a good week, the sun is supposed to shine although it will be accompanied buy some fresh winds, better make the most of what we get because we can’t change it 😉

I forgot to mention the willow cage we made that you can see in the photo, we cut down the willows and used the whips to make a cage to go over the dahlia bed to support the taller flowers as they usually flop all over the path, we were quite pleased with our efforts 🙂

Sorry this is a bit late but I have had my hats of many jobs on this morning, after feeding time which was farmeress hat, came cleaning out the dogs and so the kennel maid hat, after that my groundsman hat, not really a gardening hat as it was watering seedlings etc, then my housemaids hat, in between that my foremans hat as the skip lorry arrived and had to fit into the ridiculously small area that Hubby insisted on it being positioned, then my shepherdess hat to go and feed Frankie, more about that later, and my stock mans hat to talk to the vet, also more about that later and after my blogging hat out will come the cooker repair man hat when I fit a new element to my oven! So whizzing around like speedy Gonzales this morning trying to get all that a a few more little things done and crossed off the list.

Well Mabel finally gave birth to her lamb, a little boy, early on Saturday morning, she managed all by herself which was great but the lamb managed to get into the other pen with Lily and her lamb, this is when the problems began. Because, Frankie, which is what we named him, had got the scent from the other ewe on him, his Mum would not feed him, she did not reject him as such, she still tolerates him being near her, sheep tend to headbutt lambs that they do not recognise as their own, but she will not let him suckle. So we started off by smearing him in the afterbirth, then penning her up tight so she could not move away, she will let him eventually we thought! Two days later and we are still having to go and pin her against the wall every four hours to let him feed from her, the easy option would be to put him on the bottle, but Mabel is so full of milk that a) it would be a waste and b) Mabel could suffer with mastitis which would be most uncomfortable for her. So the plan is to keep helping him on for the time being and hope when he is strong he will become more persistent and manage by himself. We did put them all out at the weekend in the sunshine, Lily, after frolicking about with her lamb is now lame! I assume she has pulled a muscle running around, I can’t find anything wrong with her foot or leg so she is now on bed rest until it is better. It never rains but it pours doesn’t it and also at the weekend I discovered that the orphan lambs we bought in have Orf! This is a viral infection a little bit like cold sores, they have scabs on and around their mouths and of course as they all use the feeder it has spread quickly. I spoke to the vet this morning and the general routine is to let it run its course which will take about a month, poor little lambs they look quite sore. A talk to the vet is always a good opportunity to ask everything you need to know in one go, especially over the phone as it is free, so we talked about worming and vaccination programmes and also any treatment for the Orf, the problem with smallholding is that most medicines come in 50 dose packs and with vaccines because they are live they don’t last in the bottle for more than a week, so basically we have to practice intelligent farming and not routine medicating. This method suits me fine as I am not a great believer in taking something if it is not completely necessary and it keeps you on your toes a bit more.

During the week we had some lovely weather along with some awful winds but we did get some gardening done in the veg patch, all of the roots crop seeds have been planted and at the weekend a row of garlic went in as well as the potatoes. The seeds we planted in the poly tunnel at the beginning of the month are coming up now, broad beans, peas, carrots and spinach. No sign of the potatoes yet though they can’t be far off shooting now and the strawberry plants have developed flowers so, all in all, heading in the right direction. The ongoing battle with the greenhouses and the wind has come to an end, after replacing the glass which fell out of the roof with polycarbonate panels, which then blew off, were then wired on and promptly blew in, I have decided to do away with them and ordered another poly tunnel. Smaller this time and of a specific design to fit in with requirements, this one will house the tomatoes and melons and have a side vent for letting the air in. The prevailing winds here are quite strong because we are so exposed and it was becoming a constant battle, so I thought give up and change the whole situation which will lower my stress levels but empty my pocket at the same time 😉

The grass seed in the paddocks has yet to show any significant growth, although you can just about see it sprouting in a few patches, the trees are finally beginning to burst their leaves open and just this morning I have spotted a bee and ejected a cabbage white butterfly from the poly tunnel so Spring is slowly creeping in. The Blue Tits that usually nest in the holes in our wall are a bit confused this year, we replaced the old wood with new and there are no holes, however we did put up two shiny new des res boxes which they have been checking out and with luck they will move in to rear a brood or two.

Time to get a different hat on, probably fix the cooker first then go and feed the lambs and check out their sores, gross, humans can catch it too and so we will have to be extremely careful with hygiene, I find at the moment that I constantly feel the need to wash my hands even when I have not been near them, I hope they recover soon as it does look horrible, but as another smallholder said, it could be worse, lol lets hope there is nothing else round the corner lurking in wait, if there is, you will hear all about it next week!

The second ewe who I have now named Mabel is still in waiting, she is showing all the signs except producing lambs! Every time I go and check on her she is just stood chewing on her hay, probably wondering why I have appeared again. Betty continues to go from strength to strength totally holding her own in with the others even though she is a week younger she is not about to let anyone push her off a teat at feed time. Stumpy is still hunching over after feeding and we have now got him on a bit of bran to see if that helps, he is fine when he is playing with the rest of them so I think it is a touch of belly ache from colic or bloat. April is in with her Mum, Lily Blackfoot, and doing well, I feel a bit sorry for her as she is all on her own while the other lambs get to play together. I did put Betty in with her for a play but it frightened her so I abandoned that idea. Once they are all outside it will be so much fun for them all, running and leaping around, it’s one of the best sights of Spring.

Talking of Spring, it is finally springing, the leaves on the trees are just beginning to burst out and the daffodils have finally shown their beautiful flowers, the primroses are also slowly unfolding to reveal little pink flowers. The rain was much needed and has freshened up the grass, although it has bought back the mud, the trashed areas had not quite recovered and it didn’t take much to make a mess again, the difference now is that it dries out a lot quicker than during the Winter months. I have been busy in the garden this week, finishing off the tidying up on the veg plot and cutting back old foliage on the flowers and shrubs. I decided to put some chicken wire over the top of my box beds, if the chickens get out they take great pleasure in hopping up onto them and digging, this should foil them and protect the flowers as well as providing a little bit of support for the taller ones.

We have finally got rid of Roland the rat in the roof space, it took quite a bit if bait to finish him off but we couldn’t risk him chewing through the electrical cables. We do have something living in the ground in the chicken pen in the orchard though, I filled in the hole a couple of days in a row but each morning it had been excavated again, also something is stealing the duck eggs from inside their house and depositing the empty shells in the ménage, I have never caught it so have no idea what it is. We are gradually reducing the number of chickens, we sold a dozen this week which is great because we were getting so many eggs, I actually scrambled some up for the dogs breakfast this morning! A fox has been on the prowl again, we have lost two this week towards the later end of the day, foxes will have cubs now and needing to feed hungry mouths but I don’t want them feeding on my chooks.

The quail, who never really get much of a mention, have started laying in earnest again and so quail eggs are back on the shelves, if you fancy trying some they are £1.50 for a dozen. The chicks that I hatched out are doing well in the brooder, and two of my gold laced Orps have gone broody on a clutch of eggs. They don’t take much to go, just have to leave a eggs in with them for a couple of days and they go all maternal and once one goes they all go so eventually there will be three or four of them sitting on eggs while the cockerel is wandering outside by himself all day.

We are only a couple of weeks away from exchanging contracts on our house now providing nothing goes wrong, then we can start looking in earnest for a compact tractor which will make all the difference to the heavy work that needs to be done. The first job will be to turn the muck heap, the more it is turned the quicker it will be ready, at the moment it takes at least a year to rot down but turning it would make it ready in a few months and much easier to bag up to sell. At the minute we give a way for free and will still be doing that if anybody wants to come and bag up their own you are welcome to do so. Our middle daughter is living in our old place at the moment and is nearly ready the exchange on the place they are buying but if there is a lap over they will be staying with us here until they can move in. With that in mind and the fact that will still have quite a bit if furniture at the other place, Hubby has been taking down walls in the caravan that is usually a workshop, so that we can use it to store everything. We have a huge pile of stuff already here that has been sorted out for car booting, goodness knows why we collect all these things and then store them in the loft, never to be seen again until you move! We have filled one skip and are about to order another, eventually we might get straight.

Today’s jobs including cleaning and tidying the house after the weekend, putting some washing on the line for the first time this year, planting up some seeds now it is finally warm enough in the greenhouse and checking on the ewe every couple of hours, only to see her stood eating I expect. Happy Birthday today to our youngest in Aus, and to two of my sisters who also celebrate theirs today and tomorrow, have a great week to the rest of you and enjoy any sunshine that may miraculously appear when we are not expecting it!

We have, at last, had a decent block of lovely weather, how much more we will get is anyone’s guess but we made the most of it this weekend and worked flat out!

We are still waiting for the second ewe to produce her lambs, meanwhile the first is still in with her remaining lamb April, we cant take her outside because the other ewe would fret so she will have to stay in until the other lambs are born, though I would have liked to put her out in the sunshine this weekend. Little April is doing very well with Mum and is a very contented little lamb.
The orphan lambs are growing very quickly, they start off suckling very timidly and have now worked up to a voracious guzzle, so much so that I have to hold the feeder down so they don’t push it off the rail and they drain it in one sitting, Betty is also doing well in with them and is taking a normal sized feed every six hours. She has very strongly identified to me though, to the point where if I lift her out of the pen she will follow me all around the yard. On Sunday morning we decided to get all the orphans out and put them on a small grass area next to the house, their first look at the outside world was lovely to watch and I have taken some video footage which I will put up on my page. Spring lambs do a funny little jump and all four feet leave the ground, I tried to catch it on film but as always the minute I turned on the camera they stopped and when I stopped they began lol. We have given a couple more some names, the other little girl is called Sweet Pea and one of the boys is called Stumpy. stumpy has had a few problems going to the loo, and so stands quite hunched up making him look short in the body hence Stumpy, we have been giving him vegetable oil to try and get his bowel movements working, it is working slowly and hopefully he will feel comfortable enough to stretch out soon. One of the reasons we took them out is to give them some exercise as this helps with digestion, the stable is big enough for them to run around but it’s not the same as being outside and leaping around.

We still have not put anything in the vegetable garden, until this weekend the ground was still too cold, I think from here on in we will be a lot busier with planting though, the ground has definitely dried out and is no longer waterlogged, hopefully we will have more normal weather from now on which will enable us to get some crops in the ground. For the past few weeks its been like treading water, there is nothing you can do except wait, make plans and keep waiting, which is why at the weekend when the weather finally broke it was all systems go!

The paddocks were our main priority and our eldest daughters boyfriend came over on Saturday morning with his quad bike to do major work on them. First they all needed dragging, this mean attaching heavy chains to the bike and pulling it over the ground in the paddocks. Two things happen when you do this, first it knocks out all the lumps of soil and flattens ground that has been trashed through the Winter months, secondly it pulls out a great deal of thatch, dead grass, which in turn gives the new emerging grass more light and a better chance of growing. Back in the dark months we had bought various gadgets to attach to the bike to make the jobs easier and the next job after dragging was to reseed a couple of the worst affected paddocks. Sometimes it is possible to let the grass go to seed and therefore reseed itself, our worst affected paddock is about three quarters of weeds and so desperately needed seeding which was never going to happen if we didn’t help it. This paddock has now been, mucked, dragged, dragged again, seeded and rolled, we also made some bird scarers so the pigeons don’t eat all our hard work, now all we need on it, and I hardly dare say it, is a spot of rain! Just a spot mind we don’t want a torrential downpour as this will wash the seed into the middle of the field which we don’t want. We also reseeded and rolled the two front paddocks, a lighter dusting of seed on these two just to thicken up the sward that is there already, these also have bird scarers flapping in the wind, I hope they work, if they don’t work you may see a slightly mad women flapping her arms around to scare the birds away!

This weekend we moved the horses to their Summer grazing which is our next door neighbours
field, they kindly let us use it and we save it for the better months so that it does not get trashed. We have to put up quite a bit of electric fencing in order to keep the horses from getting out, not that they were thinking of going anywhere in a hurry when they saw the feast before them, having been grazing on fairly bare paddocks all Winter they have probably been gorging themselves all night. The new Spring grass has not started to come through yet and so last years grass that has gone over Winter will not have too much value in it but it will fill their bellies and keep them busy for a while.

We also fixed the big greenhouse over the weekend, remember how the wind had blown out some of the roof panels and also some of the side panels, out came the glass cutter and it is now all in one piece again and hopefully I can start using it to bring on some seeds. Before I get started though it needs a clean with disinfectant and I thought I might give it a coat of wood preserver, it’s very nearly on its last legs but if I look after it I could possibly get a few more years out of it before it rots through totally.

The chicks hatched out last Wednesday right on cue, however it was a disastrous hatch, out of twenty four eggs only five hatched, two of those were failing to thrive and had to be dispatched, out of the other three that remain, two are cock birds and only one is a hen! Halfway through the incubation period I noticed that the turner was not working properly as it had come off its fitting, how long it had been like that I am unsure but the poor hatch indicates it was quite a while. I think I will leave it to the birds to hatch their own for the rest of the year.

We did take a couple of breaks during our busy weekend, one was to sit and watch the Grand National as we always do each year, betting slips in hand, shouting at the TV, this year the lucky winners in the room were our eldest daughter who had second and her boyfriend who had the 100-1 winner, naturally the second break we took later in the day was down to the pub and the drinks were on him 🙂

Have a great week and hopefully I will have some news about the other ewe by next Monday!

I hope you all had a lovely Easter, ours was very quiet until yesterday when it was all systems go with the ewes. We went out to find that ewe number one had lambed in the afternoon, she had triplets, all girls, sadly one was already dead and the other was cold and nearly lifeless. The third was up on her feet and doing fine so we left her in with mum and took the other indoors, we spent the next few hours trying to warm her up and get some glucose into her for strength. We did try to put her back in with Mum but she rejected it and so our work began. After a very long night of trying to feed her hourly she is nice and warm this morning, has taken her first 100mls of milk and tried to stand up, she is also quite vocal! We gave her concentrated colostrum every four hours and sat her on our laps with a hot water bottle underneath her.
It was a very exciting moment when we realised they had been born and then a mad scramble to get the emergency kit out and administer whatever we could to keep the little one alive. We have named her Betty after my Mum as she was born on her birthday, if the other ewe lambs today and has a boy we will nick name it after our middle daughters boyfriend whose birthday is today!
We still had to keep an eye on the one with Mum to make sure she was doing ok, I soon realised that Mum had not let her milk down and the lamb was trying to feed in vain. Later that evening I took a warm flannel out and washed her teats to try and encourage the milk flow, I was dead chuffed when it worked and now little one has been happily feeding through the night. We need a name for her and as it was the first of April I think we will name her after the month.

We also picked up the seven orphan lambs last Thursday, they are in the stable block and doing well. It is so cold for the time of year, the shepherd told us he had lost a lot of lambs to hypothermia as his ewes all lamb out in the field. The orphans are in a pen with plenty of straw and blankets draped over the side of the hurdles to keep out the draught and though they were cold to start with they have gained strength and growing nicely. It’s just a shame they can’t go outside even for a short time to have a hop, skip and jump around. Only two of the orphans have names at the minute, one is Billy because he looks more like a goat and one of the girls is Daisy because she is rather cute, eventually we will come up with names for the rest of them and I will let you know when we do.

We have had plenty of visitors to see the lambs over the weekend and it is lovely to see small children, see, touch and feed little lambs, the adults are always smitten as you can imagine, more so than the children sometimes! If you want to come and have a look just let me know, afternoon is probably the best time for me and the lambs.

As I have said already the rest of the week has been fairly quiet, we still can’t get on the garden even though we have had a glimpse of the Sun it has still be accompanied by a cold East wind. The seeds my Mum took back to her place have started to sprout, and in the week we planted as much as we could in the poly tunnel just in case that’s the only planting we get to do this year. We put broad beans, peas, lettuce, radish on one side and the first early and second early potatoes on the other side. At the very least we should get a crop from each of those, this prolonged cold spell is not doing anyone any good at all.

All other livestock on the farm are doing fine, the hens and ducks are still laying well and the horses have now been turned out wether they like it or not! I am expecting a hatch of chicks tomorrow, Cream Legbars, which lay the Blue eggs, lol it was bad timing on my part for everything to happen at once. Someone commented that it must be hard work but I replied, I think smallholders thrive on the challenge to be honest, that is certainly true on our part, throw us a curve ball and we will return to the very best of our ability.

I will put some pictures of Betty at the bottom of the blog and see if I can get one of Mum with April, I also have some video footage of when we first bought Betty in and tried to get her a first feed into but I still can’t get that to upload on here so it will follow on my Facebook page.

On the food front, I did not get round to making my hot cross buns as I was so busy with the arrival of the orphan lambs and establishing a feeding routine which was complicated at first due to the fact that they were used to different shaped teats, but luckily my Mum had a go at making some and we went round on Good Friday to have some with coffee. My hubby declared they were the best he had ever tasted and as you can imagine he does not pay her compliments very often so that is a very high accolade indeed! We also had cup cakes made by my young niece which were lovely and a roast dinner out on the Sunday, and of course chocolate eggs, so we did alright considering 🙂

I have a busy day ahead of me so I am off to get a couple of photos for you before Betty wants another feed and then will upload this blog. Have a good week and keeping wishing for the Sun to appear and the east wind to disappear.
The Orphan lambs, mum with little April in the corner and Betty this morning doing well.