Author: frieslandfarm

I love the weekends when everyone one is home and the activity level is high, but I also quite like Monday mornings when normal routines resume and peace and quiet are all that is heard once more.  The dogs especially get more vocal over the weekend when there are lots of comings and goings, a visit from the puppy always causes havoc as the other dogs would love to get out and ‘eat’ him!

The weather has still been pretty good despite the threats from the met office and I have been continuing to plant rows of vegetable seeds, some of those in the greenhouse have shot up enough to pot on so at the moment it’s all going according to plan. Traditionally the potatoes go in on Good Friday, don’t ask me why as the date changes from year to year but Hubby likes to stick with tradition on that one 🙂 He who must be obeyed 😉 has worked very hard this weekend, there is still a mountain of wood to chop and move from the conifers that we took down and he is slowly making his way through that whenever he has a spare day.

Very often when I sit down to do the blog, I have to think hard about what I have done over the last week, I know the days are always full but I can never remember what I have been doing! Towards the end of the week my Mum came over and we have been busy making the seating area look nice, we have built some nice long boxes to mark out the area and they will be filled with the perennial plants that the girls bought me for Mothers day, along with a few bulbs and some annual flowers seeds. It will be nice to have plenty of flowers this year instead of just veg and it will also benefit the pollination by bringing in the bees and butterfly’s etc. When it is in its full glory I will take some photos and put them on here, talking of photos, I opened the door the other morning to see some Fallow deer grazing in the next field, but by the time I had run in to get the camera they had gone 😦 hopefully the will return again soon and I will be ready for them!

We lost a chicken this week and I automatically blamed a Fox, but the next day we saw two huge Kite circling very low over the house and the paddocks, so it is possible that it was taken by them, normally when a Fox has had a chicken there are tell-tale signs everywhere that the chicken has been chased before being caught. In this instance there were just a bunch of feathers in one place on the ground , so it is possible it had just swooped down and took it, they are magnificent birds but now it looks like the chickens are under attack from the sky as well as the ground 😦

My daughters boyfriend came over with his quad bike this weekend to drag the fields, dragging breaks the cap that the winter weather has formed, it also breaks up any lumps that have formed and lets in the light and the moisture giving the grass a better chance to sprout. The lack of rain however has meant that even at this time of year the ground is very hard and difficult to break up, we managed to do three of the fields but will wait for rain before we attempt the others. The chicken houses were also moved at the same time, they are just pulled to a clean area of grass as the underneath of the hut gets very full of chicken droppings which sours the ground. the drag then rakes over these and they are scattered and will hopefully, when the rain comes, fertilise the ground a bit more.

We had a trip out with friends to another local farm on Saturday to pick up a calf and three piglets, we go halves on these but they are kept at our friends farm for the duration. The calf is an adorable little Aberdeen, she is jet black and as I had the honour of naming her I called her Ebony, I left the naming of the pigs up to them, I will get some photos of them when we go over to visit next Saturday. While we were at the farm we had a look at the other piglets that had been born only 36 hours before, they were so cute, she had 11 altogether and they were all huddled up fast asleep under a lamp, they looked very soft and cuddly, there were other calves there too and I am glad the one we were having was not the one that decided to jump over the wall in an attempt to escape!

We stopped for a coffee with our friends and the lady of the house had just made a delicious tea cake, you can tell it was delicious as Hubby had three pieces!! I was very graciously given the recipe and will be trying that out sometime this week, as soon as I have had a go to make sure it turns out ok I will put it on the recipe page for you all to try yourselves 🙂

Today’s job is not so nice, cleaning! I have barely had time to sling the hoover round this week and so need to have a bit of a deep clean, then we have the end of year paperwork to do, the not so nice side of business 😦 I have still not received the paperwork from Animal Health to send the lambs off so I need to chase that up and I need to do a bit of research into a plucking machine, we have decided to buy one so that the job becomes quick and easy, it is rough on the fingers when you are plucking a few in a row and I always tend to do it when the weather is cool so that the meat stays chilled, but it does mean I am stood for a few hours, this should make light work of it and I may be inclined to do more! I am determined to start off my brewing some time this week as well, the kit has sat there since Christmas and I would like it to be ready for the Jubilee celebrations in June so I need to pull my finger out 😛

Spring is officially here, although it seems more like Summer at the moment 🙂 The weather is beautiful, its uplifting after the long cold Winter and our motivation has gone into overdrive.

We have had a very busy week and an even busier weekend, lots of tidying up to do and general maintenance such as altering gates that have dropped over time. It is amazing how much rubbish you can accumulate, all left in a little pile for dealing with another day and before you know it the small pile is a mountain of broken bits and pieces. The wildlife activity has increased hugely, last Thursday evening at dusk we saw four fallow deer out in the field across the lane, and a huge buzzard which took off just in front of the van as we were driving home, seconds after that we spotted a fox in the hedge about to run out, I will have to keep an eye on the chickens again, we have had a couple of weeks respite but time to go back on guard. I have also spotted a couple of Long Tailed Tits, they are clearly nesting nearby although I have not worked out where just yet. The Blue Tits are busy nesting in the walls of the building, I think there are about three pairs in various locations, and a Wren which appears to be nesting in the old muck heap! Just in case you were wondering ‘Kevin the Crow’ is still sitting patiently next to the mirrors, oh dear 😛

The lovely sunshine means people get out and about a bit more and so we have had a few visitors popping in for a cup of tea which is always nice, my in-laws came in the week and we walked around the farm chatting about the year to come, while we were up the back, I pointed out one of the ducks that had decided to have a dip in a bucket of water, as we got closer and she didn’t move I realised she was a stuck duck! I tipped the bucket over and off she went, only to find her the very next day in exactly the same situation, she clearly feels the need for a bath so I will need to find her something bigger to sit in. The chickens we were waiting for finally arrived, but only because Hubby went on a four-hour round trip to pick them up, we got fed up with waiting and had so many customers that had pre-booked them we thought it was worth the trip. The weekend was then spent ringing round and letting people know they had arrived and after that we had a steady stream of would be chicken keepers coming to pick up their new pets. We sold over twenty between Saturday lunchtime and Sunday evening! Keeping chickens has become very popular and it is getting more difficult to source them but I have put in my order for the next few months which should see us through to Autumn, so if you fancy keeping chickens, you know where to come 🙂

The horses are enjoying the Sunshine too, off come all the Winter rugs then we have a short period of time before the flies start to bother them and the fly masks go on. Jack had a bath at the weekend and is looking very shiny, or he was untill he went back out and rolled in the dust! The two indoor dogs have also had their long coats clipped right off, the older of the two, Max,  particularly enjoys this for some reason, he bounces about like a puppy for a couple of days glad to be rid of all that fur.

The busiest time has been spent out on the garden, we have been building two new raised beds, these are for flowers though, especially flowers that will attract the bees and butterflies and of course they will be pretty to look at which is why they are next to the seating area. Weeding is again at the top of the list, no matter how much you do there are always more! I spent one morning tidying up the raspberry canes, I have a mix of summer and autumn ones and they needed to be tied in and any runners pulled up so that they don’t grow everywhere, if you fancy a go at growing some of your own, I would get Autumn canes, they are very easy to look after and will produce some fruit this year, then they just get cut back to the ground at the end of the season. The Summer canes are a little more work as they fruit on second year wood so you have cut back the canes that have fruited and leave the new growth in place for the following year to fruit. For years I only grew the Autumn ones but I would say that the summer type are much better in taste and so worth the extra work if you are up for it.

I spent this morning in the greenhouse, it is by far my favorite place to be at this time of year 🙂 I have been busy sowing a range of seeds, some vegetable and some flowers, all nicely labeled and watered, little black seed trays full of promise, that’s the theory anyway, one of the failures I had last year were the mini pop sweetcorn, they completely failed to germinate, but I have given them another go this year and hope they do better. The courgette seeds I planted last week have burst through the surface and are looking  strong, there are leek seedlings just emerging from the dark beneath, but the broad beans have yet to make an appearance, I did have a feel to make sure the mice had not pinched them, they are still there just a little reluctant to grow at the minute. Growing plants from seed is very easy and much cheaper that buying the plant, you get to the stage when you don’t want to buy any plant because you know you can buy a packet of seeds and grow many more for the same price. A general rule is to plant the seed one and half times deeper than the size of it, this is because the seed is packed with just enough energy to reach the surface before the sunlight begins to help it on its way. If you plant it too deep it wont make it to the surface, too shallow and it will be leggy and not rooted well enough to hold it in place, of course the main thing to remember is to water it because not much will grow in a dry pot! One crop I am going to grow more of this year is sprouting seed, you can grow them like cress and they don’t need anything fancy, in fact they don’t even need compost, a piece of wet kitchen roll will do the job. I discovered one of the tastiest by accident a few years ago, I had sown some Celery seeds with the aim of pricking them out and growing them on into nice plants, but I didn’t have time and so they were growing like cress does, I cut them with scissors and added them to a salad and they were delicious and much easier than growing and blanching the full Celery plant.

I have had a look at the Tortoises this week, considering how warm it has been, I would have expected to see some activity from them by now, on inspection I am not sure they have made it through the Winter, they look very leathered and dry, I will leave them where they are for now  as it would be dangerous to bring them out of hibernation if they are not ready,   I will be crossing my fingers  that they are just having an extra little nap, and keep you informed over the next couple of weeks. 

I had a lovely weekend being thoroughly spoilt with presents, meals out, a bit of garden centre shopping and some Skyping with my lovely girls and their partners, I hope every Mum and Mother figure out there enjoyed themselves just as much.

Spring is definitely leaping forward, the Equinox will soon be upon us and the clocks will change, the ground temperature is still a little low though, and after the Sunshine we were promised last week did not materialise, I put off sowing straight into the ground and planted into seed trays instead. The Broad Beans, Courgettes and Leeks were all sown into trays and will stay in the greenhouse until they can be hardened off. I could have planted them into the ground but there are too many things that can work against it, firstly although we have now put up a wind barrier all the way round the veg garden we are still in an exposed area and the temperatures are often 2 or 3 degrees lower than the town. Secondly there are still small animals out there searching for a tasty meal and the bean seeds would be a definite attraction for mice and lastly I can bring the plants on, make sure they get enough water and they will hopefully be strong enough to withstand the weather when they are finally planted out. The one thing that is growing away merrily are the weeds, it will now be a continuous battle to keep them down so that they are not stealing all the nutrients and light that the vegetable plants will need to thrive.

The rhubarb has shot up over the last week and it will very soon be time to pick some and have it fresh with custard :p I started blogging just over a year ago now and one of the stories I remember putting on here was about how I had forgotten how good rhubarb tasted, it is always a pleasure to re discover it every year! Gardeners often have an abundance of the stuff and if you get offered some and have not eaten since you were at school, I would say give it another chance you may be pleasantly surprised, it also makes a great crumble filling, a friend of mine makes his crumble with chocolate and rhubarb, the jury is still out on that one for me, I think I will need another tasting session to decide once and for all!

I am still waiting for the arrival of the chickens that were due for delivery last week! Later on today I will be on the phone asking for a definite delivery day, I know that the chicken industry is working flat out at the minute and the supplier is struggling to keep up with demand but I am hoping I will get a result and that they will be here very soon. On the subject of chickens the recent EU ban on caged hens will mean that the cost of eggs will go up as the producers costs increase with the very welcome change of lifestyle for the hens. This will have a knock on effect to all products made with eggs, all the more reason to buy them from your local free range farm 🙂

One of my current gripes about the retail industry is the charging of higher prices for ‘fashionable food’, Blue eggs do not cost any more to produce in any layer of the process so why charge up to double the price for them. The original egg that the hen comes from costs the same to incubate as any other, the feed is not any different to make the eggshell Blue, that is a process that the hen can manage by herself, the husbandry is exactly the same and it does not cost anymore to collect or transport, so why do they cost more to buy??????  My little Blue egg layer is laying on a daily basis, I hatched her out last year with the intention of mixing in Blue eggs with White and Brown to prove that they are not a ‘designer’ egg and that they should not cost any more than any other egg to buy. The cost of buying laying hens appears to be on the up too, I did do Economics at school and I remember the ‘supply and demand’ cycle but I was aghast to see a local garden centre with hybrid hens for sale at £25 each, knowing the industry I am aware that is approx 150% profit! I know they have overheads as do we all but honestly, you should be paying around £12 – £17 for a hybrid hen and approx £20 – £30 for a Pure Breed depending on its rarity, obviously anything rarer than that will cost you considerably more but that is mostly for enthusiasts and not your average back garden keeper. You are better off spending your money on good Fox protection because no matter how much you paid for your hen it is a quick and easy fast food takeway for him if you dont 😉

 

What an absolute stonker of a weekend for mid March! We couldn’t have asked for better weather than that and I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did 🙂

I have been busy this week preparing the beds for imminent planting of vegetable seeds and plants, the weeds have been cleared in the fruit cage and the holes in the netting mended, a Goji Berry which is taking over has been dug up and will be planted in something that can contain the root system, it is a bit of a brute and the branches have been rooting all around it, the Japanese Wineberry is about to have the same treatment as this is also quite vigorous and I don’t want it taking over the fruit cage.

All the time I have been digging and weeding, four of the young chickens have been doing a great job of picking over the grubs and scratching the dirt around, even manuring it for me as they go, but now they have come to the end of their usefulness in that department and it is time for them to vacate the vegetable garden completely so that anything I plant remains in the ground! This has proved easier said than done, firstly I increased the height of the fencing around their pen which covers a large area in the orchard, this did not stop them finding a way out, so the next step was to clip their wings and move them to the back paddock with the laying flock. A new battery was connected to the electric fence, but by midday one by one they began to wander down to the front and were eyeing up my newly raked over beds, on to plan c and they are back in the orchard and we have removed (hopefully) all possible mid height perching areas, I will watch today and see how succesful that has been.

The chickens in the orchard will be joined by 60 more tomorrow which is my first order of the year for the ‘hens for sale’ part of the business, that should keep them occupied for a while, and if they continue to get out they will included in the for sale list! They really can’t complain though as we spent Sunday morning cleaning and scrubbing the chicken hut for the new arrivals and then the wanderers moved back in, I don’t think they are as stupid as we think they are!

On the Saturday we went to the Smallholders Auction as planned, and I know you are all dying to know what we bought, two bacon rolls and two cups of coffee and that was it 🙂 To be honest the stock that was there was not up to much, a word of warning for anyone buying animals from an auction, on the whole it is generally stock that is no longer wanted by the owner, and if they don’t want it, neither do you! It is a bit like a Spring clean when people get rid of things that are no longer working or a bit tatty and passed its sell by date 😉 To be fair there were one or two pens that had good animals in but they were reflected by the prices, and the day was not wasted as it gave us a fair idea of what we should be paying or selling decent stock for, plus we got to catch up with a couple of friends and talk ‘smallholdings’ and of course the bacon rolls went down a treat 🙂

We caught another Fox this week, and whilst chatting to our friends we found out that we are not the only ones that are overrun with them, the ones we have caught have mainly been in good condition but I know that there are an increasing amount that are looking very scruffy and full of mange, a clear indication that something needs to be done, hunting, although not agreed by everyone, did at least dispose of the weak and the ill in the fox population. Another worrying fact is that the stronger ones are increasing in size, we thought our 15kg fox was big, but there have been reports in the paper of even bigger foxes than that caught, as there is nothing to keep the numbers down and the urban foxes have a ready supply of food from bins or even put out especially for them, I can only wonder how long it will be before they evolve to be big enough to include dogs, cats, or worse, as fair game!

My daffodils have finally burst open this morning 😀 and the trees in the village are covered in blossom so we can safely say that Spring has arrived, how long it will stay for is another matter though. As the weather had warmed up a bit I thought I would check on the Tortoise house and see if there were any signs of movement. On inspection I found a clutch of 14 hens eggs, another problem with wandering hens, as I got them all out I noticed that quite a few were cracked and smelt a little off, the Tortoises are still fast asleep and I hope that the smell in there was caused by the eggs and not the fact that Fred and Livingstone have not made it through the Winter! Only time will tell, they have to wake up slowly and in their own good time, if you try to rush it they will certainly die, we should know by the end of the month so I will keep you posted on that one 🙂

I would have planted Broad Beans, Parsnip and some New potatoes this weekend but wanted to make sure they would stay in the ground without getting dug up, so that is today’s job providing the chickens don’t get out again, what I have planted is radish, Spring Onion, Lettuce and Spinach, all in the safety of the greenhouse, the radish are already beginning to sprout and I will plant successions of each in order to keep a ready supply going through the Spring. For a gardener this has to be the best time of the year, planning and anticipating the bounty to come, it does not matter if it is vegetables or flowers the rewards are one of natures greatest gifts, there may be some disappointments along the way and army of insects all bent on getting to the goods before you do but that is what makes it fun, getting the treasure at the end.

I just popped out to check on the chickens in the orchard and they are all still in there, however they were all gathered around the plum tree eyeing up the lower branches as a possible escape route!!

It is beautiful and sunny today but the North East wind is biting, over the weekend we have had an enormous amount of rain which is desperately needed but does mean the paddocks are squelching underfoot!

During the week when the weather was a little better I spent one day weeding and digging over the Strawberry bed, I dug up half of the plants last year as these were 3 years old and they should be replaced at least every 3 years so that disease does not build up in the runners that are potted up for the next years crop. I have ordered new plants to replace them and as soon as they arrive they will go in and I will give them a feed of Sulphate of Potash to encourage flowering and fruiting. I tend to cover them with environmesh to begin with, then when they are flowering change it to netting, so that the bees can still get in but the birds can’t get at the fruit. Last years weather caused a bit of a problem, we had a lovely warm spell followed by a wet cold spell, they had flowered by then are were beginning to set fruit, but the fruit began to drop off before ripening which was disappointing, we still had a good crop, but I am hoping the weather will be kinder to us this year.

It has been very quiet on the Fox front this week, I feel he is lulling us into a false sense of security! There are plenty of rabbits around at the minute so maybe they are keeping the Foxes fed, they are certainly keeping our cats fed, Felix has been spotted twice this week with a baby bunny in his mouth. The rabbits are getting braver and coming nearer to the vegetable garden, I will need to get some rabbit fencing in place before too long, last year they chewed through the fruit cage netting, which not only let them in, but the birds as well, I will need to go round and ‘stitch’ up any holes that I find so that the only ones eating the fruit crop is us :p

The weekend was a very busy one and we have had one of the liveries leave as well, that is a long story but after having to have many ‘words’ with her the last straw was when she turned up at 12.30 on Friday night to do her horse, needless to say we found out how good the guard dog was and there was no way she was going to be able to get past the gate at that time of night!

My daughters boyfriend and my Hubby spent Sunday felling the two remaining conifers at the front of the drive, the first came down a treat but the last one got stuck in another tree as it was coming down, which made the whole job a little bit longer. We were all pulling on the rope as it came down trying to get it to miss but to no avail. It is an amazing sound when the tree has been cut and your hear that crack as it begins to fall then the thud as it hits the ground. It was a good days work though and there is now a huge pile of trimmings to slowly work through, the biggest will be cut for next years wood and  rest will eventually be burnt. Left standing are two Eucalyptus and three Silver Birch, they look very odd at the moment as they have been cut back and look like triffids stood in the middle of nowhere, but eventually the canopy should come back and it will be a much more attractive looking area (that’s the plan anyway).

I have an order of chickens due in next week, I had put in my original order of 40 birds but I have had that many enquiries and pre bookings that I have had to up the order to 60. Keeping chickens has become a very popular hobby and a great one at that, they are easy to look after, entertaining, and give you lovely fresh eggs in return, no wonder the chicken industry is struggling to keep up with demand 🙂 My laying flock have gone into overdrive at the moment which is great, at one time I was struggling to keep customers supplied and then one day last week I had seven dozen sat on the side, needless to say we had eggs for tea! I am still waiting for the Geese to start laying, mine always seem to be late, after a chat with a friend last week I found out that hers had been laying all month, my two just seem to be more interested in terrorising the chickens than laying an egg. While I was feeding them last night with the corn that I throw into the paddock, an almighty rumpus occurred, I looked round to find that one of the geese had a chicken in its mouth running around the paddock with it, the chicken was making a din and the other goose was chasing round after them making a din, and all because the chicken got too close to the corn that the goose was eating! They failed to realise that all the time they were doing that, fifteen other chickens were greedily gobbling up the remaining corn :p

I have set up and planted the heated propagator, tomatoes, aubergine, peppers and melon all need an early start as they have a long growing season and if you want to produce any fruit at all they need a good warm start. I am determined to get more that one or two Peppers this year, I don’t use a heated greenhouse because of the obvious costs both to my pocket and the environment, but I will use the propagator for a short while to get them going. After that they will need a good regime of potting on and gradual acclimatizing to  the harshness of the British Weather! I have ordered all my seeds and am eagerly awaiting their arrival any day, I have been careful about the choice this year, trying to choose plants that will do well in an exposed area, for example I have gone for dwarf broad beans this year as the bed they are going into gets quite a bit of wind, so hopefully at that size they wont get blown over and break, in theory they should already be in and growing but experience tells me that it is not possible on our site and it is better to wait for the ground to warm up a bit more, the results will be faster and better rather than watching them disappointingly struggle.

This Saturday is the smallholder auction in Thame, so we will be popping over there for the day to see what we can find, we have had the ‘we are not having any lambs or piglets this year’ conversation but you never know sometimes it can be irresistible! What I will be on the look out for is Quail, I would like a few and be able to sell quail eggs, we used to have some when we lived at our old place and they lay really well although I am not sure if there will be customers for the eggs it will be fun finding out 🙂 I will let you know what we came back with next week!

I am an early bird this morning! I have had my medication upped for Thyroid and finally feel ‘normal’ again, consequently I have been very busy this week able to do jobs that should have already been done.

I made a huge list of jobs that I would normally look at and think ‘when am I going to get all this done’ but gradually through the week the jobs have been crossed off and that has given me a great sense of achievement. One of the first on the list was to cut back all the foliage at the front of the building, weed the bed and order a few tons of shingle to put down in the areas that were becoming muddy. Luckily the lorry driver did a good job of spreading most of it for me but there were still a few piles to rake out a fair distance. My hands and arms hurt for a day after but it was worth it as it is now all ready for Spring to blossom. The nut trees also needed a bit of a prune to get rid of any whips that had shot up in the last year, to me the condition of the front of the farm is important because not only is it first impressions for any new customers but it lifts my mood when I return home and it is all looking nice and tidy. Soon it will be time to decide what to plant in the boxes by the front gate, I am not a lover of bedding plants as they are not good pollinators for the insects so after watching the Sarah Raven programme it might be a mix of wild flowers and ‘ modern’ meadow planting. These are only small areas so I am in the middle of identifying larger areas that I can also broadcast a wildflower mix, it is difficult as the horses need the grass areas but I am sure I will find space somewhere.

The chickens, ducks and rabbits have all had a good Spring clean this weekend, I tend to deep litter them over the Winter, which means they don’t get a full clean, just partial, and more bedding added. Unfortunately the small chicken houses are infested with Red Mite this is a small blood sucking insect that comes out at night to feed on my chickens! They are very common and an infestation is difficult to get rid of completely, there are mite powders on the market and these houses and chickens will have to be regularly dusted to try to eradicate it. The problem lies with modern methods and thinking, in the old days, coops would have been soaked in old engine oil to protect them from the elements which was very good at deterring any mites, in fact our big sheds which are about 100 years old never get infested, unfortunately it’s not very environmentally friendly, so we are trying creosote on the new houses to see if that will deter them 🙂

The weather this weekend has been glorious and yesterday we decided to dig over the area that will have potato’s, last  year it was where we planted the swede, parsnip and carrots, there were a few parsnips left to dig up and plenty of weeds! Hubby kept complaining that he hates digging so eventually it was left to me while he rotavated a different area. We have already bought the seed potato’s and this year are trying Pentland Javelin and Rocket as our first earlies, these will go in next weekend and in about 7 weeks we will be eating new potato’s, providing we get a bit of rain!  As a gardener I find this is the best time of year, planning what to grow, where to grow it and getting started, it will only be a few weeks now before we are able to eat fresh veg again, although we still have a fair amount in the freezer to use up beforehand.

If, as the Met Office is suggesting, we go into drought conditions, the subject of watering will be  a major concern, although being a commercial property we wont be included in any hosepipe ban because of the animals, having said that I still feel a responsibility to conserve and reuse as much rainwater and grey water as possible, so we will do whatever is possible to do just that. We have a huge rainwater collection tank, and providing we have rain we should be ok during any dry periods, we generally use it to fill up the duck pond and last time Hubby forgot to turn the tap off again and so at the moment it is bone dry! I will have to put a big notice on it reminding him to turn it off after use 😉

Well having got an early start, I had a little Skype session with my brother in Australia halfway through and now am a bit behind letting out the animals and they will be wondering where breakfast has got too, so I had better go and sort them all out, ta ta for now 🙂

Yet again I can’t believe how quickly the week has gone, I have found the energy and inclination to do quite a few jobs this week so maybe that’s why it has shot past.

Firstly I replaced the roof on the greenhouse, the one that collapsed during the gales towards the end of last year, the roof was all glass but I have replaced it with polycarbonate, firstly because I didn’t want the roof coming down again on my head while I was in there and secondly because it was cheaper and easier to fit. I had to straighten out the roof bars as the force of the wind had twisted them slightly, tighten up all the bolts to make the frame  strong again, I just have a couple of little triangle pieces to put in the ends and it will be ready for planting up salad leaves at the end of the month.

The second big job of the week was to fit two new blinds to the kitchen and bathroom window, which to my surprise I did with little swearing! They were quite easy to fit and I was very chuffed that I had managed them all by myself 🙂 

On the animal front this week we have said an emotional goodbye to Atherton who was the thoroughbred that we have had on loan for the past 3 years, his owner came and picked him up on Saturday afternoon, we shall miss him very much as he was the first fulltime ‘farm’ animal that we ever looked after. The sheep is doing very well this week, she is back out in the paddock and back to her usual routine of pestering me for feed every time she sees me, although there is a slight possibility that she is in lamb, I am not convinced so we will just have to wait and see.

The fox has made an appearance again this week, as we still have not been able to trap this one, I went up the back one day last week, and caught sight of him running across the corner paddock. I crept to a spot where I was sure he couldn’t see me and luckily I was up wind of him, I stood watching him for about 20 minutes while he was sat in the hedgeline watching my chickens, eventually he moved out in the paddock but by the time I got round the other side he was gone, needless to say I was on high alert for the rest of the day!

The eggs numbers are increasing daily again now and this morning I had my very Blue egg which was very exciting, for me anyway ;), It is funny how last week I was considering decreasing my duck numbers because the ducks lay very well but the demand is not there, then suddenly I have an increase in people wanting duck eggs, the power of thought is amazing, if only I could do that with a lottery win 😀

Spring is definitely on its way, the birds have begun to check out the holes in the side of the building ready for choosing a suitable nest, I have told Hubby that we will not be able to replace the wooden cladding until all the fledglings have vacated so that will be near the end of the summer before that job can be done. I was trying to count up the number of different birds that I have spotted over the last couple of months, it is becoming quite a little haven for them especially the small birds, we have Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Long Tailed Tits, Robins, Wrens, Woodpecker, Dunnocks, Sparrows, Thrush, Blackbird, Magpie, Collared Doves, Wood Pigeon, Buzzard, Red Kite, Bullfinches Goldfinches and spotted for the first time Greenfinches and Yellow Hammer.

The Snowdrops are a lovely arrival and the green stems of the daffodils are pushing up all over the place, the buds are swelling on the trees and hopefully it wont be long before everything bursts into life again, the Met office forecasts some warmer weather for the week coming and not before time too, although we are also in line for some gusty winds, I better hope that I have secured that new greenhouse roof properly!

Hubby had a bit of an unfortunate accident yesterday, he walked into the door but he had a plate and a steak knife in his hand, the plate fell on the floor and the knife went an inch and a quarter straight into his stomach! Luckily after a trip to A & E they decided that it had mostly gone into his spare tyre and although he is feeling sorry for himself he has not done any damage, just has a couple of stitches and some bruising, so today he is resting and I have to provide the TLC, I have heaped the sympathy on him but not before telling him what a prat he was 😉

Goodbye Atherton,  we will miss you.

The type of week I have had this week, is the reason I began the blog in the first place, to make a permanent log of the things that are great and go according to plan and the things that go wrong. In my limited experience of this smallholding life I have found that things tend to go wrong all at the same time and this has been one of those weeks.

The weather has really been against us, the plummeting temperatures and unrelenting frozen ground has made life hard, not just for us but the animals too. The layer of snow, subsequent part thaw, then freezing again meant that the paddocks were just like huge ice rinks, the horses were all brought in on the night the snow first fell and have now been in for over a week, they are not happy. Hopefully after today they will be able to return to the fields again and be able to enjoy that freedom for the rest of the year.

In 48 hours during the week, I had enough little incidents to wonder ‘what the hell am I doing, I should just get an office job’.  Apart from battling against the elements, the animals all decided that they would wreak a bit of havoc too, our oldest dog, normally on his best behaviour decided I could do with some excercise and ran away through an accidentally left open gate, not once but two days running, he is not the sort to come back on command, so there I am chasing after him across the fields, trying to sound friendly while I call him, but he knows I am cross and keeps on running! During the part thaw I hear the unmistakable sound of water dripping onto my living room carpet and after catching a fox on Tuesday night and disposing of it, Wednesday morning at about 10.30 there was a cuffufle outside the back door and I ran out to see another fox about 4 ft away with one of my chickens in its mouth, it was in no hurry to leg it, so I stood shouting and screaming at it, in the end I tried to pick up a stone and hurl it but the ground was so frozen that it was stuck! So I spent all day on high alert, checking the chickens every hour or so. I had decided to leave them in on the Thursday, the fox population is so very hungry at the moment with temperatures well below freezing I was taking no chances.

On Thursday morning I went up to the paddocks as usual to find one of the sheep ‘down’ she was laying on her side and did not get up, so we bought her into the hay barn made a pen filled with straw and put up a heat lamp, I then spent about 6 hours sitting with her trying to get her to eat or drink, on top of this I still had to feed all the others and ferry water to them, plus see to what seemed like a unprecented amount of egg customers and remember to keep the Rayburn going with logs every now and then. I did not come in from outside until 2 o’clock in the afternoon, grabbed a sandwich and a cuppa and went back out to see the sheep. There was not much change so phoned the vet with the symptoms who was not very hopeful and didn’t have a clue what had caused it! I ask for  opinions from online forums,  gave it sugar water and tried to encourage it to stand up every now and then, then someone suggested a twin lamb drench which is a metabolic stimulant, it took two days but I am happy to report she is fine and cant wait to get back outside. During my ‘nursing shift’ I had to let the horses out for a bit of exercise because they are boxed all day, I had got two out of three outside when the other one decided I wasnt quick enough, busts the bolt on the stable door and lets himself out to charge round the yard.

Actually it does not sound too bad when I write it all down but some of these things were happening while I was trying to deal with the last incident, so I was at times running about like the proverbial headless chicken, all the while, the phone rings, the dogs need letting out, the dinner needs cooking, the tap needs defrosting (for the third time in the day), the fire needs stoking, etc etc etc, they were certainly 2 days that stretched my multitasking abilities to the limit! Of course my mood was not made any better by Hubby arriving home and informing me that I get ‘too stressed’ arrrrrrgggghhhh! Everything was restored to calm after a good nights sleep on Thursday once we were sure the sheep was out of danger, we have since had a burst pipe in the tack room, but I am taking it all in my stride, besides that is definatly Hubby’s dept  :p

What I learnt about myself during this time was that I like to be in control, my brother jokingly said to me ‘wait till you have kids’ (my youngest is 22), it was much easier with kids, they understood ‘time out’ or ‘no’ or they could speak to you and let you know what is wrong, with animals all of those rules are thrown out of the window and my ‘control’ goes with it!

As I look toward to the rest of the year I have begun making preparations for working out side in the Sun, you may remember that I was diagnosed with Discoid Lupus back in the Spring, for me this means not being able to expose my skin to strong sunlight, this is something that will be a challenge given my lifestyle, but I am determined to work around it the best I can. Very early mornings and late evenings on the veg garden will be the routine, spending the middle of the day indoors, I have heavily invested (£1 each) in some oversized, longsleeved mens cotton shirts, which will be washed in a UVA factor 50 liquid protection, I have also just ordered a portable UVA protective cover that covers about 8ft in diameter, a very delectable hat that makes me look like I am on safari, and I will  be plastered in factor 50 sun block, if you come up to the farm in the summer, you wont miss me, I will be the one looking like Worzel Gummidge on Holiday 🙂

Where has the last week gone, it seems to have flown past very quickly! We have had all kinds of weather, bright blue skies with frosty mornings, plunging freezing temperatures and now a blanket of Snow! I prefer the warmth the snow brings to the bone chilling cold that we had just before it, it makes life seriously difficult when every water holder has to be defrosted because the ice is about 4 inches thick and no amount of kicking it is going to smash it. Of course you always get one bright spark that puts his foot through the bottom of not one but two buckets :p 

The horses have been bought in and stabled whilst the snow is on the ground, partly because we weren’t sure how much we were really going to end up with and partly to save the total destruction of the fields when it begins to melt again.  They were given a chance to ‘play’ in the menage, they do like a good roll in the snow, it is funny how snow brings out the playfullness in people and animals, our oldest dog, who is 13, comes alive like a puppy in the snow.

The beastly fox has struck again, this time he has had a Goose, despite the traps both being set, he must have come early in the morning as we found the headless body in the small paddock still quite fresh, the Fox had tried to get it through the stock fencing, it was obviously too heavy for him to jump up and over the fence with it in his mouth. This one seems to pick off the birds just one at a time and he is about at all times of the day, I will be glad when we have finally caught him and hope it is before he does serious damage to the flock numbers. He is quite brazen, one of the liveries was filling hay nets in the barn turned around and there he was just looking at her, she said it was the biggest one she had ever seen.

Only a few more weeks until Spring, which will hopefully bring warmer weather and the start of the growing year again. We still have a freezer full of veg and fruit that were processed last year which gives me a great sense of achievement during the cold months, those long Summer days of picking, cutting, blanching and freezing were well worth it. The Snowdrops have appeared at the front of the house and next will come the Daffodils and Crocuses, at the end of this month it will be about the right time to begin planting the seeds that will take longest to produce anything, Tomatoes, Aubergine, Melons etc. I am planning on making a mini hotbed inside the greenhouse in order to raise the temperature, this is a Victorian method using manure in its fresh form, as it begins to break down it will release heat, normally you would put earth on top and plant into it, but I just need it for the heat source so I will use an old dustbin, I should also get a thick black liquid from the bottom of it that will provide me with a  free fertiliser too.  We have had a flock of Long Tailed Tits here this weekend, I had never seen them until we moved here, they are lovely little birds but they don’t stay around for very long, we also had a visit from a Red Kite which swooped very low over the hay barn, they are huge and extremely graceful in flight. I was told that there is an albino buzzard living in the area but I have yet to spot it, we have a small number of albino rabbits living about 2 miles up the road, they are very easy to spot in the middle of the field and I wonder how long they will last before they get eaten!

Alfie has arrived at the farm this morning, he is not one of the farm animals but he does spend quite a bit of time here, he is a brown and white collie puppy that belongs to my daughters boyfriend, he is a clever little fellow that is already learning his commands, he is learning all about life on the farm and at the minute is most scared of the sheep!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thats about it for this week as the dogs are barking because the puppy is here and I cant really concentrate, plus the puppy is about to start chewing the carpet!

 

Well we managed to trap the elusive fox finally, but there is now another! After re-setting the trap and inspecting it the next morning we found that we had caught another but he had managed to rip the metal off the bottom of the trap and dig his way out! This will call for a bit of spot welding to be done to ensure that he does not get away a second time.

We had the use of a cherry picker at the end of last week and so the trees at the front of the drive had have a radical lopping! The Eucalyptus trees had reached about 80ft and all the growth is on one side due to lack of light from the conifer trees, we have reduced their height to about 40 ft and taken the tops out of the conifers for the time being although they will eventually come down altogether. They look a bit of a state at the moment but they will recover and look lovely come the spring, we will leave the conifers in place until that happens so that they are not an eyesore! We had just finished and were beginning to pack up the equipment when the most horrible hailstorm hit, I have not been out in a storm like that for a few years, it was cold and it stung! All that pruning means that Hubby has another big piles of branches and tree trunk to cut up ready for next Winters log pile, the Eucalyptus should smell amazing burning on the Rayburn and it will have all year to dry out first which is a good job as they are high in natural oils.

The other big job for Hubby this weekend was to make many trips with a trailer full of well-rotted manure down to the corner paddock, this will be spread and then weathered in before putting down grass seed in the spring, the paddock has been seriously overgrazed over the last couple of years and all it contains now is dandelions so is in need of some TLC to bring it back to good grazing. Although we have a huge pile of muck you would be surprised how much it takes to cover even a small area, it’s a good job we have a constant supply 🙂

I can’t write the blog this week without dedicating it to a man who greatly influenced my lifestyle choice and sadly passed away at the end of last year  ‘Some men achieve greatness, others are born with it’ as my Mum said to me when we were talking about him. Ernie was one of those born with it, he was a tutor on a Horticultural course I did about 10 years ago but his influence has stayed with me on a daily basis for all those years and will continue to do so. His passion and dedication to the natural world was something we never tired of listening to during our lectures, from teaching us all about the fascinating matriarchal society of a badger set to telling us stories of the magnificent stags on a misty Scottish morning during the rutting season. His horticultural knowledge was just as entertaining, one of the first practical things we did with him was to prune a very old grapevine, nervous newbies we stood there with our secateurs while he demonstrated which bits to cut out, ‘dont worry if you make a mistake’ he said ‘the sole aim of a plant is to grow and so it will recover’ a point worth remembering if you make a hash of your next bit of pruning! He spent the day, in his own time, teaching us the art of hedgelaying and we spent many a day wandering around outside as, in his opinion, this was the best way to learn. The things Ernie taught us could never have been learnt from a textbook alone, there were 5 of us on the course and 4 of us remain in close contact with each other even now. Each one of us has gone on to use and develop the skills he taught us, one has gone on to build a very succesful Green Roof business, one has among other things gone on to keep bees, knowing that this small insect is the most important insect in the whole eco system, the other is retired but has taken up Botanical painting, which is a wonderful way to look at all the intricacies that plants and flowers display, and then there is me with my madcap, muddy life, surrounded by all the amazing things nature has to offer. So thank you Ernie from myself and the hundreds, probably thousands of others that you were generous enough to share your life long knowledge and experience with.