Author: frieslandfarm

We use rubber eggs here at the farm for two reasons, firstly to encourage the hens to lay in the correct place, otherwise they can randomly lay all over the place and every day would be an egg hunt! Secondly some hens take to egg eating, this is something you need to nip in the bud and a rubber egg is used, the hen can’t break it and so gives up trying (that’s the theory anyhow). When we came back from a weekend away at the beginning of the month I went to collect up the eggs and noticed that one of the rubber ones was missing, I hunted high and low in the coop but it had disappeared, I laughingly asked the girls ‘who has sold the rubber egg to a customer’, blank looks were what I received in return! At this point I feel I ought to explain that they are very realistic looking and even I have thought, wow they have laid well today, only to remember that the rubber eggs were there too :p Finally at the weekend a regular customer turned up and said ‘I have something funny to tell you’, ‘let me guess’ I said, ‘you were sold a rubber egg’. The story didn’t stop there, she was about to make cakes and tried to crack the egg which she was unable to do, so she called her husband and told him she thought there may be a chick in it and could he take it outside to break it open and look, it took him about 5 minutes to realise that it was not going to break because it was fake! I told you they were realistic!! They said that was the best laugh they’d  had in ages, I was thinking, good job they have a sense of humour!

This morning I have heard on the grapevine (which is pretty quick around here) that the yard along the lane from us was broken into last night and tools taken, so once again we need to be vigilant! I did have a bit of an inkling something was amiss when a police car pulled in the drive this morning, sat for a while and then left, always a telltale sign! I did have a thought that could work, as we get so much nighttime flying activity around here perhaps they could strap police cameras to the undercarriage, I am pretty sure the crime detection rate would shoot up! Seriously, it is a damn nuisance, rural crime is difficult to police I am sure as we don’t have the availability of CCTV, but no one ever seems to get caught and it just becomes a routine event, in fact you can guarantee that every six months you will get word of someone nearby being done over 😦

Two  more liveries arrived at the weekend so we are now a full yard, no doubt that the increase in horses has been noted by the aforementioned and the assumption that there will be an increase of tack on the premises, however we advise the liveries not to keep anything they value here, even locking things away does not stop them, the best you can do is slow them down a little and hope they get caught in the mean time, but if they want to get in they will so it is safer not to have it on site.

Hubby finished the last bit of fencing we will need to do for a while, he went hammer and tong to get it done by Saturday dinnertime, 22 posts to go in, 3 to every twelve foot, maths is not my strong point but that’s roughly 90 feet of fencing before 11.30 in the morning! It will help to get rid of the ‘Christmas belly’ 😉 I have a list of jobs to do this week, mostly thorough clean outs of hutch, runs and houses, there is always plenty of s**t to shovel round here so that will hopefully help me to get rid of some Christmas leftovers too 🙂

The fox is still being elusive, although he is still around, we have seen him with the torch and heard him fighting with another, we have moved one of the traps to the back of the paddock and disguised it with branches! I am not sure if he will be fooled by that or not, at the moment we have not lost any more hens but it wont be long if we don’t catch him soon. I have just realised that I feel like we are under attack from all angles at the minute 😦 No wonder my stress levels are up! Roll on the peaceful, heady days of Summer 😀

Well I have managed to write the blog without shedding any tears after saying goodbye to our youngest at departures last night, in fact she should be landing in Kuala Lumpar any minute on the first leg of the journey, I will heave a sigh of relief when she gets back on the correct plane (arghh) and lands in Sydney, then I will begin to worry again when I see the pictures on Facebook, she is 22 but you never stop worrying!

I hope you all had a lovely festive season, I thought I would give myself a couple of weeks off from the blog, I was, as I suspect were you, too busy in the run up to Christmas and too tired afterwards!

Well the New Year has certainly blown its way in here, the winds have been frightful, luckily the only damage so far has been a pane of glass in one of the stables. Besides the usual Christmas preparations, we still had the day to day running to keep up with and so it was very busy for a few days, the daily routine remains the same no matter what the calendar says, although we did have a couple of extra ‘half an hour’ lie ins 🙂

About two years ago we made the decision to take down some conifers that are at the front of the drive, they have reached about 50ft and are getting too big to be that near to the road, we finally got round to felling the first of them during the holiday break. That was an experience, cutting off as many branches as possible then tieing a rope to the top and hoping it would fall in the general direction required! When I heard the crack, just as it was about to fall, my heart was in my mouth, then the feeling and exclamation of jubilation, when it crash landed in the right place without any damage to persons or property, was amazing. We have another two to bring down and being closer to the road they will be a little more difficult to manage, but the amount of wood that we will get from them for next Winter will be well worth it.

Hubby and I went to visit My Dad in Wales for a couple of days after Christmas and left the girls in charge of the farm. The usual thing that happens is we get half way down there and they ring up to say the fox had been, so this time they decided to be one step ahead and bait the fox trap, a cunning plan, they got up the next morning to find they had caught…………….the cat! There he was sat in the trap with a belly full of pigeon! Oddly enough we did have a fox on the prowl, when I came home, I could smell that it had been marking its territory, so we baited the trap again and hoped that the cat stayed away, he did and this time we caught the fox. We can’t rest there though, only yesterday while out doing the afternoon feed, Hubby spotted a second fox in the far paddock, and there are tell tales signs of droppings around the Hen houses, so today we will set a second trap out in the paddock, I have lost one hen in the last week, and I can’t afford to lose any more.

I had some great presents for Christmas, all useful, which are the best kind and one of them was a micro brewery kit! I have not started it off yet but hopefully I will be brewing beer before the month is out, what it will taste like is another matter :p One of my aims this year is to use our produce in a wider range of products and brewing is right up at the top of the list 🙂 It may lead to some very entertaining blogs after a tasting session 😉

The New Year heralds new beginnings and that rule applies here just as much as anywhere, but before we begin planning for the future we need to clear up from the previous year, for us that means identifying birds that are no longer productive  and are costing more to keep than they make. From a batch of eggs hatched last year I have 5 very large Blue Splash Orpington cockerels, unless I can find buyers for them they will be fattened up for the freezer, we have around 10 hens that have either never laid or have stopped laying, they need to be culled and as there is hardly any meat on a hybrid they will be used to feed the dogs or bait the fox trap.  Yesterday we had to cull a drake who had suddenly developed a chest rattle and could no longer walk, poor thing was found flapping around in the mud, so we gave him a dry stable, water and food overnight to see if he would recover but it was evident that he was not going to 😦 Then there are the two remaining lambs that will need to go off to slaughter at the end of February, they have put on some good weight even though it is Winter, probably because they badger us for food every time we go near them! Once all that is done it will be time to decide what to plant, rear and grow for the coming seasons. We have talked about a permanent flock of sheep, just a small one of about 3 0r 4 ewes, it would uneconomical to keep a ram and so we would have to bring one in to serve them. It would mean that we would deliver our own lambs, which would be a whole new experience for us but a very exciting one as well, so watch this space 🙂 We also talked about having piglets again this year, after having a year without them, we need to build a permanent run for them first, and I was going to say, it will be a case of if we get round to it, but from experience what usually happens is an oportunity to buy some comes up and you dive in head first without much thought, ending up with piglets but no run, then a mad scrabble to get something ready for them to move into when they get too big for their pen! To be honest I prefer a ‘think on your feet’ situation rather than mull it over and planning it, with the latter we usually never get round to doing it!

We are well and truly in the season of mud here, for a time during Autumn we get some mud but the Sun comes out and dries it up again, from here on in that wont happen again until March, unless it freezes! It is a daily case of slipping your way to the fields. I try to find a positive in everything and the only thing I can say is that by the time I have finished feeding I am about two inches taller from the mud on the bottom of my wellies, a great thing when you are only 5’2″ but it is not a look that will go nicely with a party dress and so I am unable to use it to my advantage!!

We have a new ‘resident’ at the farm, Kevin the Crow, I did check with one of the girls that come down if she had noticed the same thing as I had, she confirmed my thoughts and so I will relate the story to you. We have huge mirrors in the Menage, they are used in the same way a ballet dancer uses mirrors, the rider can see if, both themselves, and the horse are in the correct riding position. Kevin has taken up a permanent position on the rail next to the end mirror, he is either very stupid or very clever, I can’t decide which, I think he may have decided that his reflection will do very nicely for a mate, when he flies off, so does his mate, when he comes closer, so does his mate, as far as he is concerned, it’s a match made in Heaven!! The other thought is that he is using the mirror to deflect heat and thus keeping him warm, very clever, whatever the reason he is there every time I go out to the back paddocks, I assume that eventually he will give up on a mate that gets close, but not close enough!!

The Country is taking a battering weatherwise this week, the North, worse than the South, but it is still very wet and windy here this morning, we have had a couple of  small branches down but nothing major as yet. We are a little concerned about a row of 40ft conifers that are about 15ft from the building, we need to take the tops out of them and bring them back down to a level that will be safe so that is a job for the New Year and fingers crossed in-between. With the amount of rain we had overnight, I quite expected to see the fields beginning to flood this morning but although they are wet they are not too bad, the water table has been very low in this area and hopefully the rain will run off for quite a while before it begins to saturate the ground. The only animals that love this weather are the ducks, they are in their element, plenty of water in the pond to splash about in and plenty of worms coming to the surface, they spend most of the day grubbing around for food and by the end of the day their crops are bulging and they go to bed happy. The chickens on the other hand couldn’t look more dejected and forlorn, they hate the rain and the  mud, they spend their day huddled underneath the chicken house or any available shelter, they do run around frantically when I first let them out in the morning looking for worms though, then end up wet and ruffled for the rest of the day. A chicken that has found the first worm is a funny sight to watch, she pulls the worm out runs around with it in her beak, unable to stop and eat it because she is being chased by the other 29 hens! Sometimes she is lucky and manages to gobble it down, other times it gets pinched from her and then that chicken runs around followed by 29 too! Finally they work out that if they stop chasing they can look for their own 🙂

Rosie the Rayburn is working flat out at this time of the year, although we had to let her out at the weekend and extend the length of the flue to get more of a pull in order to get a better fire going. Hubby spent Saturday morning cleaning her out as the soot had built up quite a bit in the flueways, when I came in from outside there was a fine layer of soot all over the kitchen! I wouldn’t have minded so much but I had completely cleaned the kitchen the day before (not happy). According to the instructions she needs to be cleaned out once a month, no wonder people switched to gas, but it all adds to the experience I suppose and next time I will leave the kitchen cleaning until after the flue cleaning :p It is quite difficult keeping the room temperatures up in a wooden building, especially one that was not originally built to live in. It was literally put up as a shed, and when I first came down here to visit that’s exactly what it was being used for, only the kitchen and bathroom were built for purpose. The rest was gradually changed into ‘a dwelling’ as time went on, so now we have walls that are plastered and a floor on top of the shed floor, next year we are replacing all of the wood at the front of the building and will insulate it at the same time to stop the draughts, unfortunately this will mean that the birds will have to find new places to nest so I will need to put up a few bird boxes to accommodate them! At this point I have spent 15 mins trying to upload a photo but WordPress is not playing ball so maybe next time 🙂

I have had two cups of coffee and can’t put off the inevitable any longer, I have to go out and muck out the stables, the weather looks awful out there so I may procrastinate a little longer 😉 I look forward to coming back in to the warm and dry, I think the rest of the day I will spend wrapping presents and watching daytime tv 🙂

Good morning bloggers, it is a cold North Westerly blowing here this morning, making it very fresh indeed! We were up early, having a dentist appointment at 9am means action stations or we would never have got there in time. Luckily no treatment needed for another 6 months 🙂

I rather jinxed everything in last weeks blog talking about the horses and having a stable ready when needed for the ponies, that very night one of the livery ponies had to have the vet out! He spent a couple of days in the stable (the pony, not the vet ) on antibiotics and happily has now gone back out to the field. No real diagnosis as to what was wrong with him, just one of those things and a hefty vet bill for his owner!

On Saturday I  went along to a Rayburn cooking demonstration, these are always inspiring and I learn something new each time I go, as the oven is usually hottest in the evening, because it is cranked up for the heating, I decided to make a batch of mince pies that night. This is the second lot I have made in as many weeks and they do not last very long in our house! We are gearing up for Christmas, although the day itself will start and end in the same way as every other day of the year. The animals still have to be fed and watered, then in the early evening they will all have to be put to bed again, they don’t know its Christmas day and would be very put out if we forgot them so no tipples untill after dark for us!! This years Christmas dinner will be all of our own meat in various forms and probably most of our home-grown veg, except potatoes which we have now run out of, we will even be eating our own Walnuts and Cob nuts, if only we could grow satsumas well over here we would be made up!!

The new batch of Point of Lay hens are still getting out everywhere, I need to clip their wings so that they can’t fly up to the fence and escape, the combs are beginning to redden up which means they will be coming into lay very soon and unless I keep them in I will have no chance of finding their eggs. I had a chap come to buy some yesterday, unfortunately they were not for him, he was having to replace them after his dog came bounding up to him with two chickens in his mouth closely followed by the farmer from next door :s . I have moved the young pullets from the pens up to the back paddock to live with the other Orpingtons, they were quite bemused and didn’t come out for a whole day, this will be the first time they have been out on grass and have no idea what to do, I am sure they will soon learn though. The pens  are used to rear the young birds and become very muddy over Winter so it is best to get as many out onto better ground as I can, I still have a few old birds in one of them, they are past laying now but I can’t bring myself to dispatch them 😦 years ago they would have been eaten at the end of their laying life but to be honest there is not enough meat on them for one person being hybrids, so to kill them just because they are no longer useful seems a bit cruel.

I have ordered all the seed catalogues I need for next years veg, I may have a good go at growing some heritage varieties, a lot of these are not grown these days because of pests and disease but the flavour is usually far superior. A lot of the veg for sale in the supermarkets are of the new hybrids, they are developed for the mass producing growers because they can withstand blight or mould or burrowing insects but as you probably know they are very lacking in taste! One of the veg I will grow again this year is the Sweetcorn, the taste of it fresh from the garden is second to none, we are down to the last bag of kernels and I still bang on about how delicious they are even though they have been frozen! I was watching a program in the week and they were saying that pigs are making a comeback in the back garden, years ago most householders would have kept their own pig, when we moved into our last house in Carterton the remains of the pig pen were still there even though it had long been used to store wood. This turn around in people’s outlook can only be a good thing, getting to know how to grow your own veg again and rearing your own meat, I suppose things always go round in circles and a new generation will discover how good it all tastes, then the generation after will want it all conveniently packaged and ready to buy off the shelf!

Talking of pigs, we have decided to have a couple in the New Year, I have already put the feelers out and asked a friend to let me know when some will be ready. They are very endearing creatures and brilliant to have around the farm, they eat all the veg peelings and if you keep them long enough are very ready to hoover up windfall apples which in turn makes the meat taste superb 😉

Well I had better go and crank up the fire again, I bought a new cookbook from the demo, slow cooking, the best way to cook I think, put it all in a dish and leave it to cook for a few hours, it will be ready to eat when we get back in from the cold after doing the animals, perfick 🙂

I have just checked the outside thermometer and it is registering -5, that’s a whole 2 degrees warmer than when I first checked it at 6.30 this morning!! It’s a bit of a shock to the system to say the least, but I am well prepared this year and so I donned my salopettes, warm snow boots, thermal gloves and hat, thick coat and went outside. It is a little difficult to walk when you are trussed up like the Michelin man but at least I was warm 🙂

First job is to break all the ice in the water buckets about 15 in total and as yet I have not defrosted the rabbit water bottles, I need a plan of action for those this year, we have tried insulating them with various materials but they still freeze, I did have a thought about fixing them to the inside of the hutch hoping that the warmth of the rabbits might keep them thawed, something to work on today I think.

We have had confirmed reports of a fox seen leaving the premises last night, the dog has been yapping for a couple of nights in a row and we wondered what was out there and now we know for sure so the fox trap will be baited today. In fact both traps will be set one in the back paddocks and one in the front where the activity seems to be at the moment. The fact that he is in the front means he is after my new intake of pullets and although they are shut in at night we all know how determined a fox can be if he is hungry.

Of course I can’t mention the cold outside without saying how beautifully warm it is indoors this year 🙂 The Rayburn is doing a wonderful job of radiating warmth all through the rooms, with the added bonus of a constantly simmering kettle sitting on the top, ready whenever you are, for a cuppa 🙂 I think as it is so cold out, today’s jobs will all be indoors, some cleaning and a bit of baking, I need to use up some of the duck eggs that are multiplying by the day, if I make a batch of cakes for the freezer now, then when the birds stop laying in Midwinter I will not mind in the least. A few batches of homemade soup may be in order too, last week I made the first pot of Leek and Potato soup, our favourite, with a freshly made loaf of bread, it was lovely and at least we appreciate the Winter for that if nothing else! 

A flock of sheep have moved into the field next door, I love it when they move them down our lane, they stop the traffic from each end and then you hear a barely audible rumbling of hundreds of hooves as they come past the farm and go off down the road. The horses get very excited to see them,I have no idea why, and started charging round the paddock like yearlings. Of course those sheep are nothing like ours, they are out in the open ground with no shelter and graze on whatever is left in the field, ours by comparison are totally pampered with a field shelter and regular hay nets and feed, they spend their day bleating at us for more food and attention. I have not had a close look at the flock but they are usually ‘in lamb ewes’ who will spend a couple of weeks out there before being taken in ready for lambing in the New Year. Taking part in lambing is something I would love to do, even the thought of a cold, long night does not put me off, I would imagine it has to be the highlight of the farmers year to successfully bring all those new lambs into the world, just about the greatest job satisfaction I could imagine.

The horses will start coming into the stables overnight very soon, at the moment they are being rugged, the thoroughbred is heavily rugged. This is to stop them losing too much weight trying to keep themselves warm. If you ever wondered why they are dressed like that, then now you know, sometimes they will have a full head covering on too, this is to stop them getting too muddy if they are being ridden. It takes quite a while to groom a horse that has been out in a muddy field before putting on his tack so the less you have to do the better. The little Shetlands will stay outside all Winter, the only time they would come in is in a sustained wet period, they are more than able to cope with the cold temperatures but constantly standing in wet mud can cause foot problems and so there is a stable on standby for them to come in at any time.

The ducks have been giving me a bit of grief this week, I decided to let them free range while it was damp, that way I would have to feed them less as they were able to forage all day for worms and slugs, but as the week went on they got wanderlust. First they ventured out to the front under the apple tree to pick over any remnants of windfalls, but by yesterday afternoon they were making their way down the front drive and out onto the lane! Needless to say that today they are staying securely inside their pen. The chickens are getting just as bad, they have discovered that if they hop up into the muck heap at the back of the orchard, freedom is theirs for the taking! I quite like seeing them roaming around all over the place but it is not very practical if someone comes to buy some and I have to round them all up first, they are not as easy to herd as ducks and I swear they deliberately torment the dogs by getting as close to the dog run as possible without losing a feather or two :p

Unfortunately we have been put on our guard this week and become suspicious of every new vehicle and person that comes! During the night last Tuesday someone broke into a van which was parked about 1/2 mile up the road and stole £1000 worth of work tools, since then we have heard of two other similar incidents in the nearby villages. On that same  night the dog did actually growl which is unusual for him and I suspect that someone was wondering if they could get to John’s van. Luckily our guard dog who is out at night is excellent at what he does and I don’t think anyone would be stupid enough to risk it, if they are, well that will be an entertaining blog!

This has a knock on effect and every strange car that stops in the lane or comes up the drive becomes a suspect, especially during the dark hours, last night the dog was particularly vocal and we were up and down like yoyo’s checking the yard and the fields, not that you can see much in the pitch black but we let the dog go and woe betide anyone who is where they shouldn’t be!

Apart from that the farm has been very much the same as usual, the weather is still being kind to us although a little damp and claggy. I spent yesterday and this morning cleaning out all the chicken houses and the rabbits before we have a downpour. They have all had a good dose of mineral powder to keep them in tip-top condition through the Winter. We add cooking oil to the grain to coat it then add the powder so that it sticks to the grain otherwise you find a pile of powder in the bottom og the feed troughs which is not a lot of good. We still have the dreaded Red Mite in one of the houses, that will take quite a while to get it under control. The Red Mite feed from the chickens blood overnight which reduces the well-being of the chicken and so she will not lay, these are the old ladies and because of their age it is difficult to keep them in good condition and so they become a soft target for mites etc. If I was any good as a business woman they would have been culled the minute they went off production but I doubt if I will ever make it big in the industry as I prefer for them to live out their remaining days just being happy 🙂

Hubby has been busy on his never-ending task of keeping the muck heap under control, it is looking good, he has been rotavating it before moving it and I have to say it improves it no end. So much so that I think we will be bagging up and selling it next year instead of giving it away for free. All the hard work will be done so I am sure we could charge about a £1.00 a bag with no problems. We would still give people the option of bagging it themselves for free, so if you want any in the Spring just give me a shout.

The geese are giving us problems again, they have been fine living together all Summer long and two have now decided that they don’t want the other one anywhere near, I guess they are pairing ready for the breeding season but I do feel sorry for the odd one out who has no idea what its done wrong. I say it, as I thought it was a female but if they are casting it out it is possibly male. Geese are very difficult to sex just by looking at them even when they are fully grown but there is no way I am even going to attempt to have a look at the genitals! A flailing goose wing from a naffed off bird can easily break your arm, I think I will wait to see how many eggs get laid each day in the Spring, much safer 😉

There are a lot of trees and hedgerows here and they have all but lost their leaves now so everything is looking very stark and grey, but it does mean that you can see all the wildlife that is still around, the squirrel is still gathering nuts, he has not quite realised that its ok he can have whatever he likes now I have gathered my quota. The woodpecker is a daily visitor and the small garden birds are gathering in large numbers every now and then. When they come to roost in the large Buddleia’s out the front it usually means we are in for some cold weather, last year you could forecast the snowfall by their arrival, there must be over a hundred of them and they make quite a racket, then it all goes silent and lo and behold begins to snow, who needs a weatherman!

Good morning, we have had a mixed bag of weather over the last week but yesterday was glorious, lots of sunshine and great temperatures for the time of year. We have to embrace those days when they come as they will be fewer and further between from now until the end of February!! The rain that we had in the previous couple of days has very quickly turned the farm into a World Champion mud wrestling arena, especially in the duck pen! The is when the exercise routine begins, a lot of calories are used up trudging through mud on a daily basis, there are unexpected leg extensions and lunges to contend with, and who needs dumbbells when there are water buckets to transport to the remotest areas of the paddocks :s

The chickens are not as keen as the ducks when it comes to mud and I do feel sorry for the younger ones in the runs, so on alternate days they all get let out to roam around, at least they can walk around on dry firm ground for a while. The veg garden is all but done now and so having the chickens and ducks picking over the grubs and worms is beneficial, plus they leave a few presents around that help to enrich the soil 🙂 There is still quite a bit of tidying up to do on the veg patch but at the minute I am still trying to decorate the living room/office ready for Christmas, it’s nearly done just a bit more painting and then I can concentrate on fleecing up delicate shrubs ready for the bad weather. I lost so many last year that I don’t want to make the same mistake again, it’s mostly fruit and herbs such as Figs and Rosemary, I also need to cover over the Dahlia bed which was newly planted last year. In my last garden I   tried digging up the bulbs and storing them but they rotted away and I found I had better luck if I left them in the ground and covered them sufficiently with straw and fleece. The Herb garden has had a good mulch of well-rotted manure and I am hoping that next year it will really take off in terms of foliage. It is situated underneath a large crab apple tree which seemed like a good idea at the time but it takes too much moisture and gives too much shade! Putting the manure on will hopefully provide a slightly richer more moisture retentive ground that they can romp away in. If it does not work I will have to consider relocating the whole area to a sunnier corner 😦

I dug up the rest of the Sweet Potato plants, they were not a lot better that the few we had the week before, but not a total disaster, I have potted up some of the plants to see if they will make through the Winter if kept in the greenhouse and will try planting them in sacks as I don’t think the ground type is particularly suited to them. Not the great success that I hoped they would be but not too disastrous either more of a learning curve!

Talking of learning curves reminded me of an expression that we used when we first came here, I used to say that the whole experience was less of a learning curve and more of a sharp bend!! We take things more in our stride these days and are less anxious about failing if things don’t go according to plan, a well-known local farmer was spotted the other day chasing an escaped sow and her many piglets which were spilling all over the verge and road outside the entrance to the farm, I am comforted to know that these little episodes happen to even the most experienced farmers among us 😉

Tonight’s dinner is roast beef and all the trimmings plus an apple pie so I had better go and get on with peeling veg and stoking up the fire ready to cook everything. I should have done it yesterday but to be honest I had a bit of a headache :p it was caused by something I am going to name as ‘wine flu’ !! Its one curve I have never quite learnt from 😉

I feel full of beans this morning! Enough to have got all the animals fed and blog this early 🙂

It could be the fresh North Westerly wind out there, quite a change from the recent mild temperatures, someone commented on how windy it is up here and that is certainly true, we have an open aspect, especially once all the leaves have gone from the surrounding hedgerows and it is always 2 degrees colder here than in Carterton and with a wind chill factor on top, its cold this morning.

We had a busy weekend finishing the dispatch of the rest of the meat birds, that is 18 in all, half of them have been plucked as whole birds and the other half will be quartered. It was pretty cold standing there for hours doing the job so I had donned my salopettes and snow boots to keep me warm. Everyone else is far too squeamish to do the plucking and gutting so its down to me, but I make sure that they keep me supplied with plenty of warm drinks and give them at list of other jobs to do while I am busy. That means that the housework got done, the chicken shed got cleaned out and the dinner got cooked, so I really don’t mind 🙂

We had various visitors over the weekend all of them horrified at what I was doing, but that’s what we do here, we feed ourselves and so it has to be done, you get used to it after the first few times and it just becomes a process.

The visitors were family dropping off various fireworks ready for Bonfire night, it’s the first time we have let off fireworks here and I was worried about  a stray one making its way to the hay barn but luckily all went off without a hitch. We also celebrated All Hallows Eve here as we do every year, with a get together round the fire pit, a few games and plenty of food, it started off just for the children but the adults thoroughly enjoy themselves. Each year we have a competition around the pumpkin, we have had best carved, best recipe made from pumpkin and this year was best original use of a pumpkin which was won by my eldest brother who carved the whole world into his pumpkin globe!

The egg sales are off the scale at the minute, we are picking up 3 dozen a day and can’t keep up with demand, the one thing we do have surplus of though are duck eggs, the ducks are laying particularly well and we have an abundance of them, so if you know anyone that likes duck eggs send them up here! We are taking another delivery of POL hens tomorrow which is why the chicken house needed cleaning out, I thought that people would stop buying over the winter but I have already had two enquiries so it appears not! This time we are having Speckledy’s and ISA browns, if you are thinking about chickens the browns are the best to start off with, they are lovely little things, easy to catch and easy to look after.

I have been busy trying to decorate the living room before Christmas so the veg patch has been a bit neglected, I need to get on it soon and put it to bed for the Winter, there are a few remaining veg to dig up and store, we dug some Sweet Potato yesterday which I had almost forgot about. I left them in the capable hands of my youngest to prepare for dinner in the evening, when I got back they were all in the bowl ready for the compost bin! They are full of holes, I was told, however, I have spent half a year growing that crop and was not going to give in lightly so I peeled them and cut out as much of the useful parts as possible, they made a small boiling which was just enough, waste not want not I say, the youth of today have a throwaway attitude no matter how much I try to educate them 😉

The drop in temperature means an increase in feed for the animals, they need something to keep the body temperature up just the same as we eat hearty soups and stews to warm us up. We had 1 and a half tons of grain delivered from a local farmer, that will keep the chickens fed until about August next year, luckily the cats like to sleep on top of the sacks so that keeps the mice away 🙂 I have noticed an increase in wildlife, especially little birds, a Wren landed on my windowsill the other day and we just took a moment to regard each other before she flew off again. The woodpecker is a daily visitor now as is the squirrel, I don’t mind him here now I have gathered all my nuts, he can have as many acorns and hazelnuts as he can find to keep him and his family going through the Winter. I am keeping an eye on my Owl box to see if any have taken an interest, at the moment just the pigeons seem to be eyeing it up, typical :p

Well I think I have extended my coffee break a little too long, so its time to say goodbye and get on with dressing out the rest of the chickens which have been hanging up overnight in the back stable, have a great week 🙂

Apologies for the lack of a blog last week, but Hubby was off and we were busy getting a few jobs done before Winter. It also happened to be the week that he gave up smoking and so it was best to keep him sweet and not sit on the computer while he was busy working!!

We managed to get a few clearing up jobs done and the weather is still being kind to us, I can’t believe how mild it is, we don’t even light the Rayburn until the evening as it gets too hot in the rest of the house! However I am quite sure that Winter will arrive with a vengeance any day soon. We  also began to dispatch our meat chickens this week, we have 18 to do altogether and each one takes about an hour for one person to pluck, I would like one of those fancy plucking machines but at around £400 I don’t think that will be any time soon!! I try to do 3 at a time which is plenty long enough to be standing out in the cold with only the radio for company, occasionally someone brings me a cup of something hot, and stops for a quick chat, of course that’s not the end of it and the next day they all need to be gutted and prepared. It sounds like a horrible job but there is something strangely satisfying about presenting a bird for the table that you have reared, killed and dressed yourself. If anyone ever wants a lesson, let me know and I am happy to show you, you never know when the skill might come in handy 😉

The veg garden is all but at a standstill at the minute, there are a few things still to harvest and I have some Winter lettuce growing in the greenhouse but in all honesty we are not salad eaters in the cold months so they may go to the chickens. I have been busy carving pumpkins and the chickens love the insides and the seeds so no waste there. Even though my brood are all grown up we still like to mark Halloween (and all the other festivals) and have a family get together with Nieces and Nephews etc, tonight we will be eating hot dogs and baked potatoes, play a couple of games and sit round the firepit telling spooky stories while we toast marshmallows and do a bit of apple bobbing. I have not yet moved into the world of cupcakes, for me it is still fairy cakes with iced spiders!

I love the Autumn programmes on TV  at the moment and have taken to watching Kirsty’s Handmade Britain,  envious of  all the craft making and wondering what I can have a go at. Then I sat and thought about all the things I have tried over the years and forgotten about, I usually bought the kit and it is probably in the loft somewhere, the list includes, Candle making, Lace making, Glass painting, Quilling, Flowerpressing, Calligraphy, even bath bombs which were probably the most succesful of my long list of dismal failures! Ah well maybe I will stick to chicken plucking and wistfully watching other people on the telly creating marvelous things. One of the thoughts I had for the farm was to have a space where craft and skill classes could be held, just think of the all the other things I could fail at, pottery, basket weaving, woodturning, wool spinning :p

The lambs all came back from the butcher and were safely delivered to the customers, it is always good to know how they did in terms of quality and I was informed that they were just right, good weights, not too fat, not too lean, so I was pleased that we had got it right. I have no idea how they taste this year though as our two are still alive and kicking in the field, and as we are not sure if the ram got at them before he went, they will not be going until well into the New Year just to make sure! We did however take delivery of our half of the cow which fitted nicely into the new freezer, it is very tender and delicious and the amount of meat you get is colossal. I felt I had to do the first roast some justice and we had it with all the trimmings, plus Apple pie and cream for pudding it was a superb meal even if I do say so myself 😉

I hate to say the word but, CHRISTMAS, is approaching faster that any of us would like, while I love the festive season, the amount of preparation leading up to it seems never-ending. Even though we don’t go mad at Christmas there are still presents to think about and purchase, food to prepare, some of it can be done well in advance, but I find that no matter how many mince pies you make, it is never enough for my lot. We are not religious but for me it is about the atmosphere of the day, the excitement of opening gifts, the hustle and bustle of preparing dinner for guests and the contentment of the evening when everyone is full up and happy, one day of the year that is dedicated to being together as a family, and so much easier now the children are older and don’t fall out!

Sometimes I actually do leave the farm, although not very often!! This time of the year I will be away more than any other time, luckily it is a fairly quiet time as far as work goes and so I am able to take part in a local Pantomime with the Acting Community Thingumybogs in Carterton. I first went along with the children about 15 years ago, they have long since given up but I am still part of the group. We have been rehearsing since the beginning of September on a Thursday evening but from this week onwards it will step up a gear, Sunday rehearsals begin as well as scenery painting evenings etc. This year we are putting on Hercules, not your average traditional panto, but then there is nothing average about our group!! Look out for the posters, the performances will be the weekend before Christmas so just the thing to get you in the festive spirit and I promise you wont be disappointed 🙂 All the money raised (apart from the the money needed to pay the insurance) goes to Save The Children, so you get a feel good factor all round!