Author: frieslandfarm

Apologies for the lateness of my weekly blog, I had a very busy day today painting the kitchen and reorganising my files in the office. It didn’t help that when we took the clock down to paint, the battery worked slightly loose and I didn’t realise that it had been half past three for at least an hour!! This put me well behind schedule with the animals to feed, the horses to do, the tea to cook and pop and get a bit of shopping 🙂

Well the weather has certainly changed and we are fast moving into the dreaded darker months of the year, time to assess what animals to keep and what to move on, one way or another. Most of the sheep will go this week, although for the first time ever we will be keeping two of them through the Winter, this will no doubt throw us some new challenges and give us a few stories to tell. As the temperature drops we start to feed the sheep and horses hay to keep their body temperature up overnight, it’s not just the price of food in the supermarket that has gone up, animal feed is creeping up too with the hay wheels going from £15 to £20 this year. Our friendly farmer is good to us though as I have heard reports of wheels costing up to £45 in other parts of the country. We are also able to bulk buy grain from the same farmer after he has sold his quota to the big boys, we had a ton of wheat last year and will have the same again this year plus a ton of barley, it saves us a fortune in animal feed and just about lasts untill next years harvest.

We have been trying to get the veg patch cleared and ready to put muck on, this will be left over Winter for the worms to do their job, ready for the new growing season in Spring. I have been harvesting the Pumpkin patch and have a good amount of all different shapes and sizes, those that are not used for Halloween will keep nicely for the chickens to eat over the next couple of months. I am not a squash fan myself but they grow very well here and are a useful feed for livestock. I am still harvesting a few small heads of broccoli and to my surprise the cauli stalks I left in the ground have started to throw out new tiny little cauliflower heads which I am very chuffed about. At least the caterpillars have all turned to chrysalis now and wont be munching away and ruining them. I ordered the new freezer which arrived on Friday so I can begin to freeze a few more ver and the rest of the cooking apples which are still raining down each time the wind blows.

This Winter will be a 100% improvement on last year, we have central heating, some insulation in the walls and a roof that does not let in the rain, it’s almost  a 5* resort!! All in all I am kind of looking forward to the cold this year, at least when we come in it will be warm and dry, and I have bought some snow gear on E-bay so am ready for whatever the weather throws at us 🙂 The Spring and Summer are great but you do find yourself working from morning till bedtime, at least in the Winter we get our evenings back to relax and watch the rubbish on TV 😉

My eldest daughter has been away on holiday this week (lucky so and so) so I have had the added extra of feeding the horses in the morning, although a friend of hers has been coming in the evenings to feed, ride and clear the field of poo. Yesterday while out riding there was a bit of an incident and the horse went backwards over the wall down near the local pond, he came back with a few scrapes and is a bit sore today but he will be fine. She was supposed to be home by this evening, but text earlier to tell me that her flight had been delayed because of thunderstorms and she wont be flying until the morning, there was me thinking I was off the hook as far as the horses were concerned, lets hope she is not delayed any further or has not secretly booked two weeks and not told me!!

Well the squirrel made an appearance this week and I caught him nicking my nuts! I had assumed he was no longer around and left them under the Ash tree to lose their skins naturally, I went out to the greenhouse and caught him sneaking up the tree with a Walnut in his mouth. He sat stock still, hoping I couldn’t see him, I told him no matter how still he sat I could see him plain as day and that would be his last one 🙂

I have finally sorted out the lambs, I now have the replacement tags and a date for them to go, I have made the decision to keep the two small ones back until the new year, they don’t have enough weight on them yet and I don’t have room in the freezer so they get a short reprieve 🙂

The unseasonably warm weather is still causing a problem with the tortoises, they are still eating but as soon as the weather breaks it will be cold enough for them to want to hibernate and they can’t do that with food inside as it will rot during hibernation, as yet I am undecided on how to tackle the problem, answers on a postcard please :p

The veg patch has all but come to an end, next years catalogues are arriving in the post and it will soon be time to decide what  grew well and what new things to try. We will have to build a permanent runner bean frame as this is the third year in a row that the wind has blown them over, they get very heavy with all the foliage and beans and the wooden poles can’t hold them up so it will be a metal structure that hopefully will do the job. There is a lot of clearing up to do in the vegetable garden, they need to be cleared of old foliage and any weeds, then certain beds will be manured ready for whatever crop they are having next year. The crop rotation plan has already been finalised, it is important to rotate so that pests and disease do not build up, and although the runner beans fix nitrogen into the ground and so are an important part of rotation for other crops, they can have a permanent bed without too many problems. The only things left in the ground now are Parnips and Sweet Potato, the latter is a new crop for me this year and until November when they are dug I have no idea how they are doing or even if there is anything there at all, it will be a pleasant surprise if there is 🙂

I made a mental note this week that it is time to think about making the Christmas cake and pudding!! It always seems so early but the longer you leave them to mature (and add copious amounts of Brandy to) the better they taste. I usually start making batches of mince pies around this time too, I make them up and freeze them in the bun tin then put them into bags and, if as in our house you eat dozens of them, you can just get them out of the freezer and pop them in the oven when required. I went to a cooking demo not long ago and was shown a simple way to do mince pies, take a block of buttery flaky pastry, roll it out, spread mincemeat over the top, roll back up and cut into slices, cook and dust with icing sugar when cool. These are quick and easy, they also work with chocolate spread and you can keep the roll frozen untill you need it  or slice a few off at a time. This time of year is also a good time to start batch baking too, this morning I have been making fruit cakes, apple pies and victoria sponges to go into the freezer, ready for those cold days when you need a bit of comfort food when you come in from outside. We will have enough in the freezer to see us through the Winter, just in case we get snowed in for three months!! In fact I have had to order another freezer, as we are expecting our half of the cow any day, we now have 4 freezers of various sizes and the plan is to turn one off at a time as they get emptied, I don’t think I will need to go shopping for months, except for Chocolate of course 😛

Good morning all, another Monday morning and another blog 🙂 I have just had a look at my stats, and since I began the blog, I have had nearly 1000 views, not bad. I started the blog as a way to record and look back at the things that happen or the things that we do on the farm, and the fact that people read along with our weekly exploits is a real bonus so thank you.

The subtle changes of Autumn are in the air, the leaves are beginning to turn brown, the vegetables have definitely slowed to snail pace, and the morning and evening air temperatures have dropped. Despite that it is still a lovely time of the year that can sometimes surprise you with a lovely sunny day, we are forecast a good week this week coming so we had better make the most if it.

The Greater Spotted Woodpecker made a welcome return this weekend, we have not seen it all summer long, but I heard It’s unmistakable call on Saturday, looked out and there it was sat on top of the telegraph pole. We also have an Owl that appears to be living very close by, I have an Owl box that my daughters boyfriend made for my birthday so need to get that erected in the roof of the hay barn and see if it will become a des res for a family of owls which would be very exciting. As I was making my way to feed the dogs this morning I noticed what looked like a pile of pigeons! There were five of them all piled on top of each other trying to have a bath in the smallest of puddles, the silly thing is that there were plenty more puddles around, that one obviously was deemed to be the best by the local pigeon population.

We have had a visit from a large dog fox this week, thankfully it took the bait in the trap, I have to admit it was a beautiful looking thing but not something I can have prowling around my poultry ready to pick them off. I also had a visit from the lady at the farm along the lane, her lodger has shot four on their land alone in the last month, they seem to be on the increase, sadly it is suggested that urban foxes, when caught, are transported out to the countryside and released, while this may seem like a kind thing to do, it is just the opposite, urban foxes do not know how to survive in the countryside, they are used being fed by humans or scavenging on readily available rubbish, not hunting for their own food with natural instinct.

The same lady keeps bees and produces her own Honey, she kindly dropped off a couple of jars in return for a couple of buckets of cooking apples to make chutney with. The honey is delicious, I had it on toast this morning 🙂 the farm is less than half a mile from us and so it is possible that the bees have popped over this way to collect the nectar, you can’t get more local than that! While we were chatting she told me about an old recipe for Apple chutney that her Nan used to make, when she came back with the honey she also bought me a jar of the chutney as well as the recipe for it and another for Pear chutney. I had a go at making the Pear one on Sunday and early signs are that it is delicious, nice and sweet, I will leave it to mature for a couple of months to bring out the true flavour, and look forward to eating it at Christmas with some cold ham :p

September is a great month for produce, we went along to the local ploughing match this weekend and while we were there we had a wander round the produce tent. What an amazing amount of talent, everything from cupcakes and scones to vegetable animals and sacks of grain harvest. The whole atmosphere was once of relaxed contentment, heavy horses beautifully adorned, huge steam engines and ancient tractors of all kinds, all aiming to get lovely straight furrows and win the, no doubt, coveted prize of a shiny cup. Also on display were the ancient crafts of wattling, woodcarving and weaving all lovingly carried out by those few determined to keep the traditions going, those stalls together with displays from the sheep dogs, the local hounds and many other countryside pursuits, made  a welcome escape from the jobs on the farm and a relaxing afternoon out 🙂

Here on the farm this week we have been using copious amounts of purple spray, for those of you who don’t have a clue what that is, it is a spray that among other things contains Genetian Violet. It is used widely on wounds of all kinds and on many animals, we have had to spray the chickens, the ones that have been pulling each others feathers out. Despite giving them plenty more oyster shell and grit for Calcium and digestion they continued to de-feather each other, eventually they begin to peck at the skin and they don’t stop there, this can result in cannibalism! Purple spray not only heals the wounds but is a good visual deterrent for chickens and it appears to have halted them in their tracks for the time being. We have also had to use it on one of the rams, he has small horn buds, but keeps knocking one of them off when he is rubbing his head on the fence posts, on Sunday morning it looked like a massacre had taken place, not only was he bleeding all down the side of his head but he had managed to rub it all over the other sheep too! We scrubbed him clean and purple sprayed the wound, which should keep the flies off until it heals. 

Talking of sheep, I finally got round to sorting out their final few weeks, it started off well, after much discussion on a forum, I found out which tags I needed to buy to replace the ones that had been lost. All sheep have to be tagged and many of them now have to have electronic tags, because ours are under one year and destined for slaughter they can have just a visual tag, but because some of them have come off and are lost they have to be replaced with a red tag. It’s a complicated system until you get your head round it, but what else do you expect from the EU!!!! Two of the female sheep will be held back as they will not make weight in time, we have until next April for them to go, after that they will have to have two tags, one electronic and one visual. They say it is to make the origin and train of produce simpler for the consumer, but personally I think it is to clog up my life with more paperwork than is necessary 😉

Well that was definitely a windy week and although the house roof stayed on, the greenhouse roof came crashing down onto the tomatoes 😦 Very annoying as it was a new roof  last year and cost a pretty penny! The runner bean canes are all but on the floor, although I am still managing to pick a few beans. This morning I have been digging up the carrots ready for them to go into dry storage, that is basically a large metal box filled with sand, the carrots go into the sand and should still be ok by next Spring. Some of them I will chop and freeze, so that I have some handy bags available for those days when everything is a rush. Last week I had a little bit of a glut on a few things, so I made up a veg box and put it for sale on Facebook, I was really surprised at the interest and sold six in total! Until then I was contemplating scaling down the veg patch as it was producing far more than we could eat, but this seems like an opportunity too good to pass up on, so instead I will be planning my crops for next year with a view to doing a few boxes a week and see how it goes.

The chicken problems just keep coming this week, I have one with an impacted crop, I have fed her cod liver oil but it has not shifted and failing that only surgery would help, another just dropped dead, no apparent reason, just one of those things. On the up side the mother bought her babies outside on Saturday and they are a pleasure to watch. She is such a good mother, clucking around showing them what to eat and calling them back sharply if they stray too far from her.

 While I was out with the camera, I caught Diesel in his favorite position, sleeping in the hay barn, both of the cats have been very busy this week, the hay fields around us have been cut which drives all the mice to look for new homes and a lot of them come our way! The cats have been on a constant hunting and stalking exercise, what makes me laugh though is they always bring their prey all the way back home before they eat it and go off to catch more 🙂

 The last photo I decided to take, shows you have the new girls have settled in, remember the ones that would not come out for two days. well they have quickly got over their shyness and have learnt that if I am around they just might be getting some titbits!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That will have to be it for this week, as WordPress is playing havoc with my patience!! Also I have got lots to do, including sorting out the sheep (note to self, pull your finger out!!)

Well we have found both of the tortoises, one was found in the stable block heading for one of the stalls, no doubt to hunker down for hibernation and the other was about to break free into the paddocks, both are now safely back where they belong in the Herb garden.

Chickens seem to have been the main focus of this week with various problems cropping up, one of the four that my Mum was having had developed a limp that got steadily worse, we got her out and had a look at her and she appears to have arthritis, she has a joint that is solid and hot to touch, we have applied a generous covering of Arnica gel to see if that makes any difference, if not we will then need to decide what to do with her. Because she is quite well in all other respects the dilemma will be to A) put her to sleep or B) leave her to limp around and see how she gets on.  She shows no other signs of distress so I am inclined to see how it goes for a while. If Mum decides to take her on she will get plenty of personal TLC and lots of Aloe Vera!

One of the Buff Orpingtons has managed to hatch out 3 little chicks, its little bit late in the year and all kinds of mishaps are waiting for them but hopefully she will rear them successfully. I have two other hens that keep trying to go broody, unfortunately they are laying hens and do  not run with a Cockerel so they have no hope of hatching their eggs! In this instance it is kinder to break to brooding pattern, that can be as simple as keep taking her off and taking away the eggs or as mean as shutting her out of the hen house, it all depends on how she wants to play it, so far just removing the eggs seems to be working although they did keep going back for three days in a row.

We have a feather eating problem in the other batch of hens, after studying them for a while we caught the culprit ‘red beaked’ so to speak with feathers in its mouth! We have had to separate that hen from all the others to break her of the habit, we have also given all the hens a replenishment of oystershell and grit in case it is a deficiency. At this time of year the chickens will go into a moult, egg production decreases and they need a little added extra calcium to grow new feathers, egg eating can also be a problem this time of year for the same reason.

Our home reared bacon arrived in the week, you will remember that we had a pig living with our friends a couple of miles away, well the bacon is delicious, not like the watery thin rashers you buy in the shop, you only need one of these rashers they are about 1/4 inch thick and when you cook them you get very little liquid out of them. We also put a gammon joint in the Rayburn to cook very slowly overnight, in was in for 10 hours and was ready for breakfast the next morning, my worry was that it would be burnt so it was a bit of an experiment but it was fine, very succulent and a great way to start the day 🙂

The freezer is very nearly full to bursting with fruit, veg and meat and so anything that is in the garden from now on will have to be eaten fresh, there are still lots and lots of runner beans to be picked as well as cooking apples. The pumpkins are ripening a little too early but once they are picked should store well in a cool ventilated area. Most of them will be used for Halloween, I personally don’t like eating pumpkin, apart from in a cheesecake I once tasted which was delicious, but I will probably save the seeds from any that we use to carve lanterns from. I need to pick the sweetcorn, it has been a good crop this year and although sweetcorn tastes better if picked and cooked immediately, I will have to freeze some or we will be eating it every day for a couple of weeks!

I still have not decided what to do about the sheep yet but I need to sort it out soon, mainly because we are now spending money on feed that we don’t necessarily need to be doing and so it is not cost-effective. The cow that we have gone halves with also needs to have the same decision made, does it go for slaughter this side of  Winter or do we feed it though the winter which will be costly but all the while it is still growing and we get more output in terms of meat in the new year. Decisions, decisions, a consultation will be made with the butcher to see what he thinks before the final choice is made.

The strong winds that we are experiencing at the moment are bringing down all the nuts and we have been gathering Walnuts and Hazelnuts, I have not seen any more signs of the squirrel and am beginning to think he may have become a casualty of the road, great for me, not so great for him!

Talking of the wind, as I can hear it picking up outside, I am hoping that the new roof  Hubby has been busy trying to finish, stays put! It will be a compete calamity if it doesn’t (note to self, have a little more faith in his abilities). Hopefully I will report back with good news on that score next week 😉

Ooops, I have managed to lose the Tortoises this weekend, yesterday I let them out into the Veg garden for a stroll and forgot to put them away!! This morning there is no sign of them anywhere, the garden is quite large and so I am hoping I will spot them at some point over the next few days, Hubby saw one of them in the afternoon ambling past him as he was weeding and that is the last known sighting!

The dreaded fox attacks have returned and I have lost 3 of my breeding chickens and a goose! This fox is a little more cunning as the fox trap was set but he has avoided it, we are having to shut the birds in tight and hope that it eventually goes for the bait.

My new chickens arrived on Friday at lunchtime, I left them shut inside to settle in, the next day I went up to feed them and open the doors, but they didn’t come out all day! No surprise really as they would have been shed reared from hatching and have no idea that they are now allowed to go outside to play. Yesterday a few of them ventured out but the rest stayed inside, I am hoping that today they will all get to enjoy the great outdoors, they are safely behind an electric fence so hopefully safe from Mr Fox. My Mum has finally decided to have some chickens and I have 4 lined up for her, she named them Molly, Dolly, Sally and Primrose, they are from a batch I hatched earlier in the spring and they will soon be off to thier new des res.

I need to organise a date for the sheep to go to their final destination, the dilemma is that only six of them are at weight, two are not ready yet, they are the one that had fly strike and the one that had the breathing problems in the beginning. Do I send six off and keep the two back until later or keep them all until the other two catch up, meanwhile the others are getting fatter and fatter!! Hmmm the jury is still out on that one.

Hubby has still been very busy this weekend and we now have half a new roof, at least one end of the building is leakproof at last, Mum and Stepdad were here helping again this weekend and we have picked lots of cooking apples and processed them for the freezer, I picked at least 7lb of Runner Beans on Sunday and just looked at the pile in despair, its great to have so many but it takes ages to sort that amount out for the freezer 😦 I will be glad that I did in the middle of Winter though 🙂 We also picked sloes and I might have a go at making that good old country tipple Sloe Gin, I have never tasted it before but used to have the odd Gin and Tonic many years ago and if I don’t like it I can always use it for presents 😉

We went to the Wychwood Forest Fayre yesterday, it was a lovely sunny afternoon, the place was full of local crafts and businesses, we bought some locally produced Cider and Cheese, at the end of the afternoon we sat down and listened to a folk tale from the storyteller, very therapeutic. I am always in awe of people who produce wonderful looking objects, there were Bow makers, wood turners, weavers of every kind, bushcraft, potters, the list goes on. I picked up some good tips about weaving with Willow and will definitely be having a go with all the whips I cut back this year, it may not be pretty or even functional but at least I will have tried 🙂

Lastly, have a look at this photo, I took it on Saturday when the men moved some cupboards away from the door in an outbuilding, We marvelled at the amount of work that went into building a mountain of cushioning before building the little nest in the top! It must have taken the Robin days and days to build it 🙂

 

We have been so busy this week we have hardly had time to stop! Hubby was on his second week off and now I have a linen cupboard, an extra sink and cupboards in the utility room, extra space in the kitchen (enough to swing the proverbial cat!), a painted bathroom, a wallpapered bedroom, and new cladding all down one side of the Bunk House (which is the building we live in). That is all on top of the usual day to day stuff, he has gone back to work this week ‘for a rest’ 🙂 

We have had the very much appreciated help of my Mum and Stepdad, without them we probably would not have got half of it done. Mum and I spent one afternoon picking and pressing apples in my new press, the pressing part was easy, but before you get that far the apples need to be pulped, I bought a pulpmaster bucket that you attach a drill to which is supposed to be quick and easy, we should have know that was just ‘sales talk’ to be honest it would be quicker to do it in a food processor. We cleaned out and sterilised three 2 pint milk cartons (that was a bit optimistic) and got ready to press, it was quite exciting watching the first bit of apple juice run into the carton, the result looked like cold tea and we managed to get about a pint, but the taste was absolutely delicious 🙂 It was well worth doing and with all the windfall apples around ‘free’ juice is clearly a winner.

The lambs have been up to their usual tricks again this weekend, I thought it was odd to find what I assumed were rabbit bumbles on the drive at the side of the house, we had gone in to have lunch and when we came back out it was just laying there, when I went up to the back paddock to feed the animals later on I was greeted by 2 lambs who had been rummaging around in the stable block, when I looked for the others they had escaped their paddock and were down in the corner field merrily eating away on fresh grass. Chaos broke out within a split second 😛 picture the scene, the ducks and the geese were free ranging and all the animals recognise the purple bucket at feeding time, so I am walking up to the back paddocks with my feed bucket, followed by 7 ducks, the 4 geese look up and start coming towards me, a fight breaks out between the ducks and the geese, meanwhile the lambs have realised I am there and begin to thunder up the field straight towards me and I am stood in the middle of the ‘bird fight’. Sheep have a tendency not to stop until they hit something when they are running, and so they bundled headlong straight into the ducks and geese nearly knocking me over at the same time, luckily no one was injured, just a lot of quacking, and squawking and a few feathers flying around! Peace resumed once I had managed to get the sheep back in their field and shut (and tie) the gate.

I am waiting for a delivery today of 30 chickens, at the weekend we had to clean out and scrub the chicken ark in preparation for their arrival, these will be my permanent laying flock, we did just buy in hens for resale and use the eggs while they were here but found that we would suddenly sell a few and be left with no eggs for our customers, they will be out in the paddocks, free ranging behind an electric fence. We had a visit from the fox last week which took 3 of my Buff Orpingtons, we had not realised that they did not go into the hut before we shut them up for the night and in the morning the trail of feathers was everywhere. We have now got our very own fox trap thanks to my Stepfather and so it will be permanently baited, I can’t risk losing 30 hens to the fox!

On the veg front, since that downpour the runner beans have gone into overdrive! I swear they are growing faster than I can pick them, and I am picking a large quantity each day, I have also harvested a couple of Melons this week which are small but very sweet and juicy, the Tomatoes are finally beginning to ripen, I have picked a grand total of 5 to date!! Plenty of green ones left ready for green tomato chutney (groan), I still have a few jars left from last year. We are digging up potatoes as and when we need them and some of them are huge, one baked potato could feed 4 people! The Autumn raspberries are beginning to be a little more prolific, they are great at this time of year although I think the Summer raspberries have a much better flavour. I have not been out Blackberry picking yet although I have heard that there are plenty ready so I had better make time to do that very soon. 

Any day now we will be taking delivery of our Bacon, you will remember we had a pig living on our friends farm, this was because pigs need to live in pairs and they only needed one, so we agreed to have one as well and they lived together. One of them went for Pork, which we had back a couple of weeks ago and the other went off to be baconed, and we are looking forward to bacon sarnies 🙂

Our two horses came back up from their ‘summer paddock’ in the village and now when I open the back door in the morning, they are there to greet me, it is nice to have them back grazing on our land again, although judging by the rate they are eating it off it wont be long until they are moved again!

While I have been writing this I have noticed something rather odd, yesterday I noticed two very young Doves trying to build a nest and over the last hour I have also seen the Blue Tits trying to get into the nest holes that they use in the spring, Hmmm they are either very confused, or the weather is about to do something quite unusual for the time of year! Unlike the weathermen the animals very seldom get it wrong 😉

What a glorious morning, when Mother Nature gets its right, there is no better place to be on Earth than England on a warm August morning! As I write this the cockerel is crowing, the sun is pouring in through the windows and it almost feels like I am on holiday 🙂

Talking of holidays, Hubby is halfway through his two weeks off, (from his regular day job anyway), he has got plenty to do here so it will not be a restful holiday, last week we put the new Rayburn in and he has had to pipe up all the new radiators plus move the cylinder. This is his normal job so you would think that all would be straight forward :p unfortunately he is from the school of ‘what do you need instructions for’ and so had to drain down the cylinder twice in order to get the hot water working properly! He has worked very hard though and yesterday I cooked the first of many cakes in ‘Rosie’ as we have named her. She will provide us with heating, hot water and cooking facilities all powered by the wood that we have either collected from taking down old fencing or been given by friends cutting down trees they no longer want.

On the fruit and veg front, I am still busy bringing in the harvest, with the help of my Mum, the freezer has been organised with military precision and is very nearly full, just the runner beans and the cooking apples to pick, cook and freeze, everything else can be stored in a cold dry storage area. The onions are hanging in string bags and the carrot box, which is a large metal trunk filled with sand has been allocated a space, that will just leave potatoes, and swede to be dried off and bagged up ready for storage. Parsnips can be left in the ground until needed and are better after the frosts have got at them. Cabbages can be harvested, chopped blanched and frozen, but the stalks left in the ground, then if you cut a + in the top if the stalk they will produce smaller but still useful baby cabbages, the same technique can be used for broccoli, it is something my Dad taught me a few years ago and it works a treat. I am keeping a careful eye on the nuts, just incase the squirrel gets any funny ideas about beating me to it. I had to laugh the other morning when I caught myself telling a Bee off for assuming that these runner beans I had lovingly planted belonged to him and he was getting quite irate that I dared to pick them! He didn’t seem to understand that he was after the pollen from the flowers and I was after the beans and so we could work in harmony!

The lambs (I should really call them sheep now) have been up to their usual tricks, I went to feed them the other morning and could only count 7, I heard bleating across the paddock and one of them had got himself firmly wedged under the chicken house! How they can get themselves in somewhere but be unable to get themselves out again is a mystery, I called Hubby and we had to roll around on the ground in amongst all the sheep s**t to get it back out!

The baby rabbits are growing very fast now and eat like there is no tomorrow, it would be lovely if we could keep them all but we need to find homes for them quite soon. We also have a large population of wild rabbits in the lower paddocks and sadly yesterday had to shoot one that had Myxomotosis, so I am guessing that it will not be a large population for long. 

One of my older hens died of old age this week, they are the batch that we bought here with us and are nearly 4 years old, occasionally you will get hens that live much longer than that, but I think she has done well to get this far considering the amount of Fox attacks we have had. Sustained fox attacks will hopefully be a thing of the past as my Stepfather has now built us our very own fox trap, the other one we had was on loan to us and it works so well we thought we ought to have our own. I have another batch of 30  hens arriving next week, these will be my permanent laying stock, we will have eggs galore, if you want any they are £1 for half a dozen and we are quite happy to deliver in the local area when we are passing 🙂 The ducks are laying well too now and the eggs are £1.50 per half dozen if you prefer those.

Right I had better get back to work, make sure Hubby is not slacking, he has got a long list still to get through by the end of the week 😛 and I have to keep his strength up with plenty of cups of tea!

What a week we have had, hence the title, if we didn’t have a laugh about it, we would certainly be very down! Actually it wasnt so much as a bad week as one bad day, and I did check on the calendar that the Friday wasnt the 13th!

The most awful discovery on that day was that one of the lambs had fly strike, shearing off the fleece around her bottom we discovered maggots! I had suspected the day before that she may have a problem as she was stamping her back legs and flicking her tail. We quickly discovered via the internet what was to be done and also that it can strike very quickly and so not to feel too guilty. Today the maggots are all gone but she has a shaved behind that looks a bit sore but much better than it was.

Staying on the subject of ‘behinds’ we picked up some day old chicks last Thursday and they went under the lamp, on Friday we had to wipe their bottoms as they had developed ‘pasty vent’ which can happen when the lamp is not at the correct height, this causes the excretions to dry up and block the vent, after which they can go downhill very quickly.

Then there were three other bits of news affecting various members of the family, nothing serious, just things you don’t want to hear on a day that has already gone wrong! Hubby is having a holiday from his regular day job in order to fit the new Rayburn, it was a very exciting moment when it arrived and it is such a lovely piece of kit we have decided that it needs a name and will be known as Rosie. Before Rosie was installed we had to put down some self leveler on the floor, a nice runny mix that does what it says on the tin, unfortunately it ran through the kitchen wall, where it was supposed to stay and into the bathroom all over the lino!! Add to that an accidental fire while he was soldering some pipework, he shouts ‘ get some water quick’, then ‘quicker than that’ and you can see how the week has gone :p His excuse is that it will give me something interesting to write in my blog!!!!!!

On the up side, the freezer is filling up nicely, in fact I need to look out for another small chest freezer as a spare, which we can use as and when necessary. I have picked lbs of plums this week, the windfall apples are coming in thick and fast and the runner beans are yielding about 3lbs a day, the Autumn raspberries are not as forthcoming as I would like but if I keep freezing the small amounts I will soon have enough to make some jam. I mentioned an Autumn feel in the air last week and I don’t think I was far off the mark, it was quite chilly early this morning and reports of a light frost have reached my ears! The squirrel was spotted this morning in the nuts trees (another early indicator) and so I need to keep a close eye on those and get to them before he does 🙂  Blackberry picking season will soon be upon us (already is in some areas), I love to go blackberry picking, not only are they free, which is always a bonus, but I get to spend some time wandering along the country lanes at my leisure under the pretence of  ‘working’ 🙂

The onions, shallots and garlic have now finished drying out and are hanging in the back room, although quite what I am going to do with about 20kg of shallots beats me! They will easily last well into next year and I think everyone will be getting pickled onions as a Christmas pressie whether they like them or not! Some of the garlic will be going into bottles of Olive Oil and left for a few months to mature , it is then a delicious oil for dipping or for dressings, the longer you leave it the better it gets. I like to make a few bottles so that I always have one on the go and one ready to use. I have also bought my cheap bottles of Vodka to make Blackberry Vodka, a very easy (and unlike the pickled onions) a very much appreciated pressie. The Vodka, Blackberries and a small amount of sugar go into a jug for a few days, stirring once a day, then strain and pour back into the Vodka bottle and leave to mature for a couple of months, easy peasy 🙂 Sloe gin is made in the same way or you can use Blueberries for a treat. Fruit flavoured alcohols are very fashionable at the minute so why not make your own.

The baby rabbits are 5 weeks old now, that’s nine mouths to feed in total and they go through a lot of food! Luckily, the courgettes are growing faster than the rabbits can eat them,  they are also getting plenty of Kale and windfall apples to supplement thier dried food, and they love marigold flowers and a selection of herbs, so as I cut them back, I feed them to the rabbits, I love it when nothing goes to waste.

I hope you all have a good week and that we dont have another Friday like the last one!

Well I hate to say it again but there are signs of an early Autumn! Just as the Tortoises came out of hibernation early, they are going to bed early too! I thought perhaps one of them was ill, he had taken himself off into the house, so after a day or so I thought I better check, he seems fine, just keen to get indoors and under his straw pile. The apples and plums are earlier than usual, the nuts appear to be ripening early, all the signs are there!

Just as well then that we have an exciting new project starting next week in the form of a new Rayburn that we will not only be cooking on but will also do our hot water and heating, bliss! We have electric storage heaters that cost an absolute fortune and throw out the heat at the wrong time of day, so for three years it has been very cold indoors, we are looking forward to this Winter instead of dreading it! We have lots of old wood and people have given us their chopped down trees and so we decided to take the plunge, weigh up the costs and go for it. I researched the environmental impact of buying and running a wood burning stove and was satisfied that as a tree gives off as much carbon when it is rotting away as it does when it is being burnt it then becomes carbon neutral, together with the fact that Rayburns are 95% recycled and recyclable, I don’t think I have compromised my ethics!

I have literally just received an e-mail to say that my birthday present from the girls is on its way, a grape-vine, a goji berry, a kiwi, a pomegranate and a fig, I knew some fruit bushes were coming but didn’t know what until now, how exciting, lots of new fruits to try next year. I have been picking plums this week, the harvest is not as good as last year but still adequate enough to make plum jams and plenty of plum crumble for the cold Winter months, all made on the Rayburn (did I mention I was getting a new one 🙂 )

I am still harvesting plenty of veg and at long last might get some peppers although my tomatoes are still green, apart from putting a ripe banana in with them I don’t think there is much hope of them turning red! I will have to rethink for next year and possibly heat the greenhouse somehow, I am loath to use electric or paraffin so I will have to look at eco-friendly methods, solar power or possibly the Victorian method of using a pile of manure 🙂

The animals are all ticking along nicely at the minute, the rabbits are growing bigger and eating voraciously now, it will soon be time for them to be separated from the Mum, she will start to get fed up with them in the next couple of weeks, can’t blame her I suppose, eight little bodies eating all the food and climbing all over her, I have attempted to transfer some video footage of the baby rabbits from my phone to the computer but failed miserably:(  and will try again when I have a whole day to try to work it out!!!! I have not got round to doing the Farm Cat stories yet so apologies for anyone waiting for them, I will do it as soon as I get a minute.

Hubby has been planning and scheming again, this time he has come up with an idea about joining the caravan and camping club and using the front paddocks in the summer for up to five caravans, hmmm, I am not committing myself to a yes just yet, I quite like the peace and quiet and am not sure if I want to share it with holiday makers! I think he is envisaging that he can retire early on the proceeds from the egg and vegetable sales because being the optimist that he is we are sure to be fully booked from March to October! I dread it when I hear those words ‘ I have a plan’ although he has learnt to say  ‘I doubt if you will like it’ straight after!