Author: frieslandfarm

I have started today’s blog three times now, not satisfied with what I was writing on the first two attempts, after giving it some thought, I decided I am having one of ‘those’ days! I suppose everyone has them, the days when you question what it is you are doing, aiming for, trying to achieve, where to I fit in, in the grand scheme of life? Today seems to be a battle, against the wind in particular, I have been trying (and failing) to erect wind barriers to protect the veg that are out in the open, I also noticed that the rabbits, that usually live down at the bottom of the paddock, have decided that they will help themselves to the top of my carrots and beans, and the cats although they have 5 acres in which to do their business, think I have raked and sown a seedbed just for their convenience! I am feeding most of the rooks in a 5 mile radius because the chickens don’t eat their grain up fast enough, and some little sod thinks it’s very funny to nick my egg board every saturday night and deposit it half a mile down the lane!!!

I think I need chocolate 🙂

As for the farm, well everything survived while we were away, which is a bonus, well more of a surprise really as we usually don’t get very far before getting a phone call to inform us of the latest death! So well done to the girls for holding the fort :).

The smallholder show was great and although I enjoyed it, hubby would rather have been home watching the F1 qualifying, I managed to contain myself and only came away with a few hatching eggs for the incubator, two types of Orpington, Gold Laced and Blue Splash, which are difficult to source around these parts.

The little lamb that was poorly has now gone back out to the paddocks with her friends, the ducklings are growing fast and I need to find them a permanent home outside, the new hens are laying very well and the egg sales are going back up again. The other young goose has started nesting and I found two eggs in there this morning, the end of May is a little late for her to start sitting really but I wont stop her and you never know we might actually get goslings after all (note to self: don’t hold your breath). I have a light sussex bantam that has been sitting on her two eggs for a couple of weeks now so fingers crossed that they are fertile!

The outdoor veg plants are struggling a little, what with lack of rain, cold nighttime temperatures and now these strong winds, it will be a wonder if we get a harvest from them at all, the greenhouses are doing much better, with the sun trying to peep through each day, the temperature inside them is pretty good and the plants are well protected. We are still harvesting lettuce, radish, spinach and spring onions, there are plenty left before I need to make more sowings. We picked the first bowl of strawberries yesterday, which is quite early, they say it will be a bumper year for them, I have a few dozen jamjars on standby and when they are in full flow, will be making jam on a daily basis. I bought a Tefal jam maker which is a great little gadget as you can make as little as one jar at a time and it self cleans, always a bonus!

I,m off now to make the decision of the day, whether to go back out into the wind and be buffeted until my head aches or stay in, clean the house, make the dinner and hope the wind has gone by tomorrow, its at times like these I could do with a conservatory, then the choice would be neither, I will sit down with a magazine and a cup of tea :p

At the beginning of the week I had such a massive ‘to do’ list that I had to prioritize or nothing would have got done at all, thankfully with the help of the rest of the family we have nearly ploughed through all of them 🙂

The lambs have been high up on the list, we have had to get the vet out to one of them as she was not doing very well out in the field, the vet diagnosed Pasteurella which is a lung infection probably caused by it not getting enough colostrum when it was first born. She has been having antibiotic injections daily and at first we could not even force feed her a bottle but, I have just looked in on her and she has been having a nibble at the hard feed so hopefully although she is terribly thin she will pull through. The other lambs all had to have a bum wash with a diluted disinfectant, this keeps the flies away from their nether regions and hopefully prevents flystrike, which is very nasty and if it goes unnoticed would cause their death. A most unpleasant job to do as the lambs tend to wag their tails whilst you are doing it and you end up covered in splashes of poo! Worming was next on the list, and as the vet was paying a visit we decided to do a worm count, this is basically picking up sheep poo, testing it for worms and dosing depending on the result, we were very happy that the vet reported a negative count, which means that we don’t have to worm at all, this is good news for animal rearing in a natural way as we like to do, so that we do not give unnecessary medication.

The little Shetland ponies escaped from their paddock this weekend, I was in the kitchen and suddenly heard tiny hoofs clattering around, as bad luck would have it I had left the gate to the veg garden open and Jazz decided to charge all over the veg beds! As good luck would have it he managed to miss every single plant I had put in only the day before!

I have almost finished planting out the veg plants, just a few more brassicas to go, the beans have not appeared from beneath the surface so my guess is that they have been eaten by mice, luckily I had planted some in pots too and they are growing nicely although too small to go out just yet. Everything else is growing steadily, we even picked the first strawberry of the year last week! That is very early and I am not quite sure what is going on, someone else told me that their tomatoes are already setting trusses, I can only think that it was all that warm weather we had has confused them, lets hope that the return to seasonal temperatures does not interfere with the fruit too much or the harvest could be poor.

The Rhubarb champagne is well under way, I bottled it yesterday, it now needs to stand for two weeks until its ready, I did have a sneaky slurp and if it tastes as good at the end as it does half way through it is going to be delicious, the recipe did say to open carefully when it is ready so I have stood it in an outbuilding just in case it explodes! It made just over 5 litres of drink, and from a few cups of rhubarb some sugar, vinegar and water, is a great return, I have put it on the recipe page for anyone who wants to have a go, it’s very simple and does not need a lot if equipment. I saved the squash bottles to put it in but you could use milk cartons or lemonade bottles.

We have small garden birds nesting in the walls (yes, in the walls, the building is wooden with various holes ideal for nests!) A pair of Blue Tits are nesting in the front next to the window, I can hear them all cheeping as I type, one fell out of the nest the night before last and before we could rescue it the dog pounced on it and tossed it in the air like a ball, poor thing was a goner! We will keep a close eye on things as the develop, the fledglings will be flinging themselves out any day and we need to make sure the dogs are in so that no more of them perish!

I am going to the 2011 Smallholder show at the Royal Welsh Showground this weekend, we are looking forward to meeting up with like minded people and having a look at the livestock, who knows what we will come back with, but we are taking an empty trailer so watch this space 🙂 

Thank you to those that took part in the rain dance, we seemed to have achieved it!! We have had a good soaking which will spur on the paddocks, the veg beds and unfortunately the weeds, but you can’t have it all 🙂

We finally caught the marauding fox last night as well, we borrowed a trap and set it up, on the second night just before dark, the dog starting barking and lo and behold she was caught. We called in a neighbour to dispatch her humanely, but will have to set the trap again as no doubt there will be more than one.

We have had 4 ducklings hatch this week which is lovely, but the goose eggs turned out to be dud’s so that is disappointing, that is generally how things go. On the wildlife side we have a pair of wild ducks visiting at the moment and a pair of swifts that nested in the stables last year have returned again this year, so we look forward to them hatching out a brood and teaching them to fly, it was very entertaining watching the young firstly move out of the nest onto the ledge and then after some days take their first flight.

I mentioned the weeds and we have been working hard to clear the beds before planting, I sometimes wonder why we don’t eat more weeds, it would save us a lot of time and effort! Quite a few of them we feed to the chickens, like fat hen and chickweed so it’s not all a wasted effort, my sister gave me an early birthday present which is a book on foraging, you can make coffee from the goosegrass seeds, that the sprawling sticky weeds with the sticky balls on, might have a go at that, you never know it could be a rival for Nescafe but I seriously doubt it! I also saw a recipe for Rhubarb Champagne this week and it seems very easy so I thought I would have a go at making some, I don’t think it is very alcoholic but should be refreshing and as an added bonus it will be pink so a nice girly drink for the summer BBQ’s.

The sweet potato slips arrived at the weekend, a strange plant and it will be interesting to see how it grows, they are not grown like a normal potato, they come as a bit of greenery and you pot them up to begin with, then plant them out in June, I have never grown them before, although we have eaten them and love them mashed, they are also lovely baked, if you have never tried them, give them a go I don’t think you will be disappointed.

As I said thanks for the rain dance, now if you could all just gather same time again this week, a money dance would be appreciated :p

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend, especially the Royal Wedding, being a houseful of girls we watched in style with a Champagne brunch, oooooed and arrrhhhed at the dress, the hair, and melted when William commented that Kate looked beautiful, we commented on the awful choice of hat by Beatrice and waited with baited breath for the balcony kiss, we were not disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed the whole spectacle!

The downside came when we returned home to find the fox had been at it again! This time 5 chickens and he had actually dug into one of the pens, he must have known we were preoccupied as he came in the middle of the day! I have now had to put a notice on the gate apologising for the lack of eggs, sods law means that the point of lay have not started laying yet and so I just hope that customers return when we have a more plentiful supply. We have doubled up the defences but it will probably mean that we will have to shoot the fox as the business cannot sustain that kind of loss in a week!

Another ‘up’ is the second lot of lambs went out into the field today after living their first 6 weeks in a stable. We coaxed them up there this morning and tried to introduce them to the other older two, neither party was interested! The youngest lambs hung round the gate visibly shaking, this is all new to them after all, the first time they had seen grass, sky and other animals, I did try to move them away from the gate as I needed to let the geese out but they wouldn’t move, so out came the geese and I watched knowing what was going to happen. The lambs were curious and went straight over to them, the bravest had a sniff and whack, got a  peck on the nose for his trouble! Sheep are generally considered to be a bit stupid and these are no exception so in they went for another sniff and whack another peck on the nose! After that I left them to it so goodness knows how many more times that has happened today!

We still have had no rain and this is becoming a serious problem for farmers in general now, the knock on effect if we don’t get any soon will impact the wider public in the long run, although the crop will grow it will be far more sparse, this in turn will put up the price of the grain, it will also put up the price of straw and hay in the Autumn. You may think that it does not concern you but that will mean that meat  and dairy animals are going to cost more to feed and house during the winter thus pushing up the price of your shopping again. So my solution is simple, if we all do a rain dance at the same time we can save ourselves some money!! Wednesday at 3.30pm it is then :p

What a glorious week we have had weather wise, I hope you have all enjoyed the Easter weekend out in the sunshine. Here on the farm we had a tea party on the lawn on Easter Sunday which was lovely and very English, all the best china came out, we had cucumber sandwiches and scones and cream, simmnel cake and much more besides! The oldies sat in the sun while the youngsters played ball games in the paddock, it was lovely to take time out from farm work and share the space we have with others.

The rest of the week has been full of highs and lows! We have had a visit from Mr Fox, he has taken seven of my best laying hens, he came in the middle of the day while we were busy doing some improvements on the house, Hubby said that he heard the rooks making a right rumpus about 1 o’clock, about 2.30 we went down the back to feed and there were feathers everywhere. These hens are supposed to be behind an electric fence and we even clipped their wings but they were determined to be fully free range and that was their downfall and mine! In future if the rooks make a din we will be investigating straight away, he may still get away with one or two but we can hopefully limit the damage. It means we are seven eggs a day down which is a lot over the week, I will have to tell customers that I don’t have any until the new batch of hens start laying, and if they know what is good for them they will start very soon 🙂

Talking of eggs you will remember that the Buff Orpington hen was sat on a huge clutch, well the time came and went for them to hatch so I decided to have a look at a couple of them. I broke them open and nothing but yolk inside so I went back and got a couple more, again nothing, she had been sitting far too long so I decided to break her brooding and put her in a new pen, I had a look at the rest of the eggs and nothing!! She has had a wasted 2o or more days. I had a visit from a friend this week who is a keen pigeon fancier and has contacts with lots of poultry people, there seems to be a general problem with fertility in birds this year, this set me thinking and so last night I candled the duck eggs in the incubator and only eight out of twenty-four were fertile 😦 I just hope that the goose eggs are going to produce some goslings otherwise it will be and all round disaster.

The improvements I talked about earlier are one of the highs, we are re-designing the interior of the place (which is a wooden structure) and fitting in a second bedroom, we have been living with one bedroom and a living room and so some of us had no place to sleep except on the sofa, now we have our own room and the girls have theirs which is bliss and makes so much difference! At the  moment we have no living room as we have to knock down a wall adjoining the office to make it bigger and so the sofa’s are stacked on top of each other and the TV is disconnected much to hubby’s disgust as the snooker championship is on at the moment. I have not relented and let him plug it in however as I cunningly figure we will get more work done this way!

The veg plot is coming along nicely, everything is growing although a burst of rain would certainly help to get it all romping away, tap water is never the same. The greenhouse is fit to burst with plants ready to either be sold or planted in situ, there are cucumbers, tomato, melon, pumpkin, courgettes, sweetcorn & peppers, the bean poles need putting in ready to plant up and the brassicas which have all been hardened off also need to go in, not to mention a second sowing of  salads and root veg! I think I will leave the TV unconnected a while longer, we don’t have time to watch it anyway!!

Enjoy your second long weekend, if you are celebrating the Royal Wedding have fun, and as I wouldn’t want the rain to spoil anyone’s fun could we please have some between now and Thursday night!

Its been a busy and eventful week, I had just sold the last three hens when a new batch of 30 arrived the very next day. It was a quick turnaround as I was not expecting them until next week, so after a phone call at 3.45 to say they were being delivered, I had to go and clean the whole pen and hen-house, dust it down for mites and get it ready. It is like a new intake at the beginning of a new school term, you never know just what to expect from the little darlings, these have turned out to be a bit of a handful! I left them in on the first day, the theory being they will know where to go back to at nighttime, now the first night of putting them away unfortunately coincided with my youngest’s 21st birthday celebrations, so while we were parting at my other daughters, John went home to put them all to bed! Half an hour later I had a phone call to say that the new chickens had roosted in a nearby tree and what should he do? Get the ladder and get them down I told him! An hour later he returned to the party with scratches galore but very pleased he had done the job! The hope was that the next day they would go to bed in their des res……..wrong, there they were up the tree again! So out came the ladder and up the tree went John, I don’t think that ladder will hold, I said to him, it did yesterday came the reply, so I let him get on with it, two minutes later he fell 10 feet out of the tree! I TOLD YOU SO! I did my wifely duty and showed concerned for his well-being, obviously holding back a huge guffaw until I got the answer I’m fine! He has a few scratches and ached a bit the next day but no real damage thank goodness. Last night we decided on a new tactic, so before dark we rounded them up one by one and clipped their wings, one wing is clipped so that they can’t fly with any balance and therefore should not be able to get any height, tonight they should go to bed, I will keep you posted!!

Chickens seem to have taken up a lot of this week, we had to despatch 8 cockerels, they were from a batch of eggs we hatched and only 4 were hens, as I have mentioned before, the down side is that you have excess cockerels that nobody wants!  We do eat these and now have a freezer full of chicken to keep us going through the summer. We also raised some table birds for the first time and did two of these in the week, the first weighed in at a stonking 11lb, this would make 3 good meals easily and a carcass for soup! Yesterday we had salad consisting of baby lettuce, spinach, cress, radish and sprouting, all picked from the garden and a home reared chicken, the best meals are the ones entirely grown by ourselves 🙂

The weeds are growing just as fast as the produce at the minute even with a lack of much-needed rain, the blossom is plentiful, the pear, apple and plums trees are loaded as are the blueberries and strawberries, unless the june drop is a heavy one we should have an excellent crop. The only problem with a bumper crop is the amount of time it takes to process all the fruit! A lot of it is frozen quickly and if time allows a few jam making sessions are in order. Towards the end of the season the chutney making kicks in, we always have plenty of chutney and pickles and still have plenty left from last year, some jars are given as present for Christmas but I think I will need to sell some this year. One of the chutney’s that was surprisingly good was the runner bean one, it is a little bit like piccalilli and excellent with a cheese sandwich!

As you can see from the pictures the lambs are growing fast and realy enjoying the outdoor life, it will be lovely when they are joined by the other six who are still indoors on milk. The newly hatched chicks are doing well and we are still waiting for the hen to hatch her brood, that should be next week sometime, the goose will be on her eggs a good deal longer as they will take nearly 40 days, I am just hoping that they are fertile or she will have wasted her time!

            Happy Easter 🙂

We are back from our holiday, which was such a treat, the weather was hot and we visited some lovely places including a cider museum in Brittany, so I have picked up so tips ready to make mine in the autumn.

So much has happened even in the short time we were gone, six new lambs arrived and the goose is finally sitting on about 8 eggs! I am very excited about the forthcoming goslings as we have spent two years raising the geese with various setbacks and now we will finally reap the rewards. One of the Buff hens is sat on a huge clutch of eggs, she has spread herself out as much as she can, I would think there are up to 25 eggs underneath her. While I was away a friend brought round 15 light sussex bantam eggs for the incubator, which was already full, so I told Mum to put them under one that I thought was going broody before we went away and she has taken them on! On the day we arrived back the eggs in the incubator started to hatch and we now have a selection of Maran, Wellsummer and Orpington chicks that are doing well.

The two larger lambs that we already had are now out in the paddock, they are a little bit forlorn as weaning them means stopping the bottle abruptly, they don’t quite understand why they have been put out to grass! It is lovely to see them leaping about in the sunshine though, lambs produce serotonin which makes them happy and that’s why you will see them skipping about and doing high kicks!

The veg garden is in full swing, this weekend we have planted the potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beetroot & fennel as well as some more rows of mangetout. My Mum planted out the broad beans while I was away and pricked out a lot of the seedlings including tomato, peppers, melons and some of the herbs, if all goes well this season we will have a bumper crop!

My Mum came to farm sit while we were away as the girls both still had to work, I was not sure if she had enjoyed her stay here until I read her post on Facebook, she wrote: I have watched the early morning sun bathe the fields in pale golden-yellow and stood in awe as the same sun turned the sky into a firebowl of reds and ambers, I have corralled geese and urged hens into a safe shelter, washed duck eggs and marvelled at the grace of a buzzard as it searched for its next meal, I have drifted off to sleep as the sounds of the night animals, badger and fox, scuffled around outside and woke to the bleating of new lambs as they called for their bottle. I have soaked up the peace and tranquility of being ‘away from it all’ Where? just three miles away from Carterton!

I will be taking bookings from next month!! Seriously though, It is lovely to read our life though a new set of eyes, we take so much for granted and moan about the routine, but we wouldn’t change it for a years worth of holidays 😀

I thought I would write this week about our larger 4 legged friends on the farm, we have 4 large dogs, two of them are Siberian Husky and live outside and 2 Collies live inside. This week the collies Max & Milly had their annual haircut, well more of a shave really. Max has a thick long coat and it matts easily and Milly’s is also thick, so once a year near springtime they get a shave, for a couple of weeks they look like the ‘would you give £2 a week’ dogs and could easily front a campaign! They do love it though, Max who is nearly 13 acts like a puppy charging around the yard, sporting his new look!

We also have 2 farm cats called Felix and Diesel, they are very good at catching mice and rabbits, they have even caught a mole, baby stoat and a hen pheasant! My Mum who is a keen writer is busy writing children’s stories about the adventures of these two, they have a great life together but both had an interesting start to life before they became the best of friends and I am hoping to start publishing the stories on this blog in the not too distant future so watch out for those.

Apart from cats and dogs we also have the horses, Scrumpy Jack, Atherton, and Jazz, all of them with their own individual characters, the vet came last week for annual vaccinations and the horses have to have their teeth filed down and any plaque removed. They have this metal gadget that is inserted into the mouth then winched open so the vet can reach inside, not a very dignified process (for the horse or the vet, who ends up with horse dribble all down her arm) but a necessary one. Many people ask me why horses have masks on in the summer, they assume that the horse can’t see out of them, but for any of you that have wondered they are fly masks, they have a fine mesh so that the flies do not keep landing on their eyes which they find very annoying as you can imagine. In order of appearance Milly, Max (relaxing), Moloko, Kai, Diesel & Felix, Atherton, Jazz & Scrumpy Jack

Apart from the daily routine of looking after the ‘farm’ animals, the paddocks have to be maintained and this involves, dragging and rolling, reseeding and repairing fences and gates etc, all this is done in the spring before the ground gets too hard,  it is a job that has to be squeezed in before the veg patch gets underway.

Meanwhile there is still much to do on the veg garden. The asparagus arrived this week and so had to be planted straight away, this is a long term investment crop as it will not be fully harvested until the third year after planting, but it will give you an annual crop for 20 years after that so a worthwhile project hopefully. I have also indulged myself and planted a bed of dahlias, any gardener will tell you that you need flowers to bring in the bees for pollination, but I think it is nice to have something bright and cheery, so these will be for cutting and giving as birthday flowers etc.  Hubby has been busy digging his trenches for the potatoes, they will probably go in this week as well, the salad crops are coming along well as are the courgette seedlings, the sun has really boosted them and I will be potting them on later today.

We are off on our hoilday on Friday but I am leaving it all in the very capable hands of my Mum, nearly everything I know about gardening I learn’t from her so  it will be well looked after, the girls will be here also, Sam will take care of the farm and Charlie will take care of the house so we are all sorted. Meanwhile hubby and I will be eating, drinking and totally relaxing in the sun, have a great week, I know I will 🙂

Its been a manic weekend, the sunshine usually brings many more visitors to the farm for eggs and back garden chickens. We have had people arriving for manure as well, if anyone wants any let me know, its free if you bag it up yourself or 50p ready bagged. The seedlings are all beginning to break the surface and need watering a couple of times a day when it is so warm, it wont be long now before we have radishes, lettuce and spinach ready to eat. I had potted on some strawberry plants a while back and sold a fair few of those at the weekend, I also have herbs such as Sage, Oregano and Chives ready for sale as well as Lavender plants. I love this time of year, I especially enjoy seed sowing and potting on, it definitely beats weeding!

It’s all been happening in the poultry dept this weekend too, during the week we collected 24 hatching eggs from various breeds and set them in the incubator, they will take precisely 21 days to hatch providing all goes well, as soon as they begin to pip I will take some pics to post. It seemed like a good time to move the chickens huts across the paddock to new grass, so we get up early on Saturday morning armed with the tow chain and van only to discover that himself had not shut one set of chickens away the night before! The dilemma was do we go ahead and move the hut running the risk of squashing roaming chickens or wait until the next morning when hopefully he would have remembered to shut them in, we chose to run the risk of squashing them! Actually they were all pretty nimble and moved out of the way sharply once the ancient hut started rumbling across the ground, after reconnecting the electric fencing we stood and watched them for a while, they are very funny when moved to new ground, running around in all directions looking for early morning worms.

The geese began to lay this week, I am not sure of the best way to hatch the eggs yet, geese tend to be  bit clumsy both with the eggs and the goslings, hatching them under a broody chicken seems like a good idea but you have to spray the eggs with water each day as the geese would normally wash then sit back on the eggs, hens don’t like to get anywhere near water except to drink. Incubating them is not always successful, so we might have a go at all three and hopefully get some goslings.

And on Saturday a little boy visited the farm, his Dad is buying him 8 chickens for his birthday, I was very impressed with his knowledge and handling of the birds, he is only 8 years old and they have chickens at his school where he obviously learnt everything he knows, his Mum was very surprised to hear him ask me lots of very relevant questions about keeping and feeding them, his interest didn’t stop at the birds either he was delighted by all the other animals we have, a mini smallholder in the making I feel.

We had the hunt charging past which was very exciting, especially for my daughters horse who used to hunt in a former life, as soon as he hears the horn, his ears prick up and he starts charging around the field, I am sure he is thinking, if only I could break free, what fun I would have! As the riders and hounds came racing down the field behind us a huge deer, which must have been standing just behind our wall, bounded across the field into the distance no doubt terrified, but the hounds were not interested in him only the scent they were on. I am neither for nor against hunting but they do make a magnificent sight thundering past and certainly liven up a saturday afternoon!

The huge full moon was quite a spectacle out here, we have almost no light pollution and it lit up the sky! I am not sure if it was the hunt or the moon that got everything in a tizzy that day but all the animals were in a heightened state, we certainly notice that the dogs behave differently during the full moon stage though they do stop short at howling!!

I almost forgot to do my blog this week! I am so excited as Hubby has booked a holiday for us in a couple of weeks time, we have not had a proper holiday since we took over this place so I am looking forward to a week without wellies!

The weather is beginning to look promising, the daffodils are ready to burst open and the animals are all ‘twitterpating’. I have been busy sowing seeds in the greenhouse, Tomato, Pepper, Sweetcorn, a squash called Sweet Dumpling, I have also sown some Spring Onion, Raddish, Lettuce and Spinach in the greenhouse that the Tomato’s will eventually move into, as they wont be planted untill May, it made sense to use the space for a quick crop of salad. Hubby has been very busy weeding and rotovating the large outside beds ready for the potato’s, at the end of the month the Carrots & Parsnip can be sown straight into the ground as will the Peas and Runner Beans, these can be started off indoors but I find that when planted outside they are stronger and catch up very quickly. No sign of the broad beans breaking through the surface yet but I have checked beneath and they are shooting so they wont be long.

The chickens are speeding up with the egg laying, so much so that I thought of pickling some of them now, ready for Christmas, I also tried my hand at making pasta with the duck eggs, it was unbelievably easy, the only thing was that I was unable to roll it thin enough and so might need to invest in a pasta machine. A friend once told me that once you have tasted home-made pasta you wont go back to eating the ready-made stuff, I think she is right!  While I was making pasta, I also made a lemon drizzle cake, excellent for spring I think, the sharp lemon is a lovely contrast to the cake and an ideal accompaniment to a well-earned cuppa on a spring day.

We sold 6 of the baby rabbits over the last week! They have gone onto solids in a big way, carrots, apples, cauliflower and I even gave them a fennel bulb which they devoured with gusto! Only 2 left to home now, great considering I thought we might not be able to sell them all, this would mean having to eat them, each of us looking at the other wondering who is going to be brave enough to dispatch these cute little things! We also sold 2 more point of lay hens, these are Lohmann Browns and great egg layers, up to 300 a year, they are friendly little birds and if anyone would like some for the back garden just get in touch.

The lambs are coming along nicely, they are sturdy little things with great personalities, they have just begun to do that characteristic little hop, skip and a jump when they see you, I am told that this is how lambs display happiness! I am not sure if is true but I would like to think so 🙂 The horses are also displaying spring like behaviour, they no longer stand in the field looking depressed, they are ‘frolicking’, tearing up and down the paddocks and having a good roll or basking in the sunshine, my daughter rode out with a friend yesterday and gave one of the horses a good canter to blow the cobwebs off, they enjoy the sunshine as much as we do. I keep looking into the goose pen for signs of an egg or two but as yet nothing, geese have a short laying period from March to June, not like hens who will lay all year. We have a problem with the geese, we have 6 altogether but they have decided to split ranks, up until yesterday they were living in two sets of three, now one set has decided that they no longer want the third goose with them! They will pick on it until it is driven away, we had to pick it up last night and put it in a pen overnight until we can decide what to do with it, I will give it a few weeks to see if it lays and if not it will either have to be rehomed or dispatched to the freezer.

I moved the Tortoises outside at the weekend, they have been overwintering in the greenhouse, but woke up quite early back in January so I decided now was as good a time as any to put them back out, they live in the herb garden, which is fully fenced so they don’t escape. Tortoises spend their whole time trying to wander off, we lost our female Sarah when we first came here, I put her out on the grass for a while and when I went back I couldn’t find her and she has not been seen since! They can get up to quite a speed once they have warmed up, coincidently we discovered that there was a tortoise rescue place about 2 miles down the road from us, they had a tortoise handed in the week she went missing but it was not her, females tend to go walkabout in July looking for a mate, although she had 2 to choose from here, they obviously were not good enough! She only ever laid eggs once and that was in the summer of 2006 when it was incredibly hot, unfortunately I was in Australia at the time where it was raining! and by the time I got home the eggs were not viable and so we were unable to hatch them.

As the sun is shining today, I need to stop sorting clothes for the holiday and go outside and prepare the beds for seedlings, a fine tilth is needed, otherwise the small seeds will struggle to reach the surface. We are quite exposed here and always 2 degrees lower than the neighbouring town so I have to wait a couple of weeks longer for the ground to warm up, it should be just about ready when I come back from my holiday!