Autumn update

It’s been a steady summer on the smallholding with lots of changes since my last update. The polytunnel growing has gone brilliantly this year. In late summer we had Aubergines, tomatoes, chillis, peppers,basil and courgettes all ready for eating which was amazing. The tomatoes and chillis are still going now, although with the cooler weather I cant see them keeping going for much longer. Its now all planted up with winter salad and spring beans an peas ready for the season ahead. Pumpkins are another thing that have done stunningly well this year. Both the pumpkins I planted and the ones the kids planted have gone mad and produced loads of fruits. So I now have a supply for pumpkin soup, risotto, roasted pumpkin, pumpkin pie etc while the kids are going to have loads of home grown lanterns at Halloween.

The chicks we raised are now fully grown although not laying yet which is a little upsetting. Of the cockerels all but one are now in the freezer ready for roasting. They were all starting to argue with each other and so it was time to go. The cockerel we kept seems very calm and seems to get on OK with our resident cockerel so we’ll see how they all do together. The chicks were separated from our older chickens but once the cockerels went I put them all together and made them a new chicken house to fit them all in. So they now have a de-luxe converted play house as their chicken house. We have been having issues in the older hen houses with mites which were getting a pain, although with regular cleaning and spraying of the chicken house I was starting to keep them under control. 

The hansom chap on the left is the new cockerel

The pigs have now all gone. Three were sold as meat and two were meat for us. The freezer is now full to bursting and trying to find anything in there at the moment is almost impossible. Its just simpler to eat what’s on top at the moment. We made all sorts from the pork including hams, bacon, air dried ham, salami and sausages. The salami is currently growing a few weird moulds on its surface but apparently that’s normal so we’ll see what it tastes like when it’s ready in a month or so. The air dried ham is a whole back leg (with the bone taken out) currently completely buried in salt. At the end if the week I’ll take it out, wipe it down with white wine vineagar, wrap it in muslin then hang it in a mouse proof cage from a shelter roof so it stays dry but the wind gets to it. Last time we made it was just under two years ago and it was amazing. We still have some if it left.

Sausage making

The sheep are doing well. After the very eventful lambing they have all thrived. They are now a good size and doing well. We didn’t castrate the male lambs this year so they are now separated off from the rest of the flock before they cause any unwanted lambs. We need to get in the ram soon to start the whole cycle again for next year. Hopefully lambing will be a bit simpler next spring, although it happened all on one day and mainly during daylight hours was quite good.

All sorts has changed at home, Zoe has changed jobs at her work, the kids have changed school and I am in the process of some changes at work too. More to follow on that another time.

Driffield Show

The constant cycle of rain and sun is making everything grow at a vast rate. The veg and grass are both shooting up and keeping up with them both is proving to be a challenge, especially as my mowers keep needing visits to the repair shop. The wild area now has grass, hogweed, docks and a range of other plants that are about up to head height. As I wander through I see dragonflies, butterflies and loads of other insects. There also seems to be something quite large making tracks through the plants and flattening large areas where it sits down. I have no idea what it is at the moment, but as it doesn’t seem to be eating the veg or upsetting the livestock I’m not too worried.

The pigs are getting really big now and have managed to decimate every last leaf of vegetation in their run. They managed to escape as well a couple of times recently. The electric fence had been left off and they dug their way under the fencing and out into the field. Once there they ate lots of grass before heading to the compost heap to raid that. Luckily as they are big and very food obsessed they happily followed a bucket of food back into the safety of their run. We thought initially that we would have to separate the pigs as they got bigger but they all seem happy together and seem to enjoy all cuddling up with one another in the pig house at night.

The lambs are now getting really big and catching up in size with their Mums. They are still enjoying getting milk though as well as the grass. Two of the sheep are being shown at the Driffield Show on Wednesday by the kids. They were shampooed at the weekend (in between shows at Beverley puppet festival) so they look their best for showing. Imogen is going to show our black bottle fed lamb. Harriett is going to show Tilly one of the lambs we bottle fed last year. This years white bottle fed lamb was very uncooperative on a lead and so we switched her for last years star Tilly, after Harriett had spent a substantial amount of time dragging a very unwilling lamb around on a lead. 

We have had a brilliant Strawberry season so far with a fresh batch most days. With having plenty to eat we have also frozen a good quantity ready for jam making. It’s still a bit of a battle wrestling them from the slugs and birds, but overall I think we are winning with that one. We have fresh broad beans at the moment and peas, runner beans and Courgettes are all going to be ready any day now. I am struggling with growing lettuce as the slugs just keep destroying it. I have tried a good few tactics, but, as soon as my back is turned they all dive out of the ground and scoff the lot. 

I spent the whole of Tuesday cleaning out and sterilizing all of the chicken runs as we found loads of red mites had got in there and were annoying the chickens. I have virtually dismantled all the chicken houses and scrubbed them clean the problem seems to be well under control. The chicks are still doing well and it’s now really clear which as cockerels and which are layers. This is the first time we have had chicks of the same breed to be able to compare them against each other and the differences are really starting to show. We still have all 9 of the chicks that we hatched, and have 2 more from Tim down the road who popped a few of our eggs into his incubator along with a load of duck eggs. The ducklings are elsewhere but the chicks seem to be happy with us. 

It’s now just a case of polishing the sheep now, ready for the Driffield Show. I am sure they will do well.

Lambs galore

It's been pretty busy here since my last update. I'll try to remember the main things that have been going on over the last month.

We had a flurry of new life a couple of weekends ago with the arrival of all our lambs and new chicks within a very short space of time. Sadly during the flurry of new life arriving here a much longer life ended and my Grandma passed away. So it was a weekend of joy and sorrow.

The lambing started on Friday while I was at work. Luckily Zoe had the day off. She arrived home about midday to a Ewe in labour. The labour did not progress and things did not go well. The Ewe's were out in the field but this one refused to be caught and still was not birthing. Luckily help was at hand and Lorraine our neighbour also happened to be in. Between Zoe and Lorraine they managed to catch the Ewe and get her into the barn. With no lamb coming Zoe phoned our sheep guru Steve for some much needed expert advice. It was then a case of having to get her hand inside the Ewe and find out what was going on inside (took me back to watching 'all creatures great and small' as a child and the vets arm completely disappearing inside a cow). So the first lamb was backwards. After much debating, adjustment, help and a lot of pulling, eventually to Zoe and Lorraine's suprise a healthy lamb appeared. With a little help it was breathing and happy very soon. I got back from work at about this point. It wasn't long before her next lamb appeared, rather more easily than the first. I had to at this point keep going outside to check on another Ewe who had gone into labour. I slightly loose track of the order of things at this point. I know I went to get the kids from school (who had kindly packed them off to the office with their bags ready for a speedy pick up and journey home). Our first Ewe then had her third and final lamb (we did wonder for a while if she was going for a forth). The Ewe outside gave birth to her first lamb out in the field and once that lamb was breathing and mother and lamb had done a little bonding we got them and our final Ewe (who seemed to want to be the mother of the new lamb) into the barn. We then had one Ewe with triplets, one with a lamb and possibly more on the way and a third being very maternal. Our Ewe with one lamb then started having a second. She seemed to be having difficulty with this one and we found that it had it's front leg bent backwards which made it very hard for it to get out. So another Ewe needed assistance and as Zoe was now our resident expert this was a job for her. During this time Loraine was brilliant and supplied tea as well as doing the regular feeding of all of our other animals. It did then all quieten down for a while and we managed to eat and have a sit down. However it was clear the final Ewe would go into labour soon and so we stayed up and by midnight it was pushing hard. Again the lamb didn't seem to want to come. An hour or so later and we had to check what was happening. She just had the most enormous lamb making it really hard to get out. It was just a case of us having to pull to give it a hand and with a lot of force it finally came into he world and it was huge. It was her only lamb and by 4:30am I finally got to bed.

Having chicks is a much simpler process. Mother hen sits on eggs for 21 days. Get her off once or twice a day for food a stretch and a poo, job done. On day 21 don't get her off and leave her to it. On day 22 have a peak. Day 22 was Tuesday and when we had a peak we could see mother hen and hear a lot of cheaping. With a bit of work we managed to lift mother hen off to see 9 healthy happy and tiny chicks. 8 fluffy and one still all mucky from having just hatched. For the next day or two we barely saw the chicks. Mummy hen would be up and about and all the chicks would be hidden under her. She could easily hide all 9 from view without a problem. If you were lucky you would catch a glimpse of a head or a foot. Then gradually they started to get adventurous and venture out. They now all run around making a lot of noise. They still head to mummy hen though if they get worried. We'll have to see now how many are hens and how many are cockerels. Hens we will keep as layers but cockerels will have to be roasted (once they are fully grown). I am getting fed up with cockerels. We had two from the last lot of chicks and had kept them both. The largest one started to get a bit vicious with us runnning at us and pecking our legs (which does hurt). So had him for dinner (he was very tasty). Now the next one has started to do the same. I think we will give up keeping cockerels. It's nicer to have a peaceful chicken run. I will miss the cocker doodle dooing though.

After last years vegetable planting extravaganza with about 300 varieties of veg growing and 100s of plants for each I have been much more low key this year. This has lead to much less stress and a much higher success rate for the plants we do have. We nearly lost all the early tomato plants with an early frost, but they seem to have recovered. I think that was why the Ewe's all gave birth together. The week before they came (when they were due) the weather was really cold, (frozen snow on the ground one night) and so they hung on until it warmed up a little.

The pigs are growing well and as always are engaging animals. So far it hasn't really made any difference having all boys. We have had one with an abysses. He had to go to the vet twice. It was quite funny having to stand on the front of our little trailer while the vetenary nurse and vet were inside the trailer with the pig trying to catch it and give it a shot of anti-biotics. On our next visit it got to go into the vets room and stand on the table while they cleaned out the abysses and gave it another anti-biotics shot. While doing so they showed me what to do so that I could administer the next two shots at home. So Zoe was chief pig holder (not an easy task) while I administered the medicine. Pigs do not like being held and when you get them they squeal and wriggle like mad. But he did settle and then on our first time he didn't even notice the shot. The next time it seemed to bother him more and he got very noisy. Zoe managed to gain a graze on her chin simply from the rough pig skin scraping against it.

Harriett and I managed to get away last weekend to my Grandad's 90^th birthday party. It was great to catch up with family and Harriett loved all the younger relatives that she could look after. We left Imogen and Zoe in charge of the smallholding. It was nice to get up and not have to dash out to the chickens. Instead Harriett and I watched a farming program on lambing for an hour before breakfast!. No lie ins when you go away with Harriett.

Back to the smallholding

If my last blog was a long time coming because of endless decorating the same could be said of this one due to work. Since Christmas I have been doing a good few extra hours to cover for an ill member of staff. This has been interesting and quite rewarding but as the weather has been warming I have been itching to get out onto the smallholding. Luckily a few weeks ago my working hours reduced down and I am back to doing a couple of days a week. This has given me time to get out, enjoy the weather and get some much needed jobs done.

The idea of winter on the smallholding is a chance to catch up on workshop tidying, machinery maintenance and that sort of thing. Nothing except the absolute essentials have been done over winter so we'll just have to do our best. Spring started in the polytunnel a while ago now and things are growing like crazy in there. There are various salad greens growing well, broad beans flowering and Swedes and Turnips growing nicely. I have been a bit worried about the broad beans germinating, but we had the first bees of the year in there today and they seemed to be doing their job.

Speaking of bees I have signed up for a course with the Beverley bee Keepers Association later in the year in the hope that we can have our own bees and of course honey in the near future. Imogen is particularly keen on this idea due to her love of honey. 

We have gone for 5 pigs this year, and they are all male. A bit of an increase on previous years, but we are getting low on pork and really need two for ourselves. After that the other three are for selling. Two are already sold through the CSA and I am sure we can sell one more along the way. They are Saddleback, Old Spot crosses. They are really friendly but also nice and calm. We have had a few Tamworths or Tamworth Crosses recently and they are a lot more jumpy.

We have two bottle fed lambs here at the moment kindly given to us by Steve our local sheep expert. He is lambing at the moment (we have a few weeks to go). The kids are loving bottle feeding the lambs. Now the pigs are out in the field the lambs can go into the barn at night, which is great because until last night they were in the kitchen at night which makes for a very messy kitchen in the morning. The last bottle fed lambs we had were kept on as Ewe's so will have lambs next year. There is a limit to how many breeding Ewe's we need so these bottle fed lambs will have to eventually be for the pot. Our sheep are quite large and should lamb in a few weeks. Hopefully no more surprises this year (like last year when an allegedly male sheep gave birth to a lamb). 

Tomorrow the kids and I will round up the sheep and give them their annual vaccinations and dose them with spray to keep the flies off. We also have some tomatoes to move out into the polyutnnel and a load of parsnips to plant. There is always so much going on here at this time of year.

Winters decorating

I have not totally forgotten my blog, although it had to be admitted that it has not been updated for quite a while. That is partly due to the amount of decorating I have been doing. I thought it may be of limited interest the amount of floorboard sanding, wallpaper stripping, light removals, painting, radiator issues that I have been dealing with recently. I was actually quite proud of myself today as I had to drain the central heating system to change a few valves. What was most exciting was the fact that I managed to get the heating working afterwards. Previously this has always involved trapping air in all sorts of inconvenient places (in the heating system) and then having to call a plumber to come and sort it out for me. This time I cracked it and the heating is back up and fully operational.

There has been some comings and goings on the smallholding. We now have the loan of a ram who is supposed to be busy servicing the Ewe's . I have to admit apart from a quick try when he first arrived in the field I haven't seen him make much effort in this department. When he first arrived he chased them around the field and tried his best but they just ran away. I hope this initial encounter didn't put him off for good. The other sheep have gone for a little trip to another field down the road where the owner needs the grass trimming. This is perfect as we are quite low on grass over winter (although the fact it is still growing helps in this matter!).

Winter vegetables are not greatly abundant. We have loads of Beetroot sat in the ground and a little spinach. We did have some really good parsnips but we have eaten those now. Any veg for growing in winter got well and truly destroyed by the slugs back in the spring. We'll try again this year. I think we'll plant a little less so we can really concentrate on what we have. I think last year we tried far to much in one go.

The CSA pigs have left us since my last blog. We had a half a pig and then other members have half or quarter pigs to enjoy. Some members also tried our hams. We are planning to get some more piglets in the spring. I am glad we don't have any pigs at the moment. The field is muddy enough as it is without pigs digging it up and stomping on it all day long with their trotters. They really would be belly deep in it by now.

We had quite a quiet Christmas. We went to my parents. We of course took some pork with us to go with the Turkey on Christmas day. The cat was supposed to be at home and stay in the barn, but that didn't quite work out. I spent ages setting up the barn (warm as that is where the biomass boiler is) with a window, cat-flap and bed on a nice shelf off the floor. However that cat liked to get up high and every night we put her in there she climbed up to the tin sheeting in the roof and got stuck up there! I think maybe it was an excuse not to be put to bed in a barn.

The decorating is taking shape and I can see and end in sight (although certainly not by tomorrow morning). It will be nice to get out and spend a little more time with the animals and a little less with the paintbrush!

Rain is with us

The rain has been going on with few breaks for days now. The mud is starting to appear around the smallholding. As is traditional the pigs area is the first to go. They had already done a good job of turning it all over so it didn't take long with a bit of rain to turn into serious mud. Luckily they are tall enough now so that they are out of it most of the time. I was hoping that during the weekend we could fence them off a new area so they have some grass. However a forecast of rain all weekend has meant the CSA day is cancelled and so I am not sure we'll get it done. However I will do at some stage in the next week. I'm letting the pigs in an area to do some ploughing for me. They can root up any potatoes left in the ground, which is great for blight prevention. They will also turn over the soil ready for it to be grown in next year. This year we grew squash and potatoes here. Next year I am hoping to make the area much larger and growing some fodder crops for both the pigs and the sheep. It's handy that we can keep the pigs happy and get all that work done it one go. It might save me from having to hire a Rotavator in the spring.

I have put it off long enough now and I am going to have to bite the bullet and get some decorating done. As it's pouring down at the weekend I might have to actually have to get going with it.

The chicks are all now getting quite large but still none of them have either layed an egg or cock-a-doodled. I thought I heard one of them cock-a-doodle several weeks ago but it must have been me as I haven't heard anything since. As it's coming into winter it could now be a good while before the girls start to lay. We suspect that the Light Sussex is a cockerel but it's only a guess as he's so much bigger than the rest.

The sheep are getting to the time of the year where their feet start to be an issue. I have already have to deal with two of them going lame in the last week or two. One seems to be on the mend. The other one still doesn't seem to be right. They also start to look rather bedraggled on stormy or wet mornings as they tend to wedge themselves as deep as they can into the hedge (this hedge is about 12 feet wide and you can walk around inside it). So they appear looking soggy and with various branches and brambles stuck in their wool. One of the lambs left us a week or so ago and we now have more excellent lamb in the freezer. We have already had liver and bacon, liver pate as well as some great lamb shanks. Still haven't done anything with the wool from the sheep. I'll add it to the list of winter jobs.

Autumn foraging

Life for me at Leconfield Grange seems to have slowed down a little over the last few weeks. Harriett's birthday has now passed and we have done our last market for a while. Leaving the markets has really freed up a lot of time at the weekends. The kids are a bit sad they loved it. They liked selling things and buying things. They would disappear for hours (literally) working out how they were going to spend the £2.50 they had with them. They became experts at getting the price on anything they wanted as low as possible. Imogen's technique of paying for everything in coppers and counting them very slowly proved a particularly effective one. In terms of selling things we are now just concentrating on the Bakery, jars and Community Supported Agriculture Pork.

The chicks we have are doing well and getting big. They are still not full size and still no clues yet as to which are cockerels and which will be layers. Only time will tell. All the chickens have the run together during the day, but the respective chicks still go back to their own house at night at the moment. The old chickens have a new house (well newish they have had it for a few months now) and for some reason several of them are refusing to perch in it. That means most nights when I go to shut their door I end up trying to get them to perch. Trying to lean into a hen house and balance a chicken which is half asleep on a perch is not an easy task. It doesn't always work either. There is always a lot of flapping and squawking. One of them always perches fine then 10 seconds later jumps off to settle to sleep in the egg box!

The lambs are all doing well and getting big. One of them is booked in to leave us in a couple of weeks. It would be nice to keep them all to Hoggets (year old) or Mutton but we just don't have the grass to manage it. The Ewe's and Lambs are separated at the moment for weaning. We have only had one or two escapes from the separate areas so hopefully in a couple of weeks it should have worked. As the lambs are almost as big as the Ewe's it was getting a bit silly them still having milk. It'll be time to get the Ram in before too long to start the process over again. I think second lambing season should hopefully be easier and less stressful than the first. 

I Have been busy in the polytnnel working on a central bed in there. Until a few days ago the centre was a messy load of grass and weeds. They are all up now and a bed is mostly dug. Just a bit more digging to do and then I need to make the paths around the edge and get a load of horse manure in there. That should be ready just in time for my seedlings which are going to need transplanting soon. Hopefully these seedlings will be large enough to provide me with greens over winter and some plants will go dormant and ready to grow really early in the spring like Cauliflower. Last year we had some successes like Mizuna (a type of mustard leaf that went mad) while over wintered carrots and beetroots were like bullets, even once cooked. Why I decided the hot weather last week was a good time to start digging in there I am not sure. It was baking. This week looks much better weather for digging and working in the shelter of the polytunnel. 

Autumn is always my favorite foraging season and it's going well this year. I like the fact I can now forage in my own field. I wonder sometimes then the difference between foraging and gardening. I think I forage for things that growing naturally and I don't help them, while gardening is where I help the plants. Foraging is clearly the easier option and is coming up trumps. I have 3 gallons of Elderberry wine just fermenting, two gallons of Plum wine (I had to go further afield for the plumbs) and a load of apples ready for crab apple jelly. I am also gradually collecting Sloe's for the customary Sloe Gin and I think I might have a go at making Sloe wine to. I tried some at the Humber Bridge Market and it seemed pretty good.