Black Star doesn't make it

Above are a few photos from last week from Zoe including the pigs arriving in the back of the car.

Unfortunately Black star (chicken) has been ill for a couple of weeks and wasn't getting better. In the end she was barely able to walk and clearly was not enjoying life any more. So I got the job of finishing her off. It was clearly for the best she was not a happy chicken any more. It does mean that we are now low on chickens and so also low on eggs. I am off next week to meet some chicken breeders to discuss a way forward. We want to get some chickens that will go broody so that we can start to raise eating chicken s as well as layers. We want to try and supply all our own chickens for eating. I am also booked in for an abattoir visit next week. I have never been to one before but want to go to see what it is like before we take the pigs in a few months.

The Pigs are starting to grow and getting very tame. They now are happy having strokes and the kids feed them out of their hands. They never took much notice of their wallow until yesterday when it was quite warm. Suddenly they were busy trying to extend it. As you can see from their faces this made for being covered in quite a lot of mud. They worked hard and the extension on the wallow is now quite big. The grass in their run is gradually disappearing as they root their way under it looking for exciting things to nibble. It does make you worry about pigs kept on concrete in sheds. All these pigs want to do is root and sleep (often on top of each other). If they are not able to root they are clearly going to be a problem.

The polytunnel is finally taking shape as can be seen above. My expert helpers were busy tightening bolts and connecting support bars. Zoe seems to think the whole thing is ugly, but I don't really see that. It seems OK to me.  If I am lucky it may be up and running by the end of the weekend. Just time to start doing lots of plating then. 

Pigs and parties

Last weekend was our housewarming party. The field may not have been to warming with the weather but I think it went really well. The kids loved the bouncy castle and it was good to catch up with so many people. We had Sunday as a work day and had a couple of families with us working hard. Zoe had Rich to help her finish off the pig pen, which was vital as they were arriving on Monday. I had Ben and Calah to help me digging over the beds that are going to be part of the polytunnel. It was great to have other people helping and I think everyone had a good time. We thought we might set up a few work weekends in the future, with food, socializing and a little digging.

Monday was the very exciting arrival of pigs day. I went to get them on my own as Zoe was still finishing the pig house (the roof was not yet felted) and putting the gate in their fence. I went up to Thirsk to pick up the piglets. After being chased around the barn a good number of times we eventually got them into the dog crate in the back of the car. They grunted and jiggled most of the journey home. I let them out into their area and they had a good run around together. They have not left each others side since. After half an hour of getting shocks from the fence they seemed to learn what that was all about and haven't really gone near it since. A good job really as escaped piglets will be extremely hard to deal with.  On Monday evening Zoe and I found the piglets asleep on the grass. We decided they should be in their house and spent the next half hour trying to guide / chase them in. I have to say we totally failed and left them to sleep in the grass. By morning they had worked it out and we found them fast asleep in their pen snuggled up next to each other in the straw.



Since then the piglets have been getting more used to us and getting closer and braver. Yesterday they were having a good sniff of our wellies as the kids and I sat in the run. They didn't seem very keen on the left over salad from the party though which I found a little disappointing. I thought they would hoover up everything, they are pigs after all.

So for the week ahead more piglet settling and a real push to get this polytunnel finally up.

Don't fence me in

Fencing seems to have been the order of the week this week. Fed up with constantly having to retrieve the dog from the neighbors or half a mile away in the village we decided we needed some fencing. A fence contractor offered to do it for six grand. So with that in mind Zoe set to and decided to do it herself. It wasn't long before she needed an assistant and in the end (finishing about half an hour ago) we managed to finish it. So hopefully no more escaped dog (until someone leaves the gate open).

With it being Zoe's birthday and our house warming party this week there has been plenty to do. On top of that the piglets arrive Monday and there is still plenty of work to do to get the field ready for them. Zoe made the base to a pig arc hoping we could then buy the corrugated metal for the roof. It was then we found that no one makes or sells metal pig arc roofs anymore. So after a quick trip to the wood shop the roof now needs building from wood in time for their imminent arrival.
As usual the chickens are keeping us on our toes. Despite my best efforts to make the egg box look inviting by keeping eggs in there and full of hay, none of the girls will go broody as I was hoping. That leaves two options: buying chickens or incubating them. Both have their advantages. Rearing chicks is fun and then you get some eaters as well as layers. However buying them is nice and easy as they just arrive and lay the next day. The only issue is how they will all integrate with each other. Black Star is now ill and in isolation. We have been thinking we might loose her, however she seems to have perked up a little bit this afternoon in her isolation barn so fingers crossed there.

I am hoping next week we can finally get on and construct this polytunnel. So far I have got the posts in place marking out where it will go (a good bit of Pythagoras in action getting that all square) and I have started to dig up one of the beds that will be at the side of the tunnel. I want to get them built before we put the tunnel up as it sounds like a recipe for destroying the plastic cover digging right next to it.
We have being doing well with bird visitors. As well as the swallows living in the barn we seem to have chicks of Robins, Coal tits, Gold Finches and Sparrows around the house. The amount of seed these birds get through is quite amazing. Apparently the Sparrows might be tree Sparrows but to be honest I am still nor very good at telling the difference. Both seem to be small and brown to me.
I am off to tend to the tomatoes now. They are getting quite big and desperately need staking as they are all at funny angles. I am also timing how long it is before the dog finds a way out of the fence!

One man went to mow ..

 So Tuesday was T-day or Tractor day. The field started looking as in the image below.

By the end of the day it had somewhat changed. I had two little helpers having tractor rides. It took all day almost none stop but I managed to get it all mowed. It felt a bit wrong mowing down the flowers which the bees and butterflies were happily dancing around. I did feel better however that both the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and the RSPB had said to me the most important thing you can do for wildlife is to ensure that the field gets a cut midsummer, once a year. I saw lots of small rodents running around in the cut grass. I think they were bank Voles, but my identification of small mammals is not stunning. We certainly have plenty of them anyway.

I am slightly dissapointed in the difference in the field in the before and after shots. On the ground the difference is huge. I think from above the difference between brown grass growing and brown grass having been chopped is a subtle one.

We went to visit our new piglets at the weekend. They are very small and clearly not yet weaned. We are going to have one Gloucester Old Spot, Tamworth Cross and one Gloucester Old Spot Saddleback cross. They are very small. I hope we can manage to keep them in their enclosure as they can sneak under a pretty small gap.On the picture below the pigs are going to be based around the tree that can be seen behind the hen house. Those with good eyes may be able to see some fence posts there.

So now the field is clear the polytunnel can go up and I think I may start that tomorrow. Our field still has the old ridge and furrows in which might make it a little tricky. Hopefully we won't have to move too much soil.
The herb garden is now complete and the Tomatoes are doing well so we will actually have some produce soon. We do of course have the egg supply. We could still do with a few more chickens to help with that though. Lastly the kids and I did the Big Butterfly count the other day in the field (before it was mowed). If you haven't done it yet perhaps give it a try. We can even identify a few butterflies now.