Sheep, parties and weddings

In the last ten days or so since my last update it's been pretty busy. It started with our first working weekend. This time we had one family visiting, thanks Ben, Anna and kids for coming. We had a fantastic weekend. Saturday started with a “Room on the Broom” kiddie fun session at Beverley Minster which they all loved. Luckily in the afternoon there were jobs that needed doing in the polytunnel as the heavy rain didn't make it tempting to do much else. Nearly all the plants in the polytunnel now have extra fleece protection for Frosty nights. The combination of fleece and the polytunnel plastic should keep the frost away. Sunday we set to with compost heap creating using old pallets. We made a good few, filled several in with compost and then using our new (well new to us it was my Grandfathers) tractor/mower collected loads of horse manure from our neighbours who have horses. We were really pleased with the weekend and are going to try some again in the future.

The Monday afterwards the Sheep arrived. Having them delivered was quite a saga. The sheep we wanted were in the field next door along with a load of other sheep. So Steve (who owns them) and another guy turned up about lunch time in the cold weather and we all set too. First we herded all the sheep out of Steve's field and onto the dead end section of road. Once we had them collected there Steve shaked his food bucket and lead them down the road and into our area of hardstanding at the entrance to the field. They were sort of trapped in there although not all of the fencing was sheep proof so we had to be quite careful. Then with aid of some sheep hurdles we corralled them into a corner. Once there they were wormed and checked. Our sheep were selected and guided one at a time by the horns (They weren't to keen on that) into the prepared field. We then had to herd the rest back into Steve's field and I somehow managed to leave one behind in the road (oops). We got it in the end though. So we now have our sheep. Two Ewe's and two castrated Rams. A fully in tact Ram will visit in late November for “Tupping” and then hopefully we will have lambs in the Spring. If the Ram visits Late November then we should get lambs late April. The sheep are a little nervous but getting more tame every day. They don't need feeding but we tend to go in every day with a little feed just to get closer to them and get them tamer. This should make checking them nice and easy. We now need to put some fencing across the rest of the field to protect the vegetables and polytunnel from them. At the moment they are in a smaller fenced off area.

As well as all of this we have had Christine and Kevin's wedding, Imogens 6^th birthday and party. Immy's party finished with a tractor ride and the tractor pulling a trailer with twelve or so kiddies in. It was all going so well until I managed to get a puncture. On the home front the Kitchen is almost there. Last bit of woodwork is going on tomorrow then hopefully I'll do the final touches this week. It's all fully operational now though. 

As a matter of interest we are now just (but only just) outside the current bird flu restriction zone.

Sheep and Bonfires

It's been half term this week and so we have been away for quite a lot of it so not so much has been going on here at Leconfield Grange. Sheep preparations have continued and once I have put in a gate tomorrow we are ready to go with them. They will then have a small paddock. While they eat that grass I then need to do a load more fencing so they can go in the rest of the field but not destroy the polytunnel or eat strawberries.

As you can see things are going well in the polytunnel and some of these greens are ready for some cut and come again salad nibbling already. As you can also see there are still slugs in there, but not too many and I am getting rid of them most evenings. 

While we were away we went to Caernarfon in North Wales and the kids managed to climb Tryfan. As it is a scramble most of the way up we were pretty impressed by how they managed. I certainly didn't like that sort of thing when I was their age, but they seemed to love it. We also went to a family bonfire party while we were away which was fantastic and the kids loved it seeing their second cousins. I am hopefully going to get my Grandfathers old sit on mower this week which should make some work a lot easier like mowing and lugging trailer fulls of manure from the stables a couple of doors down to here. Pulling trailers by hand is quite hard work. I think Zoe likes the rustic nature of it, which is fine but the effort required (especially with a puncture) is quite high. We have a working weekend coming up this weekend so we should get some more work done on the smallholding. I have a few different plans in mind. If anyone would like to come and hasn't been invited just let me know. 

The kitchen is now almost there. With a little finishing off from me and some boxing in of the extractor piping from the kitchen people I think we will be there. It has been so nice for the last couple of weeks being able to cook again.