Felting fun

The weather has been kinder this week and early on I made the most of the warmer temperatures. The plants in the polytunnel had an outing from their fleece covers and I got digging holes and clearing grass around the holes ready for the arrival of some fruit trees. A spent this morning stocking up on horse manure. Our neighbours have horses and kindly let us have a ready supply. This all went well until the tractor refused to start with a full trailer of manure behind it and in the neighbours yard. Luckily some jump leads and the chickens electric fence batteries for a bit of a boost seemed to solve the problem. I have also been busy servicing skis ready to go away in a few weeks. I am finally down to finishing the last item. By the time the skis have been cleaned, filled, sharpened, waxed and polished it takes quite a lot of time.

Me removing barbed wire from the sheep's wool

harriett took these photos.

I passed my level 2 food hygene certificate. After several hours of training videos I then had to answer questions such as

Why are chopping boards in kitchens different colours?
a)So the kitchen looks bright
b)To make sure all kitchen staff are cheerful
c) To prevent cross contamination
d) So the kitchen looks smart for an inspection

Answers on a post card please.

I have been working on my felting by making a new phone case. I normally make all my felt from tops (a type of wool) I have suddenly discovered there are lots of other forms the wool can come in and some of them speed up the felting process substantially. So I tried three different phone cases, all went wrong. However on the forth attempt I'd solved all the problems and made a beautiful Jade phone case in well under an hour. I just have to make a couple more things and then I'll pop them all (the ones that went well) on ETSY to sell.

A frosty morning for the sheep

Just a reminder of how how small the pigs were when they arrived.

The pigs hour is nearly up. They will go on Monday. Zoe is working at home that day so that she can help me with getting pigs onto the trailer and the trailer out of the field if the pigs or trailer are feeling awkward. The pigs are pretty big and meaty now. They certainly won't fit in the dog crate they arrived in any more. It will be sad to see them go, but that's what they are for. The kids are coming to terms with them going. They are quite keen on replacing them with new piglets as soon as possible. I think we will wait until the spring and keep the next lot in the traditional time of buy them in spring and send them to slaughter in the autumn. Maybe after the next round we will think about breeding pigs. Now that will start to get entertaining.

Size for comparison (this is a few weeks ago and they are bigger now)

Marmalade galore

I have now made over seventy jars of marmalade over a couple of days using 10Kg of Seville Oranges. That meant a lot of chopping, boiling and washing up. All I need now is somewhere to sell it. I think I am going to make a few more preserves before forking out for a market stall to sell things. I think I might try out a small batch of Cauliflower chutney next and see what that is like, before making industrial quantities. It's a shame we have nothing grown here to make jams or chutneys but it's not really the time of year for much to be growing right now. I thought I might take along a load of pastries too if we have a stall. I reckon I can get out about fifty croissants in a morning. So the Leconfield Grange enterprises are starting slowly to lift off. As part of this I am completing an online food safety course. I find that Zoe's temper seems very short when I tell her all the interesting things I have learnt about food safety and the “correct” procedures and safety measured required for commercial cooking. To be fair I had a visit from the council's food safety officer and she was very down to earth and helpful. Harriett did say I cheated for her visit because I cleaned the kitchen. She said I should have someones lunch on the table, pans on the stove and ingredients on the side so she could see what the kitchen looked like “in action”.

Music is starting to take off as well. I go once a month to a local pub with my guitar to play a few song. I usually do a few things I have written myself and a couple of covers. There is a nice supportive group of players there and it makes for a great evening. This week a guy was there listening who does a folk hour on local radio so I have an invite to send in some tracks or play a session there. As my current recording equipment consists of a mobile phone I think a session there might be the best options. This means I need to get practising and adding some final tweaks to my songs. A great idea but I re-strung my guitar last night, snapped the top string so now it's only a 5-string!

I've been avoiding too much outdoor work over the last few days due the very low temperature, surrounding dampness, snow and icy breeze. There has been plenty of other jobs to keep me busy. I was hoping tomorrow to get a few more holes dug ready for the arrival of the fruit trees, but I seem to suddenly have a list of other jobs as long as my arm to complete first so I am not sure how much digging will get done. The holes I dug last week are now just like small ponds due to filling with snow melt. 

After I published the last blog I later added a video of the sheep following the tractor. Peek back at the last blog entry if you want to see it.n 

Sheep

Well as promised I have managed to update my blog in a more timely manner this time. I first want to talk a little about sheep. Sheep seem to have a bit of a reputation of being stupid and not very interesting, however we have found this reputation to be far from the truth. The sheep all seem to have their own personality and we can just about tell them apart on a good day. Clearly they are all a bit timid and wary (they are sheep and an easy meal for any self respecting predator), however how they behave varies. Some are quite timid while others are much more brave coming forward and getting very close to us. The Ram is quite a lad. He is very tame and driven by food. He hogs any food we take out and it's hard to let the other sheep get a look in. I have to Physically keep shoving him out of the way to let the others eat. Where they really show they are not stupid is in the arena of being caught. From time to time we need to trap the sheep in a small area. For example yesterday one had managed to catch some old rusty barbed wire in it's wool, so I needed to remove it. We have some sheep hurdles (like portable gates that link together) to make an area we can herd the sheep into and trap them. However our sheep are quick learners. The first time we did it it was easy. However the sheep then learnt what the hurdles where for an became wary of them. So we have moved them around different places with different set ups trying to catch them. However if we go back and use a set up we have used already on the sheep they remember how it works, are instantly wary and therefore very difficult to catch. These sheep are far from stupid. Catching them is getting more and more difficult as there is a limit to the number of places we can set up these hurdles to catch them. Ted is completely useless as a sheepdog. However Jack (Zoe's Mum's dog) is brilliant and helped at Christmas herding them into a corner. As soon as he sees a sheep all he wants to do is herd it, it's really helpful.

I'm getting organised with the pigs, trailer is booked, I need to confirm with the abbatoir, have a weekend set aside for ham, sausage making etc. Hope you like all the snowy photos. First snow of the year and our first snow at Leconfield Grange today.

The pigs time is limited

As usual Speckled Star survived her illness. There was a few days before Christmas where it looked like she might have to go. However she soon perked up and is now happily with the rest of the chickens. The Chickens are getting better at their job and our egg count is gradually increasing. It's 4 a day some days now. Some are quite small so I wonder if Harriett's chicks (now chickens) are starting to lay.

The sheep caused us issues over Christmas as one of them gained a limp late Christmas eve. That meant that Christmas day we were all (about ten of us) chasing sheep around the field trying to get the one with the limp. Unfortunately we found that the usually tame sheep go very untame when injured and not keen on going very near people. We did however manage to get her in the end after lots of chasing around. We checked her foot and nothing seemed wrong despite a lot of limping. Typical. We needed sheep foot spray (some sort of blue anti-fungel stuff known to solve all sheeps feet issues) and were in the first of two consecutive bank holidays. So the poor sheep had to limp until the day after boxing day when I went to the vet (without the sheep) and got the spray. By getting medicine I have now triggered a vet visit to our smallholding at some stage in the future, however it hasn't happened yet. The sheep are now all well and happy and very tame again. They will often follow you around the field in case you happen to find some sheep food in your pocket. The sheep are also starting to bully Ted (our chocolate Labrador) a little. They have found if they stand around him or even move towards him he gets a bit scared and doesn't know what to do. Poor boy. If he barks at them they run away but if surrounded he seems to forget this and get a bit confused.

We have decided it is about time the pigs went. They aren't growing much any more and at 7 months old are baconers and look about ready for eating. They are really quite meaty animals when you look at them. I am still amazed though at how fast they run, although they are hardly built for it. So they have another few weeks with us and they are off. I am busy arranging the abattoir (I visited this in the summer and am happy with it), ear tags, paperwork, trailers but much more importantly how to make sausages, how we want the carcass butchered, how to make ham etc. Harriett (my oldest daughter who is eight) and I made a kilo of sausages the other day. It went pretty well and they tasted good. Would have been better with some flavourings but kids being kids she insisted they were plain. I at least managed to sneak in some salt and pepper. I had my first go at salting last week and salted a piece of belly pork for about 5 days. We then roasted it and it was pretty good and had turned pretty hammy. Both pleasing and making me feel more ready with the pig weekend we are going to have ,processing the pigs when they come back from the abbatoir. However making two pigs worth of sausages will be a lot more work than one kilo. The plan is the pigs will go off on the Monday. I should hopefully come back with blood and offal. The blood is for black pudding but as the rest of the pigs won't be there that will have to wait and the blood frozen. That means just making pate and stuff like that until the weekend when the butchered carcass comes back and lots of work begins. Note to self, buy a chest freezer quick!

We have also decided it is probably about time that the smallholding in some way starts to pay towards at least some of it's keep. So I am looking at selling a few different things and seeing what sells. My first venture is into marmalade making and selling that at farmers markets. I am in the exciting legal process of registering as a food company, and even more exciting process of completing a level two certificate in food hygene. From another angle I am going to sell some felted products online on the crafty shop Etsy. I'll keep you posted once goods go online but it'll be custom made laptop, ipad and phone cases made out of felt. I might try a few other things eventually but they're what we are going to try to start with. We could always go into meat I suppose!

This week I am digging our final strawberry patch (for now) and digging some holes for the arrival of our new fruit trees and bushes next month. I must try and write my blog more often too.

New strawberry bed in progress

Strawberry plant after being nibbled by the sheep