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