Baking and planting

I am finally feeling for the first time in about two months that I am about where I should be with planting. Back in March I was very keen, got in the seed catalogue and ordered every veg and fruit under the sun. At that stage the veg patch was little more than a grassy field. Seed planting, being a quick and fairly easy job was done in March and April with huge quantities of seeds planted. However once it came to planting them out and having beds ready the whole process got a lot slower and since then there has constantly been far more seedlings to plant out than I have prepared space for or have time to do. However finally after a days digging yesterday I have almost caught up with myself and there are only a few seedlings now left needing planting out. All of this has meant that most things have gone out rather late so fingers crossed about how it goes.

Some things are growing really well. Strawberries which I got in last year are producing loads of fruit despite the slugs and being nibbled by the sheep twice earlier in the year. Broads beans are coming on well as are peas beetroot and sweetcorn. Lettuce as usual is varied with some doing well and others being a constant battle with my arch enemy the slug. All the Brassicas I have tried to plant (Kale, Brussel sprouts, broccoli) has all been destroyed by a combination of slug attack and being dug up by birds. I'm giving up on them until next year when I am going to need a serious plan to keep them alive. It is quite nice at the moment to have fresh salad leaves every day and fresh strawberries every other day.

Our tractor mower is still at the menders with a new part coming over from the states to get it going again. I suppose having a thirty year old tractor will mean it's parts wear out and they won't always be the easiest to get hold of. It is a slow job keeping the grass down with a push petrol mower so I am hoping the part arrives soon.
I have started selling bread locally between markets. I have managed to sell a few loaves just in the first few days so that's a good start. It's the market again in just over a week and after a bit of a slow one last month we are really gearing up to have a good day there. I have just made some Elderflower cordial today so I am hoping it will be warm on market day as it's a perfect drink for a hot day. I am also hoping to make a load of Elderflower delight (like Turkish delight) before then to sell.

The girls have decided they want to show Mary and Tilly (the two lambs we bottle reared) at the Driffield Show. So for the last three days they have twice a week popped a halter on them and tried to pursuade the lambs that they want to go where they are told. Harriett has found from the start that Tilly is being quite uncooperative and is not keen on being dragged anyewhere. She is however quite keen on dragging Harriett around where possible. Imogen is having more luck and Mary seems to be a little more coopertiave and certainly at the first attempt she walked happily with Imogen. However as the days have gone on she seems to have got slightly more awkward and is taking a bit more cajoling to stop just eating grass and actually walk somewhere.

It has been pretty busy and hectic recently and I am quite looking forward to the summer holidays, although I can feel already things beginning to calm down as we head towards them.

Keeping up with the weeds and slugs

The lambs now are growing really fast. They are spending more and more time together and away from their Mums. They are usually found in a group sleeping or playing together as a four. They are very playful and are often jumping, climbing or running around together. Their mothers still look like goats with their lack of wool, but our shearer did such a neat job they look quite good still. Our last adult who has not had any lambs is definitely male, as became much more obvious once he was sheared. He is destined for the pot very soon and so we can then have our first lamb meat. I believe at 18 months they still count as lamb. I would like to keep some until they are mutton to try but we only have limited grass so this might be tricky. We are trying to work out at the moment how many we can keep over winter as the amount of winter grass is limited. 

Mary and Tilly the orphaned lambs are currently living in with the chickens. Out tractor mower is at the menders and so the grass in their and other places is getting rather high. So I've sent the lambs in to try and bring it down. They are working on it slowly, but I did notice today that they have started to make a dent on it. The grass is so high in there it's easy to loose the chickens and they have warn little chicken paths in various places through the grass and nettles. 

Our pigs seem to be permanently hungry, more so than the last pigs we have. You seem to have to pop a bit of food over the fence before going in with them otherwise they try and nibble at your ankles. They are happily settled and showing no more signs of escaping. They have started seriously rooting up their run and apart from the toilet area, all the grass is gone. However there are a few green areas where nettles and Thistles grow that they don't seem to like.

We now have a cleared out a barn we are converting into a small shop. It is quite nice inside panelled out in wood, not just stone and spiders webs. I am hoping we can open this fairly soon, I did even got my first customer in the shop yesterday. 

The Hay Festival we went to was really interesting. The kids got to meet lots of authors and illustrators. They managed to get their pigs drawn by one of the illustrators and so we have the picture now at home. I found a talk about beer which I thought was great. Books of course can be about everything and so this lady had written a book about beer and her talk included tastings. Who could argue? We also took our Canoe down the river Wye a couple of times while we were there. It was nice to have a break, but equally good to get back home at the end. Especially as Kevin and Christine (who had been looking after the animals) had cleaned up the back patio in our absence. It looks fantastic now.

 It was amazing how much everything had grown in the week we had been away.

The polytunnel and plants are coming on well although it's a constant battle with the slugs at the moment. They are everywhere. Last month I tried parasitic worms but they didn't seem to have much effect. I am now onto slug pellets. I have always avoided these in the past due to their effect on other wildlife, but I have done some research and found some organic ones that seem to manage to kill off the slugs without effecting the rest of the food chain (apart from the fact that there are less slugs). I am hoping that these will at least make a dent in the huge slug population that we seem to have in the field. I sometimes worry I am getting a bit slug obsessed. Zoe thinks I am. But the little buggers do just eat the little seedlings that plant out having looked after them for weeks.

I think it's sausage making at the weekend as we have run out and have a freezer full of meat to turn into sausages. Hopefully I'll have finally planted out all the seedlings soon as well, it's starting to get quite late.