Back from holiday

Having been away for a week in Turkey enjoying the sunshine we are back in Yorkshire enjoying the smallholding. As always there is lots to do here at this time with vegetables and grass all growing like mad. It's great having so much veg suddenly coming through. We now have loads of beetroot, potatoes, courgettes and runner beans. The cucumbers, tomatoes and sweetcorn are almost ready and the Aubergines in the polytunnel are starting to take shape. It's pretty exciting actually growing an Aubergine, it makes the polytunnel feel like it's really worthwhile. I am starting to exhaust my courgette recipe supply though, so if anyone has any good ones then do let me know. 

Christine and Kevin did a stunning job looking after the smallholding while we were away and ended up with a far more involved job than they bargained for. Unfortunately one of our lambs got fly strike, a really nasty thing where maggots grow inside the lambs flesh. It got lots of care, attention and medicine but did not make it through, poor thing. Kevin and Michael spent the week (when not nursing sick lambs) gardening. For those of you who have followed previous blogs you may realise this is not a simple matter of a bit of delicate weeding but trying to tame a jungle and turn it into a garden. The weeds in undeveloped areas are large, tangled and everywhere. They cleared a huge area and the garden is moving further and further from being a jungle. My Mum is visiting for a few days later this week and so with her help we should be able to move even further on with it. 

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project is really starting to take shape. We now have a good few people wanting Pork for September and Pork for Christmas. If you are interested at all then get in touch as I need to know final details for both very soon. The idea (very briefly) is that to be a member you sign up for a half or quarter pig. You sign up at the beginning of the process when the new piglets arrive. You get to meet the piglets and be involved, having a say in how they are reared. At the end of it you receive very tasty, rare breed, slow grown pork. You know how the pigs were treated and have a real connection with where your food has come from. For more details see our web site www.leconfieldgrange.org This project has been an idea for a long time and is is really great to see it now starting to become a reality.

The chicks are now getting large and quite ugly. They have gone past the cute fluffy chick stage. They are now at the stubby feathers, bits of fluff here and feathers growing there stage. We can start to see which breeds we have. I believe we have one cuckoo Marran, one Light Sussex and then some others I have yet to identify. The key question is whether they are cocks (one to be a cockerel and the rest as eaters) or layers. The only way to know is either sex them at birth (a highly skilled job we can't do here) or (as we have to do) wait until they either cock a doodle doo, or lay an egg. They should do one or the other in time. As a happy coincidence as they first cock a doodle doo is a perfect time for eating them! I can't quite what I would like more, more layers or a good few chicken roasts.