Life for me at
Leconfield Grange seems to have slowed down a little over the last
few weeks. Harriett's birthday has now passed and we have done our
last market for a while. Leaving the markets has really freed up a
lot of time at the weekends. The kids are a bit sad they loved it.
They liked selling things and buying things. They would disappear for
hours (literally) working out how they were going to spend the £2.50
they had with them. They became experts at getting the price on
anything they wanted as low as possible. Imogen's technique of paying
for everything in coppers and counting them very slowly proved a
particularly effective one. In terms of selling things we are now
just concentrating on the Bakery, jars and Community Supported
Agriculture Pork.
The chicks we have
are doing well and getting big. They are still not full size and
still no clues yet as to which are cockerels and which will be
layers. Only time will tell. All the chickens have the run together
during the day, but the respective chicks still go back to their own
house at night at the moment. The old chickens have a new house (well
newish they have had it for a few months now) and for some reason
several of them are refusing to perch in it. That means most nights
when I go to shut their door I end up trying to get them to perch.
Trying to lean into a hen house and balance a chicken which is half
asleep on a perch is not an easy task. It doesn't always work either.
There is always a lot of flapping and squawking. One of them always
perches fine then 10 seconds later jumps off to settle to sleep in
the egg box!
The lambs are all
doing well and getting big. One of them is booked in to leave us in a
couple of weeks. It would be nice to keep them all to Hoggets (year
old) or Mutton but we just don't have the grass to manage it. The
Ewe's and Lambs are separated at the moment for weaning. We have only
had one or two escapes from the separate areas so hopefully in a
couple of weeks it should have worked. As the lambs are almost as big
as the Ewe's it was getting a bit silly them still having milk. It'll
be time to get the Ram in before too long to start the process over
again. I think second lambing season should hopefully be easier and
less stressful than the first.
I Have been busy in
the polytnnel working on a central bed in there. Until a few days ago
the centre was a messy load of grass and weeds. They are all up now
and a bed is mostly dug. Just a bit more digging to do and then I
need to make the paths around the edge and get a load of horse manure
in there. That should be ready just in time for my seedlings which
are going to need transplanting soon. Hopefully these seedlings will
be large enough to provide me with greens over winter and some plants
will go dormant and ready to grow really early in the spring like
Cauliflower. Last year we had some successes like Mizuna (a type of
mustard leaf that went mad) while over wintered carrots and beetroots
were like bullets, even once cooked. Why I decided the hot weather
last week was a good time to start digging in there I am not sure. It
was baking. This week looks much better weather for digging and
working in the shelter of the polytunnel.
Autumn is always my favorite foraging season and it's going well this year. I like the fact I can now forage in my own field. I wonder sometimes then the difference between foraging and gardening. I think I forage for things that growing naturally and I don't help them, while gardening is where I help the plants. Foraging is clearly the easier option and is coming up trumps. I have 3 gallons of Elderberry wine just fermenting, two gallons of Plum wine (I had to go further afield for the plumbs) and a load of apples ready for crab apple jelly. I am also gradually collecting Sloe's for the customary Sloe Gin and I think I might have a go at making Sloe wine to. I tried some at the Humber Bridge Market and it seemed pretty good.
