Autumn foraging

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.