Back to the smallholding

If my last blog was a long time coming because of endless decorating the same could be said of this one due to work. Since Christmas I have been doing a good few extra hours to cover for an ill member of staff. This has been interesting and quite rewarding but as the weather has been warming I have been itching to get out onto the smallholding. Luckily a few weeks ago my working hours reduced down and I am back to doing a couple of days a week. This has given me time to get out, enjoy the weather and get some much needed jobs done.

The idea of winter on the smallholding is a chance to catch up on workshop tidying, machinery maintenance and that sort of thing. Nothing except the absolute essentials have been done over winter so we'll just have to do our best. Spring started in the polytunnel a while ago now and things are growing like crazy in there. There are various salad greens growing well, broad beans flowering and Swedes and Turnips growing nicely. I have been a bit worried about the broad beans germinating, but we had the first bees of the year in there today and they seemed to be doing their job.

Speaking of bees I have signed up for a course with the Beverley bee Keepers Association later in the year in the hope that we can have our own bees and of course honey in the near future. Imogen is particularly keen on this idea due to her love of honey. 

We have gone for 5 pigs this year, and they are all male. A bit of an increase on previous years, but we are getting low on pork and really need two for ourselves. After that the other three are for selling. Two are already sold through the CSA and I am sure we can sell one more along the way. They are Saddleback, Old Spot crosses. They are really friendly but also nice and calm. We have had a few Tamworths or Tamworth Crosses recently and they are a lot more jumpy.

We have two bottle fed lambs here at the moment kindly given to us by Steve our local sheep expert. He is lambing at the moment (we have a few weeks to go). The kids are loving bottle feeding the lambs. Now the pigs are out in the field the lambs can go into the barn at night, which is great because until last night they were in the kitchen at night which makes for a very messy kitchen in the morning. The last bottle fed lambs we had were kept on as Ewe's so will have lambs next year. There is a limit to how many breeding Ewe's we need so these bottle fed lambs will have to eventually be for the pot. Our sheep are quite large and should lamb in a few weeks. Hopefully no more surprises this year (like last year when an allegedly male sheep gave birth to a lamb). 

Tomorrow the kids and I will round up the sheep and give them their annual vaccinations and dose them with spray to keep the flies off. We also have some tomatoes to move out into the polyutnnel and a load of parsnips to plant. There is always so much going on here at this time of year.