Well, sincere apologies for lack of blogging. Open Farm Sunday was a resounding success with our visitor numbers reaching 4 figures…. wow, had we known that would we have done it? Anyway we all survived with the help of so many kind volunteers who gave their time and knowledge freely.
OPEN FARM SUNDAY
We had an inch of rain on Sunday morning in a very short time, I just wanted to get back into bed after waking at 6am, I was so worried about the day. I only went to bed after midnight after stuffing carrier bags for 3 hours with some very kind friends and family who joined in to help this laborious task.
However fifteen minutes before our gates were to open a streak of blue sky appeared and we actually had a fine day, which made all the difference. It was wonderful to see so many happy smiling people enjoying the animals and machines and we hope they learnt something about how their food is produced.
Well, we are already planning for next year now - 13th June 2010 – while the clearing up and taking down of displays goes on and we will have a major de-brief when we get time.
The new piglets all arrived in time and I hope to put a pic on soon. We have more visits this week of school groups and pre-school while we are still set up for visitors and the concrete yards are so clean. It truly seems that the work of a farmer is never done and it is no longer just about producing food - sharing knowledge and improved public relations seem to be just as important.
The ladies-in-waiting are still waiting and I feel extremely foolish for announcing we’d have piglets last weekend, however I was guided by the date the vendor gave me for the Tamworth. I really hope one of them will oblige in time for our Open Farm Sunday next weekend.
It is another lovely sunny day and there is no sign of rain. Three hours of rain is all we have had this week and although we all love to work outside in the warm and the dry conditions it has actually been very windy and this combined with the lack of rain is now becoming worrysome.
We are waging war on the pigeons, who have homed in and attacked our well grown brassicas and netting the long strip may be the only answer. Jethro has managed to reduce numbers by shooting a few of the pesky things, but then others come. I wonder how pigeons tell each other where the tasty greens are so that more and more come? Jethro has even tried out a farm scale battery powered noisy bird scarer. The effect of this weird noise [like a wonky burglar alarm] was to simply upset all the sheep in the field opposite, cause the fattening cattle to stampede and irritate us and the dogs so much we eventually had to turn it off.
The beans and the squashes still need planting out hopefully today and tomorrow. Food production, we still love it but as always it remains challenging at times.
There was a new lamb last night, and there can’t really be many more to come. The lambs look well [a dry year always suits lambs] and the sheep and lambs have had their dose of clik to prevent flystrike. We had had two sheep mildly affected by maggots, and they were treated with insecticide to kill the maggots and eggs. As we deliberately lamb late in the season there is always a balance to keep between leaving the sheep in peace or rounding them up to apply the Clik. Rounding up sheep with small lambs is not easy. Every year is different but the sunnier weather has hatched a lot of flies.
No piglets yet! Did we put her off by cooking roast ham for Saturday lunch? The due date given was Sunday and the signs were there but she is hanging on… Now we wonder which of the three ladies-in-waiting will be first?
The Tamworth has made a giant straw nest, this morning, and hidden herself behind this wall of straw… so we’ll keep checking.
Meanwhile it has rained for about 3 hours today and we planted all the brassicas and sweetcorn out yesterday.
We now need more rain and less pigeons who have already homed in on our little plants, shredding and consuming their growing leaves as part of a May day feast.
I expect the Tamworth gilt to have her very first piglets by tomorrow so I am spending the day trotting between the garden and her pen and to cheer her up along the way I am bearing little gifts of weeds [fat hen] and shot lettuces.
In the meanwhile my Jethro has just resorted to the largest scale farm machinery he has in order to prepare the brassica bed for planting out of the many seedlings. The untilled ground in the veg garden has set like cement and the rotavator, which he normally uses could not cope with the rock hard ground. I hope to post a picture later it is really too funny to see!
However, the total lack of precipitation is beginning to look very serious with yields of grain, hay, silage and British grown vegetables all predicted to be well down. We may enjoy the dry weather to work in every day but by golly the land needs the rain. Even if we get a lot of rain now it may actually be too late for some crops. A very dry April AND May is unusual.
We’ve had bees swarming this week and new calves born almost every day while the raging tide of new lambs has ebbed to a trickle and it will soon be time to vaccinate the lambs for bluetongue.
The-boar-that-fired-blanks has been renamed. He is now the-boar-that-works-very-well as we now have our two sows due to farrow any minute from the look of them and a Tamworth gilt bought in specially [so we'd have piglets for the open day] is due tomorrow or Monday.
So I am off this morning to ride another horse and escape this mad place for a just few hours grace.
The rest of the weekend when not seeing to these pregnant animals will be spent planting out several hundred veggie seedlings. Sweetcorn, cauli, broccoli, cabbage, red cabbage, beans, lettuce, and then we will have to water. We have a large tank which holds the run off from the grain store roofs. The onions planted some weeks back hace done nothing, it is simply too dry.
We use a Norwegian based weather forecast and they predict a lot of rain on Monday but the Met office does not. I wonder who will be themost accurate. I have a dear friend in the USA who says all the weather forecasters are simply ‘weather guessers’… Time will tell.
Clearly I spoke to soon when I wrote yesterday about the lack of problems in the cows. I tempted fate. After all this time in farming I should know better!
We were checking the livestock and tagging the latest lambs out in the fields when we noticed one of the heifers calving. She appeared to be in no hurry, which is normal for a heifer, and as we meandered about the four fields nearest to her catching lambs and tagging and tailing them we realised she really was not progressing in the usual fashion.
It is hard to explain how, after a lifetime of stockmanship, exactly how we know there is a problem, but we did. Maybe she just looked wrong, and she certainly was not getting on with the job – walking around and standing rather than lying down and pushing. Further checking at closer quarters showed we could only find one foot, a front foot. The normal presentation for a calf’s birth is two feet and a head, although almost every year we get a breech [backwards with back feet first].
Jethro and I were a mile and a half from home in a very large field with no means of either catching or restraining the heifer in a small enclosure. There was only one thing to do. Walk her gently and slowly back to the farm. We did this and she was very good and very quiet, six fields we crossed, as gate by gate was shut behind her and then we had a good half mile of open countryside and wheat fields to cross. Every so often along the way she would stop at a trough for a drink and perhaps manage a a few contractions before setting off again but her progress was good. Eventually Jethro ambled her across the last wheat field on the diagonal as I buzzed round in the vehicle to get all the right gates either open or shut back at the farm to get her straight into the yard and in to our cattle handling pens.
The heifer was very amenable to our handling of her which was fantastic and quite remarkable when you think that we bought her as a yearling and she has lived out in our fields for two years since then and she is not really used to close handling excpet for the occasional treatment for parasites and vaccinations such as bluetongue. And receiving extra rations to supplement the grass in the winter.
The heifer did not want to go in the cattle crush so we kept her in a pen and put a rope halter on her and tied her to the gate. Jethro rolled his sleeves up and put a long veterinary glove on and we poured the lubrication gel all over his hand and arm. It was not hard to discover why she couldn’t calve herself. The calf’s right leg was pinned back on the the far side of the cervix, and with some careful manoeuvring between contractions Jethro tweaked it forward. We now had a normal presentation for birth, however the heifer was getting tired and the calf appeared to be quite big.
The next step was to attach calving ropes to the two front legs just above the fetlock [ankle] joints. After doing that and holding them firmly every time the cow pushed we attached the calving aid. This is a very clever machine that fits the rear end of a cow very neatly. The ropes are attached one each side of the central pole on a rachet. As the cow pushes and the calf emerges millimetre by millimetre the rachet is gently tightened. This allows the heifer to give birth naturally without the calf slipping back in every time the contractions ease. As soon as the calf’s head is out in the outside world the ropes are taken off the rachet and the calf’s weight is supported as the heifer naturally pushes the calf out. This way the calf has the best chance to breathe on delivery and the heifer has the best chance of not being damaged internally during her first birth.
In our long farming careers Jethro and I have both seen these calving aids used on other farms in a very cavalier manner whereby the calf is forced out a very fast rate and the potential damage done to the cow is almost unimaginable, and we think that this is a most terrible practice and one that needs stopping. We firmly believe it is a balance of helping the cow and keeping the calf alive but we also reckon that using nature and the contractions to our advantage is the best way.
If we can’t ever calve a cow, which happens occasionally, then we ask the vet to come. I think we have only had 2 or 3 Caesarians in all the years we’ve farmed, and all these cows have eventually gone on to give birth normally the next year.
The calf arrived and was laid gently on the clean concrete while we untied the cow. Although it was her first calf, the young cow immediately knew to lick the calf and loved her instantly. We fetched a thick pad of straw, peeled off the outside of a large round bale, to lay under the calf to give grip and padding for when the calf tried to stand, which would only be a matter of minutes. Then we had a much needed cup of tea. We’d first arrived in the field at at 2pm and now it was 5.30pm
When we came back out, full of tea and biscuits, both mother and daughter were curled up, resting together on the improvised straw island. Later, after checking the other groups of cows and sheep on we found the calf had suckled and received the vital colostrum so we tucked them up together for their first night in a clean, newly strawed byre with a feed of crushed home grown barley for Mum.
Some tasks in farming are hard work and difficult but very, very satisfying.
Tomorrow they will go back out to grass and eventually be taken back to the herd by trailer. However, as this cow is such a sweetheart and so very placid we have decided to have her on display in a pen on Open Farm Sunday so that all the visitors can see a cow and calf, really close at hand.
Well the rain arrived on Thursday night, in fierce bursts leaving us in a warm murky pool of humidity. Not enough rain yet, Jethro says, to do good and it fell so fast and so hard yesterday morning that it ran off the land and along the roads and is now filling up the pond. At least from the kitchen window the vegetable garden gives the impression of being damp at last and perhaps the onions planted two weeks ago will start to grow?
It is not just rain that is falling fast – new calves are arriving almost daily. So far without too much trouble [fingers crossed], one heifer [a young cow, calving for the first time] needed help, last week, late at night in the dark. The calf was almost out and swinging from her rear end with his hips held fast at the narrowest point of the heifer’s pelvis. A good pull and the bull calf was out, safe and sound. It is unusual for a calf to get stuck at this point because a calf’s head and shoulders are usually the widest and most difficult part to push through the birth passage but because we were there all was well and neither calf nor heifer were distressed. .
Cows are totally occupying our minds just now. With Open Farm Sunday coming up we are working on our displays and activities. We are building two model cows in order that anyone, but particularly the children, may try their hand at milking. There is however one problem the instructions have no measurements and no one here has any artistic talents. We are getting there by degrees, enlarging this cow piece by piece.. but hope that FACE may come up with the actual measurements soon. It does not even say how tall to make the beast! I am sure it will all be fine, in the end, but we all do wish at times at least one of us had the ability to pick up a pen and draw a cow or a sheep or a pig…
I had a drive round all the grassland last night checking the sheep and the cattle before dark as we do every day at this time of the year.
It is extraordinary how the land has dried out and the grass is already burning off. The narrow sheep tracks which criss cross the chalky pastures are already browned off, and the ancient grassed roads in the old parkland are looking yellow instead of green and we are still in mid-May. Looking at the grass closely, one would guess we were in August, as the growth of new grass is not currently keeping pace with the rate at which it is grazed.
650 acres of grass seems like a lot of grazing until the rain stops falling. According to my diary, two years ago we were almost swimming at this time of the year with inches and inches of rain that never stopped falling. It sure looks like it’s already shaping to be a dry year.
Why has there been such a long a gap in my blog entries .. not due to any shenanigans on my part that’s for sure. And there it was again on Sunday - in You magazine, the very same topic .
Laugh, we haven’t stopped! Well, in between wondering what expenses will next be charged to the public purse by over 600 professional persons and simply coping with all the after effects of all the sex and all the seeds.
Yes, I did say SEX, but sex is as normal an occupation for animals as breathing or eating. Sex, or service as it is often referred to in the farmyard, happens a lot in our herds and in our flock and Spring is the main time of the year for us to reap the consequences. It is just as well, putting it simply, if there was ‘no service’, they’d be no animals and we wouldn’t be farmers.
So far we have had over 300 lambs and are already in double figures for calves. We have one young pig due from 24th May and another two sows now do look to be in pig [fingers crossed]. We have a lot more calves due and still about sixty sheep to lamb.
The ‘dodgy boar’ may not be dodgy after all, he can be forgiven though as he was however young when he met the ‘muddy girls’ and a complete virgin, so perhaps it took him longer to put the pieces of the jigsaw correctly together. They are after all out door, and very free range, pigs and it has become clearer to me quite why some rare breeds are so rare! The friendly boar has has a ’stay of execution’ and will get another chance to sow his seeds again if the two sows produce good litters of piglets. We are all hoping all will be well and he will go on to be a champion sire.
And while I am on the subject of seeds I can report that the arable crops are doing well and I have a forest of tomatoes waiting to be turfed out into the unheated greenhouse from the ancient conservatory. However as the greenhouse is currently full of seedlings [caulilower, red cabbage, broccoli, leeks, lettuce, cabbage, more cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli, and sweetcorn] ready for the large vegetable garden, and the large garden is waiting for Jethro and his rotavator it may still take some time. I have resorted to feeding fertilser to the plant plugs that look sad to avoid the work and expense of totally repotting so many plugs just before outdoor planting.
At the weekend I sowed lettuce, radish, more lettuce , basil , carrot, spinach, swiss chard and hoed all the onions and garlic. I have been late with the sunflowers and have had complete failures of certain types of courgettes and runner and dwarf beans. So bad were the failures that I have wondered if they were all sown in the same bag of compost. The beans and courgette seeds just vanished. Normally I have very green fingers and it is very unusual for germination to fail and on such a scale. The later resowing of beans are just erupting now so it looks second time lucky for them. It is too soon however to see if the new courgette seeds have worked but the one courgette plant I bought early on from a road side stall for fifty pence is almosty in production so next year I must be much earlier for the indoor ones.
We are now desperate for rain here. It appears to be the sort of year where the grey clouds come and are swept away on these strong cold easterly winds. Jethro says this is a farm that either gets all the rain or none, and after two washout years in succession this could be the latter.
Our pig saga continues. Having replaced our very rare boar that perhaps had not done as he should with an older, proven close relative of his [his Uncle], we now discover that perhaps he had actually been alright after all.
A few more weeks should hopefully produce the evidence we desperately need. In the meantime his immediate death sentence has been lifted and he is now amusing himself in the empty cattle shed digging for tasty treats of old barley that had fallen behind the troughs where the cattle couldn’t reach.
The cattle were turned out this week too and we had a major rodeo as we let over fifty cattle out on to the lush spring grass. Every year is reassuringly the same – the cattle trumpet their joy at being let out as they run down the road kicking their heels in the air. It never fails to lifts one’s heart especially as the task of feeding them twice daily with home grown cereals and homegrown hay or silage is lifted. One old farmer friend used to state: ” The day of bondage is ended for another year”, until November when it all starts again with the next batch of calves to be weaned.
While examining the sows who are very quiet and really quite tame for pigs I made the terrible mistake of stepping over one very friendly girl to try to read her ear tattoo. I had one leg on each side of this chattering supine pig [who always chunters away as if she is having a full conversation] this proved to be a major error. Even with my glasses on I struggled to read the number and she got a bit fed up with me turning her ear inside out and peering at her. So she stood up. As a full grown sow this meant I was now completely astride the pig, with no way for my feet to reach the ground. “Uh oh” I thought “this could be painful”.. and with my hands I pushed down on her back to try to ease myself off her. This extra pressure to her to her meant “go” and she shot off across the orchard to join her friends with me on her back. “What are you doing?” came the cry from across the pens.. “Trying to get off” said I. Shock turned to laughter, both from those on the ground and from me on top of the pig, which made it worse as I couldn’t laugh and get off at the same time.
The sow decided she’d had enough - and gave a sharp turn to the left and humped her back firmly depositing me onto my knees on the hard ground. My pride took the greatest fall, although more than a week on I still bear the bruises, and I definitely won’t being doing that again..
We’ve just had a bird survey done by a RSPB volunteer. It is very interesting to read the results however as it is done at a specific time over a 3+ hour period it can only be a snapshot of the birdlife here at Prosperous Farm.
The list includes: Blackbird, Blackcap, Black headed gull, Blue tit, Carrion crow, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Collared dove, Dunnock, Goldfinch, Great tit, Green woodpecker, Greenfinch, Grey partridge, House sparrow, Jackdaw, Lapwing, Linnet, Long tailed tit, Mallard, Meadow pipit, Moorhen, pheasant, Red-legged partridge, Robin, Rook, Skylark, Swallow, Whitethroat, Wood pigeon, Wren, and Yellow hammer.
In the same week that this survey was done we saw both Buzzards and Red kites, heard the Cuckoo and the Little owl call as well as the Song thrush sing in the garden. Several Canada geese also visited the pond, we heard them long before we actually saw them, and there have been so many Magpies around that the imminent arrival of the next generation in the family has worked out first to be a girl and then a boy.
It is rewarding to know that the conservation work we are doing is helping to maintain and increase the flora and fauna. We now have a whole meadow of Cowslips and have recently shut the gate to keep the livestock stock out. We will only open it for grazing later in the season in order to preserve these delightful spring plants.
I hope when it is my time to leave this earth it is peaceful and quick, and not right in the middle of a public footpath.
Sheep are notorious for their ease of dying, and today one very pregnant ewe died suddenly, in the middle of the footpath, in full glare of the warm spring sun. It must have been quick, she had not struggled as the ground was not on this occasion torn up by thrashing limbs, and there were no obvious clues as to her demise, plus she looked perfectly alright yesterday.
However the warm sun shining on her once active body attracted flies by the multitude and the usually pleasant [if you like animals] warm sheep smell resonant of lanolin and grass is soon replaced by something very distinct that cloys in the nose and throat, and is best avoided.
It is in the nature of farming and working with livestock which inevitably leads to coping with deadstock some of the time. We have a large on-farm incinerator which we are licensed to use for sheep and as I write this she is now a cloud of smoke in the previously clear April sky.
Unfortunately after the excitement of last week and the thought that perhaps I had at last found the right horse, it was just not meant to be.
A delightful ride out, unaccompanied, which made my heart sing while my head firmly told me that this delightful little horse was too green to be considered. If he had had another 6 months riding out then the result would probably be just what I am looking for.
I have also sadly discounted the other one who had up to now run a close second. My head told me she was good and steady but my heart wasn’t really interested in her.. funny how vitally important it is for the two to be in unison.
As I have said before finding a good horse is like finding a good husband or wife… very difficult but it can be done. Although unfortunately for many it is not always first time, and there is always the settling down period for all parties whether they have four legs or two.
Good sheepdogs fall into this same category and right now we are still looking for one of those as our good old girl has finally retired from the field, she is still very fit in body but her mind is not as it was. Her life span is not however guaranteed as she has taken to chasing vehicles and biting tyres in a big way and can no longer be easily stopped. The Manitou wheels are her favourite this week and just when she has a big chunk of tyre in her teeth, the machine often goes into reverse. We have tried everything we can to prevent her doing this but we do still allow her out in the yard when we are there to take her chance otherwise she’d be shut in all day and she’d hate that.
Anyway, I am not too downhearted over horses and am just off to ride another one today. What could be better than riding in the glorious sunshine? Even with over two hours to drive each way.
Like before, on the phone, this horse sounds good and could be what we are looking for, but I no longer read too much into what people tell me. I ride it and handle it before deciding what to do next.
Sleeping on a difficult decision is always useful too. When young I was particularly hopeless at this, but age has helped to temper my impetuous nature a little, and I am optimistic that there is a little horse out there somewhere with our name on it.
The lambs continue to arrive in a steady flow, helped along by the glorious weather, and Ruby is over her mastitis and providing us with milk once more.
POSTSCRIPT: this is my 100th Post! When I started to blog I had no idea how quickly 100 posts would come around. Time passes quickly in our busy lives and the words seem to flow from the fingers quickly too. Thank you to all my readers and particularly those who are kind enough to take the time to comment.
Another two calves and a lot more lambs have been born today. Lovely sunshine here but still a cold wind.
The plants in the greenhouse are doing really well. If we don’t get a move on in the actual veg garden they will be huge by the time we are able to plant them. Even the first 24 sweetcorn plants have popped up in their individual pots yesterday, it is wonderful to see new growth and new life all around and to be part of it.
However, before we can plant out my seedlings we must do something about some of the hens. A few of them laugh at the electric fence and spend all day in the veg garden. I tried to shut them in last night and planned take the scissors to their wings this morning and up the charge on the electric fence as well. We also need to find where two are laying because it is not in the snug nest box and I know I am short of eggs.
Mmmmm… my plans did not go very well. I’d cleaned out and disinfected one hen house yesterday using Jeyes fluid as we seem to have an outbreak of red mite and I have opened up the other hen house for them. I use these two houses in rotation with a major disinfection and long rest period in between each use.
At bed time I find four out of the five hens sitting on the disinfected hen house in a huddle. In the dark I manage to take three of them [one at a time] to the ’clean’ house. One hen was missing, not sure where she slept despite shining torches in all the trees, and the other naughty hen refused to be caught. But there were still five hens scavenging this morning and yes you’ve guessed it – two of them [ the two I can't catch] back in the veggie garden.. this led to the word “gun” being mentioned by Jethro at breakfast.. this usually comes out for pigeons and rabbits.
Almost a week has passed since I last blogged and it has been another really busy week. Lambing is now properly underway, and we have had another calf born safely. We’ve had three calves so far this spring and it is lovely to see them skipping in the sunshine.
Unusually, I have driven almost 1000 miles this week either viewing and riding horses to replace the previous horse who didn’t settle, or undertaking farm business. I am quite glad to be at home today for once even though I have been working flat out since 6am..
I think I have found a suitable horse for riding around the farm and hope to return on Monday for one more ride on him before agreeing to one month’s trial. It has been very hard to choose between two particular horses [ and of course they were 200 miles apart] after looking at and riding many equines over the last few weeks.
Only two were not as described in their particulars, or by their owner [with one, I should have remembered to ask about feet before doing a 250 mile round trip], and we have seen a huge variety of types and breeds, but it has finally come down to a choice of two and after next week I hope to be able to write more about the experience.
I have however met some lovely people along the way. The trust that has been shown to us, to take horses out unaccompanied and alone by someone that they don’t really know [or have any idea if we can ride] has been amazing and a very important part of the process. One little horse was almost discounted as when rode her for the first time, in the company of other horses, she almost went to sleep. Taking her out on her own, a month later, was much better, however I think she will probably be the last losser… but I am trying to be very objective about the whole process and have also taken advice. If the two finalists could have merged together I believe we’d truly have the perfect steed, but I guess that only happens in dreams.
We have also had a farm walk this week with fifty visitors of all ages. These educational visits are brilliant for making us have a major tidy up around all the buildings. Perhaps it is time for visitors in the farmhouse too… but since the Dining room is already overflowing with educational material for OPEN FARM SUNDAY, perhaps it will have to wait. It is always very interesting to us to hear new questions from the public about what we do, and to see how they act when visiting a farm. There are always a few people who think they can go anywhere they like on the premises and others who make the day for us by being so polite, patient and so very interesting.
All the plants that were potted on last weekend have grown on well, and I still hope to plant the onion setts very soon but must be careful not to over do the bending.. all our backs are creaking right now and we are all queuing up for the chiropractor. The cauliflower seeds have come up in record time but I am slightly confused by the instructions in the gardening book and no longer sure if we are growing late summer ones or early winter ones.. so long as we can eat them in due course that is all that matters.
PS: Poor Ruby has mastitis again, and is back on the intramammary tubes. We had to rush out and buy milk for the house, and hope she will be better soon. She has been turned out with the bull by day and is back in her byre at night. We hope to be back on her milk by Wednesday as we always go over the reccommended withdrawal period for all medicines.
Once again the days seem to have have flown and I have a gap in my regular blogging. This is partly due to the workload here and also from a much needed few days away from the farm.
The grass and crops are growing well and the sheep start lambing this week. We’ve had 2 calves born so far, and more due very soon. The greenhouse and conservatory are very full of plants waiting for the milder weather to plant out. 500 onion setts await immediate planting [ they only arrived last week by post] but since it has rained all over the weekend I have caught up with transplanting tomato and cucumber seedlings and sowing the sweetcorn, courgette, pumpkin and squash seeds under cover of glass instead.
We are also deep into planning for Open Farm Sunday and LEAF have sent us many packets of seeds to distribute to the children when they visit the farm. These seed packets are provided by DEFRA and in our large batch seem to be predominantly red pepper seeds. There is also Rocket, Cress and Basil but as a seasoned gardener and grower of veg from seed I am very surprised by the choice of seeds since these packets are meant to encourage children to grow things. How many children actually like Rocket and how many will have the patience to try to grow peppers?
The day itself is not until 7th June, and that to my mind is late in the season for growing peppers. I have some grown from seed planted earlier this year that are ready to finally pot on now and I have planted the Defra pepper and basil seeds which arrived this week in the hope that we will at least have plants on display. Nearer the time I shall sow cress and rocket for the BIG DAY. I now have even more seed packets coming from another source, quick growing lettuce this time. If we don’t use them all I shall send them in to the local schools so they will be used up. I expect the numbers of visitors we will get on the day will depend almost entirely on the weather.
There is so much to think about for this big open day from First Aid cover to portaloos to catering and just what will interest our visitors and most worryingly will we have enough helpers? We will all be adding events management to our CV’s and do seem to be managing all this quite well without having a degree in the subject. Between us we just have several lifetimes of experience, an understanding of Health and Safety and buckets of common sense!
I am able to update the blog now as we were literally just about to go out to weigh the cattle from the sheds and administer their bluetongue vaccine booster but the heavens have opened in a sudden deluge and instead I find I have a few spare minutes to quickly tap the keys before starting another large task. It is very cold, and very wet and I think I am now not sorry to be stuck indoors.
The 400 acres of drilled spring corn and our first row of early potatoes in the garden will benefit from the rain. Unfortunately we had not quite finished rolling all the arable seed beds after drilling, but as we have had a run of almost perfect weather there are few complaints. Within five minutes of the squall arriving the tractor drivers have phoned in to say they are now returning to the yard.
Our first suckler calf of the season, a heifer, was born on Saturday and is doing well, although her mother is currently not in the greatest shape and is under the care of the vet. This particular cow had lost condition and has had blood tests to try to work out what is wrong when she is eating well and well in herself but she is lacking in condition. We knew she isn’t ill, as such, as she gave the vet and I such a run around in the yard on Thursday when he came out to examine her. Eventually, after several attempts of nearly getting her to the gate [even with food] only to have her return to the far end of the yard we had to let out Ruby the pet cow out in order to get them both up the race and into the cattle crush.
Persuading Ruby back into her byre after the patient was safely penned was slightly perilous too. It is Ruby’s first time out of the byre this winter and in the warm sunshine she was very frisky. I waved a bucket with food in the bottom from the end of the yard and she is so greedy that she galloped up the concrete, flat out, kicking her heels out to one side as she ran. I stopped her quite easily but then rather lost my nerve to continue with persuading her to go back to bed as her byre was still some distance away and she was desperate to get at the food even if it meant barging into me. I handed the bucket to Jethro [who had just arrived] and he grasped it, rather like the baton in a relay race, and sped down the yard with his naughty red heifer galloping flat out after him…
I had a laundry disaster this morning while washing the white coats which we wear for meat sales… I mistakenly left a black ball point pen in the coat pocket, even though I had checked the pockets. On removing the washing from the machine, while avoiding the puppy’s razor like teeth, an black inky mess stood out from the bright whiteness of the coats resulting in a huge groan from yours truly.
Then, I had a brainwave from something I had seen on the Victorian Farm. In the programme which covered washday and laundry [which took all week and nothing else could have been done] a dim memory flashed through my neurons at lightening speed. MILK! Long before the age of modern detergents milk had been used to remove ink.
As we have a house cow and we have plenty of spare milk I soaked the two white coats in five litres of milk for over two hours and duly washed again at 60′ with my usual persil non-bio plus a whitener. Result. I hung the coats out in the sunshine and instead of black streaks all over I just have a couple of stubborn very small ink marks which I think is a really great result.
The sun is still shining and the grass is growing well while all the time the tractors are still rolling on the arable land.
The growth of the new grass is much easier to measure on the other side of the fence as it is nibbled immediately within the field boundaries. The ram lambs still come for their daily feed home grown barley but are less keen for it which is a sure sign of the coming of the spring grass.
The stock work is piling up with vaccinations due, cattle still to be weighed and all manner of sheep to be moved to fresh grazing on previous set aside to give the sheep a natural nutritional boost while at the same time home resting the home pastures before lambing.
There are just not enough hours in the day or enough manpower available at the same time to get through all the urgent tasks at the exact time they need to be done. The pressure we are all feeling, from the arable and livestock sides of the business, is so typical of mixed farming systems in the spring and autumn. After all these years we ought to be either hardened to it or have come up with a better plan but we haven’t yet and everything usually works out fine in the end.
The boar appears much better and will now be used on 3 of our girls.
The cattle can clearly smell the grass growing and know spring is almost here. This morning they are running about in their open sided sheds kicking their heels in the bright, warm sunshine. Tomorrow we will weigh them and calculate their daily liveweight gain over the winter and for the oldest beef animals estimate their time of dispatch. Our wonderfully patient beef customers are getting a little restless and I promised them an update on when their beef boxes will be ready.
In the meantime I have just weighed and selected another eight lambs to send this week and this afternoon we will be checking on the progress of the fattening pigs, however I am sure they will be a few weeks off yet. Our fattening lambs are almost gone for another year and come mid April we will be delivering the new crop.
Progress on the arable front is good too with the drilling almost done and the fertiliser application on the wheat making good progress.
In the meantime the hired boar has arrived and is firmly in quarantine. This is not our first experience of hiring boars and we are frequently dismayed to find that some rare breed pigs are apparently kept in indifferent conditions. We are not sure he is even fit for the purpose he came for. Personally this morning I think he still looks poor, and we are debating whether to even try him or just send him back. He was dosed with Dectomax, an anti parasite injection, before we even took him off the trailer as he has arrived with what looks to us rather like both mange and worms, still his appetite is good and that is always a good thing with pigs. Pigs who are not eating is usually a sign of something terminal. Keeping these rare breeds going is not at all easy but we are determined to get it right and make a really good job of it, I just wish every other rare breed pig keeper tried to do the same.
In the meantime we’ve found a boar of the same line as our sterile one and can fetch him very soon. This will be good because we really prefer to have a closed herd, which makes us much less vulnerable to outbreaks of parasites and disease. It also means we are totally responsible for the pigs’ management and we prefer to do that too.
I have bad news and good news: First the bad news – I clearly spoke too soon on the drilling front as the very clever little box of ’chips’ which calculates the correct seed rate has gone on the blink and is causing MAJOR problems for Jethro. The original seed drill was so much simpler.
Now the good news is I just walked past the hired boar’s box and he is shouting for his tea already.
Drilling has started again for the spring sown crops of barley.
And the sex life of the pigs, or rather the total lack of pregnant pigs, has been a talking point here for the last few days. There has appeared to be plenty of action and semen out in the paddocks for the last few months but finally no actual piglets to show for it! We wish we could afford a pregnancy scanner.
A new boar has been collected and hired as we found our boar was sterile… the new boy is now in a loose box ’in quarantine’ away from our girls and he will remain isolation until we have dosed him for worms and external parasites and made sure he is not infected with anything nasty. Then he can have 2 lovely piggy ladies this month, and another two next month.
By then we shall have another boar of our own, and this one will be able to go back. We don’t want all 9 lovely ladies all to give birth at once because it could make selling the pork in one go too difficult.
If we can, with a fully working boar, stagger the farrowing right then the customer list usually seems to keep pace with the production, or at least that is the plan. In the meantime we shall have to buy a few weaners from our friends to keep us going. We have 15 home bred rare breed fatteners coming along niceley outdoors at the moment and they are expected to start to be ready from May onwards.
Time will tell if all these ’seeds’ will develop into new crops of barley and piglets… or whether the sex lives of the Prosperous Farm pigs will eventually become a cult read… watch this blog…
Yesterday we felt as if we experienced all four seasons in one day.
We awoke to a bright spring like morning with brilliant sunshine that warmed up the old conservatory to a summery 22′C. We have lots of seeds already growing in there for the garden.
In the afternoon the weather deteriorated with a severe wintry storm with a lot of hailstones and the day was rounded up with a dark autumnal windy evening. Weird.
The horse went back to Wales this afternoon, very sadly she never settled here in her new home. However I think she has taken a piece of my heart back with her and in all honesty I can say that not all the horses I have had in my life have done that.
We have moved some pigs around today and it is amazing to see how high a fully grown young sow (gilt) can jump while they are working out the electric fencing system. They get used to the ‘hot’ wires pretty quickly and it means they can live the life that is best for a pig, outdoors and rooting all the day long.
Last night Ruby had more suspicious clots perhaps indicating a continuation of the mastitis in one quarter of her udder so we stripped it out [milked] by hand and put in another veterinary cream tube, and again this morning. We will just have to see what tomorrow brings.
The Noroclav cream syringes filled with both antibiotic and anti-inflammatory in the form of prednisolone have worked wonders on the heifer’s udder.
This morning Ruby’s udder appeared to be back to normal, and after this morning’s milking the third and final dose was administered into each quarter via the teat. The recommended dosage is 3 syringes per teat at 12 hourly intervals. This has now been done and we hope all will be well.
I also discovered that the withdrawal period is not as long as I thought, perhaps I just did not read it right without my dratted reading glasses! 60 hours is the stated requirement so doubling that puts us on 5 days so by next weekend we should have a good supply of fresh milk once more.
Tonight’s milking was also straightforward, so here’s hoping.
Ruby the shorthorn heifer was very sore this morning and couldn’t be milked. She appeared to have mastitis in 3 of the 4 quarters of her udder. We rang the vet immediately who told us to use milking cow antibiotic syringes twice a day. These are little plastic tubes with an antibiotic cream that is inserted into the teat and the creamy contents squeezed into the udder. We keep them in stock in our medicine cupboard along with the dry cow syringes which are used to dry off cows after weaning or when milking ceases.
They advised this as the first treatment only, rather than injecting antibiotics as well. There were no signs at all last night of any trouble in her udder and we actually had over 3 gallons from her yesterday from 2 milkings. However, she was so sore first thing today that Jethro was quite worried that he might have to dry her off completely, and I had to rush out to buy milk as yesterday’s supply had to be poured down the drain and there was none even for a cup of tea.
Tonight Ruby was MUCH better, so much better in fact that we are all thrilled and amazed. Jethro was able to use the milking machine and her behaviour was actually no worse than usual. She stands quite well while eating her food and then I think when the machine feels as if it is pulling on her udder, rather like a calf suckling for too long, she kicks it off. Usually Jethro manages 3 sessions per milking and after she kicks it off for the third time he stops.
Jethro inserted more of these antibiotic tubes after milking and will do so again tomorrow morning. If all goes well it looks like we could actually be back on our own milk soon. The withdrawal period for the tubes we used is 96 hours [4days] however we will double it [as organic farmers do] and tip away the milk for 8 days after the last treatment.
It is not just the household that uses this milk. We use the surplus milk to supplement the feeding of our weaner pigs and we have one fattener, due to go on Wednesday who really loves this extra milk. He was the smallest of a batch that were sold last week and to make up for being on his own we have been giving him milk twice a day, he rushes to the door and then rushes to his dish when he sees the bucket of milk and it has had the desired effect upon his figure. He was too lean as his greedy brothers obviously pushed him out of the way while they ate the most but he has now gained weight at an increased rate with extra food and milk. As an uncastrated boar he must go before he reaches his piggy adolescence and starts producing testosterone as testosterone taints the pork and renders it uneatable. From tomorrow, I shall cheer him up with some old brassicas from the veggie garden, as the garden needs clearing, until he goes on his last journey to make up for the sudden lack of milk.
We have no idea how the mastitis started. Ruby has clean straw every day, her udder is washed with teat wipes before every milking and udder cream is applied after every milking. The area of her byre she is milked in is washed every time both before and after milking and we have an old dishwasher through which the milking machine and all the pipes go twice a day. This dishwasher has been adapted so the tubes and clusters are actually connected to the upper parts of the machine.
We are really meticulous over the hygiene aspect as it is raw milk that we all drink. I guess it was just a case of bad luck or the fact that bacteria lurks all around all of us all of the time.
Well I have just opened a parcel from my dear sister and she has sent me some bath and shower gel called knackered cow… it is produced by a company called cowshed. I shall look forward to my bath tonight!
As I have not blogged for a wee while regular readers may have realised that life at Prosperous Farm has become a tad challenging in the last 2 weeks.
Sadly, Ruby’s calf died, despite our very best efforts to keep him alive so she is now being milked twice a day and providing the house with delicious raw milk.
The day before the calf died found me totally undressed in the house in the middle of the afternoon absolutely terrified that someone would ring the bell. Ruby in her rather zealous mothering fashion had licked me to death as well as the calf and as I had struggled to feed the calf with a bottle of milk and electrolyte mixture and as it had leaked I was rather damp. As you can probably imagine I was also covered in various other bovine related products. I had had to totally strip off outside the back door and even hose off the clothes before putting them in the washing machine.
The effect of being licked all over my head, my hat and my face definitely gave me the rumpled look and all I could do when I came into the empty house was lean against the closed back door and laugh out loud as I really was quite a sight. Strange though it sounds Jethro is often away when we have these animal husbandry emergencies!
Luckily despite my irrational terror on the day no one actually came to the door or rang up so I did not even have to talk coherently down the phone while in such a state of deshabille because that would have been impossible to carry off without laughing and I was also far too cold.
The land work has started again with cultivation and planting of some of the fields which are now left as overwintered stubbles. It is our second year of this particular regime under our Countryside Stewardship Scheme and we have discovered that we have fewer rabbits on this land and many more birds. Previouslythe rabbits would live on the boundaries of these autumn sown crops totally devastating the field margins, and some years we even had to try to erect rabbit netting. The evidenceof this alteration of rabbit habits was discovered at a recent seasonal rabbit shoot. The night’s shooting produced a much smaller yield of rabbits than in previous years. I think also the hard winter may have had some impact too as along the main roads in this area so many young trees have been gnawed by the rabbits and deer that they have been ringbarked. This loss of young saplings will really be noticeable as the year progresses. This ring barking is absolutely widespread this year and not something I have ever noticed in previous winters.
Our lovely natured young boar has been working hard with the gilts and sows [ the evidence of his efforts was all around] but we realise now that he has been very busy but unfortunately firing complete blanks and none of the female pigs are currently pregnant, and the one sow we bought supposedly already in-pig has been found to be barren also. So we are searching for a new proven boar, and start the production cycle again whilst keeping our customers supplied with their outdoor reared rare breed pork.
We will need to be careful to stagger the breeding as monthly batches of piglets suit the meat sales side of the business much better. A sudden burst of too many births at once could mean major problems further down the line especially if all the pork was ready to sell in January or February next year. A pig’s gestation is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days so we will be awhile getting back on stream and in the meantime will have to buy a few more weaners from some of our friends with outdoor reared rare breed pigs.
Today I was going to update you with news of our heifer and calf and describe the challenges of walking along perilously on the top of an old christmas cake as the remaining snow sounds and feels exactly like desicated Royal icing, long after the festivities have passed.
However, I now feel all this rural whimsy can wait.
Instead, as a freelance writer, both published in print and the on web I feel very strongly about this campaign – RESPECT THE BLOG and wish to draw everyone’s attention to it. Thank you to Cheshire Wife who spread the word.
When I write on here I try to enthuse and inform and explain the complexities of rural life to those who don’t know, while at the same time trying to appeal to those who do know. It is a hard task. Remaining anonymous is also hard at times too but advice was sought before the blog started and this is how Arcadian Advocate writes.
So for those who also care about the integrity of what we WRITERS do and care about our copyrights then please follow the links and join in. Every word counts. I know what is ‘blogged’ is very much in the public domain, but I write [think and type] every single word on Arcadian Advocate and I’d be very upset if any of it was used without proper permission or acknowledgement.
Sometimes AA’s posts are written in haste, sometimes not, it depends on what is happening on the farm. I hope the readers can’t necessarily tell the difference. If I get an idea or a news story or picture from somewhere else then I put a link in the text.
Blogs mean a lot to those who write them, and also to those who read them. Real journalism matters too, and although there is genuine overlap between blogging and journalism they should not be confused.
Integrity is vitally important to many of us, but surely it should matter to everyone who writes [and reads] especially in national/international read media. I accept that we do not necessarily know the whole story but why then does it appear that there are so many shortcuts taken within the business of writing? Is this a result of all this technology?
More snow fell last night, followed by rain and sleet however our troubles here are nothing compared with those who live in Australia, especially in the State of Victoria and are coping with these terrible bush fires. How they would welcome a dose of the cold wet stuff, and that puts everything in perspective for us.
We are in now uncharted territory as the combination of rain and melting snow on previously saturated ground is a new one. We watch almost hour by hour as the pond levels rise and the fields start to flood.
The problem with the overflowing pond is that it can overflow through the Victorian buildings to fill the yard and we have no where else to move the housed cattle to.
warm and dry for now
All the melt water from the village runs down the road and into the pond, on top of all our own ‘run off’ from the surrounding fields and yards.
Frost is forecast later tonight, perhaps it will slow the rapid thaw but the problem is that the roads are running with water so they will probably be like glass tomorow and we know the County Council is short of grit and no longer bothers to salt the rural byways.
It took an hour to get to the local railway station 5 miles away this morning.
Spring seems a long way away but would be very welcome right now.
Farming, especially with livestock is not without its funnier moments [I believe the famous phrase is 'never work with children or animals'] and we have had an absolute classic this morning. I have just stopped laughing long enough to try it get it down in detail and hope that those who read this blog will find it funny too.
Ruby, the house cow heifer calved as you know 2 days ago. The calf while he is so small cannot manage to drink all she produces and it is time to start to get her used to the milking machine. Once we start milking properly the plan is to milk her in the mornings only and leave the calf on all day, removing him from her side at night. It is the ancient cottager’s system whereby you can rear beef and have milk at the same time and we will let you know how we get on. There are websites with information too.
Jethro put the halter on her and then moved her bucket with the feed to a better place in the byre to tie her up near the milking machine. Ruby is a very greedy girl and very swiftly plunged her head into the bucket of meal while at the same time inserting one of her little short horns into one of the long thin pockets for tools on the right leg of Jethro’s boiler suit. At this point they were both completely stuck, tied together as it were. Jethro unable to move and Ruby unable to eat. There followed a lengthy tussle between the two of them and a lot of cursing from Jethro. He was trying hard to get free but remained stuck fast and stooped low as she pushed harder and harder downwards in the direction of the bucket while grunting from the effort as she tried desperately to reach her delicious food.
Me, I was paralysed with laughter, clutching the gate for support, silent to start with as I thought it would be bad form to show my intense amusement but in the end something gave: the seam on the boiler suit burst open with a loud ripping sound, Jethro was released, Ruby finally got her food and I could actually laugh out loud. Oh dear… the tears of merriment still fall every time I think of it.
The good news is that Ruby coped with the clusters of the machine well and only lifted her legs in a minor protest once or twice and we milked off about 2 – 3 pints. She soon settled and stood quiet when Jethro scratched her back. The part milking out will help the heifer as she is a well bred Shorthorn cow, bred to be a good yielding cow and the calf is only sucking one teat at present and is replete on that. This is Ruby’s sire.
Of course it could have been worse, there may be those who point out that Jethro could have been hurt but he wasn’t. Ruby really likes people and should make an excellent house cow in due course.
The deep and crisp snow shows no sign of going and the animals must be feeling hungrier as they now rush up to the tractor for their hay every day. The sheep are clearly not as stupid as many people seem to think either, they pick the hay over, eating what they want, and then lie on the remainder, chewing their cud contentedly, as a way of protecting themselves from the hard frosted crust of snow.
Mollie seems fine, albeit in our human eyes perhaps a little more fed fed up than usual. Hay 3 times a day is what she gets as the rams she lives with make ‘feather’ beds out of most of it. By giving her a chance of hay 3 times a day she has first pick of the forage before the rams, she is totally the boss of them. Woe betide the boys if they dare try to take a mouthful from her pile before she has had enough. Her ears go flat back and her teeth are bared and her hind feet do a quick jig, the rams have learnt this is not a good sign and immediately back off. We do however set out a lot of separate piles of hay so they can feed at the same time. Mollie moves the rams along from pile to pile, with one sour look, while picking out the choicest strands of homemade hay for herself.
The snow is so deep and hard that even she has taken to walking in the vehicle tracks and only very occasionally trotting instead of her usual top speed around the field. I have just cleared all the icicles from her fetlocks and given her an extra feed of soaked sugar beet with a chaff mix. Her very expensive rug [nb: for rug, read 'duvet'] is keeping her toasty warm from her ears to her tail and although many horses have been brought inside during the snow she still prefers to be out and it is what she is used to. Even fetching her in, at present, would be nigh on impossible as we have sheet ice for several hundred yards from the field gate to the stable yard where the farm machines travel daily. I thought the Rhino rug was a huge expense when I rushed out and bought it the day she arrived but owing to this winter’s colder weather it has turned out to be absolutely invaluable.
For us people the ‘going’ is harder too, but the work out our muscles get is fantastic. Fit flops are increasingly popular and good for all sorts of toning and orthapaedic quirks [my arthritic knees improved no end by wearing them in the summer] but I can vouch for the fact that walking through this deep crisp snow, day after day, is most excellent for toning too. However our appetites for warm and comforting food are also increased!
We have managed to buy some extra hay, 550 small bales which will be very useful for the cattle and the sheep. Forage requirements [hay and silage] after many mild winters, like tons of road grit, are hard to predict and we need a lot more this year to keep the animals satisfied. The bought in hay should last us an extra 50 days for the cattle, we will use our existing big bale hay for the sheep.
Ruby has finally calved, well to be exact we have just calved her as after a disturbed night she presented us with one hind foot at 8am. I could see a hoof sticking out from the birth passage and had just broken the membrane so that if the calf came naturally it would not drown in constraints of the birth sack. Once the sack was popped I could see immediately that it was a hind leg which signals DANGER to both the heifer and calf.
However breech births are fairly common in cattle and sheep and fairly routine to deal with. As Jethro’s pet cow [she was hand reared before we got her] she is a easier to handle than say a heifer from our big herd out in the fields.
Anyway Jethro located the other hind leg and pulled it out until we had two hind legs presenting and the hips would be next to deliver. Then it was matter of easing the calf out gently, as Ruby pushed with each contraction, Jethro and one of the men kept an even pressure on the calf by gently pulling on the legs so that in between contractions the calf eases forwards inch by inch.
In this situation it is vitally important to be as speedy as possible, while taking every care not to damage the cow’s birth passage and pelvis, because calves and lambs in the breech position often take in amniotic fluid through their mouths and noses on their journey out of the uterus.
The deep red calf was delivered safely and then had to be hung up by his hind legs to clear all the gunk from its mouth and nose. This took some considerable time, and all the time the calf was being rubbed and its heart massaged. I gave the calf a couple of rescue breaths too and the colour of the mucous membranes reamined good and the eye reflex was also good. Sometimes calves or lambs born via breech births never breath.
When we thought we had held the calf upside down for long enough we laid it down and Ruby joined with the resucitation with her tongue. Little by little the calf started to come around and take the occasional breath. Only at this point did we think to look to see what gender the calf was, it was a boy.
I’d really have liked a heifer to breed from however this will provide us with plenty of meat in 30 months time. He sounds rather like an old man with pneumonia with a deep throaty rattle and cough but we will monitor him carefully and once he is up on his feet it will ease his chest.
The calf is deep red like his mother, and the white snow continues to fall, heavily. For yet another day all our earlier tracks have been obliterated and the feeding of extra rations in the fields goes on.
Well, we awoke early to find yet more snow and now we have very gentle drizzle resulting in thick fog so all we can see is white. White on the ground, white in the sky and everything else in between is white too. Weird!
The transport system around here is in a terrible state. Busses and trains are all affected and roads only passable with 4wd. Last night Jethro went to the train station to collect a family member 5 miles away. He left at 4.45pm and they returned at 6.35pm! Today they cannot even contemplate travelling and even more snow is forecast for tomorrow.
All the grazing animals are still receiving extra hay, and the latest possible problem is Ruby.
Ruby is Jethro’s naughty heifer and she does looks very uncomfortable and not like her usual cheery self, although an hour ago she was standing and chewing her cud. The birth of her first calf is imminent and we hope there will be no complications as getting a vet here could be a challenge. She has grown so huge we have bets on as to if it is twins… but we hope not.
I learnt a new word on the HACCP course yesterday - organoleptic.
I also felt that within the world of food safety, training and consultants there is still a huge lack of understanding about the actual farming processes.
Example: In a room full of mainly arable farmers the following statement was made : “Certain arable crops which will be entering the food chain MUST be harvested in dry weather.”
Yeah right!
In a summer like the one we just had in 2008.
Dream on!
So all those who attended the course will be getting a certificate to say we have been HACCP trained and so now are legally allowed to write our HACCP reports for what we produce.
Apparently, despite being accredited members of an assurance scheme we all have to have even more pieces of paper.
OK today’s rant over.
Snow melting well through the day and the animals starting to graze again. Will there be more snow tonight?
Why is there all this nonsense about the ‘cost’ of the bad weather, how about all the savings in all the mild winters we’ve had.
This is not a severe winter – it is just a normal winter.
The snow fall levelled out at tea time yesterday at around 8 inches. We cleared the snow off the old Victorian conservatory roof just before dark in case more snow fell and the glass cracked from the strain. The roof may be covered by insurance but we simply couldn’t cope with any more house related problems. [We also had a burst radiator 2 weeks ago which nearly brought down the farm office ceiling.] On Sunday, Jethro planted some early potatoes in a barrel in the conservatory, but in truth that feels a wee bit optimistic right now.
Today everywhere is frozen hard again and the battle to feed and water all the outdoor stock continues. Since the last cold snap we have plumbed in and filled two 2250 litre troughs for the cattle, so keeping them watered will be easier even if the frost continues and we have to resume leading water out in the bowser. The outdoor pigs have had their rations increased slightly but with their warm straw filled wooden arks they seem absolutely fine. The 2o weaned piglets chase each other around in the deep snow and are not taking any hurt at all, which is marvellous.
I have finally found my camera charger [as always with 'lost' possessions it was found when I was not actually looking for it] and now I need to find or replace the lead to connect it to the computer so albeit slowly I am making progress towards illustrating this blog.
One Good Thing about yesterday’s ’snow day’ was that my desk and filing were finally cleared of piles of papers and a lot of outstanding admin dealt with. If only I could keep on top of it on a regular basis it would be so much easier however farm life and the frequent ‘ emergency situations’ that arise on an ever increasing basis seem to make this type of routine hard to keep up, however I will keep trying. Paper simply seems to multiply when I am not looking, [does anyone else have this problem?] although I discovered that Jethro has a horrid habit of just adding to the pile of papers on MY desk [while clearing his desk] which he thinks are my responsiblity. I have now positioned a special blue tray and specifically asked him to put all papers in their that he wishes me to deal with and I also have a very smart filing tray with 4 sections marked urgent, farm, house/housekeeping etc. I really hope it will work and I can do better, it was a wish of mine for 2009 to take better control of all this paper. There is still an hour’s worth of filing today to do on pig paperwork alone.
Mollie seems fine, the hay rations for her and the three rams she lives with have been increased, but until the thaw there is no chance of riding or anything else. Roll on spring.
Today, if it is not cancelled, we are attending a
Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points (HACCP)
training course for farmers which is designed to cover the aspects of ‘farm to fork’, and will no doubt result in even wider knowledge on the legal aspects of what we do and how we do it and of course another certificate to put on the wall.
Heavy snow this morning and everything off the farm grinds to a halt. With our large tractors and other machines we are able to get around but all the animals need additional food and it is a slow task taking hay out to the fields in blinding snow.
Well Mollie and I walked slowly and carefully around a few waterlogged fields today after the blacksmith replaced her lost shoe and we tried out our sheep gathering skills of a few lambs at walking pace. The lambs moved well into a corner of the field and Mollie seemed relaxed. All good, as I work to rebuild confidence in both of us after the shattering motor bike incident 10 days ago. The horse and I remained totally calm despite startling a muntjack deer in the hedge and the many pheasants were obviously loudly announcing that from Saturday they will be safe until next season.
Ruby, Jethro’s dairy heifer, gets bigger and bigger, and I begin to think she may have twins, although this is unusual for a heifer [first timer]. She ran with the bull from April 1st last year and was due anytime from 9th Jan, however it may have been during the second cycle that she conceived. We keep watching and waiting but she lies around more and continues to eat well. The phrase ‘a watched pot never boils’, certainly comes to mind.
It is often said out loud regarding the frequency of London busses [or even men when single] , when you need one there are none, and then all of a sudden three come at once. We have now had more Policeman than you can possibly imagine in the locality however I cannot go into all the details. Except to say that on the matter of the motor bikers everyone is working together from Parish to County level, the Police and the landowners. Gates, ditches and signs will all be tried in a combined effort to educate and restrict. I doubt they can be stopped but the frequency may be lessened. I will get off next time I meet scrambler bikes or else take off across the fields, Jethro’s potential wrath over his crops will be easier to take than another fall.
I have some more pigs to view asap as I’ve had a call to say two Gloucester Old Spots are looking for an outdoor home and are about ready for the boar at 11 months old. We seem to be developing a real mix of rare breeds now and as we only have one boar crossing them should be interesting and fun. I have just received a box load of Jamie Oliver recipes already to send out with my pork boxes from Jamie’s new series on pork.
We are so confident that what we do with our pigs is right. They live outdoors all year with wooden arks with wooden floors and a large patch of ground each except for when they farrow. Just as they are due to give birth they come back to the farm and are in large old stables near the house with a warming lamp for the piglets. After 3 – 4 weeks depending on the time of year the whole family is back outside. Weaning is at around 8 weeks [ in a commercial unit weaning is often at 3 weeks] and the piglets stay in their home and on the same food and we put the sow back with all her friends and the boar. We have one sow to wean on Friday.
Weather forecasters are predicting another very cold spell soon in from the East but at least we may be able to stop swimming. Time will tell if they are right, one of my best friends in America always made me laugh by calling the forecasters ‘the weather guessers’.
Well I went to get the horse in for a bit of a spruce up as I was fed up with office work and when I got out in the yard I had to change my mind. The noise in the farm yard was deafening. The steam cleaner and other noisy equipment including a heavy duty drill are in use all around the yard and right beside Mollie’s stable. The sound was far too reminiscent of the recent episode of the roaring bikes to risk another incident just as she is recovering.
The old brick range of horse boxes are being steam cleaned and disinfected ready for the next 2 pigs to farrow, one due from this week and another in 2 weeks, and also the new cattle crush is being cemented in to its permanent position and new access gates have been put in the race for the safety of the vet and everyone who works with these large animals. This race has been specifically designed for our horned cattle and has just come back from the galvanising works. A cattle crush is not the feeling you get when you really like cows, it is the means of holding them still and preventing them from crushing you while weighing or administering routine veterinary treatments for worms and parasites.
The saddler is coming at 4pm to check the fitting of an almost new saddle I have got on sale or return. If it turns out not to be right [ but I think it will be] I must send it back this week for a refund.
The blacksmith is returning on Wednesday after shoeing the horse with a full new set of shoes on Friday and she lost one immediately… luckily I’ve never had that happen before but the loss of the shoe and the ever present threat of the bikers does rather curtail what and where we can go. However support is increasing in an attempt to keep the countryside safe with many locals and various parish councils now joining together to try to stop this menace.
In the meantime I have been selling very rare gilts for breeding and possibly a few sheep too, to some smallholders who are just starting out. It is good fun and quite the opposite to selling thousands of tons of grain which of course Jethro does all the time.
Christmas came and went and the daily work on the farm simply carried on. We had a pig with mastitis on Christmas Eve [now cured], and a shortage of electricity causing the bore hole to stop working.
16 days of hard frost followed on Boxing Day leading to huge water problems with the outdoor livestock. Thousands of gallons of water have been carried out to cattle, pigs and sheep.
The frost thawed and then the rains came [ still falling] and the pond and the fields are now almost overflowing with excess water..
The younger generation are returned to their seats of learning and even Jethro has had a week away this month studying for his MSC. While he was away we had a burst radiator in a bedroom which nearly brought down the ceiling of the farm office, thanks to the NFU insurance for their swift response in drying us out [ the fans are still whirring] and a very poorly pig who was sadly and swiftly put down. This pig was one of our absolute favourites owing to her lovely nature, she was 18 months old and had just been weaned from her litter of 10 at 8 weeks old. Customers are queuing to buy our breeding stock and I have already pre-sold 4 out of the 5 gilts, we will keep the best one to be her replacement, in due course.
The horse has come and is settling slowly, our progress has not been helped by either the terrible weather nor a terrifying experience for both of us with some trespassing motor-cross riders who all revved their engines at once causing her to frantically rear again and again and me to be thrown. Steps are being taken to restrict access on the bridle paths to those who are entitled. I am the third serious accident that I know of in this locality and sadly I fear a tragedy if nothing is done.
I missed blogging but the days were not long enough. However the nights are lighter now and we have Spring to look forward to.
I am back and will do my best to post often. Camera still not sorted.
Yesterday, we checked the fences in preparation for the coming of THE HORSE on Monday. This link shows a picture of her, she is the beautiful mare on the left at the top of the page.
All seems well, the field is nothing like as wet as we thought it might be, and there is only a small task to do. We need to remove the old and rather manky round bale of hay [ the cattle in the shed will pick over that if we put in in as bedding ] and we need to also also remove the ring feeder. This year’s group of ram lambs are about to be moved across from another field to graze with her and keep her company. Eventually she will live most of the time with the house cow, Ruby, but she is indoors at the moment and due to calve at the end of January. The horse is used to living outdoors, and is coming with her thick rug. There is also an older ‘pet’ wether sheep [castrated male] who can join this little band of special animals, but he is also elsewhere at the moment and it is too complicated to get him back on his own. Other livestock will join this happy little band from time to time as they will always be in the field nearest the house and we always have a procession fo special care animals throughout the year either needing extra food, observation, veterinary care or just plain old TLC.
The road works on Friday were awful, they did both sections on the same day [although the organisers had previously agreed not to] and as we were totally cut off by road we had to set out cross country to take our meat to the market. You could almost hear the pork crackling as the tightly packed boxes bounced about in the back of the 4WD truck. Nightmarish! However as usual we somehow managed to get through and supply our loyal customers.
Saturday was a mixture of really dire weather with squally freezing showers and a bunch of jolly people who turned out despite the awfulness of the day to celebrate my birthday in the barn. Mulled wine, slow roasted pork and mince pies , seemed to go down very well [despite the huge quantities produced there were no leftovers] and the combination of the giant Australian barbeque, and two grain dryers worked hard to try to keep the cold at bay. A strange fact we noticed is that the Calor canisters ice up as the gas vaporises inside the cylinder. It became a trifle dark just as we served lunch at 2pm as rain dripping in from the roof of the 17th Century barn caused some of the lights to fuse and Jethro had to carve the pork by calor gas lamp. Next time we must have more lights, and more heat.
By Sunday we were all very tired and the clearing up, both outside and in, continued into Monday, starting with 14 loads of washing. A combination of the return of the younger generation for the Christmas holidays from Harper Adams and London as well a house full of lovely visitors.
Now I must think about writing Christmas cards, and thank you letters before it is too late to post - in the mail , of course, not on the blog!
We are now besieged by road closures and they could not have come at a worse time. The weather is still dire [as expected for the time of year]; the roads are either frozen or under water or, as yesterday, both.
There have been three large yellow and black signs put up on the grass verges in the last week up, within 3 miles of here, and each notice said something different [roadworks starting for: 1 day, 1 week and 3 days] and after making several phone calls and driving around asking different gangs of men who each in turn grinned and said: “No , not us darling,” I eventually made contact with the powers that be.
We have a farmers market tomorrow nearby and the lanes are very narrow. On Saturday we have my birthday party, at lunchtime, and a lot of family and friends are expected, many have never been here before so imagine if they arrived at the end of the village and found a road closed sign. Not a great idea.
After very constructive discussions with the supervisors we hope it is now arranged that the road nearest the farm will be mended tomorrow (Friday) and the road nearest the market will be mended on Saturday but even if this plan works I do know that all the local drivers will be having a chaotic and frustrating few days ahead. And I still can’t understand why they chose the worst time of year to do it, but perhaps the holes are so big now that they have no choice.
Do you think I should smile sweetly and ask them to fill in the enormous pot holes in the farm drive too? Now that surely would be a birthday present to remember.
The good news is at last the source of the permanently flooding cellar is finally found and has been dealt with. The bad news is that a good proportion of the cellar ceiling has been taken down and the resulting mess is really terrible AGAIN. The row following the mess was also terrible.
Leaking heating pipes under the kitchen cupboards was the eventual diagnosis, and of course it was intermittent, only leaking when the pipes were cold and contracted.
The constant bitter cold has been a reminder that this is how winters always used to be and we all have, of late, got used to much milder ones. Since our trip to Wales, Jethro is much less worried about the grass lasting out as we appear to have a lot longer sward, if you can call it that at this time of the year, than we saw over there.
Now I am off to light the fire and put a beef stew on for supper. Inner warmth is essential when working outdoors in cold weather.
I am greatly indebted to Archbishop Cranmers Blog for bringing to our attention on his Monday’s entry [8th December 2008] of the editing of the Oxford University Press Junior Dictionary. This matter is also reported here . His Lordship quite rightly pointed out, on his post, that many young people still do live in the countryside and enjoy it. Once again we have all been too busy to read the papers so I missed the story on the day it came out and it has taken one of my regular blog reads to update me!
Obviously nothing is sacred: not our countryside, our language, our heritage and our history. How very sad.
I may be very old fashioned too but many of the words taken out according to the Telegraph article [ link above] are in everyday usage around here: porridge [Jethro's breakfast], acorn [we just planted some], leek [vegetables for supper], mint [can't have roast lamb without said sauce], oats [porridge, amongst other things], diesel [for all the farm vehicles], allotment [very popular in the village], dandelion [ a yellow weed], bullock [a shed full of them], starling [pesky flocks are all around]and spaniel [who should startle the starlings]. I even saw a stoat cross the road today, but according to what I have just read that word has gone too, along with many others, describing our Christian heritage, our history and the monarchy.
Yup, well as you can see it is now snowing on the blog and we woke up this morning to a smattering of the white stuff all around and very, very treacherous roads.
At 8 am on the way back from the butcher to check the carcasses for this week’s farmer’s market, there were a few cars in ditches along the back roads. Jethro was very cross with me for using the back way this morning [ I should have kept quiet] but I was careful and slow and the local town was already to a standstill.
The vet is booked, and the horse transport alerted [our livestock trailer is not a horse trailer] so here’s hoping the horse is as fit as she appears. Fingers crossed.
Back late last night from a few delightful hours in a sun showered Wales with 6 more little piggies, collected on the way home, to fatten for next year. The small herd of rare breed pigs at Prosperous Farm cannot yet supply our customers with all the meat they require, so we are still relying on the help of other rare breed pig keepers to keep our supply constant, and cope with the pork waiting list while we slowly and carefully build up the herd here. The provenance and full traceability of all our meat and their feed is something we are very proud of and the latest animal health scare in Ireland makes us shudder terribly. However I need to know more facts before I can comment on this further.
It was so very quiet and empty at the motorway services at 8pm last night where we stopped for a hot drink and a handwash, was everyone watching the X factor?
The adventure that I spoke of fleetingly on Friday is merely a beginning. It will be I hope the start of a very special relationship - with an animal - to be exact – a horse. A horse to ride round the farm and view the stock from, a horse to have fun with and to work with. Avery special horse from a very special place. A small Welsh hill farm with a wonderfully knowledgeable farmer who uses horses to do most of the outside stockwork from checking boundaries to moving their sheep and cattle.
The search for the right animal has taken me since early August. It has not been something that could be hurried and I have relied a lot on the goodwill of many country and horsey folk as I have searched the length and breadth of Britain for the right horse. To them ALL I say a big thank you, it has been a very great pleasure to meet so many wonderful people and be welcomed into their homes and farms and be allowed to ride their horses. Every single owner I met and/or spoke with was most concerned that their horse would go to the right home. This too was very commendable and heartening to hear, especially now in these harder times.
Finding the right horse [as other horse owners may agree] possibly ranks harder than finding the right husband, and is just as serious a matter. In an emergency your life may actually depend on the right partnership between horse and rider. On the matter of finding both – horses and husbands- well I am sure luck and perseverance play their parts too.
In the course of the last few months I have met some wonderful people, made many new friends, and tried a lot of really nice horses since I first decided that Shank’s pony was getting too slow and the knees were suffering too much when trying to gather cattle in and trying to run around the fields. Running has never been my thing, but riding always has.
There was one little black mare that really took my fancy, and I went to Worcestershire three times to ride her, but after the final visit, still I hesitated, and in the end I realised that the familiarity of the tasks and animals involved on a busy livestock farm would be more important to an ‘older’ girl like me so I started the search again this time looking for stockhorses.
This task is harder than you think, this is England, it is not America where the cowboys ride, but Britain where hacking [riding out for fun], hunting and eventing are the most popular horsey pursuits. However, I do now know the stock horse are there, and the skills to train them are there too if you are patient.
In the end I rode four different ’stockhorses’ over a two day period, which is actually a hard thing to do because it is hard to differentiate, but one WAS different. A well-bred American Quarter Horse mare, born here, who stood out above all the rest. Her current owner has done a fantastic job on bringing her along for the job she was actually bred for – moving cattle. Her nature is sweet and she likes people which is important as we have many visitors through the farm here and a seemingly unfriendly horse [to strangers] would not really work in the long run. This particular aspect of owning a horse was not something we had thought of until we were halfway through the process, and rode a few of the interesting Criollo horses from Argentina. They too are great work horses but some can [perhaps on account of their handling when young] be rather aloof in their demeanor. That would not have worked here. The whole process has actually been a steep learning curve for us all and in truth the whole thing has been very enjoyable.
I went to Wales to ride the mare again yesterday to be absolutely sure she was the one, and Jethro is happy with my final choice. We now wait for the vet’s inspection, which we are all sure will be a formality, and then I will tell more in due course.
The last ’stockhorse’ I had was in back in the ’80’s – a half thoroughbred bay mare - again with the sweetest nature, she would carry a lamb in a sack tied to the saddle or bags of mineral thrown over her withers and not budge if you got off to see to a sheep in distress.
I am actually really excited, and yet slightly apprehensive too. The work will really begin when she arrives here and we get to know each other properly and she learns the layout of farm and meets the animals out in the fields before I can ask her to help with any ‘work’. I do not know how long this initiation will take for the two of us but hopefully I can update the blog step by step. It will be fun, and slightly scary too but it is these constant challenges and new interests of working with animals that keeps us all going and gets our creaking joints out of the warm comfy bed on a cold frosty morning.
Technology and methodology have moved on since I last had a horse and I must ask Father Christmas to kindly bring me a few essentials like some grooming kit and a hoof pick, and will have to find the best saddle for the job. In the meantime I hope to borrow a saddle from a long time friend while I work out what works best for the comfort of both horse and rider and vitally for my stability while mounted!
More water in the cellar this morning and the source of this water is still unknown, but much worse is that the oil delivery [ I asked Jethro to order it for just before Christmas!] has just arrived and I was not fully dressed. Hey ho!
Frosty and cold again and we have more rare breed weaners to collect tomorrow to keep our customers upplied with pork in early 2009 until our own bred ones are big enough and our supply regular enough.
We are also off on an adventure to Wales this afternoon. It is my second adventure to that part of the world in a month but this time Jethro is coming too, obviously to keep a watchful eye on his old mother!
EDIT 1.30pm. We still don’t know the source of the water which is coming in through the cellar ceiling, and down an old tree trunk that holds one of the beams up! Yes, this is a very old farmhouse that is not maintained perhaps in the manner that the property needs, but the house is not ours and we do the best we can to live and work in it and make it home.
I am now trying every sink, bath, appliance in turn using food colouring in the water to try to pinpoint the source. My fingers are now pink from cochineal and yet we are no further forward. The dishwasher is now on and over the next hour we will see if the leaks increase.
The real problem is that if we don’t find the source soon we will lose the ceiling as well [it is now bulging] and we have only just cleared out the cellar or centuries of rubbish, sealed the walls and ceiling with PVA and painted the same walls and ceiling and even scrubbed the floor. I can hardly bear the thought of all that work wasted and we have had to move a lot of the stuff out of the cellar agian which does not thrill Jethro who is still in a pre-Christmas major house sorting mode.
We have water in the cellar and cannot find the leak… it does not appear to be an internal one so one would think it must be external… All the fascia boards under the kitchen cupboards have been ripped off in the search for the source of the problem. Unfortunately this hurried investigation has caused a certain amount of damage to the paintwork, but it turned out to be simply dry and rather dusty under there, which contrasts somewhat to the seeping water down below.
One of my regular meat customers has failed to return our calls about their delivery and has now missed the slot for courier delivery of her meat, and it probably leaves me with a whole lamb to sell to someone else. This is very unusual and I just hope they are all alright.
Three lambs and two pigs went away this morning, our final selection for this year. One pig is mine and will be slow roasted in celebration of a landmark birthday. The others will be sold at a one off Christmas market next week. Normal service for us will resume in January when the butcher has recovered from his Christmas orders to the catering trade.
Short days must be the reason we never seem to catch up fully. I meant to post here again on Monday but now find it is Wednesday night!!
The housed cattle are much better and the shed is calm and quiet with contented cattle chewing their cud, and the ram is a wee bit better too. He might be usable next season which would be better than nothing at all which is how it looked last week.
Naughty Ruby, the pet cow, will have to be moved out of the big shed as she just hoovers barley up from the trough at an alarming rate taking it from the younger ones. She can have a different sort of winter, out in the field by day and in at night, it will be easy to do she will follow a bucket anywhere, but we do have to watch out for her cheekiness if she doesn’t get her way.
The pigs are all doing well, we have had one case of joint ill in a piglet, which affected his shoulder, but he has responded well to antibiotic treatment which is another very good thing otherwise he would have been a loss. If it wasn’t for his particularly gimpy ears and big splash of red spray on his small bottom it would be hard to know which of the 10 had been ill and it is very important to finish the 5 day course of treatment, so the last injection is tomorrow. As a fully operational livestock farm it is hard not to have the odd case of this type of bacterial infection in youngstock. We did spray the navels of the piglets at birth and use iodine on the lambs too, but there is always the occasional case to treat.
We have finally moved some of the pigs outside into their new houses. They are delighted to be out and Dory, our newest sow is especially thrilled. She shows her delight by sidling up to me and then trying to scratch herself [with her whole weight] against my leg. This morning it was more than I could cope with so I found a twig to scratch her with and she wiggled all over with delight, quietly talking, as the twig raked up and down her back. We are the best of friends now.
The annual tidy up for Christmas has begun inside the farmhouse too, with the Dining Room cleaned today for the first time in months, and even the one piece of silver we own had its annual polish last night. Jethro is delighted, he would like the house to be totally in order all the time but somehow all the animals and endless paperwork gets in the way and it needs a party or something big [like Christmas] to finally get the house sorted.
Off to get more rare breed pigs any minute, I’ve just made the sandwiches, ham of course, and cheese!
We are collecting an in-pig sow and several fatteners at various stages for Farmers Markets and Christmas parties… we have to do this until all our wee piglets get bigger. The last of the previous few batches of fatteners that we collected in July went away this week and although perhaps contrary to the current economic conditions the demand for traditionally reared quality meat has increased. This has meant looking for 2 pigs that will be ready to go away in 2 weeks instead of several months. We only source weaners and fatteners from farms who keep their pigs in the traditional way as we do, and usually the pig keepers have been recomended to us. By the spring we should be totally self sufficient in supply of fatteners and able to keep a ‘closed’ herd, except for changing boars every now and then.
We will be gone most of the day, and when we get back we will have to poultice the rams foot again. However we are all out to a lovely lunch tomorrow, and then there is a lot of catching up in the house to do, so more updates on Monday.
Just a few words tonight, all the animals seem to be improving, or at least in the case of the cattle not getting any worse. The pigs are fine and the 20 piglets are really starting to thrive. The ram’s foot is probably the least improved of all the ailments but we re-poulticed it and gave him some more AB.
It is the very long ‘paper trail’ that is taking up so much time and effort as Jethro inputs every ear number, batch number, withdrawal date etc, etc for every animal and every medicine we have used. He is tired, and he has worked late in the office every night for months. It seems at the moment that this is perhaps not the best way to live.
