busy busy

What a day we’ve had – weighing lambs and pigs and selecting the best for boxes and a farmers market, vaccinating cattle with all manner of other visitors coming and going all day on farm business. No wonder we struggle so much with the shorter day length at this time of the year.

Last night haircuts were fitted in for the men after an early supper and our hairdresser’s life seems currently every bit as crazy as ours. Is it the planets or something else causing such chaos and too much work in all our lives?

Swift’s remaining three horseshoes were removed today too, just as well as it looked like whoever shod him before had tried to make his feet fit the shoes rather than the other way around. The trimmer was very patient as Swift is not yet very used to having this done. We got there in the end and although he sometimes puts his foot down sharpish a few times there was no malice in him whatsover. She will be back in three weeks time to properly trim his feet and we hope in a few months with regular trimming and work that his feet will harden and he will be able to remain ‘barefoot‘.

We also fitted in a sausage tasting this week to choose another variety to sell at our upcoming public events. Eight new  varieties of seasonings were made into patties and fried… remembering which is which on the plate as we taste them around the kitchen table is quite taxing and we all ended up with scribbled diagrams at the side to give us a clue. Everyone’s taste is so different but we eventually chose a new variety for lamb sausage and another new one for pork. We never have trouble selling bangers,  it may be a cliche but variety surely is the spice of life, or rather sausages. 

It is national sausage week this week but we were not able to have any events on to coincide. Perhaps next year we will make it fit with all the big promotions?

tell the pigs it’s not cricket

We received a frantic  telephone call this afternoon… three pigs causing havoc in a lovely garden and heading towards a very well tended cricket pitch with their noses primed in the dig position.

We asked for a bit more description of this terrible sounding trio and then we breathed a huge sigh of relief, they were not our pigs. Some quick telephoning to other pig keepers in the area produced a mobile phone number and a name and eventually the pigs were corralled [not sure about the spelling] and then owner was traced.

The relief to know it was NOT our problem was huge, that in itself is a teensy bit worrying!

Swift is getting used to large machines, the loader full of planks and old doors has gone past his byre several times this afternoon. The barefoot trimmer comes tomorrow to assess his feet, and take the remaining 3 shoes off. He has only had one set of shoes on in his life, and he has lost one this week and I am going to try to keep him ‘barefoot’ while he is only in light work.

I rode him again for a short while in the Dually halter after long lining with a friend’s help for half an hour in his field.

a dark and stormy Sunday morning

Well, we managed to dust the pigs last night in their stable and waking up today to such a wet and stormy morning means that there is absolutely no sign of the white powder on these girls anywhere. I should have photographed them last night as they were really WHITE! Let’s hope it’s worked and relieved their discomfort, hard to tell so far as nothing ever puts them off their food!

It is so wet and so windy the trees seem to have lost half their leaves overnight and are  now piled on what pretends to be a  lawn no doubt the rest will follow by nightfall? Still it is 1st November and the leaves have lasted a long time this year. It is however still mild.

Swift is happy enough out in the field in his waterproof rug, no riding today on account of the storm, not a good idea on a young horse. I will change his rug for a drier one later on if the rain persists all day, but he is ok for now. He is still wearing the thinnest weight rug, I tried him in the warmer one when he got so wet yesterday but it is too warm and he sweated up underneath it which was no good so I changed it back.

So I shall retire to the kitchen and have a baking session: pasties, cake and some other delicious goodies to see us all through the week. It will undoubtedly cheer Jethro up when he returns very wet and bedraggled [a certainty today] from his daily sortie to check all the animals in all the fields. Sunday remains a working day on a farm, but a glance at  the Sunday papers and a roaring log fire to keep out the damp will make for a pleasant few hours after lunch until it is feeding time for the livestock once more.

4.45 pm Here is the photgraphc evidence of my labours in the kitchen.. a case of now you see it, now you don’t delicious… mmmmnn. “Any more” said Jethro?

Gone in a moment.. but golly they were good!

twister

The back man cometh, well actually he goeth. Today Swift has been sorted out in a big way and I hope to ride him really soon. I think the horse must have been playing Twister as he was in a bit of a mess. Now I will get the saddle fitter out as soon as I can, I had not done this already as I was not sure how long to give Swift off while his sore back was mending.

I know the saddle is wide enough, but because Swift has sadly already had a back issues, I want to be really sure that the saddle is just right. Of course he may get fatter and thinner depending on the time of year and how much work he is having, but my saddle has different width plates for the gullet and air flocking in the padding which can be adjusted by the specialist fitter and we have one quite close by, which is one of the reasons I originally chose this saddle.

In the meantime we have done more leading out and investigation of big machines, tyres and other typical farm hazards. Some times he takes a minute or two to relax if there is a lot of noise but on the whole appears to have an ‘am I bothered’  type reaction which is great considering he has only been here just over 2 weeks, although on account of his age he is still rather green. He is unmoved now by the pigs and looks over the wall at them while they sleep. When the pigs wake up they study each other in depth, the horse over the wall and all the eight pigs looking right up at him, it is too funny to watch. Swift however is totally relaxed as he does this, which to me is the most important aspect.

The back man is returning on two weeks to sort out one of the suckler cows who we think is not quite right and he will just check Swift again to see all is still well.

Jethro is nursing a very sore leg, he was charged by a ram yesterday when he went to feed them. There are no bruises or unusual swelling but I think the sheep caught him right on the iliotibial band on the outside of his thigh. This can be an extremely sesnsitive part of the body and the ibuprofen is helping a lot. Luckily it was not worse.

shortening days…

I don’t think I can blame the lack of blogging just on the shortening days but I wish I could! The clocks change this w/e and I wish we could stay on BST rather than switching to GMT as we much prefer it. We would rather have darker mornings and lighter evenings, but I know there are huge debates about this issue every year. 

It is just so very busy with the autumn arable drilling thankfully finished today, and now the livestock work is upon us with a vengeance. Perhaps, methinks, this is why mixed farming became unfashionable, because with such a spread of enterprises on the farm there is never ever a respite?

It is not just the routine of daily feeding and checking of pigs, sheep and cattle, but the annual tasks of sorting the ewes into their groups to meet with the rams. And the time of the year when the vet comes to castrate the bull calves, time also to vaccinate the cattle against respiratory viruses, and then after 2 weeks following the vaccine, time to bring the younger cattle in for the winter.

We must be mad, as well as this heavy workload, and the meat sales, we have 5 educational visits in the next month for primary school children, teenagers, and one half day visit which encompasses all ages.

Thankfully, the puppy is not here at the moment, education is vitally important to all of us and since the actual owner of the dog is away studying for a degree in Agriculture at a top University, we thought a bit of proper education for the dog would be useful too. Both students are doing very well, especially the dog, who should be back home next month wagging her tail, walking to heel and always coming back when called!  Training a 9 month old puppy was just too much on top of everything else for yours truly to consider.

Every generation in this household has now either been trained in agriculture and/or land use or is in training. This fact actually makes us quite rare nowadays, and clearly shows that we are also quite, quite mad. However farming clearly runs in the blood [probably no choice with a name like Tull] and cannot be ignored, despite various members of the family trying to do other things along life’s winding journey.

There is more training to be done here too, that of the horse…. Swift arrived 10 days ago, and is being looked after by us. He is a young gelding, who hustled the mares too much in his previous home, and was a quick sale. I happened upon him by chance and was first in. He was not expensive but came without a vetting, as a gamble.  His teeth have been sorted, they were really bad, his overgrown molars had lacerated the inside of  his cheeks on both sides. The vet sedated him while the horse dentist worked.  His back has been found to be tender and tight and is now being sorted by professionals, using chiropractic methods and Equine Touch  amongst other things which I will tell you more about about another time. I was not expecting this, but I am sure he will be fine.

Swift has a very sweet nature and in a few days learnt to cope with the house cow [ he is now THE boss of a very bossy cow], some of the sheep and the pigs in the yard, oh and he has had his first encounter here with pheasants too. All these are vitally important attributes for a farm horse. On Sunday we walked slowly around to inspect all the large machinery in a quiet and deserted yard.

I am in no hurry with him and will take as long as it takes to get him used to what we expect and hope for. If his back needs a rest then he will learn his way around the farm from the end of a lead rope. If I need extra help with his schooling I have friends who will be able to help me. It is extremely therapeutic for me to escape the ringing of the phone and almost never ending streams of emails that pour into the farm office,  for an hour every so often.

I may not be quite so thrilled when it starts to rain and never stops. We have had so little rain we are worried about having enough grass to last the stock through the winter and with the number of acres we have and the low stocking rate that should never be a problem, but this year unusually it is.

first lambs away

As I write this post early this morning the first lambs, and a few pigs are on their way to the abattoir as we start to sell some of this year’s livestock ‘crops’.

We have taken the opportunity at the same time to wean the lambs – to take them away from their mothers – and give the ewes time to recover before the breeding season starts again for us in November.  Next week we will sort through all the lambs again, send any more that are ready away to the abattoir, because like fresh seasonal plums lambs do not keep well once matured. The remaining 300+  will be given a dose of wormer and put onto fresh grazing and then weighed again in a fortnight..

The ewes will have 2 weeks to dry up their udders and then they will be carefully sorted through and any really old girls will be taken from the flock to spend a well earned retirement on some conservation grazing. Last year’s oldies will go away on their final journey soon but we have a customer looking for old bloodlines amongst our pedigree flock and he will come and pick some first.

The rest of the flock will be checked carefully for their condition: too fat or too thin [and their diet adjusted accordingly], their udders to see it is still in full working order [no good a ewe having 2 lambs and only one side of her udder working] and finally their mouths to see they still have a full set of working teeth [ no dentures here]. The whole flock will then be sorted and treated accordingly: extra grass, less grass or a red splash on the back of the head which is their one way ticket to join the ‘old girls’. A shepherd’s year starts in Autumn and once you understand the process I find the work has an enjoyable rythmn to it, well it would only be fair to say that I have  worked with sheep for many, many years!!

The harvest is almost done, we are just waiting for the oats which were simply too green last week to cut. However we seem to have hit a sudden rainy patch so Jethro’s idea of going to the Great Dorset Steam Fair next weekend may not happen. It is absolute heaven to him to spend a day amongst the soot and the fumes watching others tinker with old machines. A few years ago he had the same idea as harvest seemed to be progressing well and guess what it rained then too. We only need 2 clear days when the oats are ready but I am not planning anything until it is all in the barn.

the ladies are still waiting

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.

busy as bees

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.

feeling the spring rise

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.

milk supply interrupted

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.

the knackered cow

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. Previously the 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 evidence of 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.

iced up again

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.

is anyone else swimming?

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’.

low levels

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.

sown seeds and a startled pig

As the world’s finances continue to crumble next year’s wheat crop is firmly planted in the ground. At last the weather is good and the soil conditions acceptable. Two tractors and drills are working flat out and Jethro hopes to have 500 acres sown by Monday if we have no breakdowns and everyone works non-stop through the weekend.

The promise of a new crop and a new beginning is always a good time on the farm, once the seed is in the ground. Until then it can be somewhat nerve-wracking for everyone, and Jethro has been a might tetchy in the last few days.

One of my tasks today is to clear a patch in the current brassica bed ready to plant some overwintered onions and garlic for next year, and clear out the herb bed which is now hidden under a tall tower of fat hen and thistles. The pigs will no doubt be pleased with their additional greens when I have finished.

On the subject of the pigs, we weighed a batch of youngsters last week to see how they are doing. This involves a lot of bribing with food to enter the electronic weigh scales and then be let out into the clean concrete yard beyond for a mass exploration and chance to talk to all the other pigs. This task has to be done so gently and kindly as you cannot and should not make a pig do anything against its will, they are just too strong and scream too loud. If you push them they just rebel, and you can’t budge them. However, once they get the idea of scoops of free food under their noses and this regular weigh in it is usually quite straightforward. 

Nevertheless for this group [who are aged about 15 weeks] this was their first weigh-in so it took rather longer. While we were weighing the very last pig one of the smaller ones stuck his head into the bucket of meal and while frantically gobbling food as fast as he could, before his brothers noticed, he somehow looped the bucket handle right over his neck. Disaster! Poor little pig, he got such a fright and took off around the yard with such a squealing and clattering all we could do was howl with laughter at this ridiculous sight and watch in amazement through the tears of hysteria that cheerfully leaked from our eyes. All the other pigs in the group took off after him, chorusing their own delight, as from this full to the brim five gallon bucket poured piles and piles of lovely meal and treats for all.

Eventually the bucket emptied, the squealing stopped, and the perpetrator of the deed freed himself from the handle and rushed off to join his friends for his early tea. We left them all out in the yard to clear up the meal and run around and while we had our supper they put themselves back to bed in the clean straw, replete and happy and Jethro found them all fast asleep lying close together – back to belly, looking exactly like fat pink sausages in a pan. All he had to do was shut the door.

 

lipstick

Prosperous Farm, as many blog readers know, is situated in rural England, not in the USA, and yet a lot of people, even locally, are now making jokes about aspects of the American Presidential candidates and their campaigns.

Take one of yesterday’s comments:

“Are you sure you are just looking after the pigs, or learning to put lipstick on the pigs?”

Even heard from this side of the Atlantic Jethro thinks some of the comments allegedly made by the prospective Republican Vice President are scary…. especially regarding foreign affairs.

In my first lifetime America was just a new world, and now four centuries on the effect this nation has had [and continues to have] on the rest of the world is almost beyond comprehension.

This is a close up photograph of one of the pigs; she is due to farrow [ give birth] in November.  Lipstick anyone?

Update 8.30pm. I have just discovered 2 Bluetongue facts: Firstly that Scotland is making the vaccinating of farm livestock compulsory from November 1st, please see this news release. Secondly, that more positive tests of Bluetongue serotype 8 have been found in imported cattle, this time in Wales.

With thanks to Warmwell for the links.

that sinking feeling

We are totally waterlogged.

If sinking almost to the ankles, whilst pulling a few carrots for supper in the veggie garden last night, gives you a clear enough visual picture then you get the idea of the problems the industry is facing over the unfinished harvest and subsequent land work. Even MORE rain fell in the night and Jethro says that on the plus side at least the livestock are still growing [and the grass].

Apart from checking the livestock and feeding the pigs no one is working today, it is impossible to get any machine onto any land anywhere on the farm.

The effects of this weather are however beginning to filter into the mainstream, this opinion piece is quite informative, with a peppering of interesting historical anecdotes and quotes.

Since reading the article I have found Samuel Pepys’ entry in his diary , which particularly mentions the rain and poor harvest on Wednesday 8th July 1663. Further mentions, by Pepys, of the unseasonal weather can be found on the entries for the 11th, 19th, and 21st July 1663.