Meet the New Residents on the Farm

Willy, Billy, Tommy, Freddie, Buster and all their friends have finally taken up residence on the farm. Just a joke....this is one set of animals that will not be named.

#

We spent this morning moving our 50,ooo worms into their new worm bed. It's been filled with a layer of wonderfully rotted (and ripe) manure from last years many poo picks ups. They have travelled all the way from Holland packed in compost, bags and baskets to live with us, so only the best is good enough for them.

Lovely Hubby built the worm bed sections last weekend and put them together and erected it in it's current position yesterday. It is lined with plastic and membrane to stop the lovely little wrigglers from vacating their new home, and will be topped with another sheet of wood to keep out predators. It's surprising how much of our wildlife likes eating worms!!

Truly a Bloggers Hubby, he photographed it every step of the way!

Lovely yummy well rotted manure!

Cosy enough to live in - if you're a worm!

100 kilos of worms

Opening all the bags.

#

And the first bag full goes in.

#

A writhing mass of life.

#

Soon we're on a roll, and there are thousands of worms taking up residence.

#

Before you can blink, they have vanished beneath the surface!

#

Literally five minutes later and the only worm left to be seen is a dead one.

Not bad, one casualty out of 50,000!

#

All tucked up, snug as a bug in a rug.

A brilliant start to Lovely Hubby's vermiculure business, a day he has long been looking forward to, after doing the initial research eight years ago. This time next year we will have worms for sale!!

Well done my darling, my soon to be Worm Millionaire!!

Sue xx

Butch Goes Walkabout

Yesterday, for the the first time Lovely Hubby decided Butch could come out of his enclosure and have a play in the orchard. However, Butch decided he would much rather explore the farm and the surrounding countryside.

For the first time in ages, I had managed to persuade LH to sit down, relax and watch a rugby match on television, of course after being sat down for ten minutes he promptly fell asleep. Next thing we know there is banging at the door and our landlady is standing there saying "did you know your boar is in our barn watching the men fix the tractors?"

Well........... NO we didn't!!

#

We quickly donned shoes, I grabbed a bucket of pig nuts and LH hitched up the pig trailer. Jill was giving me a lift to the barn, (it's over half a mile away) and who should we bump into on the track, but our landlord and Butch, casually strolling together towards home.

Butch it seems is even more bucket trained than our girls and enjoyed strolling along grabbing a mouthful of pig nuts every few minutes. We got him back to his enclosure with not a step out of place.

A pleasure to handle is a well trained pig. So, thank you Bruce (who we bought Butch from), and also a huge thank you for changing his name, as a baby he was called 'Love Potion'. Now can you imagine LH running through the fields calling that after an escaped pig!!

Sue xx

*All pictures on this post courtsey of Bruce from The Berkshire Pig Company.

Prettiness, promises and secrets revealed....

The prettiness is the lovely pot of flowers above, I'm not sure what they're called but they make me smile each and every time I step in the polytunnel.

And the promises........the first sight of the next crop of salad leaves, showing their pretty little faces just 3 days after sowing. That's the beauty of these later sowings, the warmth of the sun and the long, long days makes everything so quick to react and grow.

#

And now for something completely different........I've just got an award from the lovely Penny at The Hen House .

#

The first part of the rules is to thank the giver, well that goes without saying - but THANK YOU Penny for the award and for giving me a nice few minutes each day reading your wonderful Blog. You've been through a lot just recently and yet still you bounce back and make us all laugh........or think!!

#

The next part is to tell you 9 things about myself that you don't already know!!

#

1. I'm stubborn and forthright, I speak my mind and am just myself through and through, there are no airs and graces, if you don't like it....lump it!!

#

2. By order of my Mum (who phoned during the course of this post), I am resilient, I bounce back and I am a wonderful woman!! (She doesn't drink much....honest!!)

#

3. My hair is never the same colour all year, I have been every shade of brown, every shade of red and am currently blonde. The only colour I have never been (yet) is grey, much to my brothers' annoyance, he went grey at about twenty.

#

4. I left school at 16 with 1 ULCI (typing qualification), 1 O Level and 9 CSEs. there that shows my age. I now have a ECDL (computer qualification) and loads of retail qualifications in Visual Merchandising, Health and Safety and the Management of People. (It means I can visually merchandise my polytunnel to it's best effect.....see, I knew it would come in handy.)

#

5. My first job was at Boots the Chemist, stacking the hair products and working on the till, I earnt £14 in my first ever pay packet.

#

6. My occupation now is officially Company Director/Smallholder. In the words of Victor Kyam...........I liked the product so much I bought the company!!

#

7. My first marriage lasted 26 years, some of it good, some of it bad, but all of it a learning curve and an experience that has shaped the person I am. So, no hard feelings Pete!!

#

8. I can't swim, but I was told once by a psychic that I would never drown, so I'm okay!!

#

9. There is no nine, until you ask it, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW?

#

The final rule is to pass this on to nine other people who's Blogs you admire, well look in my sidebar there are more than nine, each and every one I admire, I follow lots of others that are listed on my dashboard, about 30 in all. If you would like to take up this award please do so, but let me know so I can call by for a nosy!!

#

Enjoy the Bank Holiday weekend, as I type it is raining (of course) but I'll be dry in my polytunnel, so it's happy planting for me.

#

Sue xx

The Kitchen Garden

January 2009 When we moved onto the farm in January 2009 the back of the house was full of rubble, covered over with a layer of stones and weeds, designed primarily for parking on. We never really saw the point of driving round the house to park, so it was always our plan to use it for something else. March 2009

By March we had made the house comfortable, and things outside had warmed up enough for us to start work on the outside. Many supplies had to be bought, as we had come from a town house with only a little patio/yard at the back, so we owned only trowels and a couple of pots.

#

June 2009

Of course Lovely Hubby needed a shed......doesn't every man!! He actually does nothing in it, he works in the barn, but we store all the animal feed in galvanised bins in it now.

#

August 2009

By August we decided we were getting to far behind with our plans for the back, so we paid a friend with his little digger to come and scrape away the stones and leave us a level surface.

#

August 2009

What would have taken us weeks digging by hand was done in a matter of two afternoons.

January 2010

Then other matters were more important so the work was temporarily put on hold. By January 2010 LH had put in the first of the raised beds. Six beds which we filled with manure and left to settle. Then came the hard frosts and snow. With the earth too hard to work with and the ice too thick we once again abandoned work.

March 2010

As soon as the thaw came we got back to work, waiting for the water to drain away we discovered the land was below the level of the water table at the shed side so we had to infill with rubble before we could think of putting in the last three beds.

April 2010

Once the last three beds were in, it looked as though we had a stream running alongside, the water was still that deep. All the beds now had manure in them, and the first six were then filled up with top soil and left to settle.

#

May 2010 - today.

Next stage was to begin planting, first in were the potatoes, Earlies, Second Earlies and a bed of Main Crop. All the other veggies were added as soon as the weather warmed up, stage by stage, we still had occasional frosts at night up until the week before last, so we had to be careful.

May 2010 - today.

#

This week saw the last bed being filled and now the Kitchen Garden looks like this.

#

A big job done over the course of more than a year but a worthwhile one. It's nice to look back on the photos and see just how far we've come.

Lots of yummy times ahead - hopefully!!

Sue xx

A Quiet Day

Poppy and Frank

#

Our lovely visitors are back in the paddock for a week while their field in the village is sprayed with something yucky. It's a win, win situation, they get fresh grazing and a holiday from being ridden every day and we get our grass cut and a little something in the kitty. And they look so right being there, if you know what I mean.

#

Today I am taking it easy, we were out until chicken bedtime last night putting the new fencing up, it's not electrified yet but that will be completed tonight. When it got to 9.30 pm and we still hadn't had our tea we thought enough was enough. When we finished eating we both promptly fell asleep on the sofa, but it's not good waking up after midnight and having to climb into bed when you have to be up at 5am to go to work.

#

So today I am taking it a bit easier.........but you know me one job can lead to another.....Lol!!

#

Even the chickens have had a lie in, must go and get them up now.

#

Sue xx

Life in the shanty town!!

Well the ladies are thoroughly enjoying life in their 'shanty town'. They troop over every morning to go in for breakfast and then have fun and games climbing the umbrella and sliding down. Some do get down to the serious business of egg laying (the nesting boxes are under the umbrella with the sides of the house being used to create a nice cosy dark corner).

#

If they want peace and quiet they sit on the roosting bars in the roof space of the old chicken house, last night Molly wanted to sleep there and it took a lot of persuasion by LH to get her to come down.

#

At night time they troop over to their usual house, have a mooch about for a while and then put themselves to bed. Hopefully today will be the last day they have to do this as our new electric foxproof poultry netting should be delivered.

#

And while they are playing.......I've been busy. Yesterday saw me planting this last raised bed with 53 Spinach Beets (Perpetual Spinach) under the net tunnels and 6 Chicory, 8 Kohl Rabi, 1 Aubergine, temporarily under the bottles and 1 Narsturtium .

#

Good job I'm married to an ex- Royal Navy guy, him and Popeye both love Spinach!!

#

Sue xx

Anything but foxes......

This morning I would rather talk about anything but foxes........but first a quick update for all my lovely followers and concerned folk. Yes, it was most definitely foxes, at least two, that have eaten my lovely girls. Yesterday morning I heard the girls making a LOT of noise and dashed out of the kitchen to find myself stood about twelve feet from Mr Fox, calmly surveying what had been his larder, but now safely behind the chicken wire. On my order Sophie gave chase and saw him off, he didn't come back!! This morning I have just been greeted by the sight of a large lady fox, bigger than yesterdays but just dashing through the field. I hope they realise chicken is off the menu.

My remaining girls are all well and safe, slightly disgruntled at being expected to live in a pen, you can see the temporary enclosure for the big girls at the top left of the photo above, it will later be the empire of the Lavender Pekin Bantams. We have placed an emergency order with the company that provided our hen houses and hopefully they will rush our new Fox-proof Electric Poultry Netting to us and then all will be well.

Runner Bean Wigwam (also 2 beans planted at each post) Now.....enough of that!! Yesterday saw us being busy, busy little bees, LH building his worm bed sections (very impressive!!) and me........I was turning the picture you see at the top of this post into the picture you see at the bottom. Cucumber Slope (with Pumpkins behind and to the left) Of course there were lots of other jobs along the way, including a marathon watering session for the Kitchen Garden and polytunnel, but in my mind my main achievement was the cucumber/pumpkin/bean bed. Nice to step back at the end of the day and see someting completed (well almost, I'm just going to add some sweetpeas between each of the uprights, LH has put some mesh there for them to grow up). I'm off to plant them now, that is after I've coaxed the girls into their daytime enclosure. Have a good day and I hope you all have some of this lovely good weather, it's Bank Holiday in the UK this weekend so we know it won't last!! Sue xx

Chickens

Little Lovely - a survivor.

At bedtime last night we managed to get back together fourteen of our thirty girls. We have lost 2 White Stars (Cappachino and Milly), 1 Welsummer (Coco), 5 Speckledys and 8 Red Girls.

#

So of our original 30 we have left 5 Speckledys, 4 Reds, 3 White Stars (Molly, Little Lovely and Jemima) and 2 Welsummers (Fudge and Bourneville).

#

They are now all living temporarily during the day in the old chicken enclosure and coming out at night under supervision to go back to their house. This will continue until the electric poultry fencing arrives. The new girls are confined to the other chicken house until then too, it's not a perfect solution but a safe one. 13 of them in a house designed for 24 gives them enough room to cope for a couple of days.

#

The Lavender Pekin Bantams have been safe all the time in their Eglu, and are now sharing it temporarily with the 2 new New Hampshire Reds, who at just 6 weeks old were being bullied by the new big girls. At least they are the same size as the bantams at the moment.

#

Life here on the farm is subdued but going on. The pigs (thanks to Butch) have discovered a liking for jam doughnuts!! They are all currently basking, with full tummys in their various mud wallows in the orchard enjoying this lovely sunshine. I'm off to the polytunnel to give everything a drink before it gets too hot in there and Lovely Hubby is busily constructing his worm beds, ready for the arrival next week of the main bulk of our worm empire.

#

Thank you SO much for all your words of sympathy left yesterday either in the form of comments or the numerous private emails I have had from lovely blogging pals. It helps when folk understand.

#

Have a lovely day.

#

Sue xx

Decimation and Disappointment

Usually when we get back from any journey off the farm we are greeted with calls, cackles and the general welcoming sound of our girls. Welcoming us back, (okay I know....they're really just after one thing.......FOOD!!), it's a lovely sight and sound. Today we arrived back from our visit to a Farm Sale to the sound of silence. Not one chicken to be seen.

#

Worrying and quite scary.

#

We quickly got out some corn and called the girls, from out of the bushes and the orchard a few appeared, in no great rush to eat, and more subdued than I have ever seen them. They peacefully all ate around one tray of food, all 6 of them.

#

How many we have lost I won't know for sure until bedtime when I can do a proper head count. Our little flock of happy hens has been decimated by a fox or a couple of foxes. There are little clusters of feathers dotted around the farm. The only consolation is that they have been taken as food, most likely for baby fox cubs and not just massacred and left. Nature is sometimes hard to accept, but in the country you must.

#

The reason we were off the farm......to buy some additional laying friends for our girls. These have now turned into replacements!!

#

We bought -

6 Speckledys POL 2 (six week old) New Hampshire Reds 1 Light Sussex POL 1 Black Rock POL

5 Hylines POL

#

These will all remain inside one of the houses, and our girls will be caged in the old chicken run during the day until we have delivery of our soon to be ordered electric poultry fencing. Mrs Fox is having no more of my ladies.

#

And the disappointment..........it looks as though Betty the Berkshire pig has had a phantom pregnancy. Not a sign of any imminent birth (pigs rarely go past their due date). She is now in with Butch, the new Berkshire boar, a proven stud. Fingers crossed this time, if nothing happens there will be lots of sausages for sale at the Farmers Market.

#

Sorry to all those of you who were waiting for pictures of little piggies, to say I'm disappointed is the biggest understatement of this year!!

#

Saturday 22nd May, a sad day here on the farm.

#

Sue xx

Discovering New Blogs

One of the best bits of Blogging on a regular basis is discovering new Blogs on your travels.

I 'follow' lots of Blogs, I have a list of good Blogs on my sidebar and nip by and visit lots more when I have time, but sometimes you stumble across a new one, usually through someone else's sidebar. After all if you like reading someones Blog it stands to reason you are on a similar wavelength to them and will enjoy some of what they enjoy. It is always a pleasure to 'dip' into someone elses life as a welcome guest.

Some of my favourites at the moment are to do with self-sufficiency and living 'the Good Life' for obvious reasons. When we dip into these we can tap into a wealth of ideas and tips, we can help solve each others problems and motivate each other.

My bestest Blog at the moment for reading daily, and one I have followed for quite a while now, has to be Rural Idiocy. Max is on a similar journey to me but in Brittany. He has the added pressure of foreign language, a family to support and a need to set himself up for his completely self-sufficient year next year. He is an inspiration. We have both helped each other (I hope) with ideas and suggestions and picked each other up when we've felt down about this life style. Through his sidebar I have tapped into many other lovely Bloggers writing about the same things.

Another very recent discovery has been Rebecca Bakes Cakes, a Blog by a lovely girl baking her way through the year, with a different cake or biscuit recipe each week, can you guess why I like it? This weeks recipe is definitely on the menu!

#

The picture at the start of this post, is three of the new girls (Rhode Island Red Hybrids) also dipping, into a pig trough, freshly filled with water.

#

Sometimes it's nice to dip, into cool clear water or into someone else's life, it can clear your head, inspire you, make you a better person, relax you........ or just quench your thirst.......all good!!

#

Sue xx

Flowering fruits.......

So many of our fruit bushes, trees and plants are flowering now it is looking promising for a fruity summer.......fingers crossed, we even have rhubarb!!

There are FIVE Lavender Pekins in this picture, they are still so small two can easily hide behind the water pot when Mum approaches with the camera. The friendliest of them is Caldwell, the cockerel. He looks after his ladies very well, always being the first to explore new things and to check the house after I've cleaned it before he lets them in,and he's only ten weeks old. (He's the one at the left of the picture with the slightly larger comb.)

#

Back to the planting.......today......lettuces.

#

Sue xx

21 today...............

No, not me.......if only! 21 eggs today, our highest ever.

#

It means more of the Rhode Island Hybrids are coming in to lay. It also means my fridge fills up VERY quickly!!

#

Sue xx

Even more planting........

My favorite bed.....Garlic and Artichokes, only needs weeding and watering once a week.....simples!!

It seems there is no end to it, as soon as I have potted some things on there are more waiting to be planted.

Cabbages in their final resting place in the polytunnel (with some beans in the foreground waiting to be planted outside).

I think I overdid it with the lettuce.....and , yes, I forgot to take them to the car boot sale....doh!!

But no worries........look at all my lovely compost! Today I am potting on Celery and sowing some more mixed leaves and radishes, we've nearly ate them all.....yummy!

Back to work. Sue xx