Pig Keeping

Just to show everyone that it's not always hunky dory keeping pigs. Betty and Butch have decided that they really do not like each other AT ALL.

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Whether it's Betty's inexperience with boars or Butchs' rough stuff we don't really know but over the weekend things came to a head and Betty was quite badly hurt. My lovely girl has deep gashes on both sides and lots of little puncture wounds all over.

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With a bit of TLC and lots of bathing with a mild disinfectant we have managed to keep the flies away and the wounds are now healing nicely. But I think after two tries of putting them together we may not have played cupid very well.

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Betty is currently living with the Large Black piglets, this gives her more room in the ark to sleep in comfort, and there is less chance of the Middle Whites pushing and shoving her while she is a bit sore.

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Lesson learnt!!

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Sue xx

Oops.....we missed a birthday!!

July 2009

Little Rosy was one year old on the 23rd May and we didn't have a party!!

July 2009

# Although to Rosy every day is a party.......

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August 2009

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...there are potatoes to chase and savage...

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August 2009

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...if they fight back you can hide on the stairs...

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August 2009

...and at the end of the day, you can use your mattress as a duvet and go to sleep.

September 2009 There's lots of yummy food to be had, and when you've eaten your own you can share with a chicken.... September 2009 # ...if anyone shouts you can just look cute...

January 2010

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...and hope they don't make you walk on ice anymore!

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March 2010

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You can wait for Mum to take you for a walk...

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April 2010

...or just curl up with a friend on Dads' knee.

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May 2010 But best of all you can be a lovely little, exasperating dog that lives a magical life here on the farm, who fits in so well with all the other mad animals, and joins in with every job that's going on. The one that guards the chickens ferociously, since the nasty fox ate some of her friends.

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The one that, when no-one's looking (and sometimes when we are), licks the plates clean, scrounges for the tastiest titbits and when all else fails rolls over on her back waves her legs in the air and grins at you.

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Sometimes life's just Rosy!!

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Sue xx

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.

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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.

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And the first bag full goes in.

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A writhing mass of life.

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

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

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

Not bad, one casualty out of 50,000!

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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!!

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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.

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

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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!!

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

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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!!

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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!!)

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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!!

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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!!

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

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

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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!!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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

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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.

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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.

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

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

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Sue xx