Pitter, patter.....

No, not the sound of more little trotters, the glorious sound of the rain.  I know it looks like we are in the midst of Autumn out there, the chickens are huddled under any shelter they can find, the pigs are having a 'straw day'....their version of our 'duvet day' when you huddle down and keep cosy, their little snouts came briefly out of the arks for breakfast and then swiftly retreated.  I'll not have much trough filling to do this afternoon.

Why do I say the 'glorious' sound of rain, well my veggie beds really need it at the moment, we were beginning to look very prarie like, with dust bunnies rolling around the farm on windy days, but the main reason is the Blackberries. 

I wandered the farm yesterday checking my wild outdoor larder, the Rosehips, the Blackberries etc.... and what is there is small, dry and hard.  I walked to all our favourite picking spots from the last couple of years and found the crops about 50% down on last year.  Hopefully this rain and then, fingers crossed a couple of days of sunshine (over the Bank Holiday would be good, can I book it please?) should do the trick and bring on what is there to a reasonable size for picking and jam making.

A shock discovery after an hour of looking there are THREE ripe almost good sized Blackberries in one photo....woo hoo.

If the crops don't improve much I will hold back from picking entirely and leave what is there for the wildlife, after all I still have some jam over from last year, I can manage, if it's a bad Winter as lots of folk are predicting they'll need them more than me.

Sue xx

One of this years success stories.

One of this years resounding successes is the Grapevine in the polytunnel.  After looking after it for three years I have finally got a bumper crop of juicy green grapes.  Lovely Hubby is always grabbing a bunch when he passes and eating them like sweets while he works on the tractor (yes, it's in bits again!!).

 

The only downside to it is that it really has taken over the polytunnel and is still growing.  I stand up from weeding to be tapped on the head by yet another branch that has grown two foot overnight and is dangling menacingly overhead.

Oh, another downside......the wasps!! Hundreds seem to come in to feast on the fallen grapes , so I've made the decision to snip off all the remaining bunches, some for LH to munch on, some to be squished into grape juice and the rest as a treat for the chickens.

Other plants running rampant in the polytunnel at the moment.......Tomatoes, Aubergines and Chilli Peppers.  All the above were turned into a delicious sauce last night for our tea served with Spicy Cous Cous and Peppered Mackerel for LH.  Yummy!!

Sue xx

Jemima, a trip down memory lane, and piggy first aid.

Sadly on Saturday Jemima slipped away.  She has been looking like she was set to die for the last couple of weeks, but something has always caught her interest and made her rally round, (I'm convinced some chickens just choose when to die!).  But on Saturday morning she came out for a drink had a last wander round Chicken World and then sat herself in the doorway of house number one.  She left enough room for everyone else to get in and out to lay their eggs and have little chunnering chats with her, but sat basking in the morning sunshine for a couple of hours.  And then she was gone, simply and peacefully, what a nice end to a life well lived.

Going through the old photos to try and find one of Jemima on her own, that's her at the very top of the post.  I realised how far we have come since we got our original 10 White Star hybrids, way back in Spring of 2009.  They were all approximately 2 years old and were rescued free-rangers.  From day one they were characters and each had a name to suit, they thought they lived in our house with us and made themselves very at home.

That's Mother above surveying the living room and then she proceeded to sit on the floor to watch some of the match!

They all roamed the farm, coming and going as they pleased, but always running to greet us when we appeared from the house.  Jemima is the second from the left in this photo.  I could recognise each and everyone of them, from their slightly varying feather patterns although they all changed slightly with each moult, so I had to watch the new patterns develop.

It's funny going back to old photos, you find some good shots....these are three of our four Welsummers, back in 2009 when they were young and went everywhere together.

 

And this little lady arrived on the farm in August of 2009, I can assure you she no longer sits on the table and drinks tea!!

Yesterday when I went to feed the pigs, these little ones were lying fast asleep in the ark absolutely covered from head to toe in mud.  They were completely dark brown all over.  I though it strange as when pigs wallow usually it is just their bottom halves or all down one side that gets muddy and these were literally covered in it.  I looked around to try and find a hole they might have fallen in but there was nothing.... except a lot less mud in Mum's wallow!!

It all became perfectly clear this morning, looking in the ark to check them while Maud was eating her breakfast, they were all fast asleep (again) but glowing pink!!  They must have got sunburnt yesterday while they were roaming about, and sensible Mum had given them all a mud bath and sent them to bed!!

Clever girl is my Maud!!

Sue xx

Shhhh.....Piggies Sleeping

Slumbering quietly in the orchard, 13 little piggies and their Mum.

The babies all tucked up cosy in a little dip filled with straw...

...big bad Farmer Man goes by, whistling loudly, ears prick up...

...grumpy Mum staggers to her feet...

...but all is well.....might just as well go back to sleep then!!

Sue xx

Tinka, Tayla and Gypsey....The Kune Kunes

In October last year we brought home three little piggies, tucked up safely in the back of the truck, they peered shyly out from the straw as we arrived home.

They quickly settled in, bonding with me over celery sticks (they always loved celery) the day after they arrived.

And enjoyed helping Lovely Hubby whenever he made modifications or improved their little home.

 As the weather turned icy they loved their little pen, and spent lots of happy hours arranging and rearranging the straw in the pig ark.

When the heavy rains of Winter came, they had mud fuelled games and got seriously messy.  But we decided a nice warm, dry spot would be more preferable for our favourite little piggies.

And what better spot than the barn where the big pigs had overwintered the year before.

This time we converted our storeroom, so they had a nice warm and cosy indoor area and a big space outside that we needed clearing anyway.  We thought we could continue storing the straw bales there but they had other ideas, chewing through the baler twine and making their beds bigger and deeper than ever before!  They emptied out our log storage bags on a daily basis and decorated their room in a very rustic fashion, having great fun in the process.

By April they had cleared the ground of all weeds and anything green they could find and it was time to move them to richer pastures.

 So they joined the big pigs in the Paddock, having a massive 2.5 acres just to themselves.  With a new ark to sleep in and a day shelter so they could escape the midday sun, made from large Hestons and a couple of boards it was truly a piggy paradise.

And then with the sad family time we are currently going through we made the reluctant decision to find new homes for all our pigs. We gave ourselves the whole of the Summer to get the right homes for our stock.   We wanted the Kunes to stay together if possible and waited for just the right new home to come along.  I'm glad we did, we took them to it yesterday, it's perfect.

Jeni, their new Mum, has got them a lush grassy paddock, with a brand new house, just the right size for the three of them to cuddle into.

They have new interesting neighbours to get to know.

But yesterday the grass was definitely taking priority.  After a quick tour of the edges of their new

 domain and a quick peek into the new little house they continued grazing all the time we were there.

Pausing briefly to say goodbye to LH, who was giving the dogs a run in the next field after the long journey.

~~~

So now that is a huge weight off our minds, we've been so lucky up to now with the homes we've found for the pigs.  The Large Black herd is happily settled in the Netherlands, Lulu and her babies are still at Jimmy's Farm and will join the rest of the family over there very soon.

Martha, her sister Maud and her piglets, our Middle Whites, are being delivered by us in two weeks (when the piglets are old enough to travel) to Fallowfields Country House Hotel, which has their own farm, occasionally open to the public (including this August Bank Holiday) where they will be some of  the resident breeding sows.  Anthony is a wonderful guy and has the same caring attitude to all his livestock that we do.  Happy lives lived the way they should be, before as humane an end as possible.  He rears and grows most of the food himself for his wonderful hotel and the quality really does stand out.

So it's all going extremely well and in two weeks time we will be left with just Martha's weaners and our four little Middle White gilts, who (fingers crossed) may now be spoken for.

So we have gone from over forty pigs a couple of months ago down to ten left on the farm by the end of this month.  With some of them going to a (sadly for them) sausagey end, but all the others being found lovely caring homes, where they will continue to live the lives we want for them.

So today it's a big THANK YOU to Jeni and her family for giving my girls a wonderful new caring home.  Just the kind of place I could have dreamed of for them.  Tinka, Tayla and Gypsey you have a wonderful future ahead of you.

Sue xx

Miss Piggy

Born on the 6th January with seven brothers and sisters.

In February she started eating pig nuts with the rest of the family and relished the first steps of freedom.

In March she had great fun chasing Daddy around the orchard,  luckily for them he didn't get cross and joined in the fun.  They were a gang of little hooligans, never still for a minute.

In April she got cheeky and we fell in love with her, she was supposed to be sold with the rest of her sisters, but we hung on to her instead and she lived with her brothers for a while.

In May she moved to the Paddock to live with the 'big girls' and was reacquainted with Mum.  An immediate bond was obvious.

Throughout June they went everywhere together and cuddled up at night in an ark just to themselves.

In July they moved back to the Orchard so Maud could prepare for her next litter of piglets to be born.

Maud got cross with her a day before the birth so she moved in with Auntie Martha and her cousins.

Tonight she leaves the farm, not for a happy end, unfortunately.  But while she was here she had an interesting and funfilled life.  By the way she is not called after the Muppet, but is named so because of her air of being a proper little Miss.

We loved having you Miss Piggy, and we hope you enjoyed your life with us.

Sue xx

Life and Death in Chicken World

The latest chicks to be born on the farm are now just over a week old.  They hatched under two of our Speckledys, who were very content sitting together and enjoyed raising their shared babies for the first few days.  Then one of them decided that this motherhood lark was not for her and demanded to be let out of the Broody House in no uncertain terms.

As she ran off relishing her freedom from motherly chores the other one got stuck in, teaching her babies to eat by themselves, introducing them to all sorts of tasty titbits and plonking herself firmly down whenever they ran to mum to get a warm under her lovely downy soft feathers.

Elsewhere in chicken world we are slowly losing one by one the birds we rescued at the start of the year.  The Hylines were from a 'free-range' farm that was going out of business and lots of lovely folk stepped in to take the birds before they went to slaughter.  We managed to fit 20 of them into one of our henhouses. 

They are lovely characterful birds, absolutely obsessed with wellies, they will peck contentedly at your feet for hours if you are wearing wellies.  It doesn't matter if they are clean or dirty, it's like a ritual for them, I'm guessing that's all they really saw of people, wellie clad feet striding through their giant 3000 chicken sheds and they relish the contact with you.  If I pick them up for a cuddle (I'm usually to be found wandering round the farm with a chicken under my arm), they always look surprised and then settle down into the cuddle in a most contented way.

Sadly because their little bodies are pushed to the limits with an egg a day expected of them all year round, lights left on in Winter to simulate extra daylight hours and the general push and shove that comes with so many birds being in a relatively small space, they don't live as long as the girls I have had on the farm from chickhood, and now aged about two and a half they are slowly declining.  When they first got here they were a sorry bunch, most went through a moult and some only regained some of their feathers, so some of them have nick names like Baldy Bum and Scruffy, although they are still the typical glorious red that Hylines are.  Others became resplendent with lovely colouring and  unique feather patterns, but each is a character in her own right.

The scruffier ones are now slowly dying, one at the start of last week, one on Monday and then sadly another this morning.  Not for them the sitting gracefully waiting to go though, they usually just keel over after breakfast or die peacefully in their sleep with no warning to us.  Very sad, but I am glad we got these lovely girls, they have lived for six months with space to roam, new friends for company the glorious Oxfordshire sunshine on their little backs and fresh clean wellies to peck whenever they want to.

  By the way our oldest hen Jemima, one of the original rescued White Stars, now over four years old is still doing well and holding her place in the higher echelons of the flock.

Every chicken deserves a happy retirement, and if they come to us we make sure they get one.

Sue xx