We Have Lambs!

At 9.00 on Tuesday morning, it was looking like a normal working day.

By 4pm a local farmer had called and told us that he had three orphan lambs in the back of his landrover and could we come and collect them that evening?

I woud not usually advocate last minute livestock purchases, but in this case it was too good an opportunity to miss. We frantically drove home and cleared out 1/3 of the garage, laid down some hay and fenced off the rest of it. Next doors' dog cage was cleaned down and off we went!



An action photo - they don't stay still for long.



They are each one of  a set of triplets whose mothers couldn't cope with feeding three. They need to be bottle fed  at least four times a day - starting with thick yellow colostrum (the milk ewes produce in the first 24 hours which contains antibodies and lots of other lovely stuff) and later with ewe milk replacement formula.

Cherry Coke - just for the taste of it.

Getting them to use a bottle was difficult at first but they soon got the hang of it with a little massaging of their throats and a squirt of milk in the corner of the mouth. Rather like a human baby the milk needs to be at body temperature.

I learned two new things about feeding lambs today - never feed them in anything other than a standing position (or you risk milk getting on their lungs and causing pneumonia) and never put colostrum in the microwave - this kills off the good stuff within it.

They are fed four times daily at 12 and 6 o'clock, so late nights and early mornings - not ideal when combined with a full time job, but thankfully I have a very obliging mother who is happy to do the lunchtime feed and a very understanding boss who lets me have a day off with 10 minutes notice to go lambing.

Vegetarianism has never looked so appealing!

Farmers for a Day

Last year we raised three Gloucester Old Spot pigs. These were for our own consumption in a Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall inspired self sufficiency drive. It was a great success - they were relatively easy to care for and produced excellent meat, which lasted us several months. We fed them on organic food and they were not medicated which makes them organic to us - although obviously they were not certified as such.

Our three pigs worth of organic-ish pork.

We were inundated by family and friends wanting to buy some, and decided this year we would up production slightly. In a bid to learn more about the pig business, we spent a day helping out at the wonderful  Marshfield Organic Farm near Bath, to try and pick up some practical skills.

Lesson 1 being how to load pigs into a trailer. Someone once said to me about pigs:

'Never wrestle a pig. You get muddy and besides, the pig likes it'

Slowly slowly catchee piggy...

So true. You just cannot force a 15 stone pig to do something it doesn't want to do. Hence we tempted 7 of the 8 pigs into a trailer with food. One just would not comply, so Oli did an excellent job of 'driving' it accross the field by cunningly laying a trail of pig nuts. Apart from one incident where it ran off to chase some sheep, it was a great success.




Mud up to armpits = happy pig.

Marshfield Farm is nestled in the rolling Bath countryside and just about as far as you can get from intensive production. Call me a wuss but  watching the pigs jumping gleefully into the deep mud brought a lump to my throat. This is how farm animals should be kept - outside, in small groups and under the watch of a farmer who cares about their welfare just as much as his profits. They sell their excellent meat through farmers markets. It seems simple to me - if you like the sight of pigs frolicking in  fields rather than crammed up in concrete sheds, buy your meat from a farmer, not a supermarket.

As it is lambing season, every 3 hours, the farmer scoots around on a quad bike, checking the lambs. This one is a triplet who was very skinny and weak. It's mother didn't have enough teats for all three, so decided to cut her losses and stop feeding this one. It will need to be bottle fed for two months at least - if it survives - and is currently living in the boiler room to keep it warm. We have offered our services if it picks up, so watch this space!

Days like today really restore my faith in British farming. Marshfield has sheep, cattle, chickens, laying hens and pigs all reared organically. Intensive farming is often cited as the only way to feed the growing world population. I disagree - Marshfield Farm is proof that small scale mixed farming can still work if we consumers are there to support farms by buying locally.

Gratuitous Flower Picture

Unfortunately I have no idea what the proper botanical name for this Camellia is. This is because I bought it two years ago as a cheap rooted cutting at Wilkinsons - not known as a beacon of horticultural excellence, admittedly, but at £2.49, my horticultural scruples flew out of the gaudy red and yellow automatic doors.

Excuse the terrible paint job on the windows - this is what happens when you skip the masking tape stage.

This is the first time it has flowered and I was kept wondering at what colour it would be. I am OK with white, especially against these lovely bright yelllow stamens. It is a little too hot for it on my kitchen windowsill, so once the flowers are over, it will go back outside. I might also treat it to a bigger pot and some fresh ericaceous compost.

Couldn't resist a gratuitous cat picture too - we have said goodbye to Jesabelle (because she's anyones) and Prudence, the cats. We were catsitting them while their owners moved house - they were excellent houseguests (apart from mistaking the fetching shagpile carpet for their litter tray now and again, but then it is an easy mistake to make) and we will miss them lots. It will be nice to have the sofa back though!

Random Spicy Raisin Bread

At our house, Sunday night is breadmaking night, so that we have bread ready for the working week.

Last night I did something different and borrowed an idea from this excellent forum. At the final proving, rolled the dough into a rectangle shape and slathered it with 1/2 a jar leftover christmas mincemeat, before rolling it up again and baking in a tin.

When you cut a slice, it has a big spicy swirl through it. Very nice for breakfast and a good way to use up leftovers.  Nom nom nom.

More parsnips than a girl should have to deal with

Ugh...my fingers stink of parsnip. The kitchen stinks of parsnips. The compost bin is full of parsnip skins.

I needed to dig over the space, so an obscene quantity of parsnips had to come out. About 1/3 of these went straight on the compost heap, as they were too thin to do anything useful with (must sow more thinly this year).

But I couldn't bring myself to throw away the remainder, which I washed off with the hose, topped and tailed and brought to the kitchen to decide what to do with them.



Ugh

Admittedly, they were good specimins - not woody and untroubled by carrot fly. I decided to par-boil the better looking ones briefly and freeze them for quick roast dinners.

Aunt Bessie? Eat my shorts.

The rest I made into Spicy Parsnip soup, which we will take to work this week (all week!). It was lovely. Here is the recipe - although I doubled the quantities:

Spicy Parsnip Soup

6 parsnips, peeled and chopped
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1tsp garam masala
1tsp dried chilli flakes
butter for frying
1 pint stock
seasoning
1/2 pint milk (or cream)

1.  Sweat the onions and garlic in the butter, garam masala and chilli until golden.
2. Add the parsnips and fry gently to coat in the spicy oil.
3. Add stock, milk and seasoning and simmer for 20 minutes until parsnips are soft.
4. Whizz up with a blender and nom it down. You can add corriander if you are so inclined.

Heaven is a Free Greenhouse!

Mi Casa



Granted, it is not a thing of great beauty, and the palm house at Kew need not fret over its world heritage status. We will probably replace the bottom panels with glass over time and it needs a gravel floor.

However it will make an enormous difference to us this year - hopefully our tomatoes will ripen (the polytunnel just wasn't light or warm enough)  and no more leggy seedlings, as we struggle to find a bright windowsill in the house.

No more of these leggy seedlings for me!

We were given this 10ft x 8ft beauty by someone on our local Freecycle group, who were redeveloping their house and needed to pull it down. It even came with built in staging and automatic window openers.




A bit of Ronsil (also free!) and the staging was as good as new.

 We calculated that the whole thing cost under £20, which was the price of the replacement screws and petrol to and from its old home. Similar sized new ones online cost £700. Well worth the 30 hours spent between us taking it down, putting it up and giving it a good clean. And with minimal swearing and spanner throwing!

Ah, the wonders of Freecycle. To think, this could have been at the bottom of a skip by now and instead it is propagating my bean and pea seedlings.

We have a chick!

Look what we found when we came home from work yesterday...



This is a cream legbar (hopefully female) chick which we bread ourselves, from our cream legbar hen and random meat hen cockerel. And just when the daffodils are coming out and the sun is shining...it must be spring!