Remembering

It's hard to believe we are only just embarking on our 8th year here at The Larches. We've learned so much, forgotten so much. In my 50th year I have noticed that there is only so much storage capacity in my noggin. Sometimes, when I learn something new, something old falls out the back... I wish I was more like my phone; when that gets close to being filled with gorgeous pictures of the sproglets, alpaca, lamb or plant, I add a SD card and all is well.

Shrimp 2014

We've just sold our 2016 lambs at market. Raised solely on our natural grass paddocks and their mums' milk, we were commended on their health and size and were rewarded with a very good price. Possibly the top price for lambs at that market. #Chuffed. We seem to specialise in making small things bigger; lambs, alpaca, plants. Shrimp, born two years ago, is now indistinguishable from my other sheep and she will go to the tup this year and have lambs of her own next year. Similarly Cleopatra lamb is well on her way to catching up her peers, and yet, earlier this year, she was sharing a bean bag with the cats, her nappy on, in the sitting room!

Cleopatra 2015

I'm not as gullible as I used to be, more's the pity. When I first started to keep hens, I was surprised to find a tiny egg one morning and when I next saw a neighbour I showed him.
"Lord!" he said. "That's very rare." He looked at me dead on.
"That's a Rooster egg." he said. I looked from he to it and it to he. He had me for approx 6 seconds, but he had me.

We had a Rooster Egg this week again, though I suspect that one of my hens, who has been looking worse for wear, lacking feathers and generally not looking her best, is finally out of moult!

2p, Rooster Egg, Standard Egg.

 

Pancakes for tea....

Free range eggs are the best!

The colour of our free range egg yolks is a Crayola yellow, the yellow a child would choose for the sun.

Tonight on the Pancake Day menu:

Ludlow Sausage and sweet mustard.... in a pancake 

or

Prawns and bacon in a cream sauce.. ditto..

 

Pud

Trad sugar and lemon... in a crepe (posh word for same recipe above!)

or

Ice cream on top of the sugar and lemon #naughty!

 

 

Even more fun, the sproglets are insisting on cooking their own. #Day-off... No doubt the kitchen will be a disaster zone by 8pm. Onward and upward.

Mother Hen and chocolate cake....

We had a lovely weekend and friends came for Sunday lunch. The 9yo and I designed a couple of naughty cakes for dessert: The Kit-Kat Cake proved the most popular though I had at least 1 fan of my rhubarb, apple and blackberry oat-topped crumble, (all from the garden/fields.)

Also, to add to the weekend's fun, our new, (well, eBay-new,) incubator proved a good purchase; as we hatched 5 chicks from 12 eggs.

It's Monday morning now and I'm back inside after completing my outdoor jobs. I'm sitting in the warm kitchen, log burner glowing and the cats stretched across the sofa - fast asleep. Outside the snow is pouring onto our fields, (poor alpaca and sheep!) Here in the warmth, the peace is periodically pierced by the peeping of the chicks! They call out, then eat something, then go back to sleep. In exactly 21 days they turned from eggs to the cutest chicks. A miracle really. They are already eating and drinking; amazing.

We're confident that two are Salmon Faverolles, (the yellow ones,) though we still don't know yet if they are male or female. We should know in a couple of weeks due to their wing colour. The other three babies may be a combination of Salmon Faverolle rooster and Black Rock hen. Hope they're girls!

In a day or so they'll move to the larger brooder but for now they are toasty in their incubator.

All-in-all a jolly good weekend. Though after the Kit-Kat Cake, (not easy to say, cut or eat,) I may need a couple of days of fasting..... 

 

[If you are reading this on an iPad or you cannot see the photos, please click the title of the post to be magically transported to my blog where all may be revealed. Lou x]

Chick Flick......

We have 6 chicks to date, more on the way. The Bantams are blissfully unaware that they are foster parents!

I was a little worried by our style of birthing centre this time; Housed in a converted cupboard inside a 3m x 3m secure compound, 3 Bantams sit close together incubating 15 eggs. Far from being a problem, their close proximity has meant that the three 'would-be' mothers have shared the chick care: They take turn sitting on the eggs, scratting with the hatched babies outside the coop and at night the chicks snuggle under which ever mother is closest. A great family model.

St. Patrick's Day white stuff....

As we toddled to bed last night Hubby remarked on the snow. I thought he was joking, having heard no mention of it on the forecast. Peering out into the darkness across the driveway and towards the fields I could see my black car was white!

I'm in need of sun. I don't mean holiday-in-the-Caribbean kind of sun, just a bit of blue sky and brightness that is a usual spring here in Blighty. I feel as if I have seen grey skies or fog-fug or blue-black rain skies for nigh on 18 months.

The other day I began fantasising about the creation of a giant hair dryer, pointed at the sky, diverting cloud cover, pollution and hopefully the ruddy jet stream. [Oxford and Cambridge get your thinking caps on.]

Note to self: Get off the soap box now!

OK, I'm back. Positive mental altitude required.

On an up-note, the sweet peas I planted in October are romping along and so, two weeks ago, I took these pots and some pots of perpetual peas planted in December and placed them on a table in the walled garden. The table faces south east and their backs are against a 25' Shropshire stone wall, home to our gossipy sparrows and tits.

I am always amazed at the resilience of sweet peas, if they have been grown hard they merely bow their heads to frost or snow. Obviously if frost was sustained I would have protected them but fortunately the white stuff has been manageable this year.

Today is traditionally the day to plant potatoes; St Patrick's Day. The snow has rather put me off. Instead I will don boots and put on a good coat to open up the chickens and check on the sheep. Then I might sow some seeds or have a spring clean of the potting shed. Good jobs for a Sunday. Hubby and Son are creating a wooden, stand-alone, nest box for the 10yo's Salmon Faverelle chickens, as they've grown so enormous they have begun squashing their own eggs in their coop. If I'm feeling robust I may even barrow some muck to the raised beds, though that may be tricky if the ground is frozen again under the snow.

This afternoon we are hunting eggs, the chocolate kind, at a school event. Here's hoping the organisers haven't hidden all white chocolate eggs or we may never find them!

Till next time.

Lou

Free Range Egg Collecting... the proper way

Take a suitable receptacle, (bucket basket shape,) pull on your wellies, [Lou checks that this tricky little word hasn't been spell checked by the computer. Computer is obsessed by sex and keeps changing wellies to willies, really annoying.]

Where was I? ...Oh yes.. wear appropriate clothing. Currently my appropriate clothing comprises two pairs of sox, one pair of saggy crotch thermal long johns, one pair of tight jeans, (to keep the thermals up,) several jumpers, a light windproof coat, a wool scarf, gardening gloves and my sturdy fake fur. I will, of course, put other layers on when I actually venture outdoors to collect the eggs.

Now, it's best to try to look innocent when egg collecting. We don't need to alert the girls to the fact that you're stealing their children, so practise sauntering. Imagine it is late spring and you are admiring the flowers. Walk in a zig-zag towards the coop so as not to be too obvious.

When you arrive at the coop exclaim loudly,

'Gosh, I'll just lift up this nest box flap and peer in, purely for the purpose of checking if the coop needs cleaning.' [Remember to smile in a nice way.]

To be honest, none of this am dram stuff really works. The girls are wise to the fact that chickens only lay eggs in the nest box when they have no where else to go. When they have access to acres and acres, it's much more fun to play hidey-seeky with the fat girl, [I'm not actually that fat, it's my coat, it makes me look poofy.]

In reality the nest box is usually the last place I check.

Ideally you need to 1.find bucket, 2. dress appropriately 3. make a coffee. All this to be done before you open the hen coop in the morning. Dressed correctly and clutching coffee and basket, pop outdoors and let the girls out. Spread a little food about and make sure they have fresh clean water, rather than a block of ice!

Then sit/stand back and sip coffee. Sure they'll all start eating, drinking and rooster will be doing his thang to the ladies, (urgh!) but sooner or later one of those girls will crave a bit of egg laying.

This is the time to employ your 'innocent look' and ideally you should appear lethargic.

She'll look surreptitiously around, probably give you a stare before picking her skirts up and running like a 6yo who needs the toilet. Here at The Larches the favoured spot for off-piste laying seems to be up behind the compost heap, so said hen, (usually Archie,) darts from the coop area, towards the house, past the front door and up the drive.

As soon as she passes me I launch into commando mode, lethargy forgotten. By tip-toe running up the drive after her, I soon reach the cover of one of the cars before she turns around to check if anyone is following her.

She stops. Checks.

By this time I am slammed against Dizzy Discovery, hardly breathing for fear of being exposed and therefore evade her beady eyes.

Off she goes again and this time I am forced to run for the cover of the Monkey Puzzle tree. Bloody spiky that tree! Again, I am undetected.

Off she goes again but this time it is clear that she has reached her destination; the hollow of the tree in the hedge behind the compost. Ah ha! I will return there later to collect that egg.

All in all, very successful, except I have 20 hens and there are approximately ten nests that are used on a rota basis. I don't need to join a gym really. Clearly the girls confer during the night in order to test my resolve. Last week they lay eggs behind the huge mountain of logs in the woodshed and the saying 'I saw something nasty in the woodshed!' has never been truer. I made it to the top of the unsteady pile and spotted 6 eggs but then the pile moved and I ended up on my derriere. Apparently country folk are taught from an early age not to climb bales or wood stacks, this wasn't mentioned in St John's Wood, London.

Anyhoo, I hope this egg collecting malarkey is now as clear as day. I shall look for an equally challenging subject shortly, possibly regarding hand-rearing lambs as I understand that the sproglets have finally worn their father down.

Till next time. Over, And. Owt! 
 

Far from the madding crowd.....

The Farmer has a fab field opposite ours. It's perfect for sledging as you will see in the video. It takes a bit of effort to walk up it, but coming down is just fine.


You know I love you to read my blog, really I do, but I also like you to experience the pictures and the daft videos I post too. Sometimes Blogger, computers or iphones block perfectly safe video or picure content, which can be annoying. If you don't see the video above, PLEASE click on the blue title of the post and you will be transported to the internet to watch the sproglets sledge.

That was Sunday and now it's Wednesday and the snow has almost gone. The sun is shining this afternoon and having spent the morning writing, I'm now off to open up the green house and check on the girls' egg production before setting off for school to watch the netball.

Catch you soon. Next blog post will be an in-depth analysis of how to collect eggs..... dead serious... not!

Death to bugs.... by the Human Buffet..

I cleaned the chicken coop today and made it all gorgeous for the girls. I do it weekly (not weakly) so as to ensure they have a nice comfy place to plop the eggs. To be honest I don't know why I bloody bother; the Bantams have completely slipped from my radar screen, preferring to hide their tinsey-winsey white eggs somewhere within the grounds. Drives me bonkers. They have been warned and the market looms.

As if the fact that chickens seem to do all of their poo in the coop at night wasn't unpleasant enough, today I had to deal with yet more revoltingness. Leaning into the little coop to scoop up the sawdust, I noticed a little mass of squirmy red stuff near the perches.

Intrigued, I leaned in even closer, resting my head on the wooden boards above the back door and YUCK upon yuck!.. I could see that there was a mass of tiny red mites on the wooden slats, presumably having a bacchanalian party to make yet more mites..

The hot, humid weather has obviously been perfect for them. I have used mite powder before, dusting all the chickens just in case, but to see the little parasitic blighters was horrid.

I pulled back my head and started examining every crevice. That's when I realised that I had rested my head on another village of blood suckers, there were squillions of them but the moving mass was no bigger than a penny piece.

Since then I have mega cleaned the coop, I have dusted chickens, I have showered and scrubbed my hair and yet I seem still, some 10 hours later, to be being used as a human buffet by creatures that look like walking grains of ground black pepper, (or red pepper if they've feasted. Shudder.) They are in my hair, down my back, in the arms of my sweater and as I sit here trying to concentrate I feel sure they are about to penetrate my sturdy smalls. I cannot tell you how defiled I feel.

All my dreams of being a vaguely competent farmer in years to come are being dashed by something that is like red sand with teeth. [scratch, scratch, itch itch, SQUASH! SQUASH!  ... oh look a blood streak! smile..]

If this is how it feels to be a chicken in a coop with mites then I really hope reincarnation is a myth.

Tomorrow I'm buying this stuff; it's a bomb for the coop.... at this rate I'll be sat in there when it goes off... naked....

....Oh my goodness I can't take anymore biting, I'm off to throw my clothes on the bonfire and then I'm washing again and again and again...

Bet you can't wait for the blogs posts when we get sheep..... have you heard of dagging or crutching?????