lambing finished

Right now,as muttered  on various forums and blogs, people are setting up their lambing sheds, double checking their lambing kits and preparing themselves for several weeks of lack of sleep, but for us it is all over for another year. 

We borrow a ram, and as his owners want him back for the traditional lambing times (ram in on bonfire night, lambs on all fools day), he came to stay with our girls for six weeks beforehand, and hence our lambing time was earlier.

Alas, as predicted only one lambed again. Various theories abound around our neighbouring shepherds as to why we should have been unlucky as to have had two barren ewes, but many said once they had failed last year.. they would become too fat and not lamb this year.  Did they not lamb because they were fat – or did they become fat because they did not lamb?

Either way it is bad news for Sheila. 

I’ve spent ages debating  whether I am being daft one way or the other regarding Shirley.  See.. Shirley has a lovely long snowy white fleece, and a great temperament to boot.  She is the one that nudges at you for a pat, and is pretty easy to handle. I keep trying to decide if we are in this for the practical reason of raising lambs, I don’t want to get into the whole thing of having pet sheep that have to die of old age, and for us to have lots of work and no produce to show for it. At the same time, we are doing all this because we enjoy it, and if we enjoy having a nice amiable ewe, then shouldn’t we… I go round and round.

But, Sheila .. . she is difficult to handle (always suspicious that the bucket of ewe nuts might be a trap…. she’s right of course…) , her fleece is almost felted, and she is prone to the most problems.She is neither productive nor enjoyable – and no debate is needed. We have booked her place at the abattoir.

Next we have to decide whether to keep this year’s ewe lamb, Agnes, or buy in new.

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clocks change..

…and it is nice to have that extra hour of daylight at the end of the day – now we shall be able to achieve a lot more.  I still grumble about the clocks changing though.. I hate that it is messed with and personally think that we should stay on BST all year round.

Today I finally planted my broad beans, sowed lots of seeds, including parsnips and radishes and even more peas.

Himself has been working away on the big pig plan – he has been digging post holes and setting the posts in, wont be long before we can put the fence up.  He also fetched the new livestock trailer we had ordered, this week.  Funny – but like owners of a new car we are excited with our new toy.

 

so…the clocks have gone forward.. why do I feel its bedtime already…

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al pacino scarf

As I mentioned before, himself will keep referring to alpaca as ‘Al Fresco’, ‘Al Capone’, and ‘Al Pacino’, and so I knitted him his own al pacino scarf.

I bought a packet of different coloured alpaca roving  from sallypointer.com for himself for as a Christmas present, and he  carefully divided the colours, spun it up going from colour to colour, then repeated with the other half of the roving, and then plied it.   The result was a blend from colour to colour, as inevitably there was some length of both colours plied together. 

Now I am well enough to return to knitting, I have finished this scarf  and he is very happy with it. Its lovely and soft.

So to add something new, and it’s going to be the moebius scarf. Nothing like a bit of weird impossible mathematical knitting to addle an already confused brain…

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too many eggs?

Today, when I opened the hen house, I found this super-sized effort. Even with my currently wonky perspective, I noticed the difference!

It’s been a  while since we had a double yolker.. I think I shall have another attempt at pork and egg pie – with this egg inside everyone gets a bit with yolk.

You can’t really have too many of any harvest can you? just not enough recipes. For some inspiration, here is my list of egg recipes so far or  try the official site for lion quality eggs .

In our case the egg mountain has been caused by the hens being great layers right now, we are averaging eight a day, the neighbours have not been by to purchase some this week, and I’ve been out of action.  However, I’m getting back into it – lunch today was egg and micro salad  sandwich  – doesn’t that sound grand.. the micro salad was spare seedlings from the greenhouse – calabrese, red cabbage and sprouts. I’ve been freezing eggs to use in the leaner winter months, there’s a bacon and stilton quiche in the oven and I’m planning to make some scotch eggs.

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still at sea

But its now more like the house is at anchor, rather than in the storm as earlier in the week. I can strongly recommend not having labyrinthitis. My doctor tells me it can be another few weeks for the remaining swimmy symptoms to go away, so I’m trying to get on with things, although doing home ed with my son uses up most of my energy, and these passing waves are not helping – everything is still going up and down, and I have to lie down now and then just to get a break.

Talking of home ed, the doctor had another doctor in with them, whom I was instructed to ignore as he was ‘observing’.  Whatever. Anyhow, he pipes up at the end if he could ask me about home education and how it works.  Well, this wasn’t the best of times, but I am fairly used to the question – people are always asking me about home ed. – most don’t seem to realise that it is legal, let alone how it works. But that was not what he meant.. he was asking how I provided an education when I am ill. This is the first time I have had this experience – many times I have read on various forums about health professionals etc questioning H.E. provision, and how they are spying etc.. and to be honest I felt they were being a tad paranoid, as I have only had support so far.  But the way he asked.. the tone of his voice..  no – it did not just feel like idle curiosity, or even pondering if they could do this for their child, as usually the questioners are.. this felt like spying. This felt like the wrong answer would get written down somewhere..

So, despite having trouble staying upright, and clutching my secret cardboard kidney bowl in a plastic bag, (just in case), and feeling decidedly rough and a fair bit depressed as I had just been told I could be feeling kak for some weeks (and for some poor souls, it never improves), and that they could only treat the symptoms, with sea sickness tablets, which yes make you very drowsy… I took a deep breath, and calmly explained that although I educate my son, I don’t need to be breathing down his neck for every minute, I can set him tasks to do, and he gets on with them, just as he was whilst I was at the doctors (and obviously he gets far more individual attention than the average school child).  I explained that a lot of my effort goes into preparation and planning, and I have already  done a lot of that, I explained that he had plenty of work to do, and as he is a teenager, capable of getting on with it, furthermore, with his ASD traits, unwilling to stray from the plan. I then added that if necessary, I could ask my Mum to come and fetch my son and cover the education. 

I managed not to say ‘mind your own business’ – I probably should have.. but hey, I was ill, and not thinking straight…

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labyrinthitis

I have labyrinthitis and am feeling pretty sorry for myself.  I always get terribly sea sick.. it’s just not fair that I can have this whilst on dry land! and sober dammit…

Seriously, yesterday was no fun at all..

Today am taking sea sickeness drugs, as per Drs instructions, and only feel dizzy and  weird. which is much better. I can live with dizzy.

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chicks again

We have chicks again – the Light Sussex this time.  six have hatched – starting on Thursday evening.   One of them took a couple of days to get out – definitely a struggle, and it seemed to dry out too much while inside the shell. We did not like to try to help it along, as mostly this seems to result in the death of the chick – but did gently pick off as much of the stuck on shell it ended up with. Its the very scruffy looking one in the picture. Not sure if it will make it – but it is certainly welcome to try. We haven’t checked out the the remaining two eggs yet – I doubt they will come to anything now.  So that’s six hatched out of ten, two blanks and two failed to hatch.

I quite like the variety of the cross breed chicks, these seem all the same, but they are the typical Easter chick image, very cute.

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fridge shed

yet another beautiful day – it’s hard to remember that they wont keep coming.. although as soon as the sun goes down, its March and cold again.

Today himself and our son were repairing the fridge shed.  The previous owner used to run a dairy from here at one point, and built a shed to house a big walk in fridge. It’s all gone now, apart from the big old door with its lovely old locking mechanism. 

We are, of course, supposed to be working on the pig run, but there is logic in our madness – we need just a bit more corrugated iron to finish the run (we have managed to find the rest just lying around the place!) and as we plan to re-roof the shed in the near future, better to buy new materials for the roof, then we can recycle the old sheets into the pig run. 

Besides, the fridge shed will be housing a new freezer (all part of the big freezer plan), and we can’t get one until we do the big shed shuffle and make the repairs so it is at least water-tight. We need a freezer of course.. as we will have pigs to put in them! – see it’s all circular.

Whilst they were doing that (and my son was having a fine time being a builder.. I swear he called me ‘luv’ at one point…) I occupied my time with dragging yet more branches out of the field, cutting and stacking firewood, tending to the sheep, and moving Sharona and her lambs into the big field, where the new grass is now showing through green.  Complaints were voiced from the dieters in the little field next door.

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