With the chilly mornings we’ve got the Rayburn up and running. It’s not the most efficient piece of kit but it makes it really cosy in the kitchen. However with the Rayburn and a wood burner we go through wood at a fair rate of knots. Back in April I ordered in a ‘little’ firewood for the winter. Rather than buying it already cut and split I thought I’d do it myself as I need the exercise and ‘how hard can it be’. The photo is 25 tons of tree trunks but I’ve got a great Tanaka chainsaw. Progress has been good if a little erratic, fortunately some friends came to stay. They worked like Trojans spending a full day splitting and barrowing, I think we processed about 5 tons. Thanks Tony, Ali, Victoria and Harry.
There’s probably about 5-6 tons to go but that can wait until next year when I’ve enlisted some other volunteers or should that read victims. Hopefully there’s enough in the wood store for the winter!
The tups have been in for 17 days and it’s time to change the raddle colour, why? The ewe’s cycle is approximately 17 days so by changing the colour we can see who hasn’t taken the first time they were tupped.
Yellow was the first colour we used and Orange covers the yellow as you can see. Hopefully we won’t have too many second timers, otherwise lambing will go on for longer.
Things are not going to plan, the idea was that Sultana would be our replacement sow as Kiwi is getting on and this will be her last litter. I’m already talking about Sultana in the past tense, she had one litter earlier this year but hasn’t come into season since despite spending 8 weeks with the boar. So she has had to go, on the upside as she was young we had 175kg of very nice sausages. I think we’ll have to have a village BBQ.
Kiwi farrowed 23rd August but only 1 piglet which is a real shame for her last litter. However mum and son are in separable. It’s like there’s 3 foot of bungie cord connecting them. They both seem quite content and Kiwi is hoovering up all the fallen apples.
The trials and tribulations on our smallholding
Dumblehole 