Machinery

Autumn’s Here

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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!

Sheep

We’re on Orange

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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.

Pigs

Kiwi Update

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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.

Sheep

Show Season 2015

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Kington2015
4th at Kington 2015

Well, this year we decided to try our hand at showing sheep. Firstly thank you to all those Ryeland members who have helped out with advice (go to Bromyard before you show at Burwarton), trimming (quite an art) and feet (don’t leave them!).  We took our Coloured shearling ram to Bromyard (4th) and Burwarton (4th) and  a trio of ram, ram lamb and ewe to Kington another 4th.

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Ubie and the jet wash: He looked much better afterwards.

It’s been fun getting involved in the shows, but there is quite a lot of preparation, not least making sure you shear at the right time and we nearly missed it this year. Next year we will be more prepared.  I’m not sure the sheep enjoy all the preparation, especially the jet wash bit. But they did seem to enjoy going to the shows.

Sheep

The Tups are in

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We’ve put the tups in a week earlier this year on 26 September, not because we particularly wanted to lamb earlier as I prefer to turn the ewes and lambs out onto fresh grass.  But everyone was getting restless and it just seemed like the right time. With  two distinct flocks it can get a little complicated and this year it means there’s 5 groups. Sam is with one group of Ryelands and Uhoo with a second. With Sherlock gone Ubi has all the coloured Ryelands, lucky boy. That just leaves this years ewe lambs and ram lambs, hence five groups in total. Surprising it only took a couple of hours to split and group everyone.

IMG_0897We don’t raddle the rams, instead we just mix the coloured marker with oil and smother it on the ram’s chest. The first year we breed Amanda used olive oil as it was ‘all we had’ apparently!

It’s all going well, after a few days a good percentage of the girls have been tupped already, hopefully the rest will follow and we’ll have a tight lambing like this year.

Sheep

Sad News

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SamSherlockUnfortunately we lost Sherlock one of our coloured rams last week. He got a taste for chicken food and broke into one of the hen houses and munched his way through 6kg of layers pellets overnight.

PaddingtonReally upsetting, however hopefully his genes will live on in his ewes and rams. In particular Paddington who is a Sherlock ram lamb from this year. Paddington isn’t his official name but apparently he’s sooo cuddly that he’s like a teddy bear.

Sheep

Lambs for sale

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Coloured Ryeland lambs born in March 2015
Coloured Ryeland lambs born in March 2015

We have had a great year in terms of increasing our flock size, with 26 lambs; 13 coloured and 13 white Ryeland sheep.  We’ll keep some of the ram lambs for our own meat and will be keeping some of the ewe lambs as future replacements for some of our older ewes. But we do have both ram and ewe lambs for sale, so if you would like a docile, friendly breed of sheep, either to start up your own flock, for great flavoured meat, for wool, or just as lawn mowers, we have some lovely weaned lambs available.

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Ryeland lambs born in March 2015
Machinery

Haymaking 2015

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Mike Mowing the 4 acre field.Cutting the hay

Well it’s happened; we’ve made our first lot of hay. Mike mowed on Wednesday and then turned it Thursday and Friday and we watched the weather forecast with great trepidation. Rain was forecast on Friday night.  There was nothing we could do except hope it didn’t rain here and thankfully it didn’t.  So Saturday morning Mike rowed up and then checked a couple of hours later and we were on: he said  “I shouldn’t need any help till we’ve got a few bales ready” and then I had an SOS call….the baler simply wasn’t baling. I understand this is typical baler behaviour; it had been wonderful baling the day before at a neighbours, but now didn’t want to play ball. So I spent a couple of hours re rowing bales that were only half tied up. It was incredibly frustrating (not to say tiring) and with proper rain forecast for the night we were under pressure to get the whole lot inside.

Needless to say I didn’t get any photos of Mike actually baling because we were all too busy getting the bales under cover.

We were very lucky in that the above neighbour and her husband came with their trailer and another villager came and helped me with our trailer and we managed to get the lot in the barn by 6pm.  Tea and cake were supplied as incentives.

Lessons learnt:

1. Make sandwiches and a flask of tea so that the person baling and number one helper (me) have some lunch.

2. Make sure you have booked help: we could never ever have managed 400 bales all on our own.

3. Book the whole of June and July off from work in case the weather’s good and the grass is ready. This is of course completely unrealistic as there’s always something that stops you getting out exactly when you want. But we will remember not to go away for 2 days during those months because that did make a difference to the amount of pressure we put on ourselves.

4. I have always thought our farmers have it tough watching the weather and as ex sailors I remember the attention we paid to the forecast. But this was different as there’s a great deal of effort going into haymaking and to think that can be wasted by the weather isn’t good for morale.

5. Hard work but goodness it’s worth it! This is a photo of the hay in the barn:Hay in the barn

 

Sheep

Our stock Rams are for sale

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Sam and ShSamSherlockerlock have been our stock rams for the last 2 years, so they need to move on as their lambs from 2013 will come into the breeding flock this year. We’ll be sad to see them go as not only have they given us some good lambs,  they’re bidable and  laid back. You can see what I mean in the photos, when they aren’t with the girls they graze in the orchard with the hens. The photos were taken in late May before they were sheared a couple of weeks later.

Sherlock officialSherlockly called Abeydore Sherlock MC0153 is the coloured   tup.

Sam (StrathoreSam Samuel M12286) is the white Ryeland.

Both are Heptavac-P vaccinated, wormed and clicked. If you’re in the market for a Ryeland or Coloured Ryeland Tup get in touch by emailing Dumblehole

Sheep

Lambing is over – normality returns

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Apologies we’ve been remiss and not updated the blog for a few weeks, my excuse, Lambing. Lambing has taken over our lives for the last 5 weeks,  we only have a small flock but we’ve had time for nothing else. Guinness (our black and white cat) is most put out, as he thinks we should be at his beckon call.

All at the milk bar
It’s not only the triplets that like the bottle

I’ve been up at 3:00am every night since we started. Initially it was just to check the ‘to be’ ewes. I’d stagger across the yard bleary eyed  in my dressing gown and wellies, not a pretty sight, not there’s anyone to see me, to check all was OK. Two weeks in and the triplets appeared on the scene which meant I had to get dressed and wake up a completely different proposition all together. Red, Blue and Chalkie (we colour coded them to ensure they all got milk) are all doing well, so well that I had my first full night’s sleep on Saturday; bliss. We were feeding the triplets every four hours day and night. Add that to twice a day feeding the ‘to be’ ewes, the just lambed ewes, the rams, last years lambs, the pigs, walk and feed the dogs, plus on average a ewe would lamb every day there’s only just enough time to have a bite to eat!

IMG_0721 (2)Has it been worth it, yep it’s great to see the lambs skipping and jumping, makes the sleepless nights worthwhile.  Stand by for a barrage of cute lamb pictures. I will create a page to introduce yo to some of the flock.