Diary

June 2016RSS feed

Calving under way

Monday 6 June, 2016

by Rosemary at 9:38am in Smallholding 1 comment Comments closed

So we’re into flaming June and the weather continues dry, with some warm days. We still have a fairly persistent easterly wind, which is keeping it cool a lot of the time. We’ve had to start putting the sprinkler on in the vegetable garden – Dan puts it on at 6am for an hour or so. I hate to say it but we could do with some rain.  :-)

We planted out the sweetcorn, some squashes and the rest of the peas and beans. The celery failed sadly, and I fear over rigorous weeding means we need to resow the parsnips. My excuse is that the rows weren’t marked and parsnips are slow to germinate, so when I resow this week, I’ll mix the parsnip seeds with radish or lettuce seeds.

Land of milk and honey

Sunday 12 June, 2016

by Rosemary Champion at 5:48pm in Smallholding Comments closed

Monday

Sneaked off to the cinema to see “Love and Friendship” with Tara. Nice to get a break and relatively dressed up.

Winter and Wallace are now on three feeds – 6am, 2pm and 10pm and glugging down a full 1/2 litre at each feed.

Pedro and Paulo are doing well. Annie has a terrific udder on her – hope she’s prepared to share.

Tuesday

Getting myself in a bit of a brain freeze about cleaning the milking machine. I have two sets of instructions – and, of course, they are different. Just need to think it through logically – first stage is a cold rinse, so that’s a start.

Rain, cheese and weeds

Monday 20 June, 2016

by Rosemary at 11:08am in Smallholding Comments closed

Monday

We actually got some sun today – came out about noon until about 4pm. Really warm too. Either side of that it’s been overcast, with rain this morning.

Dan started to make some beer – bitter, I think.

The poorly pig seems to be OK and has been reunited with his brothers.

The milking routine is falling into place but I need to get another cleaner – an alkaline one this time. The hypochlorite seems to be coming via South America. Having a bit of a problem with the legs of the cluster touching the ground when I’m putting it on – don’t know if there is a problem with the machine, a problem with the operator or if it’s just due to my cows having short legs. We need a resolution though.

Winnie; Royal Highland Show; Cheese cave

Sunday 26 June, 2016

by Rosemary at 9:52am in Smallholding 2 comments Comments closed

Monday

Been another glorious day here but windy – a good drying day! We’ve been working on the “cheese cave” – the old fridge out of the caravan. I’ve given it a good clean and Dan’s been setting up the temperature gauge. It looks good – hope it works.

My pony, Smokey, has a cough, so the vet’s coming out tomorrow. Other than that, it’s been paperwork day, as Monday always is.

The trailer is booked in to the dealer’s for repair a week tomorrow. Hope they can fix it in time to take cow and calf to the Game Fair.

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