the accidental smallholder :: diary archives

Plea for British Rare Breeds

I'd like to make a plea on behalf of British rare breeds. Please support the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and maybe more importantly, use the breeds on the RBST watchlist. With support since the Watchlist was published in 1976, 13 breeds have moved from the watchlist to being Category 6 Other Native Breeds. But many more still need help - almost all the pig breeds, many of the horse and pony breeds, as well as cattle, sheep & goats and poultry.

See the RBST website for more information.

Update w/e 26th July 2009

The vegetable garden is really getting going now. We’ve managed to get a handful of runner beans, with the glut yet to come. The French beans are doing really well – next year, I’ll grow these instead of broad beans which neither Dan nor I really like. Peas are regularly contributing to plate and freezer – I wish I’d grown more of them. Beetroot and carrots are available as thinnings and we’ve had the first of the Minicole cabbage. The new netting has transformed the brassica bed – just hope the sprouts and the sprouting broccoli don’t get too high and pull it out.

For the first time, I’ve grown white turnip. It’s a variety called “Oasis” and it’s just ready now. It’s nice raw but we had it lightly steamed yesterday and it was lovely.

We’ve had some plums this week, from the “Opal” tree. They were quite small but very tasty. The raspberries are now finished, so this week, I’ve been cutting out the old canes and tying in the new ones. This is one of my favourite jobs – you start off with a mass of foliage and at the end, there are tidy rows of plants. Actually, a lot of the plants have died off, which confirms our decision to replant new raspberries this autumn. We need to identify a site, though, and there’s no obvious one. I’m planning to put in three varieties to give a spread of cropping season.

Two of our Ryeland ewes, and their tup lambs, are quite tame and will happily hand feed and have a scratch. Jura, the mother of our only ewe lamb, is not. In the 18 months we’ve had them, I’ve never been able to get her to take any food from my hand. Until this week and the peapods! Jura loves peapods (so do the others, of course), and loves them enough to take them from my hand and accept a scratch on the head. Swede tops seem to have the same attraction. Fortunately, we have quite a lot of swede and peas, so we might manage to tame her before the winter!

Half the field is topped – the rest will be done as soon as the contractor can fit us in. I want to leave it four weeks before I put my sheep on it, to reduce the worm burden a bit. It hasn’t been heavily grazed this year, but I’d rather give it a short break as a precaution.

I bought twelve new POL (point of lay) pullets on Wednesday – ten Warrens and two White Leghorns. The Leghorns lay lovely white eggs, and these two are producing two eggs a day at the moment. The Warrens are just coming into lay, so are laying mini eggs. These are the ones we get to eat, since I can’t sell them. They’re lovely but it’s hard to cut thin enough soldiers to get into the yolk.

The highlight of the week, and I make no apologies for boring you about this over the next few weeks, was the long awaited arrival of our new rodent controllers, Harry and Bertie. They are 13 weeks old and both black. I have checked for white hairs on both and there are none. However, their faces are quite different, Bertie is bigger and bolder and Harry is, well, a black tabby, I think. Bertie is definitely black, but Harry has lighter markings on his coat that look like tabby stripes. It will be interesting to see how they develop.

I brought them home on Friday night and I think they have been running on adrenalin since. They killed a cushion this morning, wrestling it off the sofa and chewing its tassels – seems they hunt as a pack, too! However, the adrenalin seemed to run out this afternoon and they are sound asleep on their sheepskin cushion.

I can’t tell you how cute they are – we’ve never had kittens before. Our other cats have been older cats from the rescue centre. The dogs are exhausted too; only Felix seems unaffected. He seemed delighted to have access to kitten food, but he’ll return to rugby ball shape if we’re not careful, so food dishes have been removed. He’s in his favourite spot as I type – playing computer games with Dan!

Update w/e 19th July 2009

The weather has continued to be changeable here. We’ve had some really heavy showers and our garage has flooded a few times – the drain is inadequate so I’m going to get a water butt to put on the downpipe to take the pressure off it. Fortunately, anything that could have been damaged was high enough off the floor to be safe.

In the garden, the French beans are ready – I’ve not grown these before but we had them for dinner yesterday and they are really tasty. Along with peas, carrots and new potatoes – all our Sunday vegetables were homegrown.

Two of our apple trees, Sunset and Dumelow’s Seedling, are groaning with apples; the Egremont Russet is a bit sparser. The Dumelow’s Seedling is a cooker and keeps brilliantly. I used the last of the 2008 crop about March 2009. The Victoria plums have a decent crop too, so I can see some chutney being made this year. The pear tree has two tiny pears on it; we planted a second pear tree last autumn, but it’s still very small and Li’l’ Bud did have a wee nibble at it. Hopefully next year it will come away.

As expected, I had a visit from Animal Health on Thursday. It was less traumatic than I expected. The two people, a vet and an Animal Health officer, were very nice and explained what they were doing and why. Apparently, we (Britain) have to prove to the EU, God love them, that we don’t have brucellosis or toxoplasmosis in the sheep flock, hence the routine survey testing. They took a blood sample from five of my six sheep – Jura wasn’t very co-operative! – and I will get the results in due course.

I also had a visit from an experienced Ryeland breeder to assess Li’l’ Bud. He certainly meets the breed standard for bite, horn buds etc but some of the other stuff comes down to taste, basically. However, that’s good enough for me, so I’m going to lend him to my chum, Carol, for the breeding season – he can have half a dozen ewes – then next year, I’ll show him then maybe sell him in the back end as a shearling ram. So that means that Dickie can be castrated and kept as a companion. I’m glad he’s going to have a useful role that doesn’t include BBQ!

I’m hoping to buy two ewe lambs this year, to run with Lyra. I will go to some of the auctions, but will try to buy privately, I think.

I have been given the use of the 6 acre field opposite our house to graze the sheep. This is wonderful news, as grazing was tight here. However, we had to start by excluding the sheep belonging to the neighbouring farm. So our fencers came down on Friday and added some additional wires to the existing fence, which was in pretty good condition, and tightened all the wires. Unfortunately, they fenced a few of the farmer’s sheep in our side!

There were two Blackface lambs and one Mule lamb. At the corner of the field, there is a bit of fence made of wooden rails, so we dismantled that to let them through. Of course, because they hadn’t come in that way, they didn’t recognize it as a way back. So after a few futile attempts to get them to go through – they run real fast, you know, even though they’re small – I suggested that we leave it open overnight, not in the hope that they would go through but hoping that some of the others would come through that way during the night and, therefore, know their way back when we asked them to leave in the morning.

It worked a treat. By morning, there was a dozen lambs in our field, most of which had come through “our” gap in the fence. It was relatively straightforward to gather them, point them in the right direction and let them make their way back to the right side of the fence. Dan nailed up the wooden rails and job done! Brains over brawn, I say.

We now need to get the field topped – the stragglers were fence in our side because the grass is so long, the boys couldn’t see them. I’m not sure if it’s too late to take a hay crop, but I’ll take advice on that.

The pigs are fine and growing on. They got new straw yesterday and that was a cause of great excitement and much nest building.

I’m going to get 12 new pullets on Wednesday – demand for eggs is outstripping supply, which is good. We’ve had no dog incursions this week, touch wood. The Hubbards are doing well as are the little chicks. They’re three weeks now – I think the broody might be getting a bit stir crazy, though.

On Sunday, Central Scotland Smallholders has a visit to Julie Hill and Bob Henderson www.henderson-hill-bordercollies.co.uk for a sheepdog masterclass. And what a masterclass it was! Julie and Bob are both very experienced and very successful trainers of sheepdogs – they are the real deal. With eighteen dogs, from two little puppies to vastly experienced trial dogs, they were able to show us dogs at different stages of training and also dogs of the same age, but with different styles, strengths and weaknesses and levels of maturity. Julie has written a book called “The Natural Way” (by Julie Simpson) which explains her method of using the dog’s natural behaviour to successfully train it. Everyone there thoroughly enjoyed it and we all went away with a better understanding of dog behavior generally, and I’m sure our relationships with our own dogs will benefit.

Rain

We had the most SPECTACULAR rain last night. About 9pm, we went out to do the water troughs, feeders and to shut in the hens. We were also going to dose the lambs with Heptavac P Plus. It had been showery yesterday, and sometimes quite heavy but nothing like the deluge that hit then.

We were in the sheep shed, thank goodness, and what a triumph IT has been. The rain wasn't taking time to come down - it was easy to see where the description of stair rods comes from - it was solid rain.

The garage, of course, flooded. I don't think anything has been damaged, fortunately. We did lift the pig feed bags to higher shelves, just in case.

This morning, it's as if it had never been. It's cool and cloudy, with glimpses of sun. I've hung out the washing I hung out yesterday, then brought in and respun!

Good thing is that the paths are now chicken poo free. Who needs pressure washers!

Update w/e 12th July 2009

We’ve had some fabulous weather this week – wonderful sunshine, but with some pretty heavy rain too, so things are growing well. Even the sweetcorn looks a bit perkier.

Most of the broad beans are now picked and frozen. The strawberries are still coming but the raspberries are almost finished. We’re planning to replant these this year, so I think we’ll have three varieties with successional harvest times. Now the peas and the blackcurrants are ready for harvesting – I find blackcurrants really tedious to pick, but it will be worth it (I tell myself). Actually, I've bribed Dan's mum and dad to come and pick them, in return for morning coffee and a Jacob fleece.

I got the Jacob fleece from a friend who keeps a small flock. Dan's dad is learning to spin and is keen to try different fleeces. The Jacob fleece is beautiful - shades of cream, brown and black.

We lifted our first new potatoes this week and they are delicious. It’s a variety called Mayan Gold; the seed potatoes are quite expensive so we grew them in pots on the patio. The pot we emptied yielded three pounds of potatoes from one seed potato, and they are lovely and clean. We have another four pots to empty over the next few weeks.

I was running a “Backyard Poultry Keeping” course on Saturday, so that was a spur to do those tidying jobs that are always bottom of the list. We kept the sheep on the lawn over winter, which was great for lots of reasons, but the downside was the self-seeded grasses from the hay we fed them on the patio. I spent several hours weeding it, then gave in and Dan strimmed it. The “wildflower meadow” needs cut as well but Dan will have to gird up his loins and look out his pith helmet and machete for that job. However, the buddleia is in full flower and we’re starting to see butterflies in the garden. We also have a pair of goldfinches feasting on the thistle heads.

I really enjoy the poultry courses. I’ve met some really nice people; many keep in touch and have joined the TAS forums or Central Scotland Smallholders’ Association, which is great.

I am expecting a visit from Animal Health on Thursday; I got a call to say I had been selected from the Sheep and Goat Census to have my sheep tested for brucellosis and toxoplasmosis, both of which cause abortion in sheep. I don’t routinely vaccinate my sheep for either.

I am also hoping to get a visit from an experienced Ryeland breeder to assess Li’l’ Bud. I think he looks really good, but I am a) inexperienced and b) biased so thought it would be good to get an expert eye to look at him. The Coloured Ryeland Breeders Group has been very helpful in this regard. I’ve also checked with the vet about the cost of getting Dickie castrated, so I can keep him as a companion for Li’l’ Bud, who can’t continue to run with the ewes for much longer. It’s a bit pathetic, but he’s so tame, I can’t eat him. I must be more focused next year, or we’ll be overrun with wether lambs!

Update w/e 5th July

As the strawberry harvest gets well underway, both Dan and I have made strawberry jam. Dan made his special “twice boiled” jam – because he couldn’t get it to set first time and was persuaded to tip it back into the pan and have another go. Actually, it’s very nice, better than mine, I think, but all will be revealed at the local Horticultural Society show in September. The raspberries are doing better than expected. We’re planning to replace them this year and they looked a bit neglected, but they are cropping well. If I could only grow one soft fruit, it would be raspberries. I love a handful, freshly picked, on my breakfast cereal.

The broad beans are ready for picking. We’ve some blackfly, so we’ll need to treat that. I did sow poached egg plant to attract lacewings, but I think I was too late for it to be effective. Following the top dressing of seaweed, the sweetcorn looks better but if it doesn’t get a spurt on, we’ll be harvesting in November! The peas are coming on, but the dry weather might reduce the crop. The weather's changed - it's been quite wet here on and off, which will help.

Trying to keep the place reasonably tidy is an endless task – Dan spent half a day weeding the comfrey bed and sweeping up the path. The hens have decimated the comfrey this year, which is a pity because the bees do love the flowers.If we'd planned things better, we'd have put all the fruit and vegetables, including the comfrey, inside a hen proof fence and just let them in during the winter. Next time!

We’ve decided to try for self-marinating chicken. A couple of pots of coriander had flowered and had a good covering of greenfly, so we stuck them in for the Hubbards. Boy, did they enjoy it. We might try sage next time! They are growing well - and we have a mixture of white and brown ones this time. They mature at different ages, but I can't remember what they are - and it doesn't really matter to us.

The broody hen hatched four chicks. Two, unfortunately, were dead but the remaining two seem as bright as buttons, and their Mommy loves them very much. They are really cute – doesn’t matter how many times I’ve had chicks, they still have the “Ahh” factor. One, the larger of the two, is quite bold and hops in and out of the nest box on its own, much to the hen's agitation. The other one is much shyer. I hope thay are both pullets.

We try to encourage wildlife in the garden and in our field. We don’t keep it too tidy (understatement and excuse) and a couple of years ago we put in a small pond. Now, it’s not quite right. It’s not level, so when it’s full at one side, the other side still shows above the water line, but the birds and insects seem to like it. And so, it seems, do a pair of toads. We found them when we upended the chicken ark I was in the throws of painting and rescued them quickly before the hens got there. We took the two toads into the long grass and released them into a pile of stones that we haven’t decided what to do with yet. This is the first year that the water lily has flowered and it’s very lovely. My photography skills do not do it justice.

The wildflower meadow has become a sea of cow parsley and drastic action will be required this year to "refurbish" it. It was lovely a couple of years ago, but it's just a mess now. The Land Services manager at the Council asked me if I was entering the garden competition - maybe next year.

On Saturday, we were at Doune and Dunblane Show with the Central Scotland Smallholders’ Association. It was a very pleasant day, in good company, but I’m not sure that it’s the greatest recruiting tool. The pitch cost £70; if we didn’t have Lottery funding, we wouldn’t be able to afford it. To be honest, I found it a bit disappointing; I haven't been to D&D for a number of years and it seemed much smaller than I remember. Maybe I'm just bigger.

While I haven’t got show fever, I thought I’d like to show Li’l’ Bud. There are very few classes for Ryelands, let alone Coloured Ryelands, around here so I would have to go for “Any Other Native Breed” classes, but the few local shows left either don’t have these classes or the closing date for entries is past. I may try again next year, either with him or one of next year’s lambs. I may be biased, but he’s a very handsome chap!