First frost - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Saturday 5 November, 2011

by Rosemary at 8:51am in Smallholding 1 comment Comments closed

We've had our first frost this morning. It's a beautiful day - clear blue sky and bright sunshine, but cold, so I had to root out the wooly hats and gloves.

I've given the ewe lambs some hay this morning. The paddock they are on resembles a bowling green, since the ponies have been on it all summer. The hay rack has a lid so the hay won't spoil and they can pick away at it if they want to. They also have a molassed lick and they're getting a handful of sheep nuts late afternoon. The feed is really to get them used to coming to a bucket.

Dickie, our wether, is out with them and he's showing how it should be done, big pet that he is. Two of the lambs - Poppy and Pixie, Juno's twins - are very tame, the other two, Penny (Lucy) and Pickle (Luna), are less so but getting there. Poppy and Pixie's mother is very tame, while Penny and Pickle's mothers aren't. Hmm, must be a pattern there

Dan and John are out fencing in the orchard. The total area needs to be divided into two equal parts - one for each hen flock. Then the each hen house has to be situated within its area in such a way that each of the three popholes gives access to a third of the area . There has been a bit of head scratching, diagrams and mathematics going on, so I'm sure they have a plan. Well, pretty sure