8 years at Dalmore / Meet Rocky / Dead lamb - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 21 May, 2018

by Rosemary at 2:07pm in Smallholding 1 comment Comments closed

Monday 14 May  

Eight years in! Can’t believe we’ve been here eight years – and yet it feels like we’ve been here forever.

At the start, we used to joke that we were on a ten-year plan, but actually I think we were pretty close to the mark.

By the end of this year, we’ll have replaced every fence except the one round the front garden and it’s been refurbished. Every building has been upgraded in some way. It’s easy to forget how much we’ve done.

Must do some comparative photographs.

It’s been a lovely day. I think May is my favourite month. There’s a viburnum that flowers now – it has the most fantastic scent and I remember smelling it the day we moved in. It’s real “stop you in your tracks” scent.

On more prosaic matters, Dan has started to construct a new muck bay from plastic pallets.

New muck bay under construction

I got some time in the veg garden manuring the peas, beans and courgettes.

Peas manured

Sadly, the egg box is no more – I reversed over it with the car. Ouch.

The ex-egg box

Managed to rescue six eggs, but the dogs are quite a lot of broken ones and were rather pungent this evening.

I made a card for my nephew’s wedding anniversary.

Hand-made anniversary card.

Tuesday 15 May

More sun.

The pigs have settled in well now and are relishing the new addition of milk and eggs to their diet.

Wednesday 16 May

Sunny again. No.7 lamb is poorly again. Got more antibiotics and Metacam form the vet.

Cleaned out the hens. Starting to get more than a dozen pullet eggs every day including white ones but no brown or green ones yet.

The Sunset apple trees in the orchard are in full bloom - it's absolutely beautiful and hopefully a lot of the flowers will set fruit.

Sunset apple blossom.

Attended a reception hosted by NSA Scotland at the Scottish Parliament on behalf of Smallholding Scotland.

Thursday 17 May

Volunteered at a RHET Estate Day; 180 kids from Dundee schools out to visit. Same number from Angus schools out yesterday. Great work by RHET.

Got chatting to a member of staff who has an allotment in Dundee and agreed to take them a trailer load of manure.

Planted out Brussels sprouts. Dan planted out sweetcorn, tomatoes and cucumber and salad in the polytunnel.

Friday 18 May

Cooler and overcast this morning but the sun was out by lunchtime.

Found No.7 lamb dead in the field. Not the result we hoped for. Thankfully Mum has the other twin to distract her. Good big lamb with a full belly.

Put the sprinkler on in the veg garden.

Wool bags from The Natural Fibre Company arrived.

Saturday 19 May

Another lovely day. Brian came round and he and Dan went into the bees.

Brian and Dan suiting up.

One hive in particular is doing very well and Dan plans to extract some honey next weekend.

Brian also had time to pet Blizzard...

Brian scratching Blizzard.

Milking is going well, in the field shelter. Dan made paneer – first cheese of the year.

He also washed the patio.

Cleaning the patio.

We don't realise quite how grubby it gets over the course of a year until it's cleaned!

Sunday 20 May

Cooler and cloudy in the morning but sun came out later.

Dan took a load of manure to the City Road allotments, as arranged. It’s a big site of 70 odd plots and was started in 1940 as part of the “Dig for Victory” campaign.

Brought the ewes and lambs in; vaccinated the lambs with Heptavac and gave them a dose of white wormer as there’s a high risk of Nematodirus in this area just now. Our risk is reduced as we didn’t have any lambs last year but I decided better safe than sorry.

Ear tagged the six ewe lambs and submitted their registrations, along with Niamh’s black tup lamb – now called Rosedean Yogi.

Rosie calved a red and white calf this evening. Ace was back to his old tricks of harassing the calf so he’s now shut in the field shelter until we get the barn cleaned and a pen built there for him.

Ace photo-bombing Rosie and her new calf, Rocky.

I’d have to take him away from the cows soon anyway so that we don’t have calves before 1^st May next year.

Don’t know if the calf is a bull or a heifer – Rosie’s a wee tad protective until the hormones settle down. Both cow and calf look to be fine though.