Apples / Lucy / Rash

Diary

Posted: Monday 24 September, 2018

by Rosemary at 6:47pm in Smallholding Comments closed

Monday 17 September

Moved from Cumbria to Northumberland today - got reacquainted with Winnie (Rosedean Windward), her calf, Aubrey, and Paddy the steer. And our chums, Foster and Debra. Went to a talk by their vet – very good and free beer and hot beef rolls included.

Blizzard in now behaving fine for Tara, but Lucy’s leg is much worse. Decision taken to have her PTS on Wednesday

Tuesday 18 September

Sadly, Lucy had to be PTS this morning. She was down in the field and couldn’t get up. Very sad. We're very grateful to our neighbours, John and Alan, who were absolute stars moving the body to where it could be uplifted. Gutted for Tara.

Went to see the Chillingham Wild White Cattle – very interesting to see a 300-year-old closed herd.

Wednesday 19 September

Home today – very windy and due to get worse. A few branches down but nothing serious. Lots and lots of windfall apples. Just as well the pressing equipment is ready. Two hundred more bottles ordered and a pasteurizer. Lots of tomatoes to process too.

tree Been a bit windy.

Thursday 20 September

Still windy; still processing apples and tomatoes.

Smokey is a bit noisy today – I thought he was grieving then noticed that the hay had run out.

Dan has developed a rash.

Friday 21 September

Cool, cloudy and breezy but the sun came out this afternoon.

Put the first bale of new hay in. Looks and smells lovely – and weighs a tonne!!

Dan’s rash is either an allergy (hopefully not to apples or tomatoes) or a virus. It’s not sore just very, very itchy. And spreading.

Saturday 22 September

Lovely day – cool and breezy, but dry and sunny. Perfect autumn weather.

Mucked out the byre, then collected apples that Dan processed and bottled – Sunset now. He’s bought bags / boxes like wine boxes so that we can box and pasteurize 10l at a time for our own use.

Made ginger nuts and almond biscuits. Good to get the tins filled up.

Started to put the vegetable garden to bed; weeding, manuring and covering with black plastic.

Sunday 23 September

Poor Dan is still really itchy; the rash has cleared for the areas affected on Friday but moved to other areas. He’s not sleeping well because of the heat and itchiness. He’s taking antihistamine but it doesn’t seem to be making much difference.

We were going to sort the lambs for the abattoir this afternoon – they go tomorrow – but we’ll leave it until morning. Hopefully, Dan will feel a bit better by then.