Bovine Love Island / Bricks / Roses - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 25 July, 2022

by Rosemary at 10:10am in Smallholding No comments Add your own

Monday 18^th July

Hot. But not as hot as forecast. The media does love to create a crisis. Folk go on holiday to enjoy temperatures like this.

Alistair, our vet, was out just after lunchtime to jag the four female cattle with a hormone to bring them into season – sadly, this means they will slip any calf they are carrying, but we don’t have the facilities to calve indoors, so we just have to bite that particular bullet. I asked him to do an internal on Baby and on Blizzard.  I’ve never seen Baby what I would call “properly” in season. She wasn’t in calf, not surprisingly, but ovaries, tubes etc were all present and correct, so hopefully she’ll come into season and get in calf now. Blizzard was about six weeks in calf, which is a bit sad but also good news – if she can do it once, she should be able to do it again. I wanted Alistair to check all was well after quite a difficult calving last year – and it was.

All five cattle also had a blood sample taken for testing for the Premium Cattle Health Scheme; this is our second year, so fingers crossed for negative results.

Dan spent a wee while shelling peas, then I took over. There's probably one, possibly two, pickings left.

More peas.

Dan made a start on the sunken garden.

First steps.

This is my lovely birthday rose – “Bring me sunshine”. Just need to find a home for it now.

Bring me sunshine.

Tuesday 19^th July

Baby is bawling this morning – does that mean she is in season?

Baby (Rosedean Bora).

Dan did some further clearing in the sunken garden. It looks like it might not be as straightforward as we hoped. While the brick floor is there, there doesn’t seem to be any retaining walls.

Garden archaeology.

Wednesday 20^th July

Bronte looks like she’s coming into season.

While it might be a bit late, I made a bird bath. Not very high tech - dustbin lid, four bricks and some stones. Dan's already seen some blackbirds having a wash and brush up in it though.

Bird bath.

Now we can get into the sunken garden, we spotted this rose.

Sunken garden rose.

Thursday 21^st July

It’s Blizzard  today. Grey’s got his work cut out!

Dan did a bit more in the sunken garden. It looks like there might be an unbricked patch in the middle – at least we hope it’s just a patch in the middle. If so, some sort of raised water feature comes to mind. The area isn’t as shaded as we thought either. Interesting.

More floor revealed.

Friday 22^nd July

And would you believe, Rora looks to be bulling this morning. Well, we’ll see in seventeen days of so. It would be a wonderful miracle if they were all in calf so quickly and all calved together. The calves have such fun together if there's a few of a similar age.

And we’re off on my birthday weekend. Back Sunday afternoon. Yippee!

Sunday 24^th July

No problems while we were away and there’s been rain last night, overnight. And a bit more this evening.

We’ve had a wonderful weekend with our very good friends, Andrew and Janis. I am a very lucky woman.