Buster / Landscaping / Wildlife area - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 7 February, 2022

by Rosemary at 11:28am in Smallholding Comments closed

Monday 31^st January

Can’t believe it’s the end of January already. Winter has been remarkably kind this year so far – let’s hope we don’t pay for it later.

Slipped a halter on Buster this morning while he was eating his breakfast. Baby steps.
 

Buster with his halter on.

Tuesday 1^st February

Today is the festival of Imbolc and St Brigid’s Day – the first day of spring, as winter releases its grip on the land.

Took a bale of straw to the steers, amid much excitement. They look well but Albie has some bare patches. They don’t look like ringworm to me but I’ll check with the vet.

Albie's bare bits.

Wednesday 2^nd February

Slipped a halter  on Buster and he took off. I just let him go – and he bucked and kicked and bucked, then went back to eating his breakfast. Hope he’s got that out of his system now.

Thursday 3^rd February

Gillian, the scanner, was here this morning. Kit and Scoot, the Shetlands, are carrying twins. Astrid, our last Coloured Ryeland, also has twins. And the three BFL have a single, twins and triplets. Let’s hope the single and triplets come in the right order for twinning on.

Visit to the accountant, which was fruitful, then out for lunch at Ashbrook Nursery, in Arbroath. Very nice. We must be getting old, right enough.

Friday 4^th February

I’m organising a Golden Jubbley  with some school chums since we all have 60^th birthdays this year.  It will be good to catch up – we all made contact via Facebook (it does have some positive aspects) maybe six years ago and meet one or twice a year for lunch – until the pandemic, of course. So this will be the first time for two years. Really looking forward to it.

Gary, our landscaper (hark at me!) is here today building a wee retaining wall, repairing the back step and putting a new step outside the byre door. Looks fair braw – he’ll be back end of next week to do more bits and bobs.

A wee retaining wall to level up the "lawn".

New step, made with Carmyllie stone from the byre itself.

Saturday 5^th February

Very cold, windy and spattering rain. Not nice. Chores followed by relaxing – football then rugby. Well done, Scotland.

Sunday 6^th February

Cold and breezy, but mainly dry. I had to water the plants at the back door. Andy was here so Dan and he split logs. I baked.

We have a bit of shrubby woodland on the east side of the house. It's where the per cemetery is. I think it's in for a bit of a makeover this year. There are random bits of fence that need to come down to make it into one area. It will still be kept for wildlife essentially.

The top photo looks south to where the yurt used to be; we'd quite like to put a covered fire pit there. The shed is getting a wee bit hard up, but we don't keep much in it now. It's suffered a bit of storm damage.

Storm damaged shed.

On the right of the photo, out of shot, is the house and another redundant fence.

In the bottom photo, the picket fence is the boundary of John and LInda's garden. The other fences serve no purpose and will come out this year.

Our wildlife area.

Our wildlife area.