Milking / Camembert / Open Farm Sunday / Sky corgi
Posted: Friday 9 June, 2017
Monday 29th May
It’s been a showery day.
Annie and Panda are still in a seperate paddock from the others but I’ll let them through tomorrow. Panda has been up and about. She’s small but very active and Ace is fascinated.
Panda.
She’s brindle and white but I guess she’ll go black as her mum did.
Tuesday 30th May
I let Annie and Panda in with the rest of the herd today and brought them into the barn for a trial run of milking. Panda’s a very good follower.
Milking routine dry-run
Gemma and I finished the rough mucking out of the barn – just pressure washing to go and after a trial run today, we’re going to milk in there rather than the byre.
The final push!
I find the byre a bit claustrophobic and when we get to three cows, Ace and three calves, it’ll be a bit of a rammy.
Once the barn is washed, I’ll rebuild Ace’s pen and use that for the calves. I intend to take the calves off the cows probably over night, once they get to about six weeks.
The change of milking plan will have a knock-on effect on our development of the barn this summer.
Wednesday 31st May
Glorious day today for the last day of May.
This was our first proper milking and we took about 9 litres off Annie.
Milking Annie.
Made a smoked bacon quiche and some almond biscuits then bunked off this afternoon to have lunch and a catch up with my chum, Karen.
Thursday 1st June
Start of June and a mix of rain and sun. Hopefully this will keep the grass growing on.
Paul put up the Cardigan Welsh Corgi weather vane that John and Linda gave us for Christmas – it looks fab!
Corgi weather vane in position.
A Corgi in the sky!
Dan skimmed cream off yesterday’s milk and made some paneer cheese with the milk, which we had for dinner. Lovely.
Dan and Paul went fishing off Easthaven with our friend, Frank, and came back with some codling, crabs and whelks.
Gone fishing!
The crabs were transformed into Partan bree (Scottish crab bisque), with stock made from the codling trimmings. It smells and looks wonderful.
Partan Bree made with velvet crabs.
We followed it with strawberries from the polytunnel with Annie's cream - just fab.
Home-grown strawbs and cream.
The three bags of fleece were uplifted to go to The Natural Fibre Company.
Friday 2nd
Another fine day.
The Partan bree was consumed at lunch and was delicious.
Another 9 litres from Annie today. I think we need more fridge space.
A packet of resources arrived in the post from QMS for Open Farm Sunday – great service.
Spent the afternoon pressure washing the barn. I’ll finish it in the morning.
Saturday 3rd June
Another nice day.
The cows were waiting to come in this morning, which was nice.
Dan started the first of this year’s Camembert – or as he’s titled it “Camembarry”.
Camembert curds.
Camembert draining.
We have quite a lot of milk :-)
Dan cut all the garden lawns and strimmed in preparation for Open Farm Sunday and we brought some sheep home, ready to greet their adoring (I hope) public.
Baked some mini Victoria sponges – some with lemon curd and some with raspberry jam. They look (and taste) rather nice – but the kitchen seems to be covered in a thin veil of icing sugar.
Sunday 4th June
It was a bit changeable, weather-wise – heavy showers, light showers and sun, so good for grass.
Dan removed the camembert from their molds for salting. They should be ready in about 3 weeks.
Salting the camembarry.
Open Farm Sunday went well – we’ve had some nice comments but I was a wee bit disappointed at the number of no-shows, especially since I had put folk off because we were fully booked. I guess it might just be the nature of the beast.
Open Farm Sunday - meeting the sheep.
All the animals behaved very well – especially the sheep, which I think were the favourites, although Bugsy must be high in the popularity stakes too.
Bugsy enjoying Open Farm Sunday.
In between the two public tours, we had a Smallholding Scotland committee meeting – not exactly a triumph of organisation on my part, but it did focus us on the agenda.
Note to self; find out how to use Skype properly before the next meeting.
