Panic levels have dropped with the water levels - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Monday 18 January, 2016

by Rosemary Champion at 3:28pm in Smallholding 1 comment Comments closed

We’ve had some nice days over the last week – dry and cold and water levels have dropped. And with them, my panic levels. I’m such a control freak that extremes (for us) of weather really get me going. Sometimes I think I don't have the right temperament to be a smallholder :-)

Anyway, we have the start of a plan to winterize one paddock for each hen house, so that’s made me feel better.

We haven’t got a date from the scanner yet, but it should be soon. If I sell all the ewe hoggs, I can keep my tup for another year, but it will really depend on how the ewes and gimmers scan.

After looking through old diary entries last week, I downloaded all the photos off my phone onto my Mac, sorted through them and amalgamated them with the other photos on there. Once they were in subject folders and in chronological order, it was nice to scroll thorough and see developments. I do have a lot of cow photos though :-)  Dan has suggested that I sort through the 1700 photos on his phone, which I will do over the next few weeks. Then I’ll put them all together with the ones in Lightbox. Then it will be summer :-)

My seed potatoes and shallot sets arrived the other day, so that prompted me to clean the cover on the polytunnel. I’ll need to start washing pots and stuff as well, in preparation for spring. I’m quite excited about working the veg garden again. I’m reading Mark Gatter’s book on polytunnels and I am determined to make better use of ours this year.

And my cows now have their own website rosedeanshetlandcattle.scot. I made this mostly by myself, with help from Dan. As a committed technodullard, I am very happy with it :-)

It’s pretty dreich today – cold and grey and drizzly – so I am going to light the stove. Monday is paperwork day and I’m about halfway finished. Work on the Scottish Smallholder Festival is well underway now and I’ve just finalized the speaker programme for the Smallholding Scotland conference next month, so I’m looking forward to both events. September seems forever away, but it will be here before we know it.

Finally, we have a new cockerel. He’s called Nugget; a neighbor hatched eggs as a project with his kids and, of course, there were cockerels. Nugget was for the chop until Izzy was lost to the fox, so now we have a vacancy, so Nugget will be staying with us and he’ll be getting 30 pullets in a few months. Lucky boy!