Rhubarb / Hen run / Gwenna - The Accidental Smallholder

Posted: Sunday 26 March, 2023

by Rosemary at 10:08pm in Smallholding Comments closed

W/e Sunday 26^th March

Once again, this is going to be a pretty short blog. It’s Sunday 26^th March, Dan’s birthday, and we spent the morning at the emergency vet’s because there’s something bad going on with Gwenna’s spine. Again. She’d had painkillers and looks a good deal happier but a follow-up visit to our own vet tomorrow will reveal more. This is not what we expected – she recovered so well from the surgery and has been such a wee trouper. Anyway, we’ll know more tomorrow.

Poor wee Gwenna.

Lorna and I had a good wee break in Anstruther. The weather was variable – it’s Scotland in March – but we had two lovely days and on one of them, we took the bus to St Andrews for ice-cream. First time I’ve used my bus pass. There were no incidents at home and Blizzard didn’t calve, so I guess it’ll be end of April, same as the heifers. Saw this in Anstruther. Gave me a pain.

Too may apostrophes.

Monday 20^th was the vernal equinox; it’s great to see the signs of growth all around. Blizzard is lame and has three days of antibiotics. Poor girl is like a pincushion. She’s very obliging though and she looks loads better today.

Signs of spring.

Pears.

Looking forward to fresh rhubarb.

And it looks like our car may be gubbed. It’s fourteen years old but we hoped it would see us out here, but it needs a new fuel tank, which is expensive to buy and even more expensive to fit – if we could even get one. So he prospect of having to buy a replacement vehicle and surgery for Gwenna has made the week a bit fiscally challenging.

Dan finished pruning the apple trees on Wednesday and he’s been doing wee bits and pieces on the hen run, but today (Sunday), he had a good go at it and it’s not far away from completion. He thought he was going to be held up by a shortage of gripples but I found some on the old bit of fence that used o surround the polytunnel. So work continued. He’s going to be busy at work next week, with a big project finishing on Friday, but with the clocks changed, he’ll be able to get out in the evenings.

New hen run.

On Thursday, I had he pleasure of chairing one of the panels at the RBST Scotland Spring conference. The CabSec for Rural Affairs and Islands was there making the keynote speech and announcing the establishment of a Small Producers Pilot Fund. I’ve been invited to be on the working group and I’m quite excited to be involved.

Yesterday, Dan and I took ourselves of to Hampden to watch Scotland play Cyprus in the first qualifier for Euro2024. We won 3-0 but we weren’t fab; if we don’t play better against Spain on Tuesday, we could get a bit of a trouncing.

And that brings us up to date. It’s forecast to be sunny tomorrow then to rain for the rest of the week, but we’ll see. Still, I can weed the polytunnel and do the filing. Actually, both things need done regardless of the weather. But first Gwenna to the vet.