Weaning / Buddha / Tubs
Posted: Monday 20 June, 2022
Monday 13th June
Cloudy, mild and still breezy, although not blowing the hoolie at was over the weekend.
Focussed on getting through the paperwork – I’ve got a couple of newsletters to do, including one for the Festival. And I do need to spend some time on the Festival this week. The trick is not to get distracted by social media.
Bronte and Baby, just because.
Bronte and Baby.
Tuesday 14th June
I advertised Astrid, our last remaining Coloured Ryeland, for sale with the BFL x ewe lamb this morning and she’s sold. I know the family who are buying her and I know she’ll have a good home. Fifteen years we’ve had Coloured Ryelands and they’ve been great sheep for us.
Wednesday 15th June
Robbie, our vermin control man, is coming tonight to shoot rabbits.
Thursday 16th June
Robbie only managed to get two rabbits – he said there was a fox around and that was making them skittish. I think he might come back in the daytime. Dan gave the dogs a head each, which they crunched up on the lawn. He skinned and gutted the rest and put it through the meat grinder; Bryn loves it, as does Diesel. Gwenna won’t touch it.
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Bryn and Gwenna enjoying their rabbot heads.
Friday 17th June
We have peas – well, pea pods.
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Pea pods.
And blueberries.
Blueberries.
And the leeks are clearly not couch grass now.
Leeks.
The Victoria has a good crop of baby plums but the others are poor.
Victoria plums.
Spuds are through – amazing given the state the seed tatties were in.
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The vegetable garden.
I made muck tea for feeding the cucumbers, leeks, courgettes and squashes
Mmmm, muck tea.
Saturday 18th June
It was blowy a proper hoolie today; sun was out but the wind was really unpleasant. I managed to get the three big pots planted up – they’re yellow (Dahlia Happy Days Yellow in two and Osteospermum Serenity Blue eyed Beauty in the third) with white Argyrathemum Molimba Double White and purple Calibrachoa.
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Tubs in purple. yellow and white.
Dan worked in the polytunnel, planting out the rest of the rather pathetic tomatoes.
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Polytunnel.
But we do have cucumbers on our single surviving plant.
Cucumbers.
He cleared up a pile of stones from the side of the IBCs and found this lintel. It would be nice to find a place for it.
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Stone lintel.
Sunday 19th June
Beautiful day – lovely warm sunshine and only light breeze. Looks like Grey is courting Blizzard again.
We started to kill the meat birds this morning – there’s only ten left so we did six through plucking and we’ll kill and pluck the remaining four then clean them all tomorrow morning. Then I can let the cattle into Near Ditch, where there is lots of grass.
Dan, hard at work.
Our new needles and his nylon thread arrived – these are for repairing the cover for the gazebo.
Needles.
Duncan, the tree man, dropped in with his daughter and her spaniel, Bear, to meet Bryn and Gwenna then Alistair and Janet arrived with two buckets of honey to go in the freezer. It’s oil seed rape honey, which tends to crystallise, but if you freeze it for a couple of months, it doesn’t. They’re off to the Highland Show on Wednesday, so Alistair was going home to trim the sheep that he’s taking. Janet gave me my birthday present – for my serenity garden. I love it. Love it.
Serenity.
Spot and Notspot had their last bottle feed tonight. They’re now getting some lamb creep every day, so they should be fine. The weaning date was determined by age, weigh, creep consumption and the fact that the milk powder was finished. Another “last” – I threw the bottles and teats in the bin.
