The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Somewhere_by_the_river on May 23, 2014, 07:01:38 pm
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Like a lot of TAS members, smallholding is only a part of what we do, so, for all the friends we've made through TAS and those who might be interested, below are links to what we do when not smallholding... Our lifestyle feeds our work and vice versa (it all feeds us!), plus I have plans to start of some rare breed farm animals soon, which are something of a passion of mine. We hope you enjoy, if you do please like and feel free to share. :D
https://www.facebook.com/angelafrenchart (https://www.facebook.com/angelafrenchart)
https://www.facebook.com/jonathanpointerart?ref=hl (https://www.facebook.com/jonathanpointerart?ref=hl)
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Wow . . . now that's what I call art.
Love the pair of partridges!
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What a talented pair you are. :thumbsup:
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Gosh Angela, no wonder you haven't had the time to come spinning. You and Jonathan are both very talented.
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Thank you all :)
Bionic - I'm trying to make time, it just seems that everyone turns up on spinning day, I swear it's a conspiracy!! ...I was offered fleece yesterday too, for free... Aaargh!! ;)
Porterlauren - partridges will be making an appearance at the farm for real next year :D
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Excellent? Greys or the French men?
Establishing Grey Partridge is a real tough one. When it works, it probably takes about five years of releasing minimum to establish a viable breeding population.
And it hinges upon environmental factors, and an obsession with pest control, you need to really really get on top of every corvid, fox, rat, weasel, stoat, badger etc etc etc to give them half a chance to thrive.
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...Greys we hope, we're all for the natives, though we will have to see how they get on here. We know a chappy who raises them on a fairly big scale from a conservation view point (he's done it for years), which is why we also raised/released them before. Lovely birds. It was wonderful when the release pen was set up (on a friends organic farm just over the road from us) to see it attract a purely wild grey cock bird.
Biggest problem here could be the mink, though they are regularly dealt with as we are near a fishing river. We couldn't do it this year, having only moved last summer and having had a lot to do in the meantime; not to say I'm wishing time away (never enough of it as it is), but we're looking forward to next year already... ;)
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We find that the biggest issue for them, is predation of eggs / chicks / nesting birds.
Biggest culprits being birds of prey, corvids, and of course the fox. Brock also plays hell with them (as they do with all ground nesting birds) but obviously with the current legal situation, its a toughie dealing with them.
Other than that, good natural un-cut head lands, and breeding / cover crop strips really help, as do 'beatle banks'.
Something magic about spotting a hen with her brood out scratching on a summers day.
Someone once told me that to get an established population you need three things in large amounts, time, money and luck.
Fingers crossed for you!
And if you have a surplus of mink. . . . . . .give me a bell :innocent:
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Your work is stunning. :trophy:
You weren't by any chance taking lots of sheepie photos at Builth last Sunday were you?
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Absolute delight looking at both pages of art. You both have a great talent for detail, I love them :sunshine:
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Thank you, we like to share :D
In the hills - yes, that was us!! Getting the low down on sheep breeds too and trying to work out how to combine artistic interests with meat and fleece potential ;) Were you there with sheep?!
Porterlauren - the last mink is in my sister-in-laws freezer, she does lots of weird and wonderful crafty/reenactment things so goodness alone knows what it will reappear as!
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Funnily enough, i've got a mink in my freezer to :D
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Thought I recognised you. :wave: ;D
No, didn't take our girls but we were taking sheepie photos too .... as ideas for my needle felting!
What a small world!
Did you like any breeds in particular?
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:wave:
Needle felting is something I've taken up recently, though not had chance to do much lately. As for sheep... ooh, where to start?! ;D I'm a sucker for rare breeds and we both like some of the 'primitives'. As an artist I love the contrast between soft wool and ridged horn, so we're definitely thinking a horned breed. It's unlikely that we'll be able to do anything till after September at the earliest... which might be a good thing, it'll take us at least that long to work out which!! :D
Any plans for the mink Porterlauren?
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I enjoy needle felting as well. I've made a few things but I want to tackle a bigger something - a wall hanging probably.
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We love the Primitives too, SWBR. We really like the variety of colour of our Soay , as well as their characters!
MGWM - I'm going to try to get on a wet felting course and hopefully needle felt on top of that in order to produce bigger pictures. Hoping it might be faster than needle felting the whole thing. :-\
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That's what I was thinking of doing. I've done a couple of small hangings and the background took an age. I do find the wet felting tiring though but someone on here said you can walk away and leave it for a while so I'm going to try that.