October

Winter is drawing in and I feel it!
The evening are getting dark earlier and nights much colder. I have ordered the round bales of haylage for the winter and the animals will be moving in from the fields soon.

We have sold six of the seven piglets over the last few days. The remaining one will stay with the sow for company. They were very easy to sell which surprised me. I had imagined the market at this time of year would be poor compared to spring. Who wants additional livestock going into winter?

The cow will move into the cow yard in the next two weeks. She wouldn't see a field again until  May next year. The milking machine had broke down about two weeks ago and instead of forking out a few hundred to fix it , we have decided to buy a new portable machine in the spring when she freshens. At the moment I am hand-milking her every evening. She is giving about 5 litres on once a day milking. Once she moves indoor, we will dry her off. She is due her angus calf in early March.

The hens are doing well. We are getting about seven eggs a day from ten hens ( one pullet, two ducks and two roosters ). We expect to get (less) eggs right through winter as many of the hens are this years.

The bees are still foraging in the middle of the day. A great deal of pollen is brought back into the hives each day. I expect that the queens will slow down now and then cease laying sometime next month. The full hives should have plenty of stores as I took so little from them but I will continue to feed the two nuc's.

We have three horses. A pony for the children and two youngsters for me. The youngsters stayed at my sisters farm all summer, but the older of the two, a two yr old Mermus R gelding will move back here for the winter. I will collect him at the end of this month. I will be training him over the winter to lunge, long rein and then ride. I prefer to start them young and slow. I worked with him for a few weeks during the summer and he can already be tacked up in cross-ties and take my weight lying over his back. The children continue their riding lessons and will be riding their pony max over the winter. I plan to bring them to lead-rein show jumping leagues in Feb with him.

The range in the kitchen and open fire in the sitting-room is lit every day. The cottage is very cosy and snug! Thank God for turf :-)

Honey frames

The bee keeping year in winding down. The weather has become cooler, especially at night but the bees are still bringing in plenty of pollen mainly from ivy.

I took another three frames of capped honey out of the hives today. This will leave them plenty for the winter. I feel that it will be enough for for us to use over the winter and surplus for the bees larder. If the honey is still there in the spring, I might harvest it then.

I was looking forward to harvesting honey comb but all the frames I brought in happen to be built on wired foundation, which I will be phasing out over the next few years, in preference for foundation-less frames where the bees will draw their own comb.

I made up new batches of salve/balm for the house with the beeswax. I use this for minor cuts and irritated skin, and as udder balm for the cow. It is so simple, cheap and effective! It works so well for nappy rash  in young children and for outdoor winter cracked hands.

The recipe is so simple, just five parts olive oil to one part beeswax. 

I usually add a few drops of essential just because they smell so nice. Gently heat on the range until the beeswax melts into the olive oil. Using more beeswax will produce a firmer salve, which may be preferred during summer months.

We have four piglets going to new homes this evening and another one going to a neighbour in the morning. So this time tomorrow we will have two piglets instead of seven. I am delighted by this!

Piglets eat a lot, and seven eat an awful lot of food! 

It will take a lot of the pressure for milk production off the sow, as they have started to damage her teats with their fierce competition for udder space.

Piglets are growing!

The piglets are growing quickly. They are five weeks now.

They have become experts at escaping and chasing the cat and dogs!?!

Mum enjoys a break from them every now and then. They will be moving on to new homes at eight week, we will keep two for ourselves.

It will be nice to have less mouths to feed as the cow has started to dry off and there is less milk available. She is due a calf next March :-)

Our boys have started pony riding on Saturday mornings in the local riding club. I hope it is the start of a life long passion.

September

The turf is all home. There is comfort is having a shed full of fuel as we approach the winter. This will heat our cottage, provide hot water and do much of our cooking over the next six months. 

The children had been busy yesterday helping me collect mushrooms after school.

The fields are full of them. I made and am still making large amounts of mushroom and courgette soup for freezing.

We have lots of courgette and maturing pumpkins in the veg garden.

The piglets are very cute and hardy now. They get out of their yard through the gate and ramble around the field and garden exploring until Sally sow calls them back with her grunts. 

They are great fun to watch. Soon they will have grown too big to fit through and escape. 

The children are back at school and I'm back at work part time. Our home has became  hectic is the mornings and quite during the day. Life is moving on!

The cow has dropped milk production as  is expected for this time of year. In the next 4-6 wks she will come in off the land and stay in her cow yard for the winter. At Christmas we will dry her off. She is due her calf in March. 

The bees are doing well and are flying everyday now. The ivy and heather is starting here and they are bringing in loads of pollen to build up for winter.

I will have less time to update the blog but I will update it :-)

The new piglets

We counted ten cute piglets this morning!

Sally sow is very proud of her new family and was smiling and grunting happily this morning when we came to visit. 

I give her a few biscuits as a treat and a good scratch.

I think she will be a very good mum, and the piglets are so cute! 

Spotty ones, white ones and two brown striped little piggies :-) 

Piglets coming soon :-)

Sally sow has been growing very big these last few weeks. Her udder started to show about three weeks ago and milk  started to leak today. 

This was noticed by the amount of flies around her. We cleaned out her accommodation and put in fresh bedding. She is delighted and settling in now. 

I suspect that she is currently in labour. She is very restless and noisy at the moment although she normally takes a nap after dinner. She enjoyed a good scratch from us while trying to rest between grunts and position changes.

We will be checking in on her regularly and hopefully by morning she will have a healthy litter of piglets.

Exciting !!! :-)

Pork back from the butcher

The pig killed out very well. The butcher reckoned he was over 18 stone dead-weight which works out to be about 114 kgs. 

The pig was about 11 months and reared mainly on jersey milk and barley.

There is good marbling and a modest amount of fat, so we are very pleased.

The back legs are still being cured and I should be able to collect them in another week.

I cured some pork belly in brown sugar and salt for two days and then roast it. It tasted amazing !

Some costings for those that have an interest:

Pig purchase at 5 mths €50

Feed - Barley at €5 per week €180 (reared to 11 mths)

Killing cost €40

Butcher cost €40

Curing ingredients €15

Total cost :   €325 for 114kg

                   €2.85 per kg

We are very happy with these costings but are main reason to rear our own pork/bacon is because it is very difficult to find good healthy pork at a reasonable price. Our motivates are health not money but I still like to know how much it has cost us.

The feed cost is understated as he has has been reared on jersey milk. I suppose I could add a portion of the annual cow food bill to reflect this, which would add another €100 making it €3.72 per kg. 

June Update

A few updates!

My exams are finished for now, thankfully!

One of the pigs was sent to the freezer last week. He killed out at a good weight and not too fatty. We just have the gilt left. She was very lonely at first but has become more friendly and enjoys all the attention she gets now.

There was a hatched queen cell in one of the hives a few days ago. I had put in a frame of young brood a week before and these were not raised into queen cells. My take on this is that the hive has a virgin queen and I will check in another week for eggs. The weather has been good for mating flights. 

The other hives are very strong and may consider swarming. I need to open the brood area in these by putting a foundation less frame in the centre of the brood. It should occupy them enough to not produce queen cells, hopefully! 

I will spilt one of these hives to make increases but the other, I want it as a production hive. We really want honey this year!

I picked up two broody hens today at the mart. I put them into the orchard with the other hens and when I checked on them later, I could only find one! Hubby will be disappointed when he gets home. We checked the roads and fields but no sign of her. She may or may not turn up.

I am busy at home toilet training our youngest. It is a messy and challenging experience for us both. 

One of our dogs is in heat which has caught the attention of all the neighbouring dogs. One even came inside the cottage today to mark his territory .Grrrrrr!

The veg garden is finally getting attention since the hens have been secured in the orchard. I rejoice in no longer having to hop over the hen poo on the doorstep each morning or crying when the kids carry it in on their shoes. They are no longer able to scratch out flower boxes and veg beds. 

Amber the cow or moo moo as the kids call her, was ai'ed last week to an angus  bull. She was also TB tested a few days ago. 

She is a sweet cow but I think I am the only one that can milk her now. She hates hubby since he had difficulty to bring her in and used a stick. She hates all men in case they are of the vet/ai type.

But she loves me and the kids, and is so easy but if she sees hubby she will turn around and refuse to come in till he goes.

So much for hubby being the relief milker!

A little of everything...

Amber the cow has developed mastitis in one quarter. Surely it is from something I did or didn't do!
Anyway, I give her a tube into the teat canal and I also sent in a milk samples for analysis. The results were due back today but were delayed. I should have them tomorrow and the vet will give me antibiotics specific to her infection.
I recognised that we had a problem when the milk started to filter slower and then later started to produce clots, similar to cottage cheese. She was very tender on the quarter and started to kick out when I would clean and attach the teat cup. The infection has already subsided by using the tube and she isn't in pain any more but her milk is still producing clots from that quarter. She should be fine in another few days and we will be back to drinking her milk in a week, allowing for the withdrawal period.

In the meantime, the pigs are enjoying 14 litres a day of yummy milk and are putting on great weight. Ms.Piggy, the sow, showed signs of heat a few days ago and I was disappointed as I had assumed that she was pregnant, maybe she is! This is all new to me! I cleaned out their sty this evening, always a quick and easy job, using just the yard brush.

Hubby has completed the new hen house. It is my job to paint it when I get a chance over the next few weeks. He will mesh the fencing in the orchard this weekend before moving the hens permanently, fingers crossed. I guess we will have to lock them into the house for a few days until they beside it is their new home. I am collecting 8-9 eggs a day at the moment but I am unsure of how many they are laying as the dogs are professional egg thieves.
Planting of the veg garden is on hold until the hens are contained. They have already scratched out the bed I planted.

The bees are flying everyday and can be seen bringing back plenty of pollen. Each day the hives gets stronger as new brood emerges. I need to open up one hive to mark the queen. This is a difficult job, as finding one bee amongst thousands is a challenge. I haven't had a chance to do it yet, either due to the weather or children. But I know that the challenge grows with each passing day. I need her marked as I want to make splits later this month.

There is talk here of me getting another horse. Exciting! A young horse to work on over the winter and replace my current horse for next season.

April's Fool News

 

Winter is well behind us now. The bees are very busy foraging these days. I have seen them out flying as early as 9am these past few days, which is usual for this time of year. Their new site is more sheltered and faces east into the morning sun, it is warming up the hive earlier than the previous site and therefore they can fly earlier in the day.

I need to do my first open hive inspection of the year this week. I might do it tomorrow if the weather stays good. I have one queen to mark and I need to add on another brood box to the other hive. I will also add some frames with no foundation so as to allow the bees to draw their own comb. I have a bee meeting to attend tonight, the meeting will focus on making splits and establishing nucs.

I am eager for Hubby to start on a perone inspired hive design. I would like to experiment that different hive types and get more into natural beekeeping. 

 

 

Most of the over wintered veg is starting to bolt to seed. That includes turnips, winter salads, kale, cabbages, leeks, beetroot, carrots etc. I need to start using them up now before they get too tough and stringy. Although the pigs would only be too happy to help!

 

Our pigs are doing great. They have put on a lot of weight since the arrival of amber, the cow. The milk is doing them well and they are thriving. The male unnamed pig will go to the freezer this month. His female friend is pregnant, hopefully, and so we will expect a litter of piglets during the summer. Hubby is very fond of her and wishes to keep her as his breeding sow.

 

Hubby started work on the new hen 'apartment' last weekend. He hopes to finish it by this weekend. We are both sick of hen poo on the doorstep each and every morning!

The plan is to move them from the stable and free ranging, to the  new hen house in the orchard. Hubby will mesh the fencing and clip their feathers to hopefully keep them restricted to the quarter acre that is the orchard. They will still have plenty of space but wont be able to get into the yard to poop on everything and lay eggs in random places that only the dogs seem to know about.

On the downside, they make a good living by cleaning up after the pigs, pony and cow. They also spend a lot of their time scratching out worms in the dung heap. They barely cost us anything to feed at the moment, so we will have to feed them more!

The design of the hen house is as follows. There are four nesting boxes on the side that can be accessed from the fence. This should make collecting eggs a very easy job, sorry dogs! The main body has various branches for perching and the floor is slatted, there are 1-2 inch spacing between the floor boards to allow for easy cleaning. Most of the poo should fall through, but I imagine I will need to sweep it out once or twice a month. Either way it should be easy to manage.

They will have a ladder up to access the door. I hope that this will make it fox/dog proof. We don't intend to lock them in at night. We will just do as we are currently doing, allowing them to fly over the stable door when it gets dark, knowing that the stable is fox proof. 

We will use the rain water from the roof to fill a shallow paddle pond that Hubby has yet to install, that will be the water sorted. I hope that I or the children will only need to collect eggs and feed the hens, from the fence once a day. Although I am sure that there will be regular escapes.

Reflections of hand milking

So I have been hand milking everyday, twice a day for nine days now. My arms have gone through the pain, tension and numbness of extreme exercise inflicked upon them for forty minutes at a time. 

They are now strong and more efficient, with milkings only taking twenty minutes.

I have cursed my hubby for not learning how to hand milk and I have felt self pity for carrying all the milking responsibility on my shoulders, I mean forearms!

Hand milking a cow is not as romantic as one might think. Yes, amber is very quiet and willing. She has never once gone to the toilet while inside the milk shed but hand milking is work, sweaty work! And I have to do it twice a day, everyday regardless of how much it doesn't suit my mood or schedule on that particular day.

I get up earlier than everyone else and head outside to check on the animals. The hens are waiting for me at the doorstep and follow me to the shed. I turn on the lights and get the feed ready. 

A scope of grain is thrown out in the yard for the hens to pick at, one bucket of nuts for the pony and a large amount of nuts for the cow. I have a bucket of milk and barley already soaked overnight for the pigs. 

The pigs are shouting for breakfast from their sty as soon as they hear me in the shed. I get their bucket and pour it into their trough. They are very excited!

Next into the cow yard, where max the pony and amber the jersey are. They have been waiting impatiently. Amber mooing very loudly. I gave the pony his nuts in the yard while amber makes her way into the milk house.

She stands into her stall where her breakfast is waiting. I tie her in and take a seat down at her udder.

I usually take off my jumper or jacket. Milking is hard work! 

I clean off her udder and wash and dry it. I put a bucket under her and milk hard for twenty minutes. Once Amber's nuts are eaten, she starts on her hay. She looks back at me frequently while chewing. Once I have milked her out, I put her back into the yard or if the fields are dry she might go out for a few hours. I leave the bucket of warm milk outside the shed where our dogs are waiting. They drink 2-3 litres at each milking. The rest I use to soak barley for the pigs next meal.

We are not using much of the milk at the moment. Because she has a rear teat that has two openings, it makes hand milking very messy as it sprays everywhere. She needs to be machine milked to produce milk of a good hygiene  standard for our home.

I occasionally milk a few litres from her front teats into a bottle for the house.

We have a milking machine! I have being begging and pleading with hubby to get it functional as soon as possible. There is a problem with either the motor or vacuum pump.

Hubby is gone away today to a neighbouring dairy farm to figure out how to fix the machine and get spare parts. I, hopefully, will be a very pleased wife this evening when the milk machine is fully functioning. 

Fingers crossed!

And then I can consider making some Greek yogurt or some soft cheeses. Or even taking a bath in milk :-) I always wanted to do that !

Planting willow cuttings

I set about planting willow cuttings today ( thanks Kate ).  They were partially soaking in water since I got them last week. It was well time to get them planted.

These are a mixture of basket making varieties. I planted them around the bees and along a fence line.

I am hoping they will give the bees more shelter and encourage them to fly higher in the orchard. 

As they grow, we hope to weave them into fedges, a living willow hedge/fence.

We will use the winter pruning rods for basket making.

A few more signs of life in the garden. The rhubarb has awoken as have many flowering bulbs around the garden. The daffodils and tulips are pushing up through the cold soil. There are lambs in the surrounding fields, it is spring!

I have made a start to clearing out the veg beds. The pigs are reaping the rewards of turnips, kale, radishes and cabbages that have been damaged by recent storms. 

One pigs is to go to the butcher shortly, and the other is to remain as our breeding sow. 

I need to get the veg beds cleared out and add compost to them. Maybe try and heat up the soil using plastic sheeting. There is no polytunnel for this season. It will not be worth our while to replace the plastic on it after the storms. 

My to-do list is very long. February is alway a very panicked month, as I try to get ahead of the weeding, planting, beekeeping etc.

The hens need to move back into their moveable coop. I am getting no eggs and are having to buy them. But the dogs are well feed and have a great shine from all the extra protein. I want eggs!!! We also need to replace the hens that we lost last month. 

The bees need plenty of attention from now on. I need to check their food stores every week as now is the time for them to starve, as the queen starts to lay. This puts a great deal of pressure on the colony. 

We need to buy a new cow. I miss raw jersey milk so much!!

Although I feel pressured, I am very excited for spring. The winter is a very inactive period, and I long for its rest by autumn.

 But now, I long for activity, longer days, sunshine and sandals. 

 

Salami Update

It has been eight weeks since we made the salami. At five weeks cured I tasted it and although it had a light salami taste, it was followed by a bitter after taste. I was disappointed!

I had more salami today and it was wonderful. It has cured for eight weeks now. The after taste is completely gone and it tastes like a mild salami that you would buy in a shop only richer and more substantial.

This has encouraged me to try stronger spices when we make another batch.

And the kids love it, they have eaten about half of the cured sausages so far.

I intend to hide a few from them and taste test them at different ages so as to learn for next time the ideal curing time.

Bees, Pigs and Apple Trees

 

The bees are still out and about flying around during the middle of the day when the temperatures rise above 9-10 degrees.

As they have not clustered yet, they are using more energy and therefore food reserves but are able to feed although there is no forage available at this time of year for them.

I opened up all the hives, just taking off the roof to get access to the crown boards.

As you can see they have used most of the fondant that I give them in early oct. 

I made up another batch of about four litres and added this to the crown boards.

The fondant was still warm and more liquid but it quickly firmed up. The bees were delighted!

I will have to keep a close watch on them as this mild winter will see them needing more feeding through to spring. 

I prefer to over feed than for the bees to starve under the pressure of spring. 

I watched the bees going about their housework, cleaning out the hive and collecting moisture droplets from the grass.

I have them four years now and I am still in awe of them and their collective organisation. 

It hasn't rained here in a few days and the pig sty is getting messy. A heavy rain usually cleans out the sty for us. A job I must do today instead :-)

This is a young apple tree that I under sown with peas. The peas are dying back now but I noticed that the peas did a wonderful job of opening out the branches of this young tree. The weight/pull of the peas all season has trained the branches into a more ideal shape. A delightful accident!