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| << December 2021 | January 2022 | February 2022 >> |
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1st: Happy New Year Happy New Year to you too White Toe!!  |
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3rd: Eggs It seems straw and swede do the job: in the last week, our eggs have gone from between one and three a day to between 4 and NINE!!! The really weird thing though, is that the birds are back in their stable (as we needed the barn for the alpacas) and it is half the size and nowhere near as light!!! Sometimes there is no logic to animal behaviour!!   |
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5th: Our house We love this view of our house. It's the view we get as we walk back from Fruit Field with the dogs each day. It's so different season by season but always beautiful and makes us feel massively fortunate that we have such a comfortable base to head back to. (From this distance we also can't see that it is in fact no longer quite the clean magnolia colour it once was.).  |
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6th: Ex-commercial hens We seem to have acquired a few ex-commercial hens!! Happy as I am that these are now destined to live out the rest of their lives here on the Relaxed smallholding, I shudder at the thought that the rest of the 'shed-mates' (some 2000 of them) have now been loaded into a lorry and taken away to be dispatched. These birds are in good condition - prior to the Bird Flu Lockdown, they lived in large sheds but with access to the outside, looked after by a farmer who cares! Nonetheless, it is still a fact that supermarket eggs, on the whole, come from birds who only get to live for 18 months and whose chances to be outside and exhibit their natural behaviours are greatly reduced  |
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8th: Wet It's been a very wet week and we have had everything in side for a few days to keep the mud at bay and stop any foot issues - the sheep and goats cope fine, the alpacas less so- they will be out tomorrow...   |
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9th: Please!!! This is Hegemone's best ' please can we go back outside' face, supported by a few equally imploring faces behind!! WE said 'yes'!!  |
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10th: The love of straw The newbies just loving a good scratch around in a fresh bale of straw! We won't be keeping all these beauties but will find friends who are happy to take on a few so they can have lovely outside lives for as long as they need them. |
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12th: All change A beautiful day and perfect for moving stock - the rhea are now in Swallow Field and the SGAs now have access to Oak as well as Goat. The rhea sedately walked through the gate into their new field, the SGA lot not quite so! Love their enthusiasm!!   |
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13th: Olive eggers Our new chickens are rewarding us with some fabulous green and blue eggs - the photo really doesn't do them justice!   |
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14th: Mist A stunning start to the day!!  |
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17th: Puppies LIfe is all about puppies at the moment - the daily blog can be found under Dogs/Cats - but the diary deserves a few cute images from this week!!     |
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19th: Evening quiet Whilst the pups play and snooze in the whelping area, Stonefly enjoys some time out with the other dogs. Evenings are lovely - a lit fire, puppy blog done and a good book!!  |
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20th: A new toy!! A New Year's present to ourselves - a fabulous Ashford e-spinner. Spinning is now happening in earnest for our next set of alpaca rugs - all very exciting!! David is very happy!! AND if you look closely (but not too closely), you can see a wool skein in the background, spun by yours truly!!! Destination as yet unknown (the skein, not mine).  |
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21st: Morning walk A very handsome Firefly - with Sparrow chewing ice in the background - as you do!!!  |
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22nd: Smallholding stalwarts This trolley began life as a mucking out trolley, morphed into a play station for our goat kids and was then converted to a hay rack for our cows. Nowadays it is much used by the goats and alpacas and even the sheep - we move it around the fields using the quad and at over ten years old, it has certainly been huge value for money!!  |
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23rd: Gorgeous Just loving having these ex-commercial birds!!   |
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25th: Wow One of our puppy-owners-to-be asked for a photo of Stonefly (mum) as, in his words, he was a 'bit of a painter'! A week later, we were presented with this.. there are no words.. Well, three words: utterly, utterly stunning!!! We cried....   |
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27th: Evening calm |
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