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| << April 2023 | May 2023 | June 2023 >> |
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7th: Chilli, chilling... Chilli, chilling with the dogs!! She is our most dog-friendly cat, often known affectionately as Chilli the Tart!  |
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8th: A morning walk in the dry enjoying seeing our bottle babies out on the spring grass ... to this!!! It's p***** it down here now. Not altogether sure we needed this much rain!! How has your bank holiday been?   |
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9th: Sparrow!! Sparrow - You may be trying to hide your face with your long, scraggly ear but we can still see you are a dog, not a lamb. And what exactly have you done with Peppercorn, the fourth member of our bottle-babies gang and who, presumably, you are trying to impersonate? Nice try puppy but you cannot pull the wool over our ears (or yours in fact...)  |
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10th: So many eggs After all the rain we have had over the last 2 days, we have been tidying up the 'boys' nests again today. One of the girls then decided it wasn't quite right and needed a bit of adjustment... 29 eggs !!!! - and the two males concerned, White Toe and Beta, are still inviting the girls to come and lay... not altogether sure we want 29 more rhea. We will sadly be removing some of these.....   |
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13th: A perfect day for washing and drying fleeces Expect we are not the only ones who have been doing this??   |
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16th: Reclaiming Reclaiming a bit of garden by the greenhouse - the back will hopefully become our new rhubarb patch and the front we plan to fill with colourful pots. Perfect weather for being in the garden just now!!   |
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21st: Water fun After seeing the emu enjoying a few muddy puddles over the last few weeks, we wondered, now the weather is dry, whether they might appreciate their own paddling pool. Turns out they do.. rather a lot in fact!   |
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22nd: Happy place Sitting in the middle of Oak field with dogs, views, blue skies and bird song!! And breathe...  |
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23rd: Bees Once again, our smallholding has been honoured with a swarm of bees - not sure if this one came from one of the two hives already on our land owned by Andrew and Lynda Pons, but thanks to Lynda's bee-handling skills (and my expertise with a pair of loppers 🤣), we managed to get a brood box wedged in the hedgerow where the bees had settled and then encourage them inside! What amazing animals these creatures are. This evening Lynda will collect the box and then later get them settled in a new hive. Fingers crossed they stay! It was rather warm in our bee suits but being up so close and personal was brilliant!!   |
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25th: Shearing day Shearing day for the sheep: always a bit nerve wracking but thanks to William Elworthy all went well and super fast. He was in and out in under two hours and we were left with 15 happy sheep and some amazing fleeces: Shetlands, Coloured Ryelands, Badgerface, Teeswater/ Shetlands and Soay.     |
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26th: Rabbits!!! It seems we have a nest of rabbits under our hay rack in Oak field (currently empty of livestock) - eek... we have never really seen rabbits on our land till this year. Much as we love wildlife, this isn't the best news really, not with our community allotment just 2 fields away. We are hoping that the dog activity will scare them off!!  |
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29th: Sorting fleeces Been sorting fleeces after our shearing day last week - very pleased how clean most of them are. We have such a range of types and colours. Our best once again is from our Shetland wether: Mr Muckle. This is his third fleece and it seems to get better year on year! I adore those greys. I am also very much in love with Cheese's fleece - he is also a wether, a Shetland/ Teeswater cross and his fleece is enormous. Our sorting table is 8' by 4' and his fleece fills it.     |
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30th: Another swarm Our second swarm in a week (this was yesterday). It is a bit of a year for swarms apparently. This swarm took us a lot longer to move as instead of being conveniently wrapped round a central trunk in the hedge, they were in the midst of lots of leaves and small twigs, and when said leaves and twigs are blackthorn, they come with accompanying very sharp and very long thorns. We got there in the end with secateurs, loppers and a saw all playing their role. When the queen herself was revealed and dropped onto the top of the brood box, it was extraordinary to see how quickly and how expertly she was man-handled into the box itself by all her 'workers'. If she had tried to resist, she wouldn't have stood a chance. Lynda and Andrew now have five hives, three of which are populated with swarms from this year.    |