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| << December 2022 | January 2023 | February 2023 >> |
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1st: Mealworms Am so happy - bought loads of mealworms for my 'Stables Robin' who every day greeted me on the stable door with a beautiful serenade. The morning the mealworms arrived, no robin!!! 😢 Nor did s/he appear the next day, or the day after that. Yesterday, s/he was back 🥰 (phew!) so I put out a few worms on top of this bale of straw - they weren't there at the end of the day - eaten or buried themselves - not sure?? But this morning, I put some out and within just ten minutes, my robin, two sparrows and a blue tit descended. Just fabulous!!! Not a great photo but will use my compact tomorrow and see if I can get closer!! Mega chuffed!!  |
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2nd: Ryelands Meet Wheat, Barley and Rye - quite the most ridiculously cute sheep ever. Wethers from last year and destined to become part of our fibre flock. I am sooo looking forward to picking out the VM from their fleeces. We are now back up to 13 sheep: a gorgeous motley crew comprising: Shetlands, Badger Face, Hebridian, Teeswater/Shetland and now Coloured Ryelands too. Happy Days!!!     |
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4th: Eggs!! Look what we picked up yesterday from a breeder in Dorset! Looks as though we may be adding a few emu to our holding. 😊Hopefully the rhea will approve!! And yes, they really are that colour!! They go in the incubator today and then it is a long 50-plus day wait!!!!  |
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5th: Sweet This is just way too sweet: Chalk, our huge Teeswater/Shetland wether, 2 years old this spring is now 'dad' to Wheat, Barley and Rye, our new Coloured Ryeland lambs (born last Spring). Since being introduced to the rest of the flock yesterday, these three have followed Chalk around like.. well, like lambs ... and he has been more than happy to play 'protector'. Heart-melting or what?? And of course Sparrow was very keen to meet them because 'everyone' on the smallholding has to love her, obviously!!   |
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6th: Beauty and calm Sometimes you take a picture that when you then look at it later, you realise has captured a delicious moment of both beauty and calm.  |
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11th: Shelter As the weather outside rages, pummels the land and throws a few tantrums, there is something hugely comforting about being in a straw-filled shelter with all your sheep and alpacas, watching as they happily munch away, chew the cud and gently chill! These 19 fleece-babies, all individually named, loved and so well bonded, are a joy to be around. And just look how well Wheat, Barley and Rye have settled in. |
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14th: Very different Two very different rugs on the looms just now: Jack's smooth Shetland rug (made from spun slivers) and now growing a-pace and David's very, very fluffy alpaca rug made from the second cuts of our own animals. It is so lovely weaving together of an evening like this, dogs snoozing away, fire lit and curtains drawn....    |
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16th: A sight for sore eyes This is, as the saying goes, a sight for sore eyes: sunshine and blue sky after a very wet, grey, dull January so far!! We are saturated under foot still but it's nice to be able to walk around the land without our hoods permanently up, and to see the stock grazing as opposed to legging it for the shelter.  |
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17th: Wonder crop We always say that the mud disappears and the grass grows through again... And here is the proof... This (made a mess by the rhea) to... ...THIS!! In just 2 weeks. 4th Jan to today, 17th Jan!!! Grass is truly amazing. And it is all the more amazing because in those two weeks we had SOOO much rain!   |
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18th: Wheat! 'Yes I did lose the snowball fight!!!! And no, I am not happy!!' (PS, no we didn't really throw a snowball at Wheat, don't be daft... It was his best buddy Barley!!)  |
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21st: Tapestry frame The Tapestry frame is coming along nicely, David is loving making it!! Next stage heddles and raddles!! In the meantime, it is proving rather useful for hanging finished rugs.  |
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27th: Our allotment This is our old pig plot which three years ago we turned into an allotment. We invited friends to use some of it and this winter advertised locally for more people to join us as we just weren't using all the space. We now have five families from our local village sharing the plot (including one family of Syrian refugees (looking forward to swapping recipes here) and another family of 13, some of the children being home-educated). Today we laid down a load of old mats to mark out the beds and then divided them out. We could have filled a whole field with plots for the amount of responses we had 😳. People literally wait years for allotments. There are no restrictions on using the land in this way as far as land use goes. IF we do open more land (which in the future we may well do), we will need to consider parking however and be mindful of increased traffic on our very quiet road. We are very chuffed to be able to do this - it feels a very small 'thing' but a thing that will make a bit of a difference.     |
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28th: Jacob x Blue Faced Leicester Just adore how this Jacob x Blue Faced Leicester rug is starting to build - we washed the fleece and loosely picked it before spinning but wanted very much to have as many of the curls visible as we could. It's definitely giving us the effect we wanted, so far!! We have Exmoor Horn x Blue Faced Leicester to add to the mix as well!! Cannot wait to see how that will look.  |
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30th: Skies Morning and evening skies on our smallholding! Perfect! Just adore all these tree lines   |
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31st: Bonded Think it's safe to say our youngest four (mums Roxy and Stonefly and their daughters Sparrow and Otter) all rather like each other - and if there is no room for them all on the sofa, then Otter just 'makes' room. Totally melts our hearts how bonded these dogs are!!!  |