Tag: Big Field

Children, Fruit and vegetables, Garden, Sustainability, Working the land

Smallholding Sunday

Ellie

A little update on the holding! a little of what we have gotten up to this summer!

We have…. Giant courgettes, hoof trimming the sheep, honey harvesting, plum picking, a grape harvest, some beans and a new little chap hanging about more and more!

A Sunday dinner completely made and grown and raised by us, bottled rhubarb gin, the starts of a Holly run, an onion harvest and LOTS of berries.

All sorts of lovely stuff growing in the veg garden and Polytunnel!

We have baled, both big bales and hand baled small bales, we dropped the fleeces at the wool mill, made fire bricks from sawdust and paper…

And all this, as well as having summer adventures with the boys, dyeing yarn, forest school and so much more!!

Such a fab summer!!

animals, Building work, Food and drink, Sustainability, Working the land

What’s doing??

Ellie

We have been busy as bees round the holding still, but since the start of lockdown in March we have not had any significant rainfall!!! 10 weeks!!

Things are tinder dry outside…. we are having to regularly water everywhere and currently just the other side of our nearest village there is a forestry and field fire that the forestry services and a helicopter have been battling since Sunday evening…

Thankfully there is some rain forecast tonight and for at least the morning tomorrow! The earth here will give a sigh of relief I expect when it starts to fall!!

In the meantime here a few snapshots of the past few weeks here! New fencing, shearing, turning out the horses, new chicks, new play stuff for the boys, elderflowers and a lot more!!

Food and drink, Fruit and vegetables, Garden, Life with a toddler, Livestock, News, Plans, Podcast, Wanderings, Wildlife, Woodland, Working the land

A few little videos

Ellie

I’ve added a few new videos to the YouTube Channel!!!

Some tours of the animals and I’m planning a weekly ish….. vlog about the happenings on the smallholding!!

Here is Episode one!!

Fruit and vegetables, Garden, Livestock, Working the land

A few updates!!

Ellie

Things are starting to grow in the Polytunnel and the fruit cage has a heap of green strawberries!!

James has built the majority of the first long raised beds!! Just awaiting delivery of the blocks for the rest of this bed and the second now!! But we could wait and started to plant!!! Beans this end…. ran out of canes but had a heap of branches!!! So for now we use those!!! Broccoli, cauliflower (any suggestions for deterring cabbage whites gratefully received!!) celeriac, some pumpkins and courgette so far!!!

The hay meadows are looking glorious following the spell of hot weather we have had!

The hedgerows are growing amazingly now!! Fingers crossed that they’ll now be a bit more Wanda proof!!! But I’ll still check on her each day to make sure!!!

We have had some seeds sent from the seed share project from @croydongardener on Instagram!! Some really unusual squashes etc all heirlooms too!! Can’t wait to get those planted!!

Last week was half term so my sister and the children came to visit. They enjoyed meeting the tenants in the field currently!! Such beautiful little foals and their gorgeous mamas!!

They had fun building some of their own toys for bits from the barn and building dens!!

My niece turned ten also so I made a cake and she helped me ice it!!! Mmmmm chocolate orange cake!!! Yum!!!

I cant remember whether I included the bee hive in the last update or not but James has built a bee hive and we are now awaiting our first bees once he has it sited!! So exciting!!! We shall have our own honey next year!!!’

Lots of things happen here each week it seems…. time flies and it won’t be long before we will be looking to get our hay cut and baled up!!

Livestock, Working the land

Sheepy shenanigans

Ellie

So…. back in February a Beulah speckled face sheep appeared on our yard…. we tried everything to find its owner, contacted ALL the agencies had animal health out, and the animal health lady checked her databases for us to try to trace the owner…. no avail… so we advertised on the gate post…. and fourteen days later she became ours…..

So we have a Wanda!!

Now Wanda is an amazing escapologist…. she has tested all and I mean ALL of our boundaries…. shown us EVERY possible spot that is even the slightest bit weak and gappy!!!

So we have had MANY trips to other fields coaxing her back with the bucket into the field we want her in and also trips further afield to neighbours’s land and the lane and the walking path to the next village even!!!!

We have used bit of baling twine, logs, old posts, brash, bits of old gates, everything to try and keep her in the one field…..

Then a neighbour struck on a fabulous idea…. poor beast is in need of a friend… ah ha!!! She only started to try and escape once the rental sheep went home…. so the neighbours gave us Baabara!!

And a few days later!!! And a little more baking twine and brash… (she had one last hoorah into the next door field thankfully of ours!!) Wanda and Baabara are happily in the one field!!

With their neighbours…. the rental ponies and their utterly gorgeous foals!!!

Craftiness, Firewood, Forest schools, Life with a toddler, Woodland, Working the land

What a week!!

Ellie

Well this week has been a whirlwind after our usual more sedate pace round here!!

Monday we were at the hospital for another growth scan and clinic….

Not a great photo but he is a larger baby than his brother and running out of space!!! (7 weeks till due date!)

Tuesday we caught up on some jobs here…. James collecting wood, helping a neighbour who is unwell, me sorting house cleaning/laundry etc!!

Wednesday James had some more wood collecting time and I had to race through a metric crap tonne of paperwork ready for a meeting with the FUW to help me fill in claims forms and field maintenance sheets…. AND for ANOTHER farm inspection…. We have had our SAF and maintenance payments for Glastir held up by the Welsh Government, both because we have been included in their audit…. where the inspectors get inspected!!! Yes total bad luck on our first year!!!!! Joy and because they had questions about some satellite imagery which again is a new thing this year…. well done us getting the double whammy!!!

So Thursday I trooped off to Carmarthen with folders worth of paperwork and completed a capital works claim, a field maintenance new online thing to alter my field boundaries now we have added the new hedgerows!! Plus take advice on becoming VAT registered etc etc!!

Raced home to grab some lunch…. then back out to the midwife!! (Now at the we want to see you every other week stage!) who bless her was running a smidge Kate and then I hotfooted it back to holding for the inspectors!!!

Well thankfully they were late and wanted to look at activity diaries first!! So I had time to get togged up for the field portion of their trip!! Thankfully everything was all good and to quote one of them “if only all inspections were this simple and straightforward!” Phew!!!

William and I then had Forest School on Friday which we both love!!

Then after lunch we collected my car from the garage all mot’d and driving like a dream again!!!

So we have had a week of interrupted naps….. short naps….. naps in the car…… and only one nap in his big boy bed!!

So no real crafty time *sob*

Managed a bit of spinning and a bit of sewing earlier in the week…

But it’s been scarily productive paperwork wise and farm wise…..

Now to spend today and tomorrow catching up with all the other jobs we need to get sorted!!!

Working the land

Bracken wars!!!

Ellie

Creeping into the fields we have a wealth of bracken.  As this is going to eventually impinge on the productivity of the land for haylage etc James and I waited until our tenant farmer had mown the field for his haylage 

   
   and out I went with the beast!!!!

   
   

Joyfully at the furthest point of the field…. The furthest point of our land other than the woods…. The beast decided to stop working….. Thank goodness for the extra battery on the gator which jump started us!!!!

 

Wanderings, Wildlife

Now for something not building related!!

Ellie

Mmmmm a white blob in the field…..



What could it be……

The farmer who rents the fields put 26 sheepies in the field but all supposed to be barren or at least not pregnant this year……

Eek could it be remnants of dead sheepie…..

Eaten by what….. (Maybe the puma one of the neighbours keeps mentioning!!)

So I crept closer…..





Not dead remnants!!!!

Yay a little lambkin!!

Hardy little bugger mind, he/she was born amidst the snow!!! 

Working the land

What a busy month!!!

Ellie

I am not sure where February has disappeared to!! It started with yet another meeting with the builders and is finishing in an absolute whirlwind!!! More stuff to say than one blog post can cope with so I shall have to split it into several posts!!!

We went back to the farm the first full weekend in February to meet the builders and talk about the plans for the house etc etc ie what colour soffits and fascias etc to stop the house martins and swallows nesting inside this year again!!! Much as I loved seeing the fat fluffy faces peeking over the nest edges I’ll stick to seeing them outside thanks!!!

James and I then spent the weekend hedge laying as we only have until the first of March oh Sunday to actually do that so that weekend we got most of the hedge between big field and veg patch field laid on the big field side at least!!! It was the most overgrown of blackthorn hedges with birch, oak, ash standards in it!!! But suffice it to say it’s now a lot prettier!! We finished it over half term week and took some of the excess out from the first attempts at laying!! We were a little nervous I think about taking too much out but after some advice from our local farmer who rents the two fields and from James’ Dad we have cracked it I think and are certainly more confident about tackling hedges that are not purely blackthorn!!!

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Apologies for the pictures they were taken later in the day and the light was fading fast!!

Working the land

Stuck sheep

Ellie

Our field tenants, the sheep…. Mmmmm they have decided they can start to cause mayhem on the weekends we are there…..

First incident…..

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Stuck in the brambles, so armed with gloves and secateurs James I trooped across the field to rescue it! as it seemed to have been in the brambles for a while given the amount of mud kicked up…. As we got closer the sheep started to panic somewhat and when we were within a few feet managed to pull itself free from the brambles!!