Another vlog summing up this week!!
A busy one again,
Log chopping,
Fencing,
Building some Forest school/outdoor learning bits
Aaaaannnnnnd Puppy!!!!
Tag: fencing
A few little videos
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!!
Piggies!!!
Last week we spent a huge amount of time building an enclosure and hut for some pigs!!!
All the elements of their housing other than the electric fencing have been repurposed from things we had in the barns, leftovers from other building projects or reclaimed items like a collection of doors that a neighbour was throwing out!!
It was all a bit Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall with his first River Cottage piglets as James collected them in a dog crate in a fiesta!!
James has set up a solar powered electric fence and they are such good piglets and have learnt the fencing very fast thankfully!!
They have already made themselves a wallow into the cool earth and have been happily rooting through the earth in areas for roots etc!!
Sheepy shenanigans
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!!!
What a week!!
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!!!
Fencing….. Fencing and more Fencing!!!
Last week our fencing started in a big way!!! We have been fortunate to get into Glastir which is government woodland and land management scheme, which allows us to manage the land in a way that is more geared to the local wildlife and promoting that!!
Last Monday our top field looked like this….
We already have lots of woodland…..
…..and in addition to the new woodland planting we did at the start of this year covering a probably just over an acre…..
…we now have new fencing ready for new hedgerows…..
new gates…..
Well gates of out yard piles and into fields where they need to be!! We are awaiting the arrival of three new hardwood timber gates!
So next job hedge planting and a few more gates then the paperwork!!!!
Episode three is up!
Episode three is up on YouTube
Show notes….
Knitting:
Finished the Daydreamer and the Deco mat, owl puff and owl hat…. started the socks…. Nearly a HO!
Sewing:
Curtains curtains and more curtains
PJS done, baby’s tshirt done
Cutting out….
Acquisitions: only the curtain poles!!
Shop update: vintage snug hat
Farm update: hedging, fencing, diggers, tractors, pit of doom, tree planting, chain sawing….
Starting to look like we are winning
Over the weekend we were back at the farm and I went hell for leather with the hedge cutters (although I am paying for it now with a poorly bad hand and wrist) The orchard field is basically now cleared other than some brambles which Mum is coming to help pick clean next weekend!! I shall probably follow her with the hedge cutters to complete the hack down once all the juicy goodness is bagged and tagged!!!
We are starting to get some tantalising peeks into this section of woodland which we have not seen yet and we have found fencing!!! Yes fencing along the edge of the woods before they expanded over the fence!! James spent most of the weekend taking down the shambolic fencing at the top by the slurry pit bank and we have now cleared the back of the bank which means of course we have found more dumped metal work in the form of a gate and something else!! We shall see what that is when we pull it out!!
Our lovely farmer who rents our fields popped by to give us some advice on the slurry pit mess and see if he could help!! We now definitely need a digger to come to the farm to dig a channel through the bank to allow the pit to drain…. Spreading the muck on the fields is not advisable due to the amount of seeds and what not contained within!! So draining and spraying and digging out the weeds is going to be the name of the game!! But we have plenty of work for a digger to do with levelling the rest of the pit and excavating the rocks (basically lobbing them over the wall of the pit to create a complete bank all the way around!) muck heaps to be moved and everything!!
Tyddyn Bryn 