Quite alot of things have happened here lately and although I have been meaning to come here and tell all about it, time has got away form me. I will try to think back and start at the beginning, and hit the highlights.

Firstly we have lambs again this year. It swung off to bad start with the first little lamb arriving early and not being able to stand or suck. Despite our best efforts she was not able to last the distance. She was followed the next day with triplets, who then got caught a heavy frost and so didn’t survive either. Not a good start.

We then had three lots of twins, Arnica is Sammies pet from three years ago, and she had to have a little help to deliver her boy/girl twins, since they were trying to race for the finish line together. She then kept them in the pig house for the nest three days, and so they got over the worse of the weather and are doing well.

The next twins were a week later. Two ewes,  both had still born babies last time, both had twins within hours of each other, both rejected one lamb each. Dolly and Dino ended up being hand raised by us, both having brothers that are thriving on their mums.

They spent the first week in an old dog crate in the corner of the room, before progessing to the deck and then the paddock. Dino was really small,but both lambs have grown well and have accepted us as their parents.

We also had a couple of single lambs, one of them was huge and need help to be delivered, because her shoulders got stuck. All are doing well, so the only losses were those ones at the beginning.

A week after all the lambs, Sneezy gave us her first calf, and our first heifer. She arrived an hour before a huge storm, so was aptly named Stormy.

She is half Murray Grey and is very adventerous. I am often losing her as she does not stay with mum, but will instead climb through the fences and wander away.

Sneezy is proving to be a very nice house cow, giving us plenty of milk to feed the lambs, us and make cheese. She has settled into the routine so easily. I can’t tell how good it is to have real milk again.

Of course the decision had to be made, so today is his date with the homekill man. He is in very good condition and at nineteen months is more than big enough to fill the freezer and give us our years worth of beef.

It is believed, although not confirmed that his father could very well have been a Red Devon so we are expecting the finished product to be very good.

First the unavoidable, the schoolwork. We managed to finish up all our themes from last year and so will be starting a new theme when we start up again later in January. We will be doing the Sea and Sky Theme, from WinterPromise. It will be on science and history of the sea and sky. We like these programs as they give us a lot of choices in how we learn and provide us with lots of good books and  fun activities. Although sadly this may be the last year we use them, depending on what new programs they bring out.

On the craft front, I probably spend way too much time in front of my sewing machine, but I did achieve several quilts, some gifts and started on the gift bags, that we want ot be using from now on.

We have enough chickens at the moment, so we are not planning anymore chicks this year. Maybe next year, but we will see. They have started to get out of the orchard so we will have to upgrade the fencing quite a bit to keep them all where they are suppose to be, before they start finding the garden.

And on the subject of gardening, now that I have put the sewing machine away for a while, I am finally starting to tidy up the weeds. Production is down, due to my own neglect, but it is also picking up as well. I really like the whole chicken dome idea, and it seems to be working quite well.

The kikuya is a bit more of an issue, as the chickens managed to kill it off, but did not dig the roots up at all, so that is something that I will have to work on for some time yet.

They left us with a lovely cleared, fertilised and mulched area that was all ready for planting.

These photos were taken at the beginning of spring and shows the gardens just starting out.

This was the first circle planted, and many of the plants are due for replacement. In saying that, it provided us with fresh peas and salad greens for christmas, and is now producing cherry tomatoes beetroot, and some very beautiful cabbages right now.  I have just added some more tomatoes and spring onions but will put more in over the next couple of weeks.

This was the next circle, we have had an almost endless supply of pumpkin plants out of it, which is not so bad since most of my seeds failed to germinate this year. The pumpkins have mostly been transplanted, and I have lots of tomato plants going crazy in there. We have a few green tomatoes on them, but mostly they are just starting to flower.

We have had several meals of broccoli, and there is celery hiding under the broccoli leaves. I seems to like it under there and is doing very well. We are already eating the outer stalks while the plant is continuing  to keep us supplied with celery. The lettuces again need replacing (will probably happen today) as they are all going to seed with the hot weather.

This poor circle has sat neglected for all this time. I didn’t even get around to putting the edging on it. Yesterday I planted some bean seeds, and I have some more started in trays to go in here. I also have some more broccoli plants and well as few other things that are waiting to go in. Good to start getting some production going in here.

On a more positive note, I did get around to planting corn on the other side of the house, and it is doing really well.

It is just starting to form its top flowers so I am looking forward to getting lots of corn of it this summer.

The sheep are still here, they were shorn again at the end of last year and are running in the orchard out of the way. I haven’t decided if I will do lambs this year or not, that will have to be decided closer to march when the ram goes out.

The cows have consumed the most time this year, and also have brought us lots of pleasure and some sadness.

Liquorice is still at the neighbours after being weaned at 10 months, he is looking very good and is very settled there for now. Poor old sweetie did not take kindly to Ollie, when she lost her own calf.

We milked her up until three days ago but now we are drying her off.

Little Ollie seems to only be loved by Murray, but is doing well sneeking feeds from Daisy while Murray is feeding.

He is still much smaller, but is certainly not hungry at all. We will continue to have Daisy feed both the calves for another few months before we wean them off. If she starts to lose too much weight we may take Ollie off sooner, but again to be decided later.

Daisy loves being a mum to her own baby, but will only tolerate Ollie. She has slimmed down quite a lot now that she is making milk, and sometimes I feel that she could do with a rest before she has another calf. We did not intend to have her feeding two calves, it just ended up working out that way.

Neither Daisy or Sweetie Pye are in calf at the moment. We could detect the heat cycles the whole time the AI techs were working, and of course the week after we could get them any more, the both came into heat on after the other. Very frustrating.

This is Sneezy. She was one the calves we got in as week old, late born babies last year. She was always very friendly and seemed to want to be a house cow, by the way she kept coming to see us, for a scratch, and would lick me if I let her. As a last gasp effort, week after the AI techs officially stopped working, she came into heat, so I rang the tech, and he agreed to come an AI her.  At this stage it is looking like she has held, and so she could well be our house cow next year. She was just 15 months old when we had her inseminated, and although we would have liked to wait a bit longer, none of the other cows were coming to the party.

The weather is very dry here at the moment. We had a very wet winter, not much of a spring flush, and now we are going into drought conditions. This is not good for our grass situation, and we are hoping of a few days of rain soon. At least we sold two of our yearlings, so that has eases things slightly.

Overall we have had quite a good year. The biggest high was Daisys baby being born, the biggest low was Sweetie Pye slipping her calf. We are hoping for another good year and not too much excitment, just more chugging on and getting on with life.

The frame was relatively easy to put together, although there were a few basic mistakes due to things I had overlooked.  I nailed the outside rails to the posts, only to realise that it was then going to be a little more difficult to put the inside rails on.  However, because of the non-exact nature of the milking bay, I didn’t want to risk building the frame in its entirety only to find that it didn’t fit between the posts.

The next step was to put the floor boards on top.

You will notice that we now have chains and a head bail in place – these were specifically for Daisy, but they have proved quite useful for other things as well.

I must say, this has to be the best job I’ve done in a long time!

She was due on the 20th of August and we were told that she would go up to 10 days early. Well the powers to be were wrong and she kept us waitingfor the full term and over.

On the morning of the 21st I noticed she was off her food a little, and then all of a sudden she took off under the trees where I couldn’t see her for the house.

I finished all the other chores and then went to investigate, and sure enough labour had started. I saw the water bag break fairly soon after I went ot check on her, so I hung around for a bit  to be sure all went well.

Daisy was very calm about having me there and even came over for a back scratch in between contractions.

It took a long time between the feet coming and seeing the nose arriving. I guess because it was her first calf that it took a while for everything to stretch and relax enough. Daisy was showing signs of getting tired so a got her a bucket of warm water with some molasses in it, which she downed pretty quickly follwed closely by most of a second bucket.

After that things moved alot quicker and within about ten minutes we had a little grey bull calf whom we called Murray.

It took close on 45 minutes to stand but after that he found the milk bar really quickly

Now it was finished at the end of last week and Sweetie Pye started using straight away with no problems, as long as she has her hay she will pretty much stand to me be milked anywhere.

Daisy has been coming in each day and checking out how work on the bay has been progressing as it was being built. She has also watched Sweetie Pye being milked in there and munched on some hay right next to it while I potter around the place.

All this in mind I was not prepared for the complete melt down that she had the first time I asked her to go in there.

I went down to put them in the big back paddock while we went out for the day, and Daisy taking the lead walked straight into the yards and waited for me to catch up. All the other cows were standing on the other side of the open gate,  so I thought I would take the opportunity while it was there, and quietly shut the gate to keep them out of the way. I put some nice fresh hay in the milking bale and then asked Daisy to go in.

Well she was not impressed and went into a real panic. Avoided the whole thing like her life depended on it. At one stage she even went under the back side rail having to dip her back down quite a long way t do it. It took me an hour and a half with much moving of heavy objects to block escape routes to finally get her to go in and stand there. She took one hurried mouthful of hay and then tried to climb out the sides of the milking bail again. I let her stand in there for a little while and then let her out and put them all down the back for the rest of the day.

The next day I brought them in put Daisy in the yards with her only source of food in the feed bin in the milking bay and left her there to get hungry enough to go in to eat. I had to put some temporary sides on to discourage the trying to climb out the sides and also stop her from just eating through the sides rather than going in.

I made regular trips to put the bin back in and top up the food, as she kept pulling the bin out so that she didn’t have to eat in there. She spent the whole day in ther eon her own and in the evening Liquorice joined her so that we could milk Sweetie Pye in the morning.

The next morning we milked with Daisy watching on, and then she got some time in nomans land to eat some fresh grass. After Liquorice had had his breakfast off his mother, I put Sweetie Pye out with cricket and left Liquorice as a bit of company for Daisy.

This morning after I milked I brought Daisy back in from nomans land and again she is in the yards on her own. She no longer panics when she has to go into the milking bay, but will still pull the bin out. However she will also go in with only gentle guidance and eat while I pat her.

Today I put an old downpipe across the back so that she could get the idea that sometimes she had t stay there and couldn’t just leave when ever she wants to. She tested it a few times but didn’t panic or push so hard that she broke the pipe, which was good.

She has settled a lot in three days and I think I should now be able to let her out and just bring her in each day and work with her in there. It will be a long slow process, but one that will pay off in the long run.

I started off by planning out the location of the posts, then the neighbour kindly used his post hole borer to drill the holes for me – I really hate digging holes!

After using concreting to secure the posts, I then used some 100×50 as the top rails.

This was more or less the finishing point, at least at this stage.  However, I did decided to add some rails at the front in order to add a head bail and provide access for calves in the future.  Here’s the new finished product.

Last night when I went to shut Liquorice up for the night, so that I could milk in the morning before Sweetie Pye went, I noticed that she was looking close to being in heat. Sure enough by this morning she was in full swing and would stand for anything that was going. I did manage to get some milk out of her, but as is typical at this time for her, she really didn’t want to cooperate more than she could help.

There was still seven bulls in the paddock but the farmer has assured me that his worker would take five of them out by 10.00am and Sweetie Pye and Liquorice could spend a couple of days in there with the other two.

While I was feeding the chickens I could hear a bike tearing around the paddock and sure enough there was the worker chasing bulls all over the place with his bike.  It was quite funny to watch, and there was nothing gentle about his approach.

He chased the ones to be left at a flat out run to either end of the paddock and then before they could all regroup he whipped around and chased the others out the gate and up the race. When he had finished I think there were two very bewildered looking bulls left wondering what had just happened.

Anyway it gave me the chance to safely get a cow in full heat and her calf into the paddock and the gate shut very firmly behind them.

The presence of Sweetie Pye certainly made a difference to the bulls and they haven’t wasted anytime getting down to buisness. I can see them from my kitchen window and what a funny sight they make to see cow striding along around the paddock with two bulls following along in single file, Daisy and Cricket are standing at the fenceline calling to her to come home, and poor little Liquorice is standing in the middle of the paddock wondering what to do because Mum told him to go away so that she could play with the big boys, and sister and aunty are on the other side of the fence, and the big boys don’t want to know him. Poor boy I am sure he will live through it though.

We have decided to try and get a replacement milking cow out of Sweetie Pye next year on account of her being an older cow, and also she is still only on lone to us. So with these things in mind she is in with two Jersey Bulls and will we will hope for a Heifer this time. It is not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen like this but in the ideal world kthat would be what we would order.

Daisy is continuing to look like a pregnant cow and she now has the cutest little uder developing, she is in calf to a low birth weight Murray Grey, but it did take three goes at having her AIed before she got pregnant. She is due around the end of July.

With this in mind Bevan needs to get on and get the new milking bail built, he has holidays coming up at easter so I am really hoping to see some progress on them then. It will be needed to train Daisy to milk and since she doesn’t like change much, the sooner it is done the sooner she can get use to going in there for her hay, and we can start getting her use to being handled in there.

As a new year is about to come upon us, it is time to take stock and see how close to our goals we have reached.

The garden is starting to crank up for the summer harvest, and we even got our first crop of beans for the year. We eat alot of beans, so this is something that I not only grow for immediate eating, but also I freeze alot for the winter months. Last winter we ran out in the last month before the garden got going so this year the plan is to do a bit more.

I have some peas in the freezer for use over the hot summer months when they don’t grow, and my last row of them is just poding up now, it looks like I got the timing right that they will be finished before the heat kills them. I have today sown the pean beans that we used last year for homemade baked beans, so it will be good to get some more of them.

We have cucumbers and zucchinis in over abundance right now and the the tomotoes have started to ripen. The garlic has been harvested and is in the process of drying, seems to be bigger bulbs than last year, so that went well.

Potatoes, well  I could well be able to do two full crops so we will have plenty over the summer and still be growing them for the winter months. This year we have once again grown Chipawas for the wonderful chips they make, and also Sambagos for roasting. I have some moonlight seed potatoes but haven’t got them in the ground yet, as well as an unkown type that were here when we came and I have moved to the orchard to help the forest garden get going.

As for fruit, well we have had a surprising large number of raspberries off our one little plant, and I see that it is now sending up lots of shoots so as long as we have a cold enough winter we should get lots next year as well. The blueberries have done nothing with the berries just not ripening on the plants at all, but the strawberries have done well so that is all good.

We are looking like we will get plenty of apples and are already getting plums. One row of pear trees(winter cole) is doing very badly in the fruit department, but then it always has done next to nothing and we are still trying to work out what the problem is with them. The packham and nashi pears both have lots of developing fruit again so no worries there.

The necterine tree is doing really well on all the compost and manure it got last year, but the peach tree right next to is is fighting with us as to whether it will stay alive or not. This morning it had nine shoots on it, that is two more that two days ago and seven more than last month. Needless to say we will not have any peaches this year.

I think all the other trees are pretty much doing what they have always done, although there does seem to be alot of figs on the fig trees at the moment.

We are continuing to milk the cow, and we have been enjoying wonderful homemade ice cream, yogurt, butter, as well as milk. I have not made any cheese as yet, but nest year when daisy is in milk we will probably have to. Daisy is, I am pretty sure, now pregnant, but we have not been able to catch Sweetie Pye in standing heat to get the AI man into her, so not quite sure what we will do about that as yet. Her not so little calf Liquorice has been growing steadily for the last seven weeks and has will make a wonderful addition to our freezer in a couple of years.

We finally reached the point with the chickens were they are paying for themselves, and then my rooster died some mysterious death one day. On christmas eve we hatched the last lot of eggs we had from him, so now we will have to decide what to do about a replacement for him. I have been toying with the idea of just buying in fertile eggs rather than feeding a rooster all year around, but that decsion is still to come.

We have ended up with seven lambs of which only one is on the plan to keep, so lots of lamb chops in the future.

Having the pigs in winter stocked the freezer well, but they were not fun to care for in the rain with all the mud around. We had to repave around their gateway as they had created such a hole in it. Summer is definetly the only time we should do pigs, and certainly Orenoko and Tobermore that we have now are much more fun. Lesson learnt and we have an extra one on order for the end of next year to raise over the summer.

Over all I feel that I have reached my goal for the year. I wanted to be producing 70 -80% of our own food, I feel that with the addition of a housecow we have reached that point. We can certainly go through our fair share of packaged foods when we want to,but the whole point is that we only do so by choice and not because there is nothing else to eat. Even Bevan has been heard to comment on the poor quality and hugh number of additives in prepackaged goods, and that is a whole new way of thinking for him.

Now for my goal for next year. This is a hard one, as I really want to continue on the path we have started on. I think I need to have the gardens under better control as the weeds keep getting away from me at the moment, and I would also like to make some cheese in the future.

Certainly we will be wanting to achieve at least as high or higher percentage of home grown food.

Where she came from they started having problems with over sized calves and some very serious calving problems on account of the new bull they had brought in. I was worried!

We were in no way equiped to cope with a full problem birth and the potential loss of both cow and calf. The local vets office was put on alert.

I started taking regular photos of Sweetie Pye as things progressed towards the birth. Her udder got so big it looked like it was going to explode.

I could not imagine how the udder could get any bigger. Something had to give.

Just before lunch she started pacing around and seemed unable to decide where to put herself. Within two hours it became obvious that labour was in full swing and the baby would be here soon

I watched carefully for any signs of a problem, but did not want to intervene unless it was absolutely essential.

At 1:50pm on friday Liquorice Allsorts came into the world, with no help from anyone.

Click on the thumbnails to see the actual birth.

Two days later both mother and baby are doing really well

Now that he is here, it is believed that the father is not a hereford, but instead a Red Devon bull that belonged to Marys neighbour. Liquorice is a nice big healthy boy and appears to be doing very well so far.

We have been helping out at the milk bar since there is way more milk than what just one calf can manage. Yesterday we milked of almost eight litres of colostum over two milkings, some of which went into the freezer in case of future need. It is looking like Sweetie Pye has one blind quarter(no milk in that part of her udder) with another one having very little, so most of the milk is coming from the two front teats. Even so there is still plenty there to feed one calf with a bit left over for the house.

We have some more pigs arrivingthis week so they will be able to to have some as well.

I couldn’t resist this family photo – Sweetie Pye, Liquorice Allsorts, and that is Cricket(Sweetie Pyes daughter from last year) on the other side of the tape.

Happy Families.

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