Dream For Three

It has been a while since anyone has written anything on here, so time for an update.

We are still patiently awaiting the arrival of Daisy’s first calf. We are all prepared for it with the milking bay functional, and Daisy willing to go in and eat in there. We have calcium in case of milk fever, and a one calf feeder to aid in teaching Daisy to let down her milk for us. In the meantime she is getting her daily dose of magnesium sprinkled on her hay.

Bevan has managed to destroy yet another car, which once again leaves me with a less than reliable car to use. Even more so at the moment since it battery is stuffed and needs to be replaced.

Most of winter has been spent at the sewing machine. The decision was made to make christmas gifts for people this year, so quite alot of planning has been going into just what we want to do.

Firstly let me say that I want to avoid making food related gifts, so we have to lookk at other possibilites. Secondly, although Bevan came up with the idea of making a play garage for a little boy, in reality he will never get around to it, and I would not be very good at it.

So firstly I have been making quilted christmas stockings for all the children, some of them are even named so can double as the wrapping for the gift. The good thing about this is that after spending all the money to buy material and a whole book of patterns for Sammie last year, I can say that we have had our money’s worth now.

Then comes the problem of what to put into the stockings. But more on that later when I have finished a few more things for it. In the meantime, I have quite a few ideas of things I can make, as well as still being on the lookout for more.

Out of the same pattern book, I am also going to make a tree skirt this year. Something that every year I wished I had, but never got around to.

I have also almost finished painting the main bathroom, a job that was well overdue to be done. Now I have to listen to Sammie complaining about how plain it looks compared to the old fashioned flowery wall paper that we on there. Still she will get over it.

Now I have decided not to have any lambs this year. Last years lambing was not a great one for many people, and we were no exception. So I politely declined the use of a ram for this year, so that should lower the stress levels somewhat. It also means that Daisy’s calf will probably be the only baby born here this year, as we won’t be doing any chicks either I don’t think.

kThe chickens are slowly starting to lay again, and we managed to sell our first dozen surplus eggs of the season last week, with another ready for the coming week as well. The unexpected demise of the rooster, will give us a chance to take stock and decide if we still want to continue with the same breeds and everything.

Now as for the garden, well I am still waiting for the finishing of the garden boxes. In fact it is fair to say that they are no closer to being done, and it is time for a new plan since Bevan does not like doing the boxes. So for me it is a chance to encourage the making of a chicken dome instead, and then I can garden more in the style I wanted to before we moved here.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love that this place already had a chicken house, orchard and garden planning already done, it is just not all laid out in the way I wanted. So now is my big chance, and maybe the only one I will get, to finallydo something they way I wanted.

Bevan has been on holiday for two weeks,and in that time he finally built the milking bay that I have been asking for for months. I need it to train Daisy to hand milking when she has her first calf at the end of July. He says he is going to write something about that at some stage.

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.

With Daisy pregnant and due to give birth in a few months time, it was well overdue for me to build a milking bay - first time mother and all that sort of thing.

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.

Today was Sweetie Pyes day, she was due to come into heat tomorrow and the plan was that she would go over the fence today and be there for a couple of days visiting some very handsome boys and then come home again, hopefully in calf.

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.

This year we took Samantha to Zion Wildlife Gardens for her birthday – she had been asking for quite a while, and it all managed to work out this year.

As we expected it turned out to be a bit of an expensive trip (especially with the stuffed toys and t-shirts that we purchased after the tour).  They have a great range of animals at the park and there’s some interesting insights available as well.  It’s probably not something you would want to do on a regular basis – it’s very much like the Zoo in that respect.

Here are a few pictures from the visit, including the keeper who was killed later in the year by the white lions he was feeding.

At one point, while we were standing by the main pride and the white lions were about to be fed, I was growled at by this little lady – I don’t think she appreciated having the camera on her so much.

It all started several months ago (the October 2008, but not purchased until November 2008, according to the bank statement), when I decided that buying a kitset shed would be a brilliant idea – get some of the seldom used stuff out of the house, while keeping it safe from the weather.

Little did I know when I ordered the shed (in October 2008) that there was more to it than just linking a whole heap of panels together – apparently we needed some sort of flat platform on which to build it!  After several discussions with people who know, combined with my lack of desire to dig a flattish section into a gently sloping hill, I decided it would be best to put in a wooden floor.

Being the definite non-builder that I am,  I headed off to the local Carters store to get what I needed – amazingly enough the floor cost about half the price of the shed!  Even then, I later found that I still didn’t have everything yet.

It was December 2008 by this time and I was starting to realise that I had to get this floor built so that I could get on with the shed, which had now been sitting in a box for over a month.  Further discussions with people in the know found me digging a number of holes for posts – this turned out to be much harder than expected; for starters, I really don’t like digging holes.

It’s taken until mid-January, but I have now put in 13 posts, built the frame, and laid the plywood floor.  I have learnt many things, including how to mix concrete, how to square a frame, and how to procrastinate (Ok, so I already knew how to do the last one).

The next week or two should (hopefully) see me constructing the shed so we can finally start using it.  I’ve had a quick look at the instructions and it doesn’t sound as simple as it looks, so fingers crossed.

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.

It has been waited for with alot of anticipation and worry. The birth of our first calf. Sweetie Pye was lent to us so that we could learn to milk and have our own dairy products. She arrived two months ago and it was believed that she was carring a half hereford calf.

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.

.

Its always the pets that cause problems and Sammies pet lamb from last year is no exception.

Of course for the first time in weeks I didn’t check them this morning, but did after lunch. And sure enough there she was with the face of a lamb sticking out her rear end. And of course the stupid thing decided that today was the day that she did like people, and didn’t want to go anywhere where we could help her. So after half an hour or more of chasing her around the paddock, I finally gave up and decided to put her in the pig paddock.

Thank goodness the pigs went last week.

10 minutes later there I was with sammie sitting on her and me with my arm up her whatsit. I managed to get one leg out, but there was no way I was going to manage the other one, so decided that since the lamb was probably dead anyway after all that that I would just have to pull it out by one leg and its head.

Out it came and as I plonked it down I saw the flutter of a heart beat. Not breathing, but the heart was still beating. I have him a good rub and blew some air in the general direction of it nose and still nothing. Gave it another rub and another blow watched and then suddenly it threw its head back and took a big gulp of air. Then another and then on to normal breathing.

Mum was still lieing down a bit shell shocked, so I gave her a push so that she could come and see her baby. She walked over him twice ignoring him, and in the end I rubbed my hand on him again and rubbed it on her nose. That was enough and she started to talk to him and attempt to lick him clean.

I left them alone for a little while and then went back and checked. He still hadn’t stood up. I expect he was quite tired after all that ordeal. I got Sammie to hold her sheep and sat him under her so that he could get his first drink.

Mother and baby are still in the pig house, and he still isn’t very well licked, but they are both standing and he is drinking.

I probably should have checked to make sure that there wasn’t another one, but to be honest it was just a relief to get this one out, and I didn’t really want to go back in there unless I really had to.

So I have birthed my first lamb and he lived through it.

We have been talking on ond off about getting just one or two calves to feed. I think Bevan rather likes having the babies around so the whole idea appealed to him, but he was not pushing it since he is not the one that does all the work.

Then the chance came to get six calves at a good price. It seemed too good an opportunity to pass up, so today we went and collected six 2-3 week old calves, not too mention an investment in all the things we needed to raise them well.

They are all crossed with fresians ans we have two little bulls and four heifers. There is one hereford/x, one angus/x, and the rest are shorthorn/x. We thought we might name them after the seven dwarfs, but we will see if that happens or if we just end up naming the ones we keep.

They will live in the wood shed, which is almost empty at this time of year, and opens out onto this paddock with some lovely grass for them once they are eating it. We might need to end up finding a new home for our wood in the future.

The plan is to raise them to weaning, and then we will choose one or two of them to keep and sell the rest on to cover the cost. Time will tell if it works out this way.

This has come at a good time, since the pigs went to the butchers on Friday, and we won’t have the next lot arriving until sometime in November, by then the calves could well be all weaned and ready to go.