Lambing 2025 commences

The first lamb has been slow to arrive this year. The theoretical start date was 6th March but the ram seems to have been slow to get going. As it happens it was yesterday, Sunday 16th, that we had our first delivery. It was 6:30 in the morning just before I start the morning tasks feeding and watering the livestock. I managed to complete all I needed to do, pen up and check all was well with the newborn lamb and its mother, assist Janet to get set up for the morning following her hip replacement surgery and I still got to 9am Mass in time. 

About mid-day twins arrived from another ewe. She had difficulty with the first one and I had to intervene to deliver it. She was a first time mum and her cervix was a bit tight and the birth was not progressing. I also had to do all the usual things you might have seen on farming programmes to get the lamb to take its first breath. The seccond of the twins was unproblematic. Mum is very attentive to her newborns which is always reassuring. In the photogragh the lamb (a ewe lamb) is stained with meconium which is a typical sign of a difficult delivery.

Another set of twins today (so far - I'll check again at midnight). It looks like the delayed start by the ram means that the lambs are all arriving in quick succession. 

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Following a tree: February

This photo was taken on the last day of February. I am a little late posting February's record of the willow tree becasue it has been a bit busy of late: Janet has just had a new hip installed. 

The tree looks much the same as in January but close up the leaf buds are swelling and I expect leaves will start to shoot very soon. They are already evident in the hawathorn hedge.

Winter 2025/6

The logs have all been hand split because my hydraulic log splitter with a 7 tonne splitting force has broken down on me. I have been splitting the logs a bit at a time; it helps me warm up on cold mornings. 

These logs are from one of the fallen poplar trees which came down in a storm last Winter. I built a new wood store nearer to the house to help accommodate the extra wood supply. It measures 12'x4'x4'. I have another store with logs I have been using up this Winter.

Fruit I won't be growing

For her birthday recently, our duaghters bought Janet a hamper of exotic fruits. They reminded her of 'home' and some grew in her parent's garden or were commonplace in the market. Not all of the fruit come China and South East Asia but many of them were very familiar. In particular lychees, dragon fruit, star fruit, guarva, mangoes (of which there were several different types in the hamper), mangosteen and rambutan. The latter are particulalry tasty. They are the red, hairy looking fruits in the front. I we enjoyed it very much!

Keeping the breed going

Two more litters of British Saddleback piglets in November, eight from one sow and 10 from another. Most have now moved on to new homes. Numbers for the majority of traditional British pig breeds (of which there are ten recognised breeds) have declined further according to the recent end of year census of pedigree pigs, putting them at risk. As most breeders are small scale like us, the general cost of living and costs of animals feeds in particular are putting some people off keeping rare or minority breeds. 

Once a breed is 'lost' it is lost for ever and its presence in livestock diversity. Also lost is its contribution to the overall gene pool. Traditional breeds sometimes still have the potential to contribute specific breed characterisics in the further develpment of comercial stock which originated from traditional breeds in the first place.

Anyway, here is our latest contribution to keeping the British Saddleback breed going.

   

Sourdough

For a good part of our childhood we were used to eating fresh, homemade bread. Our mother, even though she was mother to ten children and worked three nights a week as a nurse, among other things, was a very fine cook and still made time to bake her own bread. Even in her latter years, going to see her for dinner, there would often be warm, freshly made wholemeal bread rolls to go with a first course, calmly factored into the elaborate preparations for the main course and dessert.

At quite a young age I was able to discern the inferiority of 'shop bought' bread, primarily its cloying texture and neutral flavour. Later I came to understand the deletrious impact of industrially produced bread (the so-called Chorleywood process) - virtually any bread bought from a supermarket, however misleadingly it might be described on the wrapping. Current bread manufacturing processes result in a product that is so devoid of nutritional value that legislation prescribes that it is fortified with minerals and vitamins. 

 

Janet is quite an expert at baking and bread making, especially sourdough in various forms. Her current sourdough starter, regularly fed and a constant feature within the refrigerator, originates from six years ago, passed on to her from a smallholding friend. 

Making sourdough involves a process that requires a lot of attention, spread over two days. Over the years Janet has made, and continues to make, fine-tuned adjustments for a consistently satisfying outcome. Janet is fascinated and enjoys the subtle intracacies which can affect the results. She has a routine of generally baking a loaf every other day. The result is that we are blessed with enjoying good quality sourdough every day. Here are some recent examples:-

Not everyone has the time nor inclination to bake their own bread. A busy home life, demanding jobs, a natural propensity for convenience and not being that fussed about bread in anycase: some or all of these factors might be reasons for not doing so. Although, breadmakers have mitigated the inconenience of breadmaking to some extent.

At the same time, if you don't or cannot make your own bread, buying 'real bread' is significantly more expensive compared to a standard supermarket loaf. It is perfectly understandable why people not only choose to buy cheaper bread but might have little option to in order to make ends meet. 

It also has to be said that sourdough, like muesili for breakfast or serving salad in a wooden bowl, has become a disparaging trope of a middle class life-style. I hasten to add that our family growing up was relatively poor - we qualified for free school meals, for example. I might also add that long before Alpen first appeared on supermarket shelves our Swiss mother used to make her own mix of oats, milk and dried and fresh fruit which we called ‘Swiss porridge’.

Following a tree: January

Prompted by bloggers Sue and Ang (and others) I would rather like to emulate them by 'following a tree'. I have chosen a mature silver birch tree that grows on the boundary of our smallholding. The photo below was taken on my mobile phone around 11am this morning. This was after a night of -5 degrees centigrade. It is quite a wintery scene. The sky has clouded over in place of the clear, bright blue sky we have had in the last few days.

 I like the weeping tendency of the birch. The bark on its branches is dark, almost black, and leaves a delicate tracery effect against the sky. The hawthorn hedge is about 7 feet high and gives an indication of the size of the birch tree.