Greek style lamb

The size of our lambs is a bit comical. This is a rolled shoulder. It did nicely for 2 people with a little left over for bibimbap on Sunday. I cooked it quite slowly as it comes out very juicy and tender that way.

The sauce is kefir (yogurt) with mint and chives in it. The salad is from the garden (except the chickpea sprouts - but I did grow them!)

Followed by rhubarb meringue pie

Moved the cows to the top field

Perhaps not very exciting! But it is good for us to keep track of how long fields have been empty for so we can give the grass sufficient time to rest, rest also helps with parasites loads.

This field doesn’t have running water in it as all the springs are well below, so we have to remember to give them water - a couple of times a day when it is sunny.

The fence has been a bit mangled by a giant tree falling on it in the winter storms, so we had to cobble that together and make the edges of the hole it left a bit less steep so a cow could escape if it fell in.

Eggs eggs and scotch eggs

I’m glad they have decided eggs are not bad for you, as I had 6 today!

2 boiled for breakfast, 3 scrambled with salmon for lunch

And scotch eggs made in to katsu curry for dinner. Normally the curry is with carrots, but didn’t have any so used the first of  the courgettes, important to keep on to of them so we don’t get too many marrows,

Very short horse ride

Maintaining/fixing the horses feet takes time, and involves a lot of reading and learning. We are busy growing the hoofs out from a very short trim (which was trying to resolve another issue) as well as treating for thrush (athletes foot in horses). We also have a new barefoot trimmer who is fortunately happy to help me learn to do it better myself. It is a great relief to have someone on standby for when I go wrong! 

We have ongoing sore feet problems and it is always hard to know if we have got to the bottom of them, when we make changes it takes a long time for them to fully take effect as sometimes you need the whole hoof to grow out to see the difference, this can take a year. Slowly over time they are getting better (I think!) and we have learnt a LOT. Sometimes it is easy just to leave the horses in the field and not worry about it while we do other things, but we are having another push to get on too of it...

I was also trying out the ‘pre-loved’ western saddle we recently got - it needs a bigger saddle pad than we have, but apart from that was great!

Coming up the drive. They only had to do gravel at the corner and a little bit at the bottom. We don’t want to push it as both are still sensitive...

Bit fuzzy! This is up through our woods above the house.

At the top of the land

The new saddle took a bit of working out what some bits are for, and even how to attach it as the tack is different to the english saddles we are used to.

I discovered this is for holding the end of the cinch when you are not using the saddle or if the cinch is longer than needed depending how you tied it. 

You can see similar here on the other side to hold the other side of the cinch when not in use.

The cinch is the girth on an English saddle ;) confusing!

You can see it is well work, but lovely leatherwork.

Walk at Payolle

Sheep shearing

It’s that time if year again. It has to be times so that the break in the fleece that happens in spring is long enough, but before the hot weather comes and with it, the danger of fly strike (we spray at the same time as shearing).

We don’t enjoy it much - too hot, too many flies, unhappy sheep

The sheep don’t enjoy it - always a danger of bits of skin getting chopped off despite our best efforst

But it has to be done anyway

First get the sheep

Then put them in a small area where you can catch them

The lambs get wormed and sprayed, but thankfully we don’t have to shear them

Two done in the first morning, five to go. We will do some more this afternoon and hope/plan to finish tomorrow morning before the coming heat wave...

We won’t be winning any sheep shearing competitions as each one takes about 30 mins!

They can’t recognise each other once the fleece comes off. This lamb is standing right by her mum baahing madly. Muuuum muuum where are yoouuuuu?

Moved bees up the mountain

A friend offered a spot to put our bees up the mountain with theirs, so they can get the heather now that the chestnut and brambles are finished down here.

We had to wait until all the bees were home before we could do the move - ie almost dark. 

It was a nice clear evening and pretty sunset

We then had to follow some directions that as it turns out would have made sense in the light (when we could see some useful landmarks), but not so much sense in the dark!

Fortunately we only had to wait 30 mins (after driving around on some rough tracks for a while - poor bees!) for our friend to appear with his hives and show us where to go.

We went to visit them the next day. They seemed fine as far as we could tell from a distance. There was some coming and going at least... The nearest place is called Chiroulet. It is a very scenic valley.

We took a picnic lunch and had a nice walk with the doggie

 

Broad bean harvest

This is the entire broad bean harvest! 

Frustrating! I keep intending to plant them in autumn to see if they work out better. Maybe I will manage it this year!

We ate them in a beef bibimbap. They were very tasty though not numerous. We have had quite a few mange tout and lots of kale. Kale always seems to do well!

We have bibimbap many/most Sundays, it is a nice spicy end to the week - drives off any hangover from the weekend! The hot stone bowl (dolsot) cooks the veg and egg, the rice and meat are precooked.

Work on the land during confinement

Strimming, mowing and chain sawing feels to be never ending at this time of year!

We are trying to push back the boundary of what we have ‘control’ of as well as keeping the bits that are theoretically ‘under control’ actually mowed/strimmed and generally cleared. In addition we had a lot of fallen trees from this winter to tidy up, along with the ones we had cut from near the house for safety reasons (it was very expensive to have them do the tidy up).

We are trying to improve the appearance and usefulness of the bits of land directly around the house, it depresses us when we go outside to be confronted with brambles and nettles as we can’t leave the house without having it impressed on us how much work needs doing! We would also like to be able to use some of it better for growing fruit trees (at the moment the poor things are so swamped with bracken, bramble and long grass they just give up) and for the sheep.

This is the area round the house, barn and stables.

Red - Orchard 1

Yellow - Orchard 2

Green - Orchard 3

Blue - Chicken/stables area

Purple - Garden and around the house

Orange - Potager (veg garden)

During confinement and since we have spent a lot of time on these areas.

Orchard 1

Before we started there was a big bramble and tree thicket just below the house

and an ugly metal fence

For this first part pushing in to the thicket a bit we had help from Isaac. Recommend him if you need someone to do something in the garden!

Still a lot of work for us burning all the stuff that came out. Here you can see Doug’s transport device and mine ;)

Once the horrible fence was gone it was easier to get the sheep on it to get the grass down a bit

Once they had done that the evil bracken had started to grow

So Doug got at it with the strimmer

There was then the rest of the thicket to be dealt with. Lots of strimming, sawing and then burning of stuff

Once that side of the drive was looking so much better it was time to mow the bank above it (below the house). Mowing the middle of the drive needs doing every week (or ideally more!) in the height of the growing season, it would be nice if we could do this bank that often, but just not feasible. We are trying to come up with a plan for it that will outwit the nettles somehow... I would love it if we could make a rock bank/leaning wall here (if you can understand what I mean), but just toooo much work. The bank is so steep it is difficult to imagine growing something successfully on it - whatever it is needs to out compete nettles too!

and also neaten up one of the trees that was broken in one of the winter storms so bits didn’t fall on the drive

Doug also cut a number of trees, an ash that was not doing anything useful, a cherry that had a lot of cherries but they were small and the birds always got them all as the tree was too large to protect, an apple that never had any apples and a self seeded walnut that was too close to the drive.

It now looks more like an orchard than a thicket. There is still plenty of work needed though, the bracken will need strimming a few times a year to keep it down and hopefully eventually get rid of it and we plan on planting some more fruit trees and pruning the birch at the bottom by the drive.

We can also now see in to the field at the bottom from the house which is nice - see a passing cow or horse or whichever animal or ours is in there...

Orchard 2 

We haven’t done much to this yet except Doug has cut the bracken above the bee hives where he strimmed last year to try to maintain that gain against the brambles. The rest of it has been engulfed and it will be next year probably before we deal with it. If the weather would get better at least the brambles are very close to the bees for them to get out and collect nectar from!

Orchard 3 

This area wasn’t too bad, but Doug gave it a good strim and we have had the sheep on it a few times and I have strimmed nettles to tidy up after the sheep as they won’t eat them.

We also mostly cleared up the tree that fell in this area and Doug gave the hawthorn a sever haircut. We may take it down altogether, but it is a bit useful for giving the sheep some shade and for blossom for the bees.

A few scrappy trees that were left after the storm damage also got the chop

I mentioned this one that fell in another post. You can see the nettle issue...

The sheep leave it looking a bit scrappy, but a strim sorts it out.

Round the chickens/stables

Most work round here has been stacking loads of wood from all the other tree wood. We need to paint the stables with wood preservative and there are some trees that need to come down over here as well. The rabbits used to keep the grass down, mowing is probably not more work than looking after them and it looks neater!

Wood delivery!

Lots of wood!

Mowing mowing

Just as we had some of the fallen trees vaguely under control some more decided they couldn’t stay upright any longer. There were blocking the way to the woodpile so had to be dealt with!

There is still a lot of wood (with more arriving!) waiting to be cut to size and stacked. Some of this comes from in the woods where we have also done a bit of clearing of the paths.

Round the house

The lawn needs mowing approx every 10 mins.

The whole back of the house needs trees cutting and de-brambling. Doug made a start on this.

Before

After

There still needs to be more trees cut and strimming of brambles, but this was the worst bit threatening the roof of the house - with leaves falling in the gutter as well as the danger of branches falling on the roof. The other trees are smaller (Doug cut the quite drastically last year).

We also cleared up the trees cut by professionals. All this and more!

It has made lots of wood for the fire

... but also lots of branches and twigs that just need clearing up. So much work lugging it all to somewhere we can burn it all. We have several spots for fires now to reduce the lugging around!

The roses are looking nice and generally the front of the house looks much better than it has, we have tried to keep the lawn mowed, but the bank in front often gets out of control sending nettles up in to our view. Aaaargh!

View from the outdoor kitchen is much nicer with the thicket being gone and with the bank mowed. Much more relaxing when we can sit and not think about all the things that need doing!

Potager

I’ll cover this in a separate post as this one is very long already!