Rhubarb rising

 

Protecting the trees

 The sheep are terrible bastards for chomping on trees, even big ones, so these tiny trees we planted in Autumn need good protection so they can manage to get to fruiting size. There is a barrier a bit away from the tree so the they can’t eat the leaves, and then I decided they needed something round their spindly little trunks too so if they make it through the first line of defence at least they can’t bite clean though the trunk!

Fingers crossed they survive to fruiting age. We are also trying some hemp mulch around the bottom to suppress weeds and give them a chance to grow - it’s a hard life being a tiny tree around here, they need all the help they can get!

This is the new section Doug has cleared. Soon we will plant more trees here!

Grow tree grow!

Baa!

Lamb number 4 (this boy makes 3 boys and a girl)

 

Walk at Payolle

We haven’t been here as often since we got the flat in La Mongie as we tend to go there instead. It is a lovely place to walk the doggy though, she really enjoys swimming in the lake, whatever the season...

The neatest!

The lawn grows so fast in Spring and early summer it is hard to keep on top of it! I have just kowed it and Isaac as strimmed the bank in front. This is probably the neatest it is going to look all year!

Maybe you can’t make it out in the photo, but there are some daffodils at the top of the bank looking very Spring like.

 

Bees and hornets

 Doug saw an Asian hornet queen this morning. The asian hornets are complete bastards who hover outside the hive and scoff lots of bees, so we need to put out traps now to catch as many queens as we can before they start making more of themselves...

The bees are getting busy with it too

Horse hair

 The horses have started moulting for spring. They are very itchy and rolling a lot. They really enjoy a good brushing. It feels like you are carving a horse out if a ball of fluff!

Incubating eggs

 Olga is sitting on some runner duck eggs. I am hoping she can hatch at least one female that we can keep.

I have just put 54 eggs in to the incubator (I’ll add 2 more tomorrow morning so it is full).

There are 24 bielefelder that I ordered from someone by post. The others are from our chickens.

The bielefelder are what is called auto sexing which means you can tell when the chicks hatch the males from the females. You also get ones called ‘sex linked’ which are certain cross breeds where you can tell the chicks apart at hatch, but if you breed the young ones it doesn’t carry on.

When I was ordering the eggs I was really tempted by various ones with coloured eggs (dark brown, blue, green etc - really fun but not very useful!) I restrained myself though. Maybe next year!

For the eggs that came through the cell I looked at each one to see how healthy the air cell looked. It is meant to sit in the fat end of the egg, but when they get all shaken around in transit they can come detached. Only one seemed to have an air cell that had split in 2 (bad!), though there were some I just couldn’t make out at all. This one is nicely in the right place. It will grow as the eggs develop (because some water evaporates from the egg) and eventually the chick will pip in to the air cell (internal pip) and then through the shell (external pip). 

So many eggs! The incubator has an auto turner, but I won’t turn it on until 2 days in because of the shipped eggs. They sat for 24 hours (fat end up) before going in the incubator, and this extra time before starting turning will hopefully allow them to settle a bit more...

I weigh a sample set. This is the left hand basket. I will use this to help ensure the humidity is right. I want them to lose about 13% of their weight during incubation and I will weigh them every few days to make sure we are on track for that...

Logs and vegetable beds

 - Can I have that log?

- No

- Can I have that log?

- No

- How about this one?

- Weeeeell ok then

It’s hard to get a log round here, they are all scheduled for planking!

I managed to score a few to go round the new veg beds. 

I’m trying cardboard to suppress the weeds and horse poo on top, I’ll plant the squash and sweetcorn that are going in them through the card. There’s going to be a 3rd one for tomatoes, possibly with a shelter/polytunnel over as they tend to get mildew round here otherwise...

Moving the sheepsies

The sheep have 3 lambs now. 2 boys and a girl. We are expecting at least one more, the other 2 ewes are not a year old so probably won’t have one, but it’s hard to tell for absolutely sure as they live with the ram all year round (he’d be lonely if he had to live on his own!) so it can happen later in the year. 

We just moved them on to new grass behind the house where there is now a bit of extra grass for them after I moved some trees of the bank below the potager.

Spec is the queen of the castle!

This fence is genius but also annoying! It keeps the sheep in, but is a bit of a fag to put out, it keeps getting caught on things and you end up walking the length of it MANY times. But on the upside it used to nearly kill me when we first did it and now I can do other things in the day! I must be fitter 🤣 

Moving some trees

 We planted some columner fruit trees 3 years ago on a steep bank. They have not been happy there amd it has been very hard to keep the grass from round them (can’t mow as it is too steep and strimming is tricky round such tiny fragile things) so we have moved them in the the veg patch. Maybe it is too late for them and they are permanently stunted (or possibly dead in one case), we shall see...

After

The bank I moved them from

Now the sheep have more grass to graze!

So I don’t forget which is which is which...

From the back left when standing in the middle of the potager 

Golden gage, Czar plum, Bramley Apple

Victoria plum, may berry, jubilee plum

Star burst cherry, morello cherry, star burst cherry

Then on the bank by the tea bush

Cox, scrumptious and winter gem apple

Conference pear

Pork roast in milk

This is soooooo good.

We used a bone in ankle from the front leg (not really sure what the cut is called - I guess it weighed 1.5 kg, skin on)

1/4 a lemon cut in to slices

1 onion cut in pieces 

1/2 litre of full fat milk (we used jersey milk which is extra creamy)

Salt the pork and leave for a few hours.

Put everything in a roasting dish (I have a large oval pyrex dish I use) with a lid and cook at 170°C for about 3 hours until the milk has curdled and caramelised and reduced to a thick (though somewhat lumpy!) sauce. If it seems to be cooking away too fast you can add a little more milk and if it isn’t reducing enough you can take the lid of for a while.

We had it with bread and cabbage, but also good with roast potato, mashed potato, or whatever else you fancy...

New Vegetable Beds

It may be madness as I can barely keep on top of the veg/fruit garden as it is, but we have decided to put some more beds on a bit Doug just dug out of the brambles. It gets good sun all day and is by a hose outlet, we hope to grow some things the chickens can eat as well as some for us...

After some nightmare weeding of bramble stumps and nettles all over the shop

I’m trying cardboard as a way to suppress the weeds with lots of horse poo on top (that grows it’s own weeks, but at least they are not nettles or brambles...)

Needs many more barrow fulls. The horses give us a barrow load a day, so plenty more where that came from!!

I’m thinking of planting squash and courgette in this bed , potato in one of the other ones and then some comfrey and other things that the chickens will like in the final bed that isn’t started yet...

Giant Plank!

This pine tree was cut down a little over a year ago. Doug had to strim it out of a ginormas mound of brambles and bracken plus another tree that fell on it in high wind and some other small ones that were cut to clear way for the pine coming down. Lots of work!

But now it is free he has started milling it in to planks with the Alaskan mill. These are LONG planks.

This is just half of one of them (easier to carry if cut down first!)

This is another thicker plank that has been cut in to useful lengths for drying. It is really really heavy at the moment despite the tree having sat for a year.

Stacked to dry. We are not sure how long it will take

Many more trees waiting for this treatment once this one is finished!

Bye bye Myrtle

 We have to many cows, so we have found a lovely new home for Myrtle. We delivered her today and had a nice lunch (home grown and made ham and cheese!) and looked round their lovely gites and property too (always enjoy being nosy!). She should hopefully have a lovely calf for them in June (Venus should have one around the same time).

Here she is just before leaving. She was very good and went in to the trailer very easily

Meeting her new friends

Tucked up for the night in her new home... she’s going to be mored pampered there than here!

We came away with some lovely jersey milk and butter. Bonus!

First lamb of the year

Missy has had a little boy. It’s been sunny and warm for ages and she chose the start of a cold rainy period to have him! Even though we have had some born in the snow and they were fine, it is a relief to see them looking happy and warm after the first night in the world... they are such tiny scraps of things when they are born, but they soon fluff up and get some milk in them and seem to double in size...