First item: ORANGE.
It will hopefully be a fashion triumph once we get the rest done to complement it!
Sunday, 12 May 2019
ORANGE
We have started furnishing the new apartment in Bangneres to get it ready to rent asap.
First item: ORANGE.
It will hopefully be a fashion triumph once we get the rest done to complement it!
First item: ORANGE.
It will hopefully be a fashion triumph once we get the rest done to complement it!
Chicks
We have waited later than normal to put eggs in to the incubator as it struggles to keep a constant temperature if the room temperature is too low and we don't have very many heated rooms at the moment.
However one of the chickens has helped us out by hatching 3 chicks. It will be a slight miracle if they survive the kites and other predators, mum is quite stressed about that too!
I have now put some on to incubate though it is possibly still on the coldish side in the room
However one of the chickens has helped us out by hatching 3 chicks. It will be a slight miracle if they survive the kites and other predators, mum is quite stressed about that too!
I have now put some on to incubate though it is possibly still on the coldish side in the room
Friday, 10 May 2019
Piggy Piggy Piggy
Spring is always a hectic time with everything starting to grow and needing cut and mown and whatnot. This year we were worried we might not have enough work with all that and 3 calves (Buttercup is due any moment) so we ordered some pigs and some bees as well.
The piglets are here. They have a huge area, although we started them off in a small area round the house for a couple of days so they could get a little used to us and their new surroundings. They are only two months old and still quite shy. Hopefully they are going to get used to us quickly.
The pig house with hurdles round it and a mini enclosure for their first few days
We picked them up from somewhere 2 hours away. Bit of a long drive but we didn't want the local black pigs as they are too slow growing - we don't want fast growing, just normal!
In their new house with some yummy food with milk in it.
Their area is getting on for a hectare. That is a lot of fence! It has two strands at about 15 and 30cm as they are pretty small at the mo and pigs don't really jump. Things will grow up under this fast and start touching the wire so it takes a fair bit of work to maintain. We have put all the wires on reels now to try to make the strimming easier by making it easy to take a length in. The reels seem a bit crappy though and we might need to replace them (or hopefully return them...)
This is them setting off for their first explore one we removed the mini enclosure round the house. Bye bye piggies (hopefully not!)
We celebrated their arrival with ham hock cooked in milk with Lemon and Thyme. Yum!
The piglets are here. They have a huge area, although we started them off in a small area round the house for a couple of days so they could get a little used to us and their new surroundings. They are only two months old and still quite shy. Hopefully they are going to get used to us quickly.
The pig house with hurdles round it and a mini enclosure for their first few days
We picked them up from somewhere 2 hours away. Bit of a long drive but we didn't want the local black pigs as they are too slow growing - we don't want fast growing, just normal!
In their new house with some yummy food with milk in it.
Their area is getting on for a hectare. That is a lot of fence! It has two strands at about 15 and 30cm as they are pretty small at the mo and pigs don't really jump. Things will grow up under this fast and start touching the wire so it takes a fair bit of work to maintain. We have put all the wires on reels now to try to make the strimming easier by making it easy to take a length in. The reels seem a bit crappy though and we might need to replace them (or hopefully return them...)
This is them setting off for their first explore one we removed the mini enclosure round the house. Bye bye piggies (hopefully not!)
We celebrated their arrival with ham hock cooked in milk with Lemon and Thyme. Yum!
Saturday, 4 May 2019
Preparing for Bees
We ordered some bees in the Autumn from a beekeeper who lives in Tarbes. They will arrive at the end of May so we have been preparing the spot the hives will sit as well as reading reading - it seems quite hard to keep bees alive.
This is just below the house. We have levelled an area on a track that was already cut in to the hill
We then laid sand and weed block membrane and then some paving stones
It is not the best laid patio as we didn't get the area level enough before starting to lay the paving. Hopefully it will work out well for the bees though. It's main purpose is to keep make it possible to keep the area round the hives and access to the hives free of bracken and brambles.
It was a pretty big job just clearing enough to allow us to reach the spot we wanted to locate the hives as we kind of lost control of this field a couple of years ago! It is also very useful that this clears round a few fruit trees that had been struggling to get established in competition with all the weeds.
We then laid sand and weed block membrane and then some paving stones
It is not the best laid patio as we didn't get the area level enough before starting to lay the paving. Hopefully it will work out well for the bees though. It's main purpose is to keep make it possible to keep the area round the hives and access to the hives free of bracken and brambles.
It was a pretty big job just clearing enough to allow us to reach the spot we wanted to locate the hives as we kind of lost control of this field a couple of years ago! It is also very useful that this clears round a few fruit trees that had been struggling to get established in competition with all the weeds.
The hives have now got to the person we are buying the swarms off and we have to wait a couple of weeks until they are established and have built up a food supply before collecting them.
Exciting and scary!
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
Curing Lismore's hide
We didn’t have much luck doing Bif’s hide. The hair slipped because it started to go off while we were still curing it. Probably not helped by it being the heat of summer.
We tried really hard to find someone who would do it for us professionally but we just couldn’t find someone who would take on a single hide.
So we decided to try the alum’tawing’ method we have used on rabbit skins.
I had to scale up the recipe somewhat for the bigger skin and decided on the following:
50 l water
3.15 kg alum
3kg salt
The skin sat damp and salted for a month while we tried to find someone to cure the skin professionally as it is a LOT of work, and also professional tanning can get a softer and often washable result as they have machines to help and can use harsh chemicals that we don't want to work with by hand. Eventually we had to give up trying to find someone as we followed several leads but could not find somewhere that would take a single skin.
Before starting I removed the worst lumps of flesh and fat, there were a lot still on there though and it wasn't a neat starting place like many I see on the internet where somehow they have managed to beautifully 'flesh' the skin. I then put the skins through the washing machine at Intermarché twice to get rid of as much grease as possible and all the salt. This is a 30C wash with washing powder added automatically. Bit of a weird thing to turn up with, but it is outside and self service so got away with it!
The skin then soaked for about 6 months in the above solution in a bin that must be something like 70l. 2 or 3 weeks would have been enough, but life got in the way!
It only got taken out in the end because we killed some lambs and needed the bucket to start processing their hides.
I hosed it off on both sides and chopped off a bit more fat and ook from the skin side. It looked pretty unprepossessing... but I continued on in the hope it would turn in to something worth while. Then life got in the way some more and it hung under a tarpaulin for another few months until Spring. I then washed it quite thoroughly to get the alum and salt out of the hair and remove any excess from the surface. This was with warm water sprayed on with a hose and dog shampoo.
This made it quite wet again so I let it dry to just damp and started working it by putting it skin side down and rolling a section back and forwards over itself. I did this all over for several days until it was dry again. We then had a go at sanding it with the power sander, this worked ok but it was too uneven a surface really which meant that some bits got sanded a lot more than others. So I oiled it with this and continued to work it some more.
https://www.snowdoniasupplies.co.uk/cgi-bin/view_larger.pl?ref=CP84
The skin still had bits of flesh on that we failed to scrape of earlier. Was hard work to sand off, be we did it eventually.
By now it was getting a lot softer so I was able to finish sanding off all the remaining flesh and whatnot from the surface. It took many many hours of sanding, but the result is a nice soft suede-y surface. The skin is still pretty stiff as it is so thick, but much more flexible than before all that work. Good for a rug.
As a final step I trimmed round the edge with a knife to give it a more even and symmetrical shape that looked kind of cow shaped so it was obvious that this was once a real animal.
Now for those sheep skins!
We tried really hard to find someone who would do it for us professionally but we just couldn’t find someone who would take on a single hide.
So we decided to try the alum’tawing’ method we have used on rabbit skins.
I had to scale up the recipe somewhat for the bigger skin and decided on the following:
50 l water
3.15 kg alum
3kg salt
The skin sat damp and salted for a month while we tried to find someone to cure the skin professionally as it is a LOT of work, and also professional tanning can get a softer and often washable result as they have machines to help and can use harsh chemicals that we don't want to work with by hand. Eventually we had to give up trying to find someone as we followed several leads but could not find somewhere that would take a single skin.
Before starting I removed the worst lumps of flesh and fat, there were a lot still on there though and it wasn't a neat starting place like many I see on the internet where somehow they have managed to beautifully 'flesh' the skin. I then put the skins through the washing machine at Intermarché twice to get rid of as much grease as possible and all the salt. This is a 30C wash with washing powder added automatically. Bit of a weird thing to turn up with, but it is outside and self service so got away with it!
The skin then soaked for about 6 months in the above solution in a bin that must be something like 70l. 2 or 3 weeks would have been enough, but life got in the way!
It only got taken out in the end because we killed some lambs and needed the bucket to start processing their hides.
I hosed it off on both sides and chopped off a bit more fat and ook from the skin side. It looked pretty unprepossessing... but I continued on in the hope it would turn in to something worth while. Then life got in the way some more and it hung under a tarpaulin for another few months until Spring. I then washed it quite thoroughly to get the alum and salt out of the hair and remove any excess from the surface. This was with warm water sprayed on with a hose and dog shampoo.
This made it quite wet again so I let it dry to just damp and started working it by putting it skin side down and rolling a section back and forwards over itself. I did this all over for several days until it was dry again. We then had a go at sanding it with the power sander, this worked ok but it was too uneven a surface really which meant that some bits got sanded a lot more than others. So I oiled it with this and continued to work it some more.
https://www.snowdoniasupplies.co.uk/cgi-bin/view_larger.pl?ref=CP84
The skin still had bits of flesh on that we failed to scrape of earlier. Was hard work to sand off, be we did it eventually.
By now it was getting a lot softer so I was able to finish sanding off all the remaining flesh and whatnot from the surface. It took many many hours of sanding, but the result is a nice soft suede-y surface. The skin is still pretty stiff as it is so thick, but much more flexible than before all that work. Good for a rug.
As a final step I trimmed round the edge with a knife to give it a more even and symmetrical shape that looked kind of cow shaped so it was obvious that this was once a real animal.
Now for those sheep skins!
Friday, 26 April 2019
Myrtle giving birth
We have never actually seen one of the cows giving birth as they seem to sneak them out in the early mornings. We have been watching Myrtle closely though as she had a bad fall at 7 months pregnant and that can result in a uterine torsion which obviously causes complications giving birth.
She went in to labour on Friday afternoon, we were worried it was going to take all night and interfere with our Friday evening!
But she got on with it quickly and gave birth to another little bull. We have called him Wellington.
The ligaments that hold the hips in place disappear just before birth
Labour had started already, not sure how long ago, but since we checked her in the morning anyway
Contractions arch the back and make the tail stick out
We stayed out of sight and not to close as it is her first time - though she is v friendly we didn't want to stress her. This is the water sack with feet in it
She wandered around for over an hour with the water sack and feet coming out a bit more then going back in. It was quite stressful as we weren't sure what was normal. Once the nose appeared and the sack burst it went much faster.
Splash! Baby on the ground.
Lots and lots of licking. Every time he tried to stand up he was getting a bit further down this hill so I ended up carrying him up to a flat spot. A hill is clearly not the ideal birthing area.
He was trying to suckle from the moment he hit the ground pretty much even before he could get to his feet (which took about 5 mins). Mum was a bit put out and kept moving her udder away every time he got near it, but they eventually worked it out.
She went in to labour on Friday afternoon, we were worried it was going to take all night and interfere with our Friday evening!
But she got on with it quickly and gave birth to another little bull. We have called him Wellington.
The ligaments that hold the hips in place disappear just before birth
Labour had started already, not sure how long ago, but since we checked her in the morning anyway
Contractions arch the back and make the tail stick out
We stayed out of sight and not to close as it is her first time - though she is v friendly we didn't want to stress her. This is the water sack with feet in it
She wandered around for over an hour with the water sack and feet coming out a bit more then going back in. It was quite stressful as we weren't sure what was normal. Once the nose appeared and the sack burst it went much faster.
Splash! Baby on the ground.
He was trying to suckle from the moment he hit the ground pretty much even before he could get to his feet (which took about 5 mins). Mum was a bit put out and kept moving her udder away every time he got near it, but they eventually worked it out.
Wednesday, 24 April 2019
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