Wettest Winter
Winter has been wet and unremitting. Farmers have been bruised and broken by the prolonged and excessive rainfall, and smallholders like me have also come close to breaking.
I’ve always suspected that one of the reasons our land stands alone from the larger tracts around it, is because basically it’s the swamp at the bottom of the landscape. Two farms used to meet around our boundary, though I suspect the same mega-contractor now manages both, and in each case, the bottom segment of their land lies fallow, too wet to work. Between those two abandoned tracts lies our field. Once the village blacksmith’s plot, it is now home to the cranky smallholders.
We are used to wet winters, but this has been so much worse than most. As March slopped into April, we began to worry about lambing. We only had six to lamb, but no ground at all on which to do so, other than the high meadow which is exposed at best. The barn was under water, so there was no hope of bringing them in, and even had it not been, all the approaches were mired in mud.
Lambs were possible from 12th April onwards, so during the first week we decided we would need to build something temporary by way of shelter. Neil fetched plastic pallets going free from a local industrial estate. Because of the mud, every single thing has to be carried by hand up the field, wading through long grass and standing water. We bought posts, and hideously expensive roofing sheets, and he constructed a two bay emergency shelter - a place to bring in newly lambed mums, allow the lambs to ‘mother up’ and stay warm and dry out of the driving wind and rain for just a day or so.
Three days after lift off, he was met in the morning, by Quick, with a pair of lambs at foot. Into bay one she went. By lunchtime, when I went to do the mid day check, Claudia had presented us with a pair of girls. Bay two was occupied. You know what comes next, right? Later that same day, Darcy lambed twin boys (the second one with help from Neil) and needed … bay three? Thankfully, the weather was much improved, and a roofless pen with some wraparound shelter from the wind was quite good enough.
There followed a few days of sun and gentle breezes, and all three families were out on clean grass before Delilah, needing a fair bit of intervention, gave birth to twin ram lambs on Saturday.
Rebooting
Thanks to a generous gift from a dear friend, I was able to treat myself to something I’ve wanted for a ridiculously long time - a pair of actual Blundstone boots! I was so excited to get them, especially as it really is time that rain stopped and the ground firmed up enough that a good pair of leather dealer boots become the daily norm. Alas, it’s still very much wellie weather and my precious footwear sits by the front door, champing at the bit like a highly tuned thoroughbred racehorse, only to look on daily disappointed as its stumbling shire neighbour supplants its rightful place.
Frequent heavy showers and the odd day of unremitting drizzle mean the ground, while it has improved in some places, is still full on rice paddy in others.
Learning and Adding Skills
Soap and Spinning
Each year, the idea is to learn a couple of new things, or very much brush up on neglected ones, and then hopefully add them to the portfolio of skills available to support ourselves either directly or indirectly, maybe monetising them at least enough to fund the next year’s adventures.
Last year was soap and spinning - both things I’d done before but let go of for a while.
I’m spinning up our Oxford Down fleece from the beautiful sliver produced by Rampisham Mill and plan to dye some for sale, but meanwhile, I think I’ll bag up some and offer bags for sale for other hand spinners. I wonder if anyone would be interested?
I’ve now got two varieties of soap perfected and certified.
Mabel’s Bath Night is a pure goats milk soap, unscented, soft and gentle. I love it for hands and face, and for its pure simplicity.
Down the Field has an outdoorsy scent, it still has the goats milk, but has added nettles, which make it a beautiful earthy shade of green, and provide a scrubby, exfoliant effect.
All I need to do now is make a fresh batch of each (I keep using them!) and figure out a way to sell a few, in order to fund this year’s skill skool, which is …
Birds and Bees
No, I’m not needing to learn about these two in quite the way you might think! I’ve got that covered, thanks.
What I would like to do is incubate some eggs, and establish breeding trios of pure bred fowl, partly to diversify our flock, and partly as an income for the smallholding. I do have a big Chinese incubator, passed onto us by someone who afforded a better one(!) but I’d really like to be able to fund a decent Brinsea one with more guaranteed results.
I also want to replace the bees who died a couple of winters ago. I don’t think a smallholding is a smallholding without a hive or two, and once again, honey and beeswax would be a useful small income for the farm.
I’ve got lots of books and of course the wonder that is the internet to study up but both of those items carry quite a hefty price tag - in the £220 - £300 bracket, each - so I’ll be setting up a big pickle jar to save the takings from what we produce, to help us learn to produce more.
First Tomatoes
The first tomatoes are out in the tunnel, and summer’s dreams of sweet salads, and stacked shelves of preserved goodness go with them. I’ve been nurturing little plants in the greenhouse for some weeks now, but the first to go out were a pair of plants of a variety called Lotos, the seed for which came from The Real Seed Company, and which are apparently super early.
British Library Crime Classics
In actual ‘Library Book Blogger’ news, I’ve been scooping up British Library Crime Classics, and snooping around on Wiltshire Libraries website to see how many they have, scattered around the county!
Here are my latest two finds - I can highly recommend them for a little harmless nostalgia (with added murders, obviously!)
I so enjoyed reading your latest blog post.
Sheep are fascinating creatures, very biblical too!
Those books look very interesting, I’ll have to have a scout around for them. x