Finn 4 Spotty Dog 0

No not a football score, just the number of ewes each tup has covered this week. We have got serious doubts about Spotty Dog, but he will remain in with his ewes for another couple of weeks, then if nothing has happened, Finn will be put in to cover the remaining ewes. I will keep you posted.....

Veg Garden update

As Saturday was forecast to be fine and sunny, it was the ideal opportunity for me to dig up the last of my potatoes and get them dry before storing them in the garden shed.
As you can see from the photo, there are 2 types of potatoes, Pink Fir Apple (the pink finger shaped ones) and Bambino. As you know blight struck my potatoes earlier in the season and it have been interesting to see how these remaining potatoes have fared.
The Pink Fir Apples have not done well at all, and as this is the 3rd year of growing them without a great deal of success, I won't be growing them again. On the other hand the Bambino variety have done really well, with only one or two lost to blight. Their only downside has been their little resistance to slugs. Next year I'm going to have a a bed of second early potatoes and a bed of main crop, but they will have to be both blight and slug resistant.
A couple of weeks ago I planted some broad bean seeds to see if they will survive the winter up here on the North Yorks Moors. If you look carefully at the photo you can just see one or two plants starting to grow. Hopefully they will put on a good bit of growth before the frosts arrive.

These are my winter onions which have come through really well, and it looks like I've got a 100% germination rate with them. My garlic bulbs arrived earlier in the week and I've planted them out next to the onions. Hopefully they will produce bigger bulbs than the ones I planted out in the spring this year.
Also on Saturday, the additional Black Current bush I had ordered arrived, so after the roots had been in soak for a couple of hours, that too was planted out. By then it was mid afternoon and the temperatures are really dropping quickly now, it was time to come in and light the wood burning stove in the front room. But it isn't cold enough for the central heating to come on for any length of time, which is good for the oil supplies.

Durham Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers

A month or so ago I was contacted by the Durham WS&D guild to see if Phillippa and I were available to come and talk to them in November 2010, then a week later they asked if we could cover this month's meeting as their booked speaker was unable to attend.
So I loaded THGlett up with my fibre and toddled up the A19 to Durham, (had the usual disagreement with the sat nav, it wanted me to go on the A1 for some reason and round Durham's wonderful one way system!!!!!) to meet Phillippa. We put out all of our fibre in readiness to start our talk, but the ladies of the guild were so interested in our fibre, that is took some time before either of us were able to get up and speak.
It was a great evening and I saw some old faces, and in no time at all, all the fibre was being packed up again, loaded back into THGlett, (this time I could see out the back) ready for the drive home, ignored the sat nav out of Durham and was home before 11pm. I even managed to get into the house without waking the dogs, now that is an achievement!!!!!
Thank you Durham ladies for a lovely evening.

Sheep MOT time

Today all the sheep have been through the handling system in the barn and given the "once over". Hooves trimmed, given a mineral drench, injected with Heptovac and given a liver fluke and worming drench. As it's the start of November, the ewe lambs were shed from the breeding ewes along with Brazil and Amy and put into a new field for the next couple of months whilst the rams (Spotty Dog and Finn) are in with the ewes.
Spotty Dog got 5 additional ewes today, Abbi, Ariadne, Missy, Allium and Anya, but there are some doubts about Spotty Dog and if he will actually work. He doesn't seem to have the "presence" that you expect from a Ram, whereas Finn seems to be all too eager to work. The next couple of weeks will tell, and if Spotty Dog isn't working, Finn will be covering all of the ewes.
We also weighed all the sheep and it was good to see how much weight that not only the lambs have put on, but also the ewes, and since we have weaned the lambs in July Missy has put on a staggering 10kg, the only ewe to have lost weight is Amy, hence she will not be going to the tup this year. We have also shed off 5 lambs for fattening in readiness for the "Light Lamb Sales". November is when the "light lamb" sales start, so any lamb that is well bodied and weighs in the region of 30kg go to this sale. Our 5 don't quite weigh 30kgs, but a couple of weeks in the barn on hay and a little bit of concentrate feed will soon get them up to this weight.
This coming week will see some major repairs to the main barn. One of the struts that supports the roof has rotted through at floor level!!! Not quite sure how Tim is going to repair it, but he has a plan.........

The Railway Goods Van

This old railway goods van sits at the back of the barn and is in need of some TLC, so today we decided to put some new roofing felt on in an attempt to stop some of the rain from coming in.
But once we had taken all the old felt of, it became very apparent that the goods van was past the TLC stage. The sides have come away from the floor, and the floor, which has been patched in several places, that when Holly walked on bounced. Not good.
So we have decided to condemn it. Trouble is, it was a good place to store all the slab wood that needs cutting for our log burning stoves. Which means that all of it will have to be removed and a new, dry home found for it all. Tim had already brought a trailer load into the barn for me to start chopping and whilst we unloaded it this afternoon, we did a very ruthless sort out of what was good to burn and what was not.
Tomorrows job, you've guessed it. Remove the rest of the wood from the goods van and then decide how we are going to dismantle the van, without damaging the barn behind it!!!!!! Any suggestions..............

Textile Day at Danby Village Hall

Sunday, was the day that the Textile Open Day at Danby Village Hall, Danby, that Phillippa and I had organised together happened.
We've been arranging this since the end of Woolfest, the idea being we used local Textile workers, as there is nothing like this event in this neck of the woods. We've contacted all the local Weaving and Spinners guilds within a 100 mile radius, the local W.Is, local radio, newspapers and T.V, as well as posters given to local Tourist Information Offices, libraries and put up in any other interested place we could think of.
4 other stallholders attended, making 6 different stalls in the hall. Phillippa put on a Natural Dying

Display down the middle of the hall.
11am arrived and the first people started coming through the door. We'd put in our publicity suggesting that spinners bring their wheels for a "Spin In", which some did and several ladies spent a very productive afternoon spinning their newly purchased fibre.
All day there was a steady stream of visitors and it only became quiet around 3pm, and during that last hour I was able to get some spinning of my own done.
We were asked several times if we were going to "do this event again? and if so when?" Well the answer is that "Yes" we will be doing this event again, all who had a stall agreed it was well worth the effort and there are some mutterings of doing it twice, one early in the season (April/May) and the other around the same time as now.
I always manage to forget something and this time it was my business cards!!! Normally I'm hardly ever asked for one as my details are on all my fibre labels, but yesterday, because we were local, everyone wanted one!!!!!! Good job I had some spare fibre band labels that I could hand out!!!!!
Photos are the 2 sides of my stall, showing the range of fibres that I now sell.

Hedgelaying Day

On Saturday evening Freylyn and Mark arrived, along with their dogs, Lunil and Bill for the weekend. Mark is interested in learning how to lay hedges and as Freylyn was teaching at the Eden Guild of Spinners Weavers and Dyers, it was decided that instead of going home, they would come to us for the weekend, and that on the Sunday, Tim, Mark and I would do a spot of hedge laying, whilst Freylyn supervised the dogs and got on with some knitting.

This is the section of hedge we were to lay and as you can see it's pretty overgrown and to make things more interesting, we had to ensure that anything we chopped down didn't hit the pig arc.

This is what the hedge looks like now. It looks really severe, but in the spring it will grow back and it will be surprising how quickly a hedge will appear. We all had a great time and we could not have ordered a better day, sunny with a very slight breeze. It started to rain just a Freylyn and Mark were leaving for home after tea.
Tomorrow Tim and I will have to clear all the brushwood and any logs that are any good to burn, stored to season for a year or two. I can see the old shed in the yard coming down to create a new area for this years wood pile from our winter hedge laying days.