Sunday 31 May 2009
A Weekend of Dyeing
I've also been busy in the veg garden, the last of the sprouts have been planted out along with the red cabbage plants. The area where the other beds are to go, the grass has been sprayed and is now ready to be rotovated. Just waiting for Scooby to arrive with the tractor and plough, who hopefully will call this coming week.
As Woolfest is now only 4 week away, the details of the stall etc arrived this weekend and as usual I'm in row H sharing a double stand with Phillippa (Wheeldale Woolcrafts). So if you are coming to Woolfest, come and say "Hello"
Monday 25 May 2009
What do you do with your old mineral lick buckets?
I'm going to get some cheap cat litter trays to stand the buckets in for ease of watering, but I can get 12 tubs in the greenhouse, filled with growbag compost. Much easier to manage. The tomatoes in the picture are Banana Cream and Vintage Wine.
Blue Tongue Vaccination & ear tagging
After lunch we took the spare Blue Tongue Vaccine over to Phillippa's to inject her 7 sheep. Whilst her sheep were penned up she took the opportunity to get the shearer to come and give her small flock a quick hair cut. I wrapped the fleeces and I have to say her Cheviot X fleece is beautiful. This was followed by an excellent tea sat out in the garden. It finished off a hectic day very nicely.
With regards to the ewe's weights, I did a comparison of what the ewes weighed just before we put the tup in, back in November, to what they weigh now, after lambing and I'm pleased to say that all have put on weight, on average 4kgs. Only Missy is down on her November weight, but we suspected that when she went down with twin lamb disease. Even old Lucy has stayed the same weight. It just goes to prove how much that extra feed has helped the ewes through the winter, and now that we have a good supply of grass, they should continue to gain some weight. This is when good record keeping comes into it's own
A week of dyeing and wrapping
Sunday 17 May 2009
Great day at Stocksfield Guild Fibre Day
By 3 o'clock both our fibre stocks had been greatly decreased, I'm so glad I took Phillippa's advice and dyed another kilo of Rainbow alpaca roving, and we were absolutely shattered.
Packing the truck to go home took very little time and we have an invite to go back next year.
Sat in our kitchen at 6 o'clock last night we both suddenly realised that Woolfest is 6 weeks away and we both have greatly reduced fibre stocks. We are going to be "mad dyeing women" over the next few weeks. But before I can start dyeing, first thing tomorrow morning I will be ringing my fibre supplier for 11kgs of Alpaca tops, 4kgs of camel tops and some Yak down, followed by some very busy evenings over a dye pot.
Despite the extra work going to Stocksfield has created, it was such great fun and that's what selling fibre is all about, if I didn't want the extra work, I wouldn't work on selling my fibre.
Next weekend is the Bank Holiday, the Resident Vandal will be here to help us ear tag the lambs and Blue Tongue all the sheep.
He was only meant to take the shelves out!!!!!!!!!
At lunchtime on Monday Tim rang me to say that the selves were out, but in the process the render had come off the walls and he was now in the process of taking it off the other wall, so that he could replaster the walls!!!!!! How he intended to do that, he was unsure, but he was going to think about it!!!!
By Friday, he'd dry lined the cupboard, using the plasterboard left over from the renovation work we've had done, and on Saturday he was going to start to skim the walls. But by then his left hand was aching quite badly so he's been resting it over the weekend. He's hoping to get it all finished this week, but to be honest, I'm not worried if it takes a little longer as he needs to work to the pace that his hand will allow.
To his credit Tim has done a good job with the plasterboard, especially patching it all up and considering what happened 5 months ago, it's amazing that he's been able to do it at all.
Latest update on Tim's hand is that he's now been discharged from the Hand Therapist, or as Tim says "The Hand Terrorist has expelled him!!! It's now down to him to keep doing the exercises and keep using it (I don't think she meant plastering), and we see the consultant again at the beginning of July.
Sunday 10 May 2009
A very windy week
Yesterday I had great plans of working in the veg garden, but a nasty migraine put paid to that, thankfully today I feel a whole lot better and we gave Fraya and Finn their second Heptovac injection and a drench of wormer. We also weighed them and over the past 7 weeks they have put on 10 and 11kgs respectively. We also moved last years ram lambs to the Alpaca's summer paddock as it needs eating down before Ghilli and Grommet move in, and as we had to move them past the barn, we took the opportunity to weigh them all. It's 2 months since we last weighed them and most have put on 8kgs with 3 putting on over 10kgs!! They are looking fit and well and so I shall be booking them into the abattoir at the end of this month. With weighing the sheep frequently we should be able to identify if we have another worm problem, as we did last year. But looking at the weights of last year's ram lambs, we should have some good lambs to go through the mart at the back end of this year/early next. Good for the old cash flow.
I did manage to spend some time in the veg garden planting out the dwarf french bean plants. Some of the potatoes are starting to show, so when I next cut the grass, I will cover them with the cuttings, also the beetroot, parsnip and onions are also starting to show. As a downside so are the weeds so I will have to get out their with my hoe.
It's going to be a busy week as I'm due to help out with Dave and Jo's farm club on Wednesday and then I need to get everything ready for Stocksfield on Saturday, as it will be an early start for myself and Phillippa that morning. Will let you all know how it went next week.
Monday 4 May 2009
Bank Holiday Weekend
On Saturday, we managed to get another deep bed in the area we now call the "Allotment"
The bed farthest away has been in since the autumn and is planted up with second early and salad potatoes. The bed at the front I rotovated to break up the grass and soil and have now stared to fork it over to take out the weeds in readiness to plant out the veg plants growing in the greenhouse.
You may just be able to see in the above photo, an area of grass that has been cut. This is where 4 more beds are to go. I've just got to rotovate the area. You may also have noticed that the beds are offset. The reason for this is when the next 4 beds are in, the allotment is to be fenced, so that the sheep can eat the grass around the outside of the veg beds, which means that the bed with the potatoes in is going to be right next to the fence, where as the one in front will have a path in front of the fence. So the back bed will have to be moved once the potatoes are dug out!!!!