What a load of bull!

I have two heads of cattle. Cloud is a 16 year old GallowayxWhite Park. She came from a farmer friend who was down-sizing. She is a perfect cow for us as she is small, docile and has no horns!

She has had a calf every year since we had her, except for last year. In 2007 we couldn't move her as there were foot and mouth restrictions. So her calf is from 2007 and now nearly 2 years old.

This is him in the picture. He is pure Dexter crossed with Cloud. We had to measure Cloud to make sure the Dexter bull could reach but there was no problem there. The little bull took one look at Cloud and she was pregnant!

We call him Jet. The only problem with Jet is that OH thought I had applied the rubber bands to ensure his balls fell off and I thought OH had done it...total break down in communication there! It wasn't until it was a year old that we noticed the swinging appendages...oh dear.

He is for slaughter and normally would have gone last year but because Cloud had no calf last summer and he was so SMALL, he stayed.

So will Cloud have a calf by her son...or was he too small to reach? Watch this space in the next couple of months.

Weekend Away

Life on the farm carried on without me while I went walking in the beautiful White Peak. It has been lovely and sunny and the snowdrops are all in full bloom. One minute there is snow...next spring flowers have arrived.

Once when on holiday in the Italian Alps in March, spring arrived over the course of the week. We were there for the ski-ing and conditions weren't perfect for the sport. The snow was frozen in the morning and slush by lunch time. However, walking around the beautiful resort on paths through woods and along the river, the change during the week was spectacular. Sadly I have no photos to show you of thie event but primroses appeared everwhere, in full bloom, replacing the snow.

Here the snow has left all the grass brown and it takes a long time for our spring flowers to push through. I have planted many bulbs and the number that flower is depleted each year. The last 100 daffodils have been put in boxes in the greenhouse and I will pick them as cut flowers. Such is life at Sandalfarm.

(the picture shows the land at it's best...)

Back to the murk.

Yes, the snow is disappearing slowly (except from the track). There is fog and mud and we are back to a traditional upland winter.

As I still couldn't take the car up the track yesterday, the dogs and I walked from the farm. It is on a busy road but after 15 minutes there is the choice of open moorland with walks across to Wuthering Heights countryside or sheltered paths by streams and rivers, farmland and woodland. Yesterday we did the latter and ended up walking for four hours. So today we can take it easy.

The Archers are on. I listen intermittently, obviously more interested in the farming bits than the tussles of conscience on religious matters. I priced my pig rearing against Tom Archer's and his came out cheaper. How did he manage that? I didn't over-feed them because there was just the right amount of fat. Must be economies of scale.

I also watched Jimmy on pigs. I was a member of Compassion in World Farming for a long time, years back (I'm always supporting some cause or other) and knew then I couldn't support any form of intensive farming. Here are happy pigs (above picture).

Collecting the post.

A spring like thaw hasn't really touched our track so today I made my way to the sorting office to pick up the week's post.

We have a new source of income!

After 4 attempts, I have finally managed to get my Single Payment from the Rural Payments Agency. I have filled in forms for 2005 2006 2007 2008 but although I knew I had blown it on the 2007 claim as I was late submitting the final application (this was because RPA returned it to me with ONE DAY'S notice as I had missed a section out), I wondered why I hadn't at least received a payment for 2008 because I had spent long hours on the phone with a very helpful case worker, making sure I had got it right.

I have had to make another call or two to try and sort out the 2008 payment but at last was assured I was going to receive the payment, but only because my 2005 claim was also correct.

(Don't ask me)

I will receive £300 for the 2 years combined.

What a wonder the world of farming is!! But it will help towards the thousands of pounds we have spent on drainage, field maintenance, outbuildings and of course the crummy tractor. I don't expect anything but if a proper farmer wanted to buy the place, with a few more acres from somewhere, then this payment is essential.

I may spend it on a new calf!

Is that more snow?

It was! It also blew across the track to the farmhouse so even the 4 wheel drive skidded sidewades. OH and I are taking it in turns to go out and to go to work as my impractical Mini sits locked in the barn. I put £53 worth of diesel in it today...so much for trying to live enviromentally sound lives.

I did catch a bus to work on Monday as OH had to work as well and he has much further to go. I worked for 2 hours but the whole rigmarole of catching a bus, walking to stops and station and waiting, plus the 2 hrs 30 mins at work, took 5 hours 35 minutes! (and the bus fare was £4.35p).

No wonder we won't contemplate giving up our cars.

We do have a very old decrepid tractor. I have driven it once and am not so keen to try that again! I can't start it anyway, OH has trouble. He resorts to a magic fluid that you pour in to the air cleaner. The air cleaner is obviously not working as the tractor then pours out storm clouds of black fumes...another failure to live the "green" life.

So, tomorrow the tractor will be taken up the track to flatten out the ruts and make life easier. I would still rather have the snow than the mud and wind and grey of the last 4 winters we have had since we moved here. Long may it last.

On the trail of Billy...

Having tried to spot the white sheep in the white fields that are spread over several acres, OH and I took a bucket of feed and a dog lead each, and drove off in search of the rampant ram. It didn't take long to find him, in a group of about 20 sheep, male and female. Poor Billy, missing his daily feed, left the group to return to us quite happily.

He had his feet trimmed and his horn sawn off as it is starting to poke himself in the eye and then he was free to patrol his own wee flock again, this time with a full stomach.

Tonight, Moss went to her dog agility class. Not having enough sheep work to keep her canny brain active, we started the class in September. In usual Moss style, she thinks she knows what she is doing and does it at full speed. But more on that later...

We are loving the proper winter with snow and sunshine. Here at Sandalfarm we are hoping it lasts a bit longer!

Billy goes on the rampage.

Billy is our ram. (pictured on the left of the photo) He is a sturdy small cross breed that we have owned for 4 years. He is usually content with his small flock of pure bred Shetland ewes and will stalk around the field during the tupping months keeping other sheep at bay.

This all changed yesterday. I check on the sheep every day but in this weather, feed them twice a day. At tea time, no Billy! I walk all over the field, calling but unusually there is no response.

However I do notice some prints in the snow around the perimeter fence. They are up and down the fence and in my field and in my neighbours field.

I clamber over the fence at the point where there are most prints and sure enough, I spot our Billy, having his way with a small number of someone else's ewes. I go back to the house for a bucket and my partially trained sheep dog.

Sadly for Moss, she hasn't been working sheep for 4 months and is all too enthusiastic. She spooks them with her too fast out-run and brings me just one home as the others flee into their own field. I leave the one to return to her sisters and take Moss home. She isn't happy so decides to round our flock up, just to show me she can still do it. She is ignoring my commands completely. Ho hum.

This morning there is no easy sight of Billy amongst the huge snowy fields and large flock of a neighbouring farm. And I have acquired the ewe that Moss brought back to me. She jumped into my field just as I walked across to renew my search for a sighting of Billy. Damn.

Due to work and neighbourly duties, I have to leave it like this until tomorrow. I will be exploring these fields with a bucket and OH as back up! Watch this space.

Sunday Sunday

It is quiet.

The little farm house was once a barn to the big house on the main road. Then it became a house in 1837 with 2 barns attached.

Then it became 3 houses (about nine years ago).

The farm house, which is the one we live in, is a lumpy, bumpy house. The walls are at all angles and the floor is up and down. If you are 5'9" tall, you are in danger of concussion on the beams and doors. We are both below that height so survive a tour of the house unscathed.

It isn't a warm house as it stands end on to the prevailing wind and there is no shelter from it's force. This snow has come from the south and east so the bitter wind is hitting the 2 barn houses first.

But we have oil fired central heating that quickly warms us up and the log burning stove in the living room is effective and cheaper to run, and of course, more sustainable. We burnt scrap from around the farm to begin with, old fence posts and rotting pallets but having drained our unhealthy resource of wood, we now have a new free supply via a farmer friend who takes a tree surgeon's off-cuts.

There was an Aga. It was small and took coal but as we both go out to work, we didn't use it. Last summer it went and everyone shouted at us...don't do it! But the lovely big, range type electric cooker fits in our massive meat joints and still looks the part.

We had the outside of the house rendered during the summer, new front doors fitted to cut down the wind chill through the old ones and the bedroom plastered. It still looks run down but everyone assures me it is "farmhousey" and if it will never be immaculate, I don't have to worry about trying to keep it that way.

More time for farming.

Feeding.

More snow...

Some unhappy animals around as they stand folornly chewing on poor quality silage. The chickens are eating spare dog food as unlike the outside animals, the inside ones have lost their appetite. Moss, who would eat for the realm given the chance, has just started eating dry biscuit, rejecting the tasty morsels of pork crackling and fat.

Three weeks ago we had two pigs slaughtered. They were mixed GOS and Lanrace, hoping for the taste of the rare breed but the lack of fat from a more commercial breed. It has worked. They were big, healthy, happy pigs.

Some people ask how we can eat our own animals but I only need to ask if they eat meat or diary and do they know what conditions their animals lived with. It is always sad to take an animal to slaughter and it is a task not relished but when we see the commercial pigs squealing with fear and dying in transit for no apparent reason, while ours trot out into their holding pen, I know who is doing it the right way.

We are so lucky to be able to do this. It is a wonderfully engrossing hobby, even when it snows and snows!!

Hobby Farming

My first blog!
It's snowing and the schools are closed where I work in the afternoons. So I have a bit of spare time.
Sandal Farm is a smallholding of 11.5 acres, about 10 acres of which is sodden, rough grazing. We moved in 5 years ago and have been repairing the old field stone drains and the crumbling stone walls ever since.
Living at the farm, indoors, are; me and husband and my collie, Moss and his collie, Pip. Of course mine is the intelligent one but Pip is cute and loves people.
Outside we have Billy the Ram and his flock of 3 Shetland ewes, Betty, Becky and Molly and a lamb that was too small to eat so he is staying until he is mutton.
Then there is Cloud who is our elderly GallowayXWhite Park beef cow. She lives with her calf, who is at the moment a DexterX, a nice little, beefy, hairy bull.
And we have 4 hybrid ish chickens and Little Eagle who is a small useless, friendly araucana chicken. She laid nice blue eggs for some time though.
So that is us.
When I learn how to post photos, I will do so!