Suspension of Blog

Sad news for the one follower and 5 other readers, I am suspending the blog until I have a working camera. There is little enough to keep you riveted here but without a photo...there is nothing.

This photo is a dramatic portrayal of 2007 winds that destroyed our new greenhouse. It WAS standing when a windy night left it looking as if a herd of elephants had made their way over it.

I hope you all have a good winter, but it will be better than this one up here - whatever the weather!

RE; Last Posts

I realise that you may bethinking that I now have 8 children living next door but no...not yet.
The photos all messed up when O loaded the East Yorkshire post so are not in order of my description. The animal vegetable is a potato but can you seem the resemblance to a sleeping sheep?

East Yorkshire

Here are some photos from the day.

Clockwise from the left, view from the top of the wood. If it was clearer you would see the Humber Estuary.

Moss and Pip walking next to the sunflower crop, yes, east Yorkshire not Provence!

The ploughed fields, chalk! The wood next to ours is Chalk Pit. but all the land is like this around here!

Red berries, seen further along the Wolds Way. This a hover fly with a light aircraft in the background...good photography eh?

I didn't do any work on the wood, just explored the area, looked at goldfinch eating thistledown and buzzards swooping over game bird hatcheries then sat and ate my lunch with the paper. Bliss!

The wall is DONE!!

So this is the piece of work that has occupied my summer. The little dog with a frisbee in her mouth is PIP who keeps herself out of mischief by running after the frisbee when I throw it, bringing it back and waiting patiently for the next throw. Moss lies in wait, like the herding dog that she is and when Pip runs, so does Moss. They race for the frisbee then if Moss gets it, she runs away with it and lies down, waiting for Pip to come and pick it up. Then she grabs it and turns her head away.

Collies have endless capacity for this type of occupation as every collie owner will know. And it does keep them well exercised.

The new neighbours apparently are moving in on Friday, possibly with 8 children? Is this the end of our life at sandalfarm as we know it?

New arrival at sandalfarm.

But what is it?

Oh! Whats this?

This is autumn.

It is definitely AUTUMN!

Oh well, it is dry and I have nearly completed 60' of wall in under 4 weeks, a saving of £400 doing it myself.

O my aching back and legs...but I'm so pleased to be working all day in dry weather. Stone walling is even more satisfying than growing your own veg. Not only is it creative but it sabes me money while growing your own veg doesn't really make economic sense unless you buy organic from Waitrose. (whoops, product placement creeping in, I never buy from Waitrose as the nearest store is in Otley which is full of traffic and a long way from here).

The tractor flail mower broke a belt today so no mowing today but we have on order a STARTER MOTOR so no longer will I have to stand and listen to the agonising groans of the engine as it is turned over again and again and again...until the flat battery demands a jump start.

OH and I both back at work tomorrow. And dark ay 7.30pm.

LOOK, DRY FIELDS!

So the tractor is put to work yet again! This picture was taken in the sheep paddock (formerly the Pony Paddock). It is a much drier field than the Reedy Field where Cloud lives but it has more than its fair share of reeds.

What a transformation to have them down and shredded (the yellow device on the back of the tractor does both, it is flail mower).

Sadly for the first time we have evidence of worms in the sheep so the next job is to construct some sort of pen again to get them seen to. I hasten to add that it isn't MY sheep that have brought them in but an interloper from a neighbouring farm.

They need to have their toe nails cut anyway and Molly has lost her tag and the lambs from last year are now due tagging.

Shetland sheep are incredibly low maintenance and I am glad we got this little flock.

It is pitch black at 8.30pm.

So lets look at the evidence that we had a summer...

Our neighbour (not immediate neighbour but round the corner) has made a beauitful vegetable garden, spending so much time and money on a fence, trees and shrubs and drainage in an attempt to create a "good growing area", and it looked to have worked. Their vegetables were tall and green looking in the view I have from my bedroom window. He built raised beds with real soil brought on the back of a wagon, put in drainage, lovely chipped paths and a seating area with stone walls and pavements. There are beautiful flowers and lights that twinkle in the dark having stored power from the daylight. Their umbrella shades the view of their table and chairs from my prying eyes but I know how much I have used my own this summer...

Then over one day the beautiful vegetables disappeared from view. I thought, he obviously didn't use successional planting...but it wasn't that! His brassicas had been decimated by caterpillers. Oh, it is a sad truth known to those who indulge in the passion of growing their own vegetables (sorry, I've been reading the biography of Jane Austen) that vegetables need daily attention if you want to grow organically. Nothing can replace the daily toil of picking off the leaf needy insects and SQUASHING them. If you are vegetarian, there in lies your dilemma...kill a creature and lose your veg or leave the creature...etc.

As you all know, I am no longer vegetarian having reverted to canivorous life on buying the farm and having access to kindly reared and happy animals (at least until they are slaughtered), but can a human live by a holey cabbage alone.

The sunflower seeds will help.

Tractor tribulations.

This is what he did...got the tractor stuck...well and truely stuck...but all was not lost because I drove the truck, hooked up the tractor and he drove the tractor and lo...all was well again. It wasn't bogged down in the rain sodden field but on a piece of metal...

Who knows what the metal was, but it just got longer and longer and disappeared into the next door's land. Shame there is no scrap value in metal anymore, with the amount we have dug out of sandalfarm we could have retired.

I am back...

This is the River Spey, a wondrous river for fishing and canoeing and dog swimming.
There is such a sense of aloneness when walking through the woods in this unpopulated part of GB. Fishing, farming and shooting sre still the main industries, alongside whisky and shortbread.
Still, it's nice to back at sandalfarm and getting going on the neglected jobs.
I dug up my potato crop yesterday. It was no where near as good as last year but some good sized tatties there and should keep us going for a few months.
The runner beans are the best I have ever grown up here and the onions are "variable" - some are huge and some are miniscule.
Sadly, my first day back was spent in work, my second day it rained for half of the day and the third is today...I am breaking for oat cakes (yes, brought home from Bonnie Scotland) and Wensleydale Cheese before returning to the great wall of Cloud's field.
The house next door looks to have been sold but I don't know how big the family is yet and I am certain that they are not interested in keeping stock. Shame. I have 6 weeks to get the wall finished so I can trespass on their land to get it done.
Better get back there...
Tomorrow I will show you what OH was up to while I was away.