....it would appear life down at the smallholding is about to take a turn towards the Peckham. Finally I have secured the services of a Ram (make up your own smut here peeps and tweeps) and Denzil - yes Denzil the Poll Dorset Ram will be over to 'see' Dolly & Dors in November. November ram spring lamb so they say. Now. It was important to find a ram of the same breed so that they lamb easily. Mega important to the 'Double D's' and to me aka Midwife. DH has already suggested rigging up a straw bed and is even prepared to lash out on a spotlight for the barn as apparently I'm going to be sitting, waiting for these sheep to go into labour and be prepared to don my elbow length gloves as required. Clearly this, as we all know is so not going to happen (latex is awful for ones skin for starters) and in fact there's more chance of me falling asleep and missing the whole labour and birth as I flick through Tatler sipping through my homemade Sloe Gin. All in all Denzil was an important find = easy, natural lambing (DD was all natural so I'll be damned if these sheep aren't!)
We have secured 2 weaners to pick up in the next 2 weeks. Despite all recommendations not to name them they are already know as Spot (Gloucestershire Old Spot) and Stripe (Saddleback) Both boys (easier to send to the chop that way!) They'll be with us for around 4-6 months before becoming, hopefully the nicest pork joints in the world! Financially it's viable (although the few hundred in a pig ark and fenced area is a bit of a hit with the first 2) as abattoir costs are reasonable. All being well, there'll be a 6 month turn on weaners with a break even outcome and benefits of own meat to a) know where it's come from and b) sell! We are still eating a neighbours Dexter joints and I swear it could be served at Claridges. Nothing like it!
Plenty of work still to be done to get ready for the new season. Have become quite the forager for free food (yes, yes, it's in the scouse blood and all that - yawn!) Sloe berries are becoming sloe gin, damsons are becoming damson gin (gin is good!) pies, crumbles, chutneys, jams etc are all under way. Soups and other freezables soon to be. Bit more stock and I'd have enough to sell a little. Mind you, have enough apples to cure world hunger. Funny, DD's Harvest Festival at school/church not keen on fresh produce! So in she goes with 2 tins of peaches - there's an irony about that and also a metaphor for our attitudes to dealing with problems like poverty...
Also found a fence man (honestly with more time and experience a 'yellow pages' type invention for smallholders would be such a good business idea. Finding people who you haven't known for generations is nigh on impossible. Find the internet people!!!) so repairs will soon be underway and the felled tree about to be logged (then sold!) Trouble is, our man reckons the tree's hollow. But as it's the age of the 6 others...you can't go hacking 6 Oaks down can you? I mean, even I know that! They're not dead either! Plus they are just across the road from the oldest woods in Sussex - now that would be eco vandalism. Again, the theme of the post recurs - leave it to nature! Nature's best - costs less!
Write again later in the week
Mx
Weather: Summers coming...!! need to dig out those summer clothes pronto and get a winter tan!
Scouse in the South
Monday 26 September 2011
Monday 12 September 2011
Stormy weather
Well, aren't the beautiful, mild and still Autumn days delightful? Oh yes, I forgot, not here in the SE! What a week it was last week and I see today has started in similar fashion! There is something in our genes that makes us British weather obsessed. Even DD at 4 years of age has to give me regular updates on the weather systems. Trouble is, she goes into school thinking the terminology exists along the lines of 'bloody rain' or 'oh this wind is ruinous for my hair.' I await parents evening already with much trepidation (much like my own were!) But last week brought a fair chunk of one of our almighty Oaks crashing down. Mercifully it wasn't one of the ones at the edge of the road (nor in the field were the sheep are) as I really didn't relish directing the traffic around my tree on the A26... Needless to say turning a £ from logging is in my mind (we don't have a real fire, been there, done that - leave the cosiness and mess to the pubs.) So that's a learning lesson for this week.
I keep on at DH to help start battening down for winter having had a taste last week. Lagging the pipes, investing in a water butt, stock piling our hay - all jobs to be done now. Enough damage was done last week through a couple of days storm what with the tree, significant branches down elsewhere one of which has stabbed Dolly underneath her eye so rather appealingly she looks like she has a horn growing out of her eye and the rebuilding of the duck pen after it was flattened. Much tidy up - also in our garden as tree came down over the stream blocking it which, I can assure you all having removed most of my downstairs upstairs on more than one occasion, had to be dealt with. DH, City worker and now arborist extraordinaire set about the task and came out with just a few nicks, bites and scratches! So good in fact, I have offered to hold the ladder as he tackles the Oak. Out of politeness I couldn't repeat his response...
DD and I have been taking a leaf out of the squirrels book and set about a task to survive winter not buying a dessert, soup, jam or chutney. The apples are just starting to fall - and lovely they are too as eaters and cookers. We have an abundance of rhubarb and mountains of raspberries and blackberries to use. I'm also going to pick some rose hips on the next dry day (ha!) and try something 'countrified' with them! Of course, all of this comes at a price. Ripped, itching hands from the sharp thorns and toxin laden leaves, earwigs that seem to appear everywhere with the big, furry don't-touch-with-a-barge-pole caterpillars and the odd hornet...Looking more and more like a bad golfer in waterproofs (non matching, dreadful) and Royal County Down cap (no I haven't played there, but have Spa-ed at Slieve Donard next door and bought the cap as a necessity to the survival of my Trevor Sorbie styled hair as we chose to stay on the worlds windiest day when even the sheltered Spelga Dam looked like the Bay of Biscay) then comes the washing, the freezing (the right and wrong way of course!) and the picking of wasp stings from the dogs face.
Speaking of the dog, the worlds laziest lab, he spent most of last night retching and whining and panting like a schoolboy at Spearmint Rhinos. So much so I nearly called the emergency vet but whilst watching my credit card pleading with me for mercy, I decided to ride it out expecting at any time a mouse or something to appear from either end...'Luckily' at 5 this morning as DH was on his way out to work he just shouted up to 'clean the wee' and the dog survived, sheepish but so far over whatever it was troubling him. Perhaps he was riding off a hallucinogenic mushroom or something...who knows, but isn't marriage full of wonderfully romantic moments with family matters?! Myla lingerie and my dream sleigh bed or again, the waterproofs, rubber gloves (steady!) and the dettol...?
Mx
Weather: See above!
I keep on at DH to help start battening down for winter having had a taste last week. Lagging the pipes, investing in a water butt, stock piling our hay - all jobs to be done now. Enough damage was done last week through a couple of days storm what with the tree, significant branches down elsewhere one of which has stabbed Dolly underneath her eye so rather appealingly she looks like she has a horn growing out of her eye and the rebuilding of the duck pen after it was flattened. Much tidy up - also in our garden as tree came down over the stream blocking it which, I can assure you all having removed most of my downstairs upstairs on more than one occasion, had to be dealt with. DH, City worker and now arborist extraordinaire set about the task and came out with just a few nicks, bites and scratches! So good in fact, I have offered to hold the ladder as he tackles the Oak. Out of politeness I couldn't repeat his response...
DD and I have been taking a leaf out of the squirrels book and set about a task to survive winter not buying a dessert, soup, jam or chutney. The apples are just starting to fall - and lovely they are too as eaters and cookers. We have an abundance of rhubarb and mountains of raspberries and blackberries to use. I'm also going to pick some rose hips on the next dry day (ha!) and try something 'countrified' with them! Of course, all of this comes at a price. Ripped, itching hands from the sharp thorns and toxin laden leaves, earwigs that seem to appear everywhere with the big, furry don't-touch-with-a-barge-pole caterpillars and the odd hornet...Looking more and more like a bad golfer in waterproofs (non matching, dreadful) and Royal County Down cap (no I haven't played there, but have Spa-ed at Slieve Donard next door and bought the cap as a necessity to the survival of my Trevor Sorbie styled hair as we chose to stay on the worlds windiest day when even the sheltered Spelga Dam looked like the Bay of Biscay) then comes the washing, the freezing (the right and wrong way of course!) and the picking of wasp stings from the dogs face.
Speaking of the dog, the worlds laziest lab, he spent most of last night retching and whining and panting like a schoolboy at Spearmint Rhinos. So much so I nearly called the emergency vet but whilst watching my credit card pleading with me for mercy, I decided to ride it out expecting at any time a mouse or something to appear from either end...'Luckily' at 5 this morning as DH was on his way out to work he just shouted up to 'clean the wee' and the dog survived, sheepish but so far over whatever it was troubling him. Perhaps he was riding off a hallucinogenic mushroom or something...who knows, but isn't marriage full of wonderfully romantic moments with family matters?! Myla lingerie and my dream sleigh bed or again, the waterproofs, rubber gloves (steady!) and the dettol...?
Mx
Weather: See above!
Friday 2 September 2011
Pride comes before a fall.
Writing this perched rather gingerly sporting a bruised hip and derriere having fallen whilst up town last night. Dashing for the train, slipped on some morons grimy Burger King chip and next thing I knew I had people sympathetically picking me up making me feel like an elderly lady. Amazingly this was neither alcohol related nor heel related but it's made the morning bucket hike and sheep wrestle somewhat 'challenging.' Serves me right for playing out I guess but as if my pride wasn't damaged enough (worst thing was my cream trousers suffered most) Ollie decided to butt my errr butt this morning sending me about 6ft into the air just as the number 29 went past....You know, I was once known for being ice cold hearted and difficult to read as a character - not since I've stepped into country life! No room for pride here! Like there's always some catty so and so in the office ready to stab you in the back, there's always a sheep ready to turn you into the entertainment for those on their commute to Brighton... As if I didn't ache enough anyway after the bank holiday hike up the South Downs at Kingston. Gorgeous day, good to be alive blah blah and all those cliches apply but oh how I needed the pub afterwards!
The animals remain well (the sheep very well as you may have gathered.) The ducks fly - yes Indian Runners FLY. That's flap their wings, reach 6ft and FLY. So, needless to say, remembering my Campbell escapee of not so long ago, they are in their pen area which is roofed until the weekend when DH and I can wrestle with them and clip their wings. A job that last time proved stressful for all concerned and I wonder if it contributed in any way to the fact that the week later they were ill...
Staying on duck land matters, we have a new resident on the pond - one juvenile Heron every morning and every evening taking off from the lillypads rising into the sky majestically like something out of Jurassic Park. They really are amazing birds but not so great for young ducklings, thankfully, apart from cowering in their house on the first day, they seem big enough to share the pond with him. I have no clue what he's after as no fish exist in the pond! Better do some research methinks.
We have so much to do. Simply no time to turn the bottom lip down at the end of summer. Hay to gather, sheep pens to prepare, water pipes to lag, holes to fill, bridges to create over the areas that turn to neat clay enabling winter wheelbarrow usage and many more things I had no clue about this time last year! Aside from that my role at this time of year seems to be chief cook. We are currently harvesting (ooo look at that word I can now apply to my life!) our apples, blackberries, raspberries, rhubarb and cob nuts. We are trying to learn about deadly nightshade and therefore not picking it and all of that means jams, chutneys, pies and pastries a plenty. Though it's been a difficult fruit growing year it's so nice - genuinely, so lovely to pick your own. Of course, it's also fashion changeover season and have been trying to create a capsule wardrobe for country work, yummy mummy work and work work (sigh, better get back to my cereal and water diet too.) So far, DD could give Suri Cruise a run for her money managing a more gorgeous look (and attitude) without the £ or should it be $? Joules quilted jacket the epitome of country cool this season. Me? well, I've invested (or so I've told DH) in Chanel's new eyeshadow and lipstick autumn range and bloomin' fab it is too - plum is so flattering (and long lasting for the benefit of DH should he read this on his travels!)
More soon beautiful readers, thank you for all your comments you've sent too recently! Good to have your support. For those Tweeters out there I'm now @southscouse so please follow!
Mx
Weather: Not bad today, sunny and warm, 22 degrees thereabouts. Evenings are cool though, a sign of things to come...no leaves falling yet though! Surely there's one more BBQ weekend left...?
The animals remain well (the sheep very well as you may have gathered.) The ducks fly - yes Indian Runners FLY. That's flap their wings, reach 6ft and FLY. So, needless to say, remembering my Campbell escapee of not so long ago, they are in their pen area which is roofed until the weekend when DH and I can wrestle with them and clip their wings. A job that last time proved stressful for all concerned and I wonder if it contributed in any way to the fact that the week later they were ill...
Staying on duck land matters, we have a new resident on the pond - one juvenile Heron every morning and every evening taking off from the lillypads rising into the sky majestically like something out of Jurassic Park. They really are amazing birds but not so great for young ducklings, thankfully, apart from cowering in their house on the first day, they seem big enough to share the pond with him. I have no clue what he's after as no fish exist in the pond! Better do some research methinks.
We have so much to do. Simply no time to turn the bottom lip down at the end of summer. Hay to gather, sheep pens to prepare, water pipes to lag, holes to fill, bridges to create over the areas that turn to neat clay enabling winter wheelbarrow usage and many more things I had no clue about this time last year! Aside from that my role at this time of year seems to be chief cook. We are currently harvesting (ooo look at that word I can now apply to my life!) our apples, blackberries, raspberries, rhubarb and cob nuts. We are trying to learn about deadly nightshade and therefore not picking it and all of that means jams, chutneys, pies and pastries a plenty. Though it's been a difficult fruit growing year it's so nice - genuinely, so lovely to pick your own. Of course, it's also fashion changeover season and have been trying to create a capsule wardrobe for country work, yummy mummy work and work work (sigh, better get back to my cereal and water diet too.) So far, DD could give Suri Cruise a run for her money managing a more gorgeous look (and attitude) without the £ or should it be $? Joules quilted jacket the epitome of country cool this season. Me? well, I've invested (or so I've told DH) in Chanel's new eyeshadow and lipstick autumn range and bloomin' fab it is too - plum is so flattering (and long lasting for the benefit of DH should he read this on his travels!)
More soon beautiful readers, thank you for all your comments you've sent too recently! Good to have your support. For those Tweeters out there I'm now @southscouse so please follow!
Mx
Weather: Not bad today, sunny and warm, 22 degrees thereabouts. Evenings are cool though, a sign of things to come...no leaves falling yet though! Surely there's one more BBQ weekend left...?
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