Category Archives: Crafting

Children, Crafting, Food, Growing, Livestock, Preserving, Produce

2019 – a Difficult year

22nd January 2020 Dans 2 Comments

It’s been quite a while since I posted here. A year in fact, and what a year. When I last posted, Sam was recovering from his broken foot, I was recovering from the pregnancy and the baby had started taking decent naps. I was feeling very hopeful for the new year and came up with a long list of things I’d like to achieve. Ah the joy of January resolutions.

It turned out to be quite a hard year again. We had a few good months but then physical complications of doing too much too quickly post-pregnancy came up. I need to be very careful these days as to how much I do each day or else I’m wiped out for a few days. Paracetamol, the hot tub and my trusty back heatpad have become so valuable to me. On top of that the baby proved the saying that no two are alike. My daughter was happy outside toddling around, she was very trustworthy in regards to eating anything and would listen in regards to things she shouldn’t do. My son’s a bit more of a free spirit, he doesn’t like being in the pushchair outside, but eats everything he touches and doesn’t listen to much. It made doing stuff outside quite a challenge. I tried using a sling or carrier but the lack of core strength just gave me awful pain. He’s getting a lot better now though and seeing him run around in the polytunnel or outside, shovelling soil and investigating (but not eating) plants, makes it all feel worthwhile.

Sling for lamb checks
They had fun with this
Setting him to work
Bringing in the harvest
Making friends with the ram
A back carry to do some butchery

Despite the difficulty I did get the duck patch cleared and set up (although strong winds have since taken the roof off). I love looking at that grassy area with its very young willow trees and remembering what a mess it was a year ago. We had our first lot of ducks and really enjoyed that. Walking them into the house each evening was lovely and they grew so quickly. We got 10 and raised them up, kept them a bit longer than we needed to but they were a good weight and they tasted delicious. We jointed 4 of them for us and kept one whole. The rest we sold to friends and family and got great feedback on them. We’d like to do the same again this year.

First paddle
Getting their feathers
Free range grazing
Walking to bed
The final trip
Wonderful meat
Before
During
A year on (with a dedge)

We made the decision not to hatch chicks in 2019 as we were struggling a bit and our flock was large enough. I perfected the use of our sin bin and broke broody after broody, but we still had 4 hens appear out of hedgerows with a total of 24 chicks between them! The cockerel chicks have now all gone into the freezer and the hens are set to join the laying flock. In addition to having more chickens than we had planned for we had our first ever encounter with redmite and it was awful. We used DE, smite, redstop and fire to try and get rid of them. I think we managed it, though I saw a couple at the last house clean. This year I think we are sending our two cockerels to the freezer to make sure we don’t get more surprise chicks. I’m a bit sad about Aramis, he is the last of our first animals, but he is 4 years old now and with 30 girls to chase around he is looking quite tired.

Drusilla was the first to have chicks
We had to rescue Daenerys and her chicks in the rain
This hen was our most vicious mother
The chick suite once the mums left
Ready to tackle red mite!

We did lamb in 2019 and it didn’t go as smoothly as we’d have liked. All but one ewe needed help, most were just a one leg back situation but our smallest ewe had our largest lamb who was overdue, stained waters and quite stuck. It ended up being a job for lambing ropes and a bit traumatic for her. We managed to get her mothering in the end but she went for meat in December. I couldn’t put her through another lambing and the vet said with her size it may well happen again. We also lost a lamb at birth, she just wouldn’t take a breath no matter what I did. That one was a bit traumatic for me. The vet says there’s not much I could have done differently, maybe pouring cold water over its face but there may have been something wrong with her. Then we lost one who strangled himself in a fence at a few months old. These were our first sheep losses and although people say ‘where there is livestock there will be deadstock’ it was quite hard. We have decided to not lamb this year, we’re a bit overgrazed and looking for more land. 2020 will be a take it easy year.

Wrapped up cosy
Big lamb, small ewe
All the lambs

On the growing front we managed to build 4 of the 5 polytunnel beds and started planting in the outside beds. The weeds ran rampant though and quite a few bits didn’t get harvested. I didn’t make a single jam or chutney, I only brewed 2 batches of wine and we did a batch of apple juice. It was quite disheartening, the intention was there but we just didn’t find the time or ability or energy to do much.

Ready for planting
Covered in weeds
In full swing
We got some nice carrots though
Plums!
Rhubarb
Harvest time
More harvest time
Even more harvest time

On the upside I did make my first ever soup (butternut squash), I followed it with some lovely broth soups. I also finally braved my Mehu Liisa and made rhubarb cordial which went down really well.

Butternut squash soup
Duck carcass
Nommy duck soup
Mehu Liisa
Rhubarb cordial

I did however manage to get back to my monthly smallholding crafting meetings this autumn. I may not have made any pegloom rugs but I started needle felting which I really enjoy. I also picked up the knitting needles and crochet hooks, getting a few very old works in progress (WIPs) finished. I’d really like to make a felted sheepskin rug and tan my own sheepskins in 2020. Meeting with some like-minded folks really helped to inspire me to craft some more and it is so good for my soul.

Finally a finished object that fits!
Cheeky knitting while waiting for a lift
Needlefelt sheep
Felted from our wool
2D felted decorations

We had a lot of talks in 2019 about selling up, moving to a detached house with a big garden and going on lots of holidays. Smallholding with children, very young children, has been far more challenging for us than we could have imagined. I see lots of families on instagram managing it well but we’ve found it hard. Despite the attractiveness of selling up we do see the joy smallholding brings us, the health benefits and the fact that everything changes each day with the kids (the one constant of children is that nothing is constant!). We’ve decided that we are trying to do too much on our acreage, it’d be great for ducks or geese or chickens on their own. Or pigs, plenty of space for them. The polytunnels are great for growing and you can build on the established fruit trees. The problem is when I really sit down and look at everything about smallholding I find it’s the sheep I love and there just isn’t enough land here for a breeding flock of slow growing sheep (keep until min. 14 months). We’re looking at a larger acreage to better support a similar number of sheep, something that will also justify a bit of machinery as my back and core strength just isn’t what it used to be.

Looking to 2020 we’re not lambing and not having chicks. We’re working on sorting out our grass (quite mossy and overgrazed at the moment), repairing the sheds and polytunnels that have fallen into disrepair, growing veg, raising some ducks and hopefully finally having a holiday or two to ease the stress. I’m hoping to find the time to keep posting here, I do enjoy sharing the ups and downs of smallholding with you all. Hopefully even our struggles will be useful to other people who are smallholding or thinking about it.

Dans

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Challenges, Children, Crafting, Growing, Livestock, Setting up

Aims for 2019

6th January 2019 Dans Leave a comment

Well 2018 was a poor year for us smallholding wise. My pregnancy and then recovery meant we didn’t do much. Very limited planting, limited harvesting, no lambing, we stopped keeping geese and a lot of maintenance jobs piled up.

I am finally able to get back to work a bit, although it is still limited. I’m itching to get on with jobs though. I thought I’d make a little list here of the things I would like to accomplish this year. It’ll be interesting to look back on at the end of the year.

We ended 2018 by finally moving the shed in the orchard (walking a 6×4 shed was an experience), painting it, getting a (partial) roof on and moving the young flock of chickens in. I’d like to finish the house: get the other side of the roof on, perches and poop trays in and get an automatic pophole and window in. Built in, easy access nest boxes would be great.

We moved the shed the width of this picture

D’Artagnen and his 9 ladies seem fairly happy, except for one who insists on breaking out to lay in her old spot. She’s going to be a handful that one.

Next up is improving our fruit and veg production. We’re halfway there with the polytunnel raised beds and I’d like to get those finished. There’s also the beds outside to raise. The fruit patch is in dire need of weeding, mulching, more bushes planting and a cage over the top.

The area between the fruit patch and veg patch has been earmarked for ducks and will need fencing, clearing and seeding. The shade polytunnel also needs clearing and seeding for next year’s chicks.

I’d also like to get some willow planted around the holding and repair a lot of fence posts that our ram lambs knocked down. And I’d like to sort out the sheds, greenhouses and polytunnels so that we can actually find things, and maybe look into planning to replace our storage polytunnel with a small barn, we really need a better lambing place.

Ok there’s a lot of jobs I’d like to take on. I don’t know that we will manage it all, but we’re gonna give it a go. One of the big things I’d like to challenge myself with is getting out 5 days a week for more than our morning and night let out/feed/lock up runs.

Even being out for an hour with the kids I can still get a lot of work done. It may sound silly for a smallholder to not already be out 5 days a week but it’s something we’ve found really hard this past year. Between coughs, colds, flu, hospital admittance, bad hips, broken bones and wounds we’ve found we can actually go weeks only doing the bare minimum. And once you’ve been in for weeks it can be easy to slip into the habit. It’s not what I imagined when I thought of smallholding with children but we play the cards we’ve been dealt. I’m hoping for a healthier 2019!

We’ve already managed 6 out of the 8 days outside this year (Saturday I had a smallholding wool crafting group meeting and Sunday we had guests), and I’m so happy with the progress we seem to be making chipping away at jobs. The polytunnel is pretty clear and tidy, I’ve two more cockerels in my freezer and started on the duck patch.

Inside I’d love to get more comfortable with baking and finally try a quiche! Also craft a bit more, I’ve finally finished knitting Rowan’s newborn hat (which just about fits), but I’d like to start and finish more projects. Motherhood the first time round took everything, I’m hoping to carve a little more me time this time around.

We’ll see how I get on with it all, I’m really excited to see what 2019 brings. Happy New Year everyone!

Dans

+10

Children, Crafting, Traditional skills

Feeling crafty

15th June 2018 Dans Leave a comment

One of the wonderful, and potentially stressful, things about smallholding is the scope. There is so much more than simply raising animals and growing crops. What will you cook with all these varied ingredients? Will you get into preserving such as dehydrating, jams, chutneys, sauces, pickling, juices, homebrew, cordials, vinegars? Then there is dairy production, churning your own butter, yoghurts, cheeses, ice creams. What about baking, savoury and sweet?

The desire to smallhold often comes hand in hand with a desire to be more self sufficient and also to have a lower impact on the planet, smallholders are often quite eco aware. Are you going to make your own cleaning products like soaps? What about building things for yourself? From BBQs and sheds to smokers and solar panels, smallholders often tackle it all. What about carving with wood for art rather than function?

Then you look at what else your animals can give you, meat for sure but with sheep at least you have the by-product of the fleece which needs to be shorn each year. You can spin it (with a drop spindle or wheel), felt it (wet and needle), dye it, make rugs, make ‘vegetarian sheepskins’, weave with it. Don’t forget products from animals that have gone for meat, you have horns, skins, feathers and bones that can also have a use. There’s always a wealth of new skills you can tackle and I have a desire to have a go at them all! In fact I’ve made a pretty good dent on that list already:

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Today I wanted to talk a bit about the crafting with wool. This is something I was passionate about for a few years. In the space of a couple of months whilst we were Scotland, with the help of youtube videos, I taught myself to knit. I wasn’t very good to start with but I worked at it and became quite competent. My Mum juggled being a seamstress alongside nursing but I have never been very good with the sewing machine.

I fell in love with my new found ability to make something. It also allowed me to sit down and still feel productive, a bonus when you have a strong drive to always be ‘doing’ but a body that isn’t very healthy. I had a little dabble at crochet but the confusion between US and UK terms seemed to put me off. I can turn my hands to most knitting without much thought but crochet takes much more concentration for me.

I then discovered fibre. I could knit with real wool and using ‘spit and splice’ to join wool was a revelation that made me look at my stash of acrylic wool with a bit of disdain! Then of course came the need to know more.

What about spinning? A wonderful man showed me how to spin with a drop spindle made out of a twig and CD using bits of wool we collected from the fences in a field whilst camping. I was soon the owner of a drop spindle and a lot of roving. Suddenly I was presented with a lovely gift of a spinning wheel. Well once you are spinning it makes sense to go to the source and I ended up with fleece, both that I had bought and that I had been gifted with. That required processing and after a very lucky Christmas I had a drum carder.

Now I had too much fleece to spin and I ended up buying a peg loom to turn the growing pile of fleece into gifts one Christmas. I even bought a dying kit but never plucked up the courage to use it. My mother in law presented me with a huge loom that is wrapped up as individual pieces, I still haven’t plucked up the courage to unwrap it and put it together yet. Can you see how it is a slippery slope? At the very least I was always walking with at least one knitting project and I mean that literally, I could walk and knit at the same time.

Then I had my daughter and my focus switched to mothering. I didn’t seem to have time between moving to the smallholding and trying to raise her to do much crafting. I have tried a couple of times to pick up a knitting or crochet project but it has been slow progress and I have had very few finished objects since I had her. I have managed to make two peg loom rugs which are getting a lot of use. I did a demo on it at an event for our smallholding club which re-ignited the flame a little.

Our smallholding club (which I love) has been having a wave of starting up small interest groups (winemaking, wooly crafts, cheese making adding to the existing music, growing and baking groups). Despite being pregnant and seeing the imminent demise of ‘me’ time I signed up to the group. We have only had two meetings (one a month) but my word my passion for crafting has been reignited. After the first one I took some time to grab the rovings I made about 5 years ago and dusted off the drop spindle. I need to work on my technique again but it’s at the very least smoother than when I first started with it so I haven’t slid too far backwards.

A rare break to enjoy the weather and spin some wool

Next we had a felting meeting coming up. I had briefly dabbled with needle felting whilst at a camp last year. I made a very thin crescent moon and then forgot about it all. The aim was to do something with the bits of our fleece that are too small to be used in the pegloom rugs (the main destination for our fleeces). I figured I might be able to pick up some tips at this meeting so I dusted it off, grabbed some raw Castlemilk wool that I had bought when smallholding was still a dream and had a go at making a sheep. It’s certainly mammalian, I’m not sure if it is a sheep and you haven’t got much of a chance of guessing it was meant to be a Castlemilk but it was a experiment and I was quite happy. It took me about an hour. My awful start at knitting gives me hope that I can master this skill, I won’t be put off by a rough start!

The felting meeting was great, we made a wet felt flower with pre-dyed wool and it is something I can see me doing with Chi. It was meant to be a poppy but it came out quite big so I’m not sure I will wear it but it does look lovely. It’s something I can see myself doing during the summer months with Chi.

Following that I decided to have a go at the needle felt sheep with clean, carded wool. I bit the bullet and decided to give washing fleece in the washing machine a go as people in the group were confirming it worked. It was a bit terrifying and I did felt one (used a denim cycle instead of wool as they are next to each other) but it is working well and I think I could get through a lot of fleece this way! The fleece shown was very dirty to start with and was a bit dirty after the wash so I put it through for a second run. It came out cleaner but still a bit dirty on the tips. It wasn’t a great one to start with but it didn’t felt, the body side is a bit more tangled on the net bag one though, not quite felted but you can see it starting. I’ll go with pillow cases from here on out.

The drum carder got a dusting off due to another smallholder in the group being excited about them and getting one. I carded my freshly washed wool and set about making a new sheep. It’s very different working with carded wool than with raw fleece, the sheep has been a lot easier to put together and isn’t half as lumpy. I’m still working on getting the proportions right, the back legs are a bit thick, and the head is giving me some trouble but it feels like I am improving which is the aim.

Now another friend is experimenting with acid dyes on spun wool and I’m starting to eye up my dusty dying kit and thinking about putting together that loom. I have 5 reasonably sized white fleeces, 2 huge white fleeces, 1 huge black fleece and 19 of our own fleeces sitting around getting dusty so I have plenty to choose from for experiments.

All in all I am feeling reinvigorated about crafting and I love it. It is something I have really missed. I know baby is due in August but I am hoping I can find some way to keep going to the meetings and keep a bit of me time for crafting this time around. In the meantime I’m going to get as much as I can made before baby arrives. Hopefully this has given you a bit of an intro about me as a crafter and will help my future posts make a bit more sense!

Dans

Crafting, Food, Livestock

Our first mutton, sheepskins and horn

7th February 2018 Dans 2 Comments

Yes we are still here!

My laptop had a slow death and went completely out of use a couple of months ago. Since then I have been limping along with my phone but it was a lot harder to get things done. Now I have a nice new laptop I’m back again. I’ll catch you up with the various goings on as new stuff comes up, but I want to do a post about our first experience of sending sheep to the abattoir and getting the meat and other products back.

You may remember that we ended up getting more breeding ewes than we thought we could have in the long run. We wanted to see how they lambed and then cull down to our final number of breeding ewes (3). Two of the ewes, Anya and Aelin didn’t get in lamb, there was a chance they would if we gave them a second year but we just couldn’t justify keeping them on. They were earmarked for meat once we were certain they weren’t carrying lambs.

Lambing went pretty well for our first time. Alanna’s lambing stood out though. She scanned as a single and had a small lamb with no difficulty. We saw another sack but she showed no sign of pushing. A very small lamb literally wriggled it’s way out of her, it dropped to the floor, she looked behind her and then continued licking the first lamb. I waited a bit to see if she would do anything but then cleared the airways. We gave her 2 hours and still no mothering towards the second lamb. We did finally get the lamb up and feeding, which she allowed after a bit of a fight. She never did ‘mother’ Crais though. She would allow him to feed if he was by her but she never answered his calls or went to him. Both lambs were a lot smaller than any of the others and Alanna got marked for meat once her lambs were weaned. Her not looking after Crais gave us so much extra work.

Crais (right) with a lamb a day younger (left)

So weaning time came around and we booked the ewes in. I spent the week before trying to come up with ways to avoid it. Maybe we could sell them – but we want meat, if we sell them we have no mutton. Maybe we are being too rash in writing them off – but if we keep them we have 12 sheep on the land over winter, far too many. It really was a decision I wrestled with and I am kind of glad I did. I hope I always feel at least a little tug in sending animals off for meat.

Abattoir rolled around quickly, the trailer had been scrubbed out, the sheep dagged and checked over, everything was ready. We got a little lost driving to the abattoir, despite doing a test run a couple days before, we pulled up at the butchers expecting the side road to be a route to the abattoir but it turned out it was further so Sam had to do a u-turn in the trailer! The animals unloaded fine and we had all the paper worked needed to get back our Category 2 animal by-products. We drove back home feeling a bit solemn but not with the tears a lot of smallholders had reported.

I was back there a few hours later though to pick up the skins and horns. It would seem that the abattoir aren’t used to people doing this, they weren’t sure about the paperwork at first and the horns were cut at varying lengths, they did apply an initial salting though which was nice.

When I got them back home the skins were laid out and any flesh removed, in future I think I’d actually ask them not to do the initial salting if I’m going to collect them so quickly (they were still warm), as it seems to make the flesh harder to remove in places. I got them as clean as I could though and covered with salt. A week or so later we covered them again and then about a month later we sent them off to be tanned. I’ll try a do a more in depth post about the skins once I get them back.

The horns I had much less of a clue about. I’d read about burying them, or putting them on a high roof far away. Unfortunately we had neither of those and so we popped them in a dog cage near the back door until I could read more about the boiling method. As it turned out when I next checked on them the maggots had loosened the core on one despite the cold weather. I left them longer and the maggots loosened the core on 3 more, not really much of a smell at all until you removed the core. There are two more and they are now in the conservatory. I should give them a try again soon.

Collecting of the meat was ok. The butchers got a couple cuts wrong which was annoying as I had to drive back to get it corrected, I didn’t want to disappoint the customers. We sold 5 halves in the end, keeping one half back for ourselves. One was collected fresh from the butcher, one was collected fresh from us, two were frozen and then collected from us and the last was posted fresh. The last one was probably the most nerve wracking for me. I pretty much loathe polystyrene so we went for Woolcool packaging which is cardboard boxes lined with a wool insert. We sent it next day delivery via courier and it arrived fine thankfully. I think we’d definitely be open to posting in future.

We ate our first home grown mutton the next night and it really was delicious, just a quick dish of chops lightly fried but the meat wasn’t tough at all. We saved a leg for Christmas dinner and slow cooked it, the meat really is different to lamb, it is genuinely richer. We’ve had lots of positive feedback from the customers which is really nice.

We should have a very limited amount of hogget over summer, so if you’re interested get your orders in, I have a feeling it will go quickly!

Dans

Crafting, Livestock

A wooly adventure

17th June 2016 Dans 2 Comments

I’ve not been very good at keeping this up to date have I? I’m currently putting that down to a toddling terror with a love of laptops and a questionably understanding of the word no (I’m pretty sure she understands but ignores). A new rule that Mummy can have her laptop at breakfast might help.

So what’s been going on at Six Oaks? I’ll update you on the sheepy front this time.

The sheep have been shorn and ended up looking more like deer than sheep. It was a real adventure getting them in for that. We had to get them out of the field they had been in and then through the next area with long grass and willow trees, down a 12 foot wide strip of good grass between the leylandi and the polytunnels (aka Polytunnel Way) and into the open polytunnel. To start with they didn’t want to go past the gate of their existing field and a drop of the bucket on the other side meant they got a fair amount of the food without getting them very far. But we got them in and the gate closed behind them. Success!

Except it wasn’t, we got as far as Polytunnel Way and then refused to go further. I guess it was narrower and they could see that the end of it was blocked off. The bolted off in a series of kicks and jumps and found the willow which was then far more interesting than the coarse mix Sam was shaking. We gave up on the carrot approach and went for the stick. There’s a hedge going through this area and with an unsuspecting volunteer (Kay) we tried walking them down the gap between it and the fence to get them into Polytunnel Way. We soon found out that the hedge wasn’t as thick as we thought when they started jumping through it!

We gave up, stuck some hurdles up a little way into Polytunnel Way so that we didn’t have sheep wandering all over the place and put their water there. We had dinner and thought about shearing the sheep ourselves (shearer due first thing in the morning).

Of course when we went out to lock up for the night the sheep were happily in Polytunnel Way munching on the grass. We opened the hurdles and tried with the bucket again. It worked and we got them penned up just before it got dark. Of course both our phones were dead at that point so no victorious photo. The only bucket we had with us at that time was the chicken corn though as we were quite surprised to find that they seemed to like that even more than the coarse mix!

The shearer came and went with little event. We had the sheep penned up in the open polytunnel with the ends of the polytunnel blocked off just in case. Turns out that was a good idea as one sheep got loose at one point and was running around the tunnel.

The fleeces were so tiny! It didn’t help that a couple of them were really shedding so had the fleece coming away in pieces and half gone anyway. I may need to get them done earlier next year or learn how to roo them. My plans to make a couple of rugs from them went out the window when I saw the size so instead I have sourced some white fleece and I will do some peg loom rugs with brown and white wool. Hopefully more on that soon.

We then had a go at treating the sheep with clik to prevent fly strike. A lot of people say to do it a few weeks after shearing but our vet advised same day and I trust her, plus we were still mentally scarred from having tried to get them in that once! We managed ok, and it was only the sheep that got sprayed so pretty good going for newbies I think!

They are in their new area now, eating the grass down to a manageable height, taking shelter under the willows and looking very much like deer. The field they had been in is looking lush and green but I want to rest a while before they go back there. I also want to split it into three areas.

Sam with the sheep in the new area (well 12ft strip) — Sam with the sheep in the new area (well Polytunnel Way)

Not much else to report on the sheepy front. We did have our first wound to deal with a while back when I went out and saw one of the sheep had a bald patch. Turned out that 28 had an abscess on her head, but thankfully after a squeeze from the vet and a long acting antibiotic injection that healed up without event.

Now to start thinking about tups and how many we keep over the winter. We’ve got use of a neighbour’s half acre field now and the grass is looking really good so thinking about keeping all the girls and maybe selling some with lambs at foot next spring, but I know the grass will slow over winter and I may come to regret that. Lots to think about!

Dans

Our Good Life

Category Archives: Crafting

2019 – a Difficult year

Aims for 2019

Feeling crafty

Our first mutton, sheepskins and horn

A wooly adventure

A journey into smallholding