Blog – Page 14 – Small Plot, Big Ideas

The Tamworths are settling in well

Sometimes it seems to have been much longer but the latest batch of pigs have been with us for almost a month now. In fact they’ve just turned 3 months old and are settling in very nicely.

Their home in the original pig pen has held up fairly well despite their best efforts to trash the place. Luckily we planned ahead and already have another couple of pig pens that can be used so that we can rest the current one when needed.

I’ve even identified a corner of the current pen which has been so well turned over already that I might fence it off and plant some veg there but I’ll definitely need to investigate electric fencing first!

I’ve noticed that it always takes a week or two for new arrivals to adjust to their surroundings but they eventually figure out that they can trust the people who bring the food each day.

Now they’re always keen to see people at any time of day but the morning and evening visits with the green bucket of feed seem to be their favourite.

There is still the fairly tough decision to be made – which two of them will be kept for breeding and which are destined for the freezer. I’ve already been firmly told that no more than 2 can be kept but luckily this choice can be put off for a bit while I watch their development over the coming weeks.

At some point though the two “keepers” will need to be formally registered with the breed society. This is vital for the longer term “master plan” which is to eventually have a go at breeding pedigree Tamworths but that will only start towards the end of this year.

Chicken update – Spring 2015

An update on the chickens is long overdue and particularly relevant now that spring is arriving in the North Pennines.

This last winter has been a real eye-opener because both flocks of chickens went through a fairly drastic moult. We hadn’t seen that at all during the first winter here so it was a bit of an education.

Hybrid layers

The rescue hens arrived just before Christmas and are making great progress. They have been with us for 3 months now as company for our last remaining pet hen – one-eyed Adele.

She had been kept separate from the others for safety after an unfortunate incident in 2013 and had been on her own since the unexpected demise of her side kick – Aretha.

It has been great to see her adjust to the new arrivals even if she was less than welcoming at the start. It wasn’t easy for her to keep the new arrivals in line, particularly with just one eye!

They are now a proper “gang” though, marauding together around their pen, the courtyard and even the large hay meadow too.

The “inherited” flock

We took over a flock of white chickens on moving in here and I’ve never known the breed name. However they have a very sneaky nature and are certainly not interested in being handled.

The cockerel keeps them in line and tolerates our presence a little but mostly because we bring a little corn near the end of the day!

The regular event of hunting for egg laying sites has begun but we can now draw on the experiences from the past so I’m getting better at that.

There’s nothing wrong with their nest boxes and occasionally eggs are laid there but instinct tells them to sneak off and lay elsewhere.

This year the plan is to find the hidden eggs and only remove a few eggs while marking the ones left behind. This seems to be working in one site for the moment and I don’t think they’ve noticed yet!

With the longer days and warmer weather the egg production from both flocks has increased noticeably – This is very welcome given the cost of feed

However it has now reached the point where the quiche tins will need to be brought out from the back of the cupboard.

Final preparations before planting begins

I’m constantly reminding myself of the good fortune in having a selection of fairly good outbuildings at my disposal. They’re generally weatherproof most of the time with power and light available so they’re perfectly usable for my needs.

The problem I’ve had is that the original potting shed had collected more and more junk since we moved in – presumably following that well-known law of physics where junk expands to fit the available space.

Later this year there will be other outbuildings to sort out which will mean a wider rethink on the usage for all of them. However the first step was to relocate the potting shed into a smaller space to exclude the junk and make it more convenient for the various raised beds scattered around the garden.

Starting with a blank canvas certainly makes the job easier and once the first items are in place everything soon looks good. If I’m honest, I’ve never been particularly noted for my interior design skills but I was quite proud of how the space was working out.

All started well enough and I felt that the standard lamp added a certain touch of class to the overall ambience. However once all the other “useful” items that I’m keeping were brought in, the space soon looked a little more crowded.

Obviously you can never have enough plant pots and seed trays so they have to stay. Handy tray covers, bags of compost, netting and mesh covers are also pretty much crucial I think.

I may need to rethink things in the near future because, although the picture below looks quite nicely arranged, there has been quite a lot more added since it was taken.

Getting there slowly... — Getting there slowly…

It’s clear I wasn’t as efficient as I thought I had been at getting rid of the clutter.

While I was wondering what to do with the large pile of left over, dried up old compost from past years, the one-eyed pet hen (“Adele”) volunteered to check it over and remove any unwanted edible (and inedible) items. Given her example, it didn’t take the 3 rescue hens long to figure out what an opportunity this was.

Chickens enjoying some dried out compost

Preparing for spring

Last weekend saw some long-overdue clearing up of the raised beds and perhaps not a moment too soon as the current long-term weather forecast seems to show there will be no late spring cold snap this year.

Clearing a raised bed with some little helpers

After some minor setbacks last spring with plants being slow to get started due to the usual over-eagerness to get things planted and growing, this year I have come up with a new master plan.

My theory is that around the 3rd Saturday in March (the 21st this year) I will plant seeds in pots for a few selected vegetables and leave them in indoors to germinate. The likely contenders for this phase will be those that take a while to germinate or anything that needs a longer growing season.

This will be followed on the 3rd Saturday in April (the 18th this year) with the first seeds planted direct outside when the weather has warmed up a little. This will include everything else I am planning to grow this year and will hopefully be the start of some properly planned succession planting.

As part of preparations for the busy days of spring, I managed to clear a few other jobs which had been hanging around waiting for the right weather (and motivation). The most important of these was to properly plant the new fruit trees which had been heeled in for the last few weeks.

Learning some important lessons from the last attempt at planting fruit trees, this location is a little more exposed but still protected by other trees and it’s definitely better drained soil so the it should work out fine. I have also installed extra posts when planting to support chicken wire wrapped around in addition to the rabbit guards at the base of each one.

We had some damage last year from wild deer when they took a liking to nibbling the leaves but the chicken wire should do the trick for now at least. I like to see the deer roaming around the local area but I might change my mind if they have another go at my young fruit trees!

And so it begins again with pigs

Saturday morning shopping is not normally one of my favourite pursuits and I’m not normally eager to set off on such trips.

However yesterday was different with an eager, early start preparing our slightly underused trailer for a trip to the northern end of Northumberland to collect our new pigs.

The accommodation had been sorted out in the past week and everything was in place ready for their arrival.

Our choice of Tamworth pigs is mostly because they are hardy pigs who can easily manage living outside all year round. They are also full of character and are officially a rare breed so we’re helping on that side too.

Last year’s 3 Oxford Sandy and Black pigs were an interesting trial with a different breed but our first weaners were Tamworths and I was probably hooked on day one with them!

This time around we have bought 4 weaner gilts with the idea of keeping two for long-term pedigree breeding. These are a little over 9 weeks old and even to my untrained eye they look pretty good – bright-eyed and alert.

The breeder had already marked out the two likely contenders to keep for breeding next year. They are all birth notified for their pedigree records but apparently official pedigree registration is only necessary in order to breed pedigree offspring in the future.

We will take a few weeks to see how they develop before deciding which ones to register. The only concern is that we may eventually decide to keep them all because we can’t choose between them.

After a very blustery first night in the North Pennines, they were up bright and early for their breakfast. They seem quite happy with their new surroundings even though they are just a bit too short for their feed trough. Needless to say they manage just fine by climbing in with the food!

Fencing works completed

As a result of having such excellent weather last weekend there has been some great progress made with the final work on the new fencing.

After being held up by the recent snow here, the contractors finally came back about a week ago to put the finishing touches by adding the stock mesh to the fencing for the pig pens in the woods.

Unfortunately it turned out they hadn’t quoted for adding the (absolutely essential) bottom strand of barbed wire to the pig pens. Other than that the finished fencing looked really good.

Now that the snow is clearing I was able to get to grips with taking down the old fencing that was no longer needed. It was cheaper to do this work myself rather than getting the contractors to do it.

Of course it also gave me a reason to use possibly the greatest invention ever – fencing pliers. Is there nothing that this tool cannot do?

Since this older fencing included quite an impressive (and perhaps unnecessary) amount of barbed wire, there was plenty to be carefully salvaged and re-used on the pig pens.

While dismantling it I realised that most of the old fence posts probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. Nearly all of them just fell over soon after the stock mesh was removed.

Apart from a few extras like drinking troughs and feeders that still need to be bought, everything is about ready for the new arrivals. They are expected to arrive around Easter which I notice is just 6/7 weeks away now!

The intervening time will be used wisely though by reading up on keeping cattle and especially calving or maybe thinking about longer term plans like winter feed for example. Having had two lots of weaners before I’m far more relaxed about taking on the pigs though.

Preparations have started

As part of the preparations for the planned new livestock arrivals, we arranged for a fencing contractor to come and make some changes to existing fencing in the back fields.

I’m sure I might have been able to do this work myself but the professionals are definitely quicker and the results are probably a lot stronger than my amateur efforts would have been.

The initial results in the back fields are pretty impressive for a single days work too but as they have the heavy equipment that obviously helps speed their work up.

The chickens will probably appreciate the extra space but to be honest this change wasn’t made with them in mind, it’s mostly to protect the solar panels.

Also the extra space we’ve claimed around the chicken houses by moving that fence line is already set aside for planting some fruit trees anyway!

When the fencers return this week they will be adding some new fencing in the woods to create two extra secure areas for pigs. Each new pen will be smaller than our original pig space (which we are keeping in place) but the extra pens will give us the ability to move different sets of pigs between them when needed.

For the moment when the picture below was taken the woods were calm and peaceful – that has no doubt changed in the meantime so I’m looking forward to seeing the results…

Further updates on the fencing – and the new livestock arrivals – will hopefully be available very soon!

Helping the chickens move house

It seemed such a simple idea this morning, I could close up the older main chicken house once they were all out and leave just the newer chicken coop open well before they put themselves to bed. Unfortunately this was not quite as straightforward as I had thought…

They’ve enjoyed this elderly but very desirable residence for some time and have had plenty of room lately as there are only the 10 hens and 1 cockerel in this group. Sadly the original “daddy” cockerel was found one morning over the Christmas break having died and fallen off his perch.

During the day they didn’t notice the housing change and as usual wandered off around the fields or occasionally in the garden too. However late afternoon required almost 20 minutes of chicken-herding, cajoling and arm waving to get the stragglers to finally realise that I was not going to open up the old house again.

In time I’m sure they’ll sort out their places in the new house but for the moment I could hear plenty of “discussions” from inside as they all settled down for the night!

Re-homing for Christmas

I’d spotted that the British Hen Welfare Trust had some hens to re-home in our area and last Saturday was collection day. I’d been considering doing this earlier in the year and decided against it but now the time was right – particularly given that our existing flock haven’t laid any eggs for quite some time!

Following the instructions provided, a cardboard box was quickly adapted and after the short journey they all arrived safely in their makeshift chicken transport. A little ragged right now perhaps but they’ll hopefully soon get back to full fitness.

These hens were intended to provide some company for our solitary remaining “pet” hen – Adele – who has had separate quarters ever since an incident with our other white chickens which resulted in losing the use of one eye. She has been quite happy sleeping in a coop on her own and during the day she will simply hop over the stone wall to visit the other chickens when she feels like it.

The new hens soon found the layers pellets and were eagerly tucking in but I’m not sure their company is as welcome as we’d hoped. There has been a few instances of pecking and a little blood drawn but nothing unexpected. Mostly I find that Adele wanders off on her own and ignores them a lot of the time!

My master plan seems to be working though and after just two days they must be settling in well because they’ve come up with the goods already. That is a life saver as we needed some eggs for Christmas morning and I couldn’t bear the thought of buying some when we’ve got so many other hens!

Freshly laid eggs! — Happiness is a freshly laid egg!

Making plans for 2015

Since the second half of 2014 has been disrupted by the day job and other distractions, it’s gratifying to now make a start on plans for next year. There are so many ideas and possibilities that it can sometimes lead to a sense of paralysis if I’m not careful.

Here is a rundown on the most likely possibilities for next year but I provide no guarantee that any or all of these will actually happen – that’s the beauty of planning ahead, there’s plenty of time to change my mind!

Pigs

After some memorable experiences raising two sets of weaners since the middle of 2013, the next step for us is to get a couple of gilts with a view to using them as breeding sows. These might also be accompanied by a couple of weaners just to provide some more pork for later this year.

The theory goes that if we raise the breeding sows from a young age then we should be completely at ease with them (and vice versa of course!) when they reach maturity. A full size adult pig will be a new experience for us so I hope they will be at least slightly friendly by then!

Cattle

New for 2015 will be a limited and hopefully gentle introduction to keeping cattle. The plan is to get a Dexter cow and calf but that depends on the available stock from local breeders as we’d rather buy privately and fairly local if possible.

I’m still not convinced that I will be able to look a calf in the eyes and then still take it to slaughter when the time comes but there’s probably only one way to find that out for sure!

Growing

The plans for vegetable growing during 2015 are coming together slowly but surely. There was a brief moment when the idea of getting a polytunnel was seriously considered but that is probably not a good idea just yet. I have to recognise that there is only limited spare time with all the other activities planned around the day job.

The emphasis this year will be on increased quantities but from a more limited range of varieties. I’m particularly interested to investigate ways for storing the harvest either through freezing, drying or simply packing away in a cool, dry place.

Machinery and Equipment

Of course introducing larger livestock will mean much more heavy work is needed so that could prove to be the tipping point to convince me to get a compact tractor. Perhaps even a brand new Siromer if I can find the money – at least getting a new one should mean that it lasts for years

Obviously the tractor will need all the usual attachments – whatever they are – so I foresee many happy hours browsing the websites looking for bargains!

New Year, New Opportunities

There’s a lot to think about and lots of money to be spent if all plans go ahead so it’s definitely wise to do some proper planning before going ahead.

Finding the balance between planning things and doing things is not as easy as I first thought but I like to think that I’m getting better at it over time.