Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

Thursday 29 November 2018

Preparing the ground for growing more willows

Another spectacular sunset
Saturday 24th November / Sunday 25th November
I spent a couple of hours fighting with the electric fence!
I am giving over a small part of the sheep paddocks to growing basket willows and short rotation coppice (fast growing willow for firewood / chippings).
Rambo and his harem have done a great job of keeping the grass short so I can easily lay some fabric mulch ready for planting.


I have rearranged the fencing too so the chickens will have access straight into the willow copse. They should do a great job cultivating underneath the willow stools.


Meanwhile Sue has been busy. She finished an experimental circular rug using our own wool which she had dyed, then she turned her hand to Medlar and Rosemary Jelly and Green Tomato and Sultana Chutney.

Sue with Boris, Arthur and Gerry all helping her to make  a circular rug.

Tuesday 20 November 2018

Rambo's Big Day

Autumn medlars
Sunday 11th November 2018
One of last year's Shetland ewes went on her final journey today. Next time we see her she will be in a box and is going straight to a customer. We are however planning on getting her fleece back so we can salt it and send it off to a tannery. This is a new departure for us.


Moving the sheep around has meant that Rambo can be put in with the four breeding ewes. He got to work instantly! We should expect lambs early April next year.

While the trailer was still on we made a couple of straw trips to a nearby farm. Straw bales are remarkably cheap round this way, £1 each for conventional small bales which are so much easier for us to handle.

On the subject of sheep and wool, Sue has been experimenting with dying and has achieved some good results. She is using acid dyes as the rabbits made short work of the natural dye plants I was trying to grow. You simply soak the wool in vinegar and add the chosen dye. You then gradually bring up the heat and boil for 40 minutes with no agitation to avoid the wool felting. A gradual cooling and voila! Dyed wool.

The picture on the left shows Boris 'helping' Sue use her new dyed wool to weave a circular rug.

Thursday 22 March 2018

Felt Flowers

17th March 2018
Cooking and Crafts for a Cold Day
More snow and biting cold easterlies again. It wasn't the best day to choose to move a new house into the turkey enclosure, but they have started laying now and need somewhere to sit.
That was it for outdoor jobs. This was a perfect day for cooking and crafts.

First up was a parsnip cake - a bit like carrot cake but, you've guessed it, with parsnips instead. Easy apart from the grated parsnips!
I had dug up too many parsnips so made parsnip and potato hash browns for the freezer too. It's astonishing how much mess grating a kg of root veg can make!
The parsnips are lovely and sweet now - reputedly they sweeten up if left to stand a few frosts.

Next up was my first ever felting. Sue purchased a box full of different coloured merino wool for her birthday. One day we hope to be able to prepare our own wool from the Shetland sheep and dye them with natural dyes from the farm.
The actual process of felting is somewhat magical. You simply arrange tufts of wool as you want them, which is hard to judge when you've no idea what's going to happen, then agitate them with increasing vigour sandwiched between layers of bubblewrap. The fibres of the wool intermingle inextricably until felt is formed. And that's it.







Mine is the best one. 

18th March 2018
Things are Looking Up
A busy day ahead. It started well with Ewe 0004 finally standing up and looking a little stronger. I am still feeding her the bright pink glucose liquid. I think she actually quite likes it, but I can tell she is getting stronger by her initial resistance. Up till now she has been too weak to protest.

Today was the Grow Your Own group, hosted by some members down in Ramsey. I had arranged to visit a smallholding on the way with a view to it opening up for a summer smallholders meeting. I had also arranged to pick up a meat slicer which I had jumped on when it came up on Facebook. Three birds with one stone.

The smallholding I visited was delightful, even in the harsh weather. I was greeted by four very large, barking dogs. A few years ago I would have buckled and turned away, but I am now a dog lover (once I know they are definitely friendly). They no longer smell the fear in me.
Then it was time to meet the goats. I have not yet kept goats (note the 'yet') but I am always surprised by how friendly they are and how soft their coat is. I am co-ordinating a Goaty Day (nothing to do with funny little beards) for the Smallholders Club late in the year. Hopefully I will be able to resist their temptations. Seriously though, they are one of the trickier species of livestock to keep so I don't think we'll be getting one any time soon.
This is a shame, for I do fancy the idea of our own dairy products. A cow is out of the question and I am pretty sure the Shetland sheep would strongly object to being milked.

I stayed longer than I should have on the smallholding so was late leaving for the Grow Your Own group get together his wasn't helped by the total absence of mobile internet signal in Ramsey. Maybe I am too reliant on my smartphone.
Anyway, the meeting was most enjoyable as usual. We discussed perennial vegetables - ones that you just plant one year and reap the harvest for many more years. Asparagus, rhubarb, globe artichoke, Jerusalem artichoke to name a few. Oh that all vegetables were like this.
Everybody brings food along to these get-togethers. There is always way too much to eat and plenty of cake!

It was late afternoon when I returned to the farm. Time to give Ewe 0004 her last dose of glucose and to hand feed the wonky-necked Silkie hen. She is not yet showing any signs of improvement but we will persist for a while yet.
Her twisted neck causes her occasionally to completely lose her sense of orientation. It shouldn't be funny, but after feeding her, if you put her outside her little house facing away from it, as soon as you let go she quickly retracts backwards into the house. It is hilarious to watch. You have to have a sense of humour when things go wrong (paired with a strong sense of compassion).

Saturday 8 July 2017

Animal Escapades

Getting a bit behind, so here's a week's worth.
Another week's worth tomorrow.

18th June - Collect hay while the sun shines

A couple of early morning trips to a local field to collect hay for the winter. Such a wonderful smell!
The afternoon was the monthly Fenland Smallholders Club at the wonderfully named Hooters Hall, where we met friends and learned about the butchery room and the wool room. Sue had a go at spinning, not very successfully.


20th June - Baking hot
The day of the dead swallows. I've already posted about this.

21st June
I'm gradually getting more into moths. The hot weather and an open window at night mean that the landing wall becomes a bit of a moth trap.




One family of swallows has managed to escape its death trap clay oven nest. The chicks are very exposed to predators on the floor but better that than being baked alive. One has already fledged and the others look very close.

25th June 2017 - A Summer Outing
The Grow Your Own group summer trip out today. Hindringham Hall over in Norfolk.
The hall itself was beautiful, surrounded by a moat complete with family of Black Swans. The gardens were nice, but not stunning. A nice place to spend a couple of hours, but not quite as grand as the entry price might suggest!

We returned home early evening to find the four sheep missing from the top paddock. The gate was open and there was no sign of the sheep. A bit of a panic as thoughts went through my head of sheep rustlers or our sheep munching their way through the local fields. I systematically covered as much ground as possible but still no sign, not until I reached the sheep field proper where there were now thirteen sheep instead of nine!

It was quite an escape act, but more remarkable was how they had found their way there. They must have travelled along the dyke and cut through the electric fence!
At least they were all present and correct.

26th June 2017 - Lucky to make it to the end of the day alive
Well, today I got stung by a bee, head-butted by a sheep and zapped by the electric fence. Smallholding can be a hazardous occupation.
A very swollen ear
The bee sting came from nowhere. I was observing Sue's hides from a distance when one of the blighters dive-bombed kamikaze style straight at my left ear. No warnings, no buzzing around the head, just an instant sting. And it hurt.

Next up was the discovery of lamb poo in the orchard. These are the lambs which have only recently escaped the top paddock. Then, twice in the space of fifteen minutes, actual brown lambs in the orchard doing their best to strip the bark off my fruit trees.
Sue wasn't around to help, but I needed to round up the sheep and send the two brown lambs back to the top paddock. It crossed my mind to use this opportunity to wean them off mum, but it is a little early so I caught her too. This is when, as I lifted her over a sheep hurdle, she flung her head back into mine. Sheep skulls are very hard.

Finally back up at the top paddock, I turned the electric fence back on only to receive a thumping great shock from the metal hurdle I was leaning over. Unbeknown to me, the sheep had moved it into contact with the electric wires. These are the worst shocks, for the metal hurdle ensures you get a good full blast of electricity.

I decided to take it easy for the rest of the day and do something more gentle, so I put the small chicks out into a cage on the lawn. Their first fresh air, their first view of the big wide world, their first taste of real grass.
Lady Penelope quickly came to investigate and then settled down in attendance for the afternoon.


27th June - Why Did The Cow Cross The Road?
After yesterday, I stayed late in bed which seemed the safest option.
I was woken by the dogs barking. This is usually caused by the phantom intruder, but this time their was actually a reason for their warning. At the farm gate there stood a woman in full golf attire. It would be quite a shot if she had lost her ball over here, for we are a good couple of miles as the crow flies from the local golf course.

Turns out there was a cow in the road and she thought it might be mine. Many of the fields round here are rented out and I knew that the owner of the cattle lived over near Market Deeping. A cow in the road is not unheard of, but is obviously fairly hazardous. As I threw on some more appropriate clothing the phone rang - the local police trying to find the owner of the cow. Then a Facebook message from a friend who had driven past earlier and noticed... you've guessed... a cow in the road. Word certainly gets around quickly.
To cut a longish story short, I eventually tracked down a number for the owner and left the cow and traffic control in the capable (?) hands of the local PCSOs.
For what it's worth, the cow had simply been curious about the hawthorn bushes on the other side of its fence and was now happily munching its way through them, totally unconcerned by the passing traffic or the attentions of the police.

Saturday 29 April 2017

Wool Day

There's been a bit of a sheepy theme lately - understandable as it's lambing time - so I'll carry on with it.
A bit out of order here, for the week's new lamb took priority, but last Sunday saw us at the Fenland Smallholders Club Wool Day.

Club members demonstrated wool crafts including needle felting (kept Sue quiet) and peg looming. I list these two as they are the ones where something recognisable can be achieved with the least skill level!



Our peg looming did not progress much
over winter, but Gerry has become impatient
waiting. At least he seems to have already
given it his seal of approval.

What fascinated me though was the demonstration of natural wool dyeing. I had no idea that by using different fixing chemicals (known as mordants) you can get different shades from the same plants.
Dyeing the wool was a surprisingly quick and easy process and the natural dyes give such wonderful colours.





I am now formulating plans for a dyer's garden!

Meanwhile, back on the farm, our new lamb has discovered its very own sheepskin rug on which to keep warm!


Sunday 19 June 2016

D-Day looming

Sue's checking out the bees so I've decided it will be safest to stay inside for  a couple of hours and update the blog.

17th June
The school fayre
The school summer fayre and a good chance to sell some jams and honey. I got stuck sitting on the stall as Sue was bravely singing in her band, which I'm sure will have impressed all the children and parents in her school. Anyway, all the honey went. I could have sold more but the weather this last week was too wet for Sue to rob the hives again.
Sue's onion marmalade always sells well too - it's the main reason I grow so many onions.

D-Day
I returned home to the realisation that today was D-Day. I've not mentioned this before but I've known for a while that our wonderful neighbours Don and Maureen are moving. They will be a great loss. We will both miss our chats over the fence and Don was always there looking out for us and ready to help when we needed it. We will still see them as they've not moved too far away. In fact they've moved very close to our dentists so we can pop in every time we've got a toothache.
In one of our last conversations, Don told us about his long-time dentist and how he used to greet him with the phrase "Neither of us is going to get hurt today, are we?" He followed this with a raucous bout of laughter. That's how I'll remember Don.

So I returned home to see a different car in next door's driveway. That's when it all became very real. Later in the evening our new neighbours knocked at the door and we invited them in for a chat. They seem decent enough people but they're not Don :-(

Elvis ducks set free
I let Elvis's ducklings out tonight too. They've grown pretty big now, big enough to make a terrible mess of their small pen. When you first let a hen and her family out, the trouble comes with the hen being too defensive and fighting with the other hens. To ameliorate this I now try to let the hen out on her own a couple of days before letting the whole family out. This seems to avoid most of the trouble.
The ducklings clearly enjoyed their new diet of plantain leaves and whatever bugs, grubs and slimies were unfortunate enough to be in their path.

18th June
With the weather dry and us at home to keep an eye on them, we decided we would have another go at letting the turkey family out. Mum has been hopping the stable wall into the goose stable and then spending the day outside, but we have kept the poults inside following the terrible events of a while ago when we let them out too early and in bad weather only to lose four poults over the next two days.


Today's release went well and the turkey family spent most of the day around the stables. They seem to be very keen on the herb patch.

There are raspberries in here somewhere
Meanwhile, I tackled the raspberry patch. The raspberries, under a strict regime of neglect, seem to be doing very well indeed this year. However, they are impossible to get to. Long grass, nettles, tansy, docks and sow thistles have been thriving. I spent the whole day just pulling weeds to restore the paths to their former state. Mowing them used to be a real pain so instead I decided to rotavate them and keep them bare. But with the soil wet the weeds took full advantage. I'm now opting for the cardboard mulch route. This should starve the weeds of light. At the same time, hopefully the weed seeds will germinate and rot off.

19th June
Peg looming
I am really aching from yesterday's mammoth weed pulling session, so I'll spend the morning pottering in the polytunnel. I've a few late brassicas to sow and there's kohl rabi to be picked.

Later on Sue and I are off to a fellow smallholder's to learn how to do peg looming. I'll post up some pictures when I get back.

... back from the peg looming and we have bought a peg loom!
James keeps Leicester Longwools specifically for their dreadlocks which produce long strands of wool for peg looming. But I don't intend changing all our sheep just so we can use the fleeces to weave, so I took along the fleece we got from Rambo this year. To my delight it was easy to pull off and stretch out the fleece to almost a yard long with no great skill required.
Peg looming is the oldest form of weaving and is pretty easy to do, if a slow process - the perfect way to spend long, dark winter evenings. Admittedly these are far from my thoughts with the summer solstice looming.






Wednesday 6 January 2016

Wonderful Willow

After my dip into the world of fedging, I still had quite a lot of willow left over. In fact, enough to contemplate another project.

Not the willow on the left. No that's my little post Christmas present to myself - more on this lower down on the page. But this willow underneath. It doesn't look so neat, but it's perfect for rustic, living willow structures in the garden.
This 1000 litre water butt has been adapted
so I can easily dip a watering can into it
when my carrots get thirsty later in the year.
But for now it makes for a very good place
to store my willow cuttings with their butt ends in water.


I fancy making an archway, or even a dome, or a living chair!
So I took to the world of Amazon and typed in Living Willow. In less than two days, this landed on my doorstep.

And while I was browsing, I came across this one too.



Just before Christmas I went on a willow weaving day at one of my favourite places, the Green Back Yard in Peterborough. We were just making Christmas decorations and I had a fairly frustrating experience. On my third effort I started to get the hang of it and then it was time to go.

Third time lucky!
The willow used for this type of project is not so easily grown at home. To be precise, it's pretty easy to grow most willows - you just stick a stick in the ground and wait. When you and the trees are ready, you chop them right back (to ground level is known as coppicing, to about waist or shoulder level is pollarding - to prevent livestock from grazing on the new shoots). The result is that all the tree's energies go into throwing up long, straight shoots perfect for weaving with.
The most common variety for basket-making willow is Black Maul. Once you are ready to take a harvest, you simply boil the shoots for about 9 hours and then strip the bark. Precisely how you process it and which variety of willow you use gives you different colours and qualities. Of course, it's not simple at all! For 8 foot long bundles of willow don't easily fit into my largest stock pot and I don't have a machine for stripping the bark, which could take quite a while by hand.

I decided I'd like to try some of the projects in the book I'd just purchased, as well as having another go at what I'd attempted at the Green Back Yard. So I ordered myself some willow. All the willow companies seem to be down in Somerset and I managed to find one which sold the various types and lengths of willow in 1kg bundles. Of course, I had to purchase enough to warrant paying the postage!

So next weekend (weather depending) Sue and I will hopefully be constructing a living willow chair somewhere in the garden. I just need to work out where to put it.
And there'll be a fair few evenings in front of the fire mastering the art of making willow dragonflies, birdfeeders, stars, hearts and fish.

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