The Joy Of Sausages

It's hard to believe that we've never in 12 years of smallholding made our own sausages. You need a certain amount of equipment for mincing, mixing and stuffing. This can get very expensive for industrial scale equipment, or you can go to the other end of the scale and sausage-making will be a nightmare if you're making more than half a dozen.

Then there's all the bother with mixing in rusk and choosing the correct skins. And that's before the somewhat suggestive but risky procedure of getting the stuffing into the skins. Anybody remember The Generation Game..!

We've not kept pigs for quite a few years now. They cost a lot to feed and you get a lot (and I mean a lot) of meat.

But for a while we'd been wondering about turning some of the older sheep into sausages and burgers. Shetland sheep are a native breed and are best kept through one winter to go for meat in their second year. This is known as hogget and has a stronger taste than commercial lamb. It is much sought after.

Sending off intact males can be problematic with some species. Goats  and pigs especially can come back with a strong taint to the meat which personally I don't find very palatable. But we've  never had a problem with intact Shetland rams. We keep them away from the females before their final journey and try to make sure they go in late summer, when they have had the opportunity to fatten up on the pasture and before their hormones get going in the autumn.

Rambutan had to go off as he was related to too many of the ewes. And three of the older ewes need to go off soon. Rambutan is about four. The older ewes about nine, so they will definitely be classified as mutton, a rarely sold meat these days as it's not economical to keep livestock that long.

So Rambutan went with a younger castrated ram and we got both of them minced with lamb and mint burgers and merguez sausages in mind. In the end there really was no discernible difference between the mince we got back from the two sheep.

Kill weight for Rambutan was 25.0kg and for the other 17.5kg which is about right for a native breed sheep. Commercials are bigger, but natives are tastier and have longer lives.

We got nearly 17kg of mince from Rambutan and over 12kg from the other, giving us plenty of mince to play with. We weren't sure about the fat content of the mince. Most recipes call for minced shoulder and belly. I reckoned that the whole sheep minced would come back about right and it certainly looked about right.

I did a fair bit of research into recipes for lamb sausages and lamb burgers, tallied up the ingredients we needed and made a visit to the ethnic stores of Peterborough to stock up on spices. Some of the mince we kept back for other recipes.

Day 1 - Mixing the ingredients

We spent an evening mixing up ELEVEN different flavours!

These were: 

BURGERS: Greek, Middle-eastern, Spicy Indian, Thai, Minted and Basic with rosemary and thyme. We mixed up each batch by hand, working the spices and other ingredients in thoroughly, then put them in the fridge overnight for the flavours to blend and the meat to chill.

These were the SAUSAGES: Minted, Lamb Massala, Rosemary & Red Wine, Merguez 1 and Merguez 2.

Day 2 - Burgers and Meatballs

We have a burger press so it didn't take too long to make about 120 burgers. A quick try of a couple of the mixes and we were absolutely delighted with the juiciness and the flavours. We used some of the various mixtures to make meatballs too.

Day 2 - Sausage Making Attempt 1

There is a mysterious aura surrounding the dark art of sausage making. Secret recipes, do it like this, don't do that... It was an art we had thus far never dabbled in.

A while back we had purchased a grinder and sausage stuffer attachment to go on our stand mixer. Even if the sausage making went badly, the mincer is a happy medium between something hefty and commercial and something clamped to the side of the kitchen worktop and cranked by hand. We ordered some sheep casings for the sausages. I had ordered two sizes as I really wasn't sure what we actually needed, what would fit the three sizes of sausage stuffer tube we had and what would work best. The casings come in brine and need rinsing and soaking. They are a bit slippery to handle so we paid a tiny bit extra to get the ones which come on a spool. This makes it easier to load them onto the stuffing tube.

We started with the Rosemary and Red Wine mixture. It went incredibly well. To our amazement the sausages came out almost perfectly. But it turns out this was beginner's luck! When we switched to a smaller diameter skin and tube things started to go wrong. The meat mix was backing up and just wouldn't go into the skins. We tried all sorts with no luck. We even went back to  the wider skins and tube but our problems continued. A brilliant start had somehow come to a stuttering and very frustrating halt.

Day 3 - The Joy Of Sausage making

We figured that our problem had been when the meat mixture warmed up. So we kept it nice and cold and put the metal grinder parts into the freezer for 10 minutes before each batch. Hey presto! Back to successful and easy sausages. 

We tried switching back to the thinner tube. It was better than the previous evening, but still not easy so we settled on the 24/26mm casings.

It really didn't take long to finish making the last three batches of sausages. When I say sausages, I mean 2m long sausages! We still had to figure how to twist and tied them into strings.

This is where YouTube really came into itself. Scott Rea Productions is a fantastic channel. We had used it to solve our initial sausage problems and the slo-mo sausage stringing video was perfect. It wasn't quite as easy as he made it look and we adapted the method a little, but it wasn't long before we were both enjoying great success... to our surprise.

This certainly won't be the last of our sausage-making and I am very happy using sheep instead of pork as the basis for sausages and burgers. In the end we didn't use the rusk we had bought in. It really wasn't necessary.

So, my five pieces of advice:

Sausages don't have to be pork (in fact lamb makes excellent meatballs and burgers too)

Do a bit of research and get everything ready

Give yourself time

It helps to have two people

KEEP EVERYTHING REALLY COLD

Sheepskins

Someone noticed that alongside the two boxes which came back from the abattoir were two sheep skins.

It is fairly easy to get the sheepskins back and to process them. You need a special licence from Defra to collect Category 3 animal by-products, but this is a simple process and only needs doing once. 

Then there are two options. The first is to return to the abattoir on kill day (as you usually take your animals in the day before) to pick up the fresh skin, then get it home and salt it immediately to prevent any rot setting in. Alternatively our abattoir were happy to salt the skin for us for a very small fee (£3 per skin) which meant we could pick them up at the same time as picking up the processed meat. This was nine days after we dropped off the live animals.

We then topped them up with fresh salt, getting right to every edge but not onto the wool side. The skins just need laying out on a surface. They don't need any special stretching or anything.

This is all Sue's department. When she is ready she will scrape any surplus fat off the skin - we have a special scraper but a knife will do. There shouldn't be much scraping to do if your abattoir have done a good job. Then apply a tanning mix which is purchased off the internet. There are three different stages to this, the last of which is an opportunity to soften the back or stretch the skin if you wish, but this is not vital. 

Scraping the skins.

You can send the skin off to a tannery to be processed but the cost is fairly high, especially if you need to pay return postage. You will get a really good result, but the homemade version is quite acceptable.

I'll add to this when Sue does the next stages.

Locking horns

Warning, this blog post does contain an account of sending sheep off to the abattoir. I don't go into any shocking detail, but if you think of livestock in a cute, woolly way then you may not want to read this. However, this is all part of the process of keeping livestock with the aim of eventually turning them into meat. 

Lots of smallholders have taken the decision to sell their sheep flocks this summer, the drought and consequent lack of grazing undoubtedly acting as a catalyst for this decision. We've not lambed for a couple of years and have not been sending any to the great freezer in the sky either. 

But Rambutan our ram can't service the females any more as he is related to most of them. The older females need to go off for meat too as I wouldn't want to lamb from them any more and they will become unproductive. I don't mean that in a heartless way but it makes no sense to keep them until they get old and sick or die. I'm excited to see what the mutton will taste like.

Our decision to send some of our sheep off was delayed as both our local small-scale abattoirs closed down. It is increasingly difficult for any small local services to exist as the burden of regulation makes their survival impossible. So instead we have been asking around fellow smallholders to find out where they have been using, both for the kill and the cut.

Our two intact rams get along pretty well together. We keep a large wether (castrated ram) in with them and where male sheep are concerned three is the magic number for peace. But Rambutan and our new ram, Arnie, still like to test each other out sometimes.

A couple  of weeks back something happened to hasten our decision to wave goodbye to Rambutan. Occasionally in smallholding something completely left field happens. 

Early one morning my sleep was abruptly interrupted by Sue informing me that the two rams were locked together. That woke me up sharp! When I went to investigate, they had somehow managed to literally lock horns. It was like one of those interlocking metal puzzles, but imagine trying to complete one of those with a grumpy sheep on the end of each one.

An hour of trying to separate them was to no avail. However I pushed and twisted their heads, I could not unlock their horns. We were seriously beginning to wonder what the outcome of this situation was going to be.

Wrestling with rams is a bit tiring too, to put it mildly.

But there is a happy ending. Eventually out of desperation and needing to try a different tack, I oiled their horns and wrestled one to the ground. Of course, the other had to come too as they were in the sheep horns equivalent of a three-legged race.

As I virtually lay on one sheep and pulled the other round to be in line, suddenly they separated! No harm was done and both wandered off to munch on some dry grass. Both looked a bit sheepish! 

This incident hastened our decision to reduce our flock. We duly booked five sheep in with the butchers in the second week of September, the earliest they could process them for us, We then booked them in with the abattoir.

The way it works is that you either get them killed at the abattoir then transfer the carcasses to a local butcher for cutting or you get the abattoir to do the whole lot. The trouble with the latter is that, especially with a larger commercial abattoir, it's hard to be sure that you are actually getting all of your own sheep back.

Our plan was to get two sheep completely minced, to include the intact ram as he was likely to taste stronger than usual. We also wanted the fleece back from the ram to make a sheepskin. The problem with this plan would be ensuring that the correct sheep was minced. Also, Rambutan would be spending time in close confinement with the girls which might cause his hormones to start rising and potentially affect the taste. 

So after a little thought we rang up the abattoir to enquire if they could take two sheep sooner and mince them for us too. They were busy, but then said that they could take them in the next morning! Sue was due to go away that afternoon, but if I could take the two sheep in the morning this would make everything a lot easier.

So very early morning I  loaded Rambutan and one younger wether  into the livestock trailer for their last journey. On my own this was no easy task. Sheep have more speed and stamina than me, but I am more stubborn and have the ability to change my tactics in light of previous failures!!!

Once in, we drove the half hour to the abattoir. It is always a bit stressful towing a trailer, especially when you don't know what sort of space you will be asked to reverse it into at the end or how friendly the staff will be. The abattoir was much more commercial than those I had previously used. Lorries were already loading up with meat to take away and everybody seemed busy. 

Rambutan and nameless other loaded into the trailer.

A peek inside the holding pens.

To cut a long story short, I dropped off the two sheep successfully and didn't really even watch as they followed each other into their holding pen. Rambutan had been a bottle fed lamb and was a nice friendly boy, though his desire to 'play' could be a bit challenging when he put his head down and charged. I was a but sad to drop him off, but that is part of keeping livestock.

We pick the two boys up (in boxes) in a week's time, then we have our first go at sausage-making. That should be fun.

A luxurious new sheep shelter

Our Shetland sheep have had a rest from breeding this year. We missed lambing, but it made for a much less stressful Easter period.

We thought we would lose Rambo, our ram, as he lost a lot of weight over winter. We've changed his wormer and our shearer gave him a vitamin and mineral drench. This seems to have halted the weight loss, though he's not really putting it back on either.

Shetland sheep are remarkably hardy. Rain, wind and snow are nothing to them. In fact they look their most uncomfortable during the summer when the sun beats down. There's not really any shade for them as we can't put them in under the trees - the trees wouldn't last very long at all.

This small paddock near the house provides perfect shade
but only enough grass for about three days.
The sheep appreciate being sheared in late May so they don't overheat.

I've been turning ideas for shelters around in my head. Last year I got hold of some large corrugated roofing sheets. They're second hand but they don't need to be perfect. I don't want to spend a fortune as the sheep pasture is divided into six small paddocks and I'd like some shelter in at least half of them. It will need to stand up to strong winds, sheep scratching and maybe the occasional bout of being rammed by the rams.

I came up with a good design when we constructed the new fenced paddock last year and I did start on adapting this for a more open situation but the ground was rock hard and the job became consigned to the ever expanding to do list.

The corrugated metal sheets became temporary ground cover around the cabin. Until yesterday that is, when a marathon clearing session with the scythe reminded me they were there. On the spur of the moment I decided it was time to sort out a design for the sheep shelters. 

I usually start with an idea in my head and adapt the design as I go along to fit the materials available.

After a couple of hours, using just four wooden posts, four wooden pallets, a couple of lengths of wood and two corrugated sheets, the shelter was complete. When they've munched their current paddock I'll move the sheep in to test the design.

If all goes well I'll start on more shelters. They will be easier with the design now worked out.

A new sheep shelter.
Easy to build, £12 for posts, £6 for corrugated roof, £4 for wood, pallets free + nails and screws.
The key to the design is the wood both below and above the corrugated sheets so the wind can't take them (hopefully!) The one I built last year easily survived 60mph wins.

It was a beautiful day for working outside. There's  not much better than working in the fresh air under our uninterrupted fenland skies.

You'll know how into nature I am. I am happy to just admire, but I've resolved to try to learn a few more identifications. So if I see something which is new to me or which I can't put a name to, I am taking the time to look it up and learn a little more about the fauna an flora around me.

Today's find was a cluster of these delightfully cute beetles on one of the pallets I was using to construct the sheep shelter. A few scuttle off before i could get a picture.
They are in fact 16 spot ladybirds. They are just a few mm long. The feed on pollen, fungi and nectar.

Planting garlic cloves - the first job of a new decade

It was at the beginning of the last decade that we took the plunge and bought our smallholding in The Fens. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.

And so we enter a new decade.

One of the things which we love about growing most of our own food is how our lives are now so entwined with the weather and the seasons.

The first bed of the year planted up with garlic cloves

New decade or not, the turn of the year has seen me planting garlic every year. This marks the start of a new growing season. The ancestors of the garlic cloves I planted today go right back to those three bulbs of garlic I bought from a greengrocer in London quite a few years back. Every year I select some nice plump cloves from last year's crop and each develops into a new bulb, multiplying itself by about 10.
And by my selection every year I get stronger stock adapted to growing here on the smallholding.

In keeping with the developing patterns of climate breakdown, this winter seems even warmer and wetter than previous ones. In fact, it would be good if somebody could tell the rhubarb to stay in hibernation for a couple more months. It really is quite confused at the moment.

Some very confused rhubarb

I had to wait for a protracted spell of dry weather before I could consider working in the veg plot. Even though I have gone no-dig, so no need for digging over sodden soil, even just walking around on the paths would create a mud bath.
Fortunately that dry spell has now come. The puddles are receding and yesterday I was able to prepare the first bed ready for planting up with garlic cloves. The whole family came out to help. Sue cleared the asparagus bed of its old stems, Gerry climbed a tree and the dogs went digging for voles.

My team of helpers.
Left to right: Boris, Arthur, Gerry and Sue

I have had to move the sheep more frequently to stop the ground from becoming poached - with water lying on or just below the surface, their hooves quickly turn the ground muddy and the grass is slow to grow. We have moved the rams well away from the ewes as we are not breeding this year. They were spending all their time frustratedly pacing up and down the fence-line turning it into a swamp.
We have had to feed more sugar beet and more hay this year. Hopefully the paddocks will recover with drier weather and we won't have to hunt for more hay towards the end of the winter.

The ewes are quick to move to a new paddock when I lower the electric fence. 

But the grass doesn't last long in these conditions. 

Swallows and Lambathons

The first swallow soaks up the early morning sun

There is excited chattering above the smallholding once more.

Yay! The swallows have returned. And with temperatures already having reached 24C there should be plenty of insects for them.
That was Sue's wake up surprise for me on Wednesday.

Thursday's surprise was that we have our fourth lamb, an adorable all black single ewe. She was the offspring of badger-face number 00009. This ewe always drops her sprogs without warning.



So the lambathon bit of the blog title is a bit (well a lot) misleading. We have had four lambs - oh, did I forget to tell you about the twins born two days previously to Number 0001.

All are doing well. All were born with no problems for mums or babies. There are three girls and one boy which is a very good ratio. They were all born within our Easter holidays, as planned.


And that's about it.

Oh. They are adorable as ever!

A bit of practical sheep-keeping

Before I get onto sheepy things, I did say I would make more effort ot be aware of Awareness Weeks. This week is National Obesity Awareness week.
There are so many reasons for the rise of this issue. Processed food. Inactive lifestyles. Processed food. Inactive lifestyles. Processed food...
I know that some people have genuine food issues and that is a separate matter.

But most of our (well, not mine) food is manufactured by huge companies who will add anything from sugars and fats to misleading descriptions and marketing, all to make us crave more so they can make more profits. And most of it produced as cheaply as possible with some shocking practices going on, at enormous cost to our Earth and its fauna and flora.

Sermon over.
There is one answer. Grow you own! The food s infinitely better and kinder to the environment and you get free exercise. Win. Win.

Onto the main subject. Sheep. Growing your own sheep is fraught with complications. In general sheep are determined to get ill, keel over and die.
But don't let me put you off. Go for a native breed and they will mostly look after themselves.

I don't do 100% organic with our sheep, only in that I do occasionally worm them with proprietary products and I do spray them for flystrike in the spring. Not to do so would be irresponsible.
I keep these things to a minimum. In the past people used to routinely worm their sheep whether or not there was an issue. Unsurprisingly the worms have become resistant to some of the chemicals.
I don't rely on garlic or homeopathy or anything like that - these are possibly of slight benefit, but not enough to cover the problem properly.
Instead good grazing management is my main weapon. The sheep move pasture on a regular basis and the ground they have been on is given as long as possible to rest. This helps break the life cycle of the worm species.
I plan to move some chickens into the sheep fields too with a mobile chicken coop. Their scratching and pecking will help expose the worm eggs to the elements.

I tend to worm when there are possible indicators of a problem. The main sign is runny poo - known as scours. I am pleased to say that my sheep have very good poo! They can get runny poo from a change of diet too, such as suddenly going on to very lush grass, so it is not always a sig of worms.

At this time of year some of the sheep develop coughs too, which can be a sign of worms. The coughs usually disappear of their own accord, but if it seems to be persistent then I generally take the opportunity to worm the whole flock.
This is just a matter of pouring a small syringe of fluid down their throats. I hold them up while Sue administers.
First task is to get the sheep penned into a small space.
Today was the turn of the five ram lambs who are down the bottom of the land where there is no convenient way to pen them.
So I set up some sheep hurdles, sprinkled some sheep nuts (pelleted food) on the ground inside and waited for them to walk in. It didn't take long. Fortunately the ram lambs are not so wary as their mothers. This is helped by the fact that Rambutan and Flash were bottle fed as babies.

This gives a good opportunity to check their condition too, though I am pretty sure from their running and bouncing and frolicking around the field that there are no major issues.
Flash is all skin and bone, but he has always been the runt and has never put on good growth since he nearly died twice as a young lamb.

Tomorrow we shall repeat this operation with the adults. I hope they behave!

Santa makes an unwelcome appearance

Tuesday 4th December 2018
Far-reaching calls through the frosty air
The year marches on. In general it has been mild, but today saw quite a heavy frost which sat around all day.
Birds were on the move all day. Two flocks of Whooper Swans flew majestically over the farm calling to announce their return for the winter. There were buntings and pipits around the smallholding too, but most unusual was a flyover of 21 jackdaws. When even a single jackdaw flies across the open fenland landscape it can be heard way before it is visible. 21 had me looking around for a while before I clocked them heading over the fields.

Where the grass is greener.
Most of today's jobs were minor jobs related to looking after the sheep and poultry. I moved the sheep onto fresh grass. There is still just about enough grass for them as long as I keep moving them, but this cold spell may mean that I soon have to start feeding hay as a supplement.


Turkey escape plans thwarted
Every few days I have to mix up the poultry feed too. Using fermented straights (that means bags of neat grain rather than industrially prepared food pellets) is working well. There's not much difference cost-wise and I won't make any wild claims about glossier feathers or tastier eggs, but I do know that all the birds go mad for it. It also makes me feel more involved with my birds, rather than just chucking processed food pellets in their direction a couple of times a day.
I have also been growing wheat fodder for the turkeys, but it is slower to grow in the cold weather and the turkeys don't seem so bothered about eating it. I'll feed them what's left and then leave it till the spring.
Final job for the morning was to mend the turkey netting for the umpteenth time. There is now more baler twine than net! The trouble is that every time a turkey breaks through a hole in the netting, they walk around on top of it trying to work out how to rejoin the others. In so doing, they create many more holes than the original one.

Santa not welcome!
This afternoon saw an unusual visitor on the smallholding. For drunkenly wrapped around one of the electric fence stakes down with the sheep was Santa Claus! To be more precise, the remains of a foil Santa helium balloon. I do wish people wouldn't celebrate in such irresponsible ways.

A few minutes later another balloon came bouncing across the fields and landed in the dyke. This one was a birthday balloon, but it had a manufacturer's address on. I promptly sent of an appropriately angry and sarcastic email. I did actually receive a reply apologising for the inconvenience. But sometimes an apology just doesn't fix anything.

A palette of willows
Another afternoon arrival was more welcome. A batch of basketry willows. I put them into water ready for planting tomorrow.

More on my willow growing plans in a post coming soon.

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.

Separating the rams

I love keeping native breed sheep. They are so much more suitable to my style of smallholding than any of the larger breeds. My chosen variety are Shetland sheep.
For a start, they don't demand acres of lush green grass. In fact they seem to prefer my rougher pasture. Most of all they would like to get in amongst my young woodland where they would for certain make short work of the trees and saplings.

My Shetland sheep demolishing some sow thistle plants I've thrown in for them.

Rambo is the gorgeous boy in the foreground.

Come lambing time, they are not trying to give birth to ridiculously large little monsters which are basically too big to come out, so there are few problems and very few occasions to call the vet (an arm and a leg would seem cheap). This makes lambing time slightly less stressful, for I do not come from a farming background and do not have the experience for this not to be a tremendously worrying time.

The downside is that they do not produce a massive carcass and, despite leaving the young rams entire this year, they would still provide relatively slim pickings if I sent them on their way now. Instead we keep them through to a second year and look forward to what is known as hogget meat.

This brings its own complications too. Firstly they need enough pasture to support the adults and this year's young through the winter. But as mentioned before, they get by on very little so this is not too much of a problem. The bigger problem is that of separating related males and females.
Native breeds have a shorter breeding season than other sheep, but by mid-August the males start getting ideas!

So a few weeks back I erected a short stretch of stock fence to divide my paddocks into two. We already have electric fence, but for the sake of getting to the girls the rams would probably be prepared to take the hit.
Luckily we got enough rain just in time for me to knock in the posts. Prior to that the ground had been like concrete.

My ewes stripping some willow for me.

All the rams have settled in well and Rambo is tolerating the presence of his five sons. The ewes are enjoying the lack of male attention too. They do in fact have one male lurking amongst them but he is not interested as he got the chop last year. He is known as a wether. It is useful to keep one such boy to keep the ram company if he ever needs to be away from all the others.

We will wait till early November before letting Rambo in with the girls. That way we reduce the risk of poor weather at lambing time and if we are lucky lambing will coincide with our Easter holidays. There is no hurry to get the lambs out early in the year as we are not aiming to fatten them up before the grass dies down in late autumn.
When this happens any of last year's ewe lambs (Rambo's daughters) will need to go into a third separate paddock away from their dad and brothers.

Luckily the grass has grown back strong after the early summer drought so there are no problems going into the autumn. I have stocked up on hay for it will be in short supply this year and the price will rise steeply if availability becomes a problem. I hardly need to use any in normal circumstances, but you need to have it in just in case.

Foraging for Fodder

When it was looking like it would never rain again, I started to think about how I could supplement the livestock's increasingly meagre supplies.
There are some things which I know they like. For instance, the sheep go mad for willow or indeed any part of any tree. And I know the hens enjoy a bit of Fat Hen - it doesn't get its name by accident.

Believe it or not, most animals like a bit of nettle too, but you have to cut it for them. The turkeys are the exception to this as they'll happily peck at the growing plants. It's such a shame that for their own safety I cannot let them wander. I have discovered that the turkeys are also hooked on two other things. Dock seeds, which I have oodles of, and squidgy tomatoes. So every day I snip a few dock stems for them. They are easy to find as their rusty brown seed spikes protrude above the vegetation.

It turns out that the sheep like dock too, but I have decided to reserve it for the turkeys. The sheep like Fat Hen too and there is plenty of it growing in my veg patch. So every day I pull some for them. I snip off the fibrous roots and return them to the soil. The fat hen is absolutely laden with seeds which must be a source of goodness for the sheep.

The Muscovies prefer a nice bit of comfrey, especially if it has flowers on. This is jam packed full of minerals and vitamins.

Back to the sheep and a nice bit of Jerusalem Artichoke stem. I cut the sunchokes back at this time of year and they give a good bulk of greenery. Usually it is reserved for the compost heap, but this year the sheep take precedence.

The geese have been let into the lower orchard, mainly to keep them away from the brown chickens' food for my laying girls have been given total free-range during the day.

Main job for the geese is to trim the long grass in there, though they are quite adept at getting to any low growing fruit too! No worries, there is plenty for everyone.

It is not just the turkeys who have a penchant for tomatoes. The Pekin ducks enjoy them too. The problem here is that my ducks live in the veg patch. They are doing a brilliant job at keeping down the slug population but I have drawn the line at swapping this service for tomatoes. The tomatoes are now protected by spare sheep hurdles and netting.