More afternoon snow images

The birches always look good in the snow.

The ducks enjoy an extra afternoon feed for warmth.

Which gang do you want to be in?

A good day to get the rest of the radiators taken out!
Just to add to the misery, the boiler's packed up this
evening! Probably just fed up being tinkered with.

Sensible chickens hang out in the stables all day.
     

Finally my handiwork is appreciated

 

White Out!

I quite simply can't let this pass without comment.
For today we woke up to white. OK, not a lot of it, but it doesn't happen that often.
For some, it was a first.

Tentative first steps

 



Others achieved almost perfect camouflage.

Thank goodness the builder decided this would not be a good week to install the new windows! But the plumber did turn up to remove another three radiators. That's six gone now, to leave room for the new windows and wall insulation to go in, but it only leaves us with one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom.
Thank goodness for the woodburners!

So the snow came overnight, as forecast, but then began its slow thaw. That is, until a fresh blanket unfurled itself over this flat fenland countryside early afternoon. As I write, perfect snowflakes are piling up, already a couple of inches thick.

The early flakes need a bit of luck to last long, need to land somewhere dry, or on another flake. But as the snowflakes get a foothold over the ground, so settling and lasting gets easier.

Of course, in a few days it will all be gone and all we'll have left to remember it by will be a few muddier pathways. A small inconvenience for such an amazing phenomenon. At the grand old age of forty-six, I still get excited by snow. It still makes my heart race. I can still sit staring for hours as it flutters its way to the ground.
However, I am now most definitely too old to want to play in it any more. Stinging, frozen fingers and numb toes have lost their appeal.

And I have discovered that if I set the camera to flash, I can capture forever the occasional flake as it falls in front of the wintry landscape.

Daisy. No Daisy. Daisy. No Daisy.

I remember in my childhood plucking the petals off a daisy one by one. "She loves me, she loves me not".
In a cruel play on words, I now find myself virtually flipping a coin over the continued existence of a pig called Daisy.

Daisy, our sow.
She has reason to look so worried.

Here's the story behind it.


A couple of months ago I was offered two breeding sows for nothing...and I turned them down.
If I was more cold-hearted I could have taken them straight to the butcher for sausages. But then so could the person who was offering them to me. That's not what small scale pig-keeping is about.

But the economics of keeping and rearing pigs are becoming harsh. For in the two years we've been here, animal food costs have gone up by 50%. I can not put the price of my pork up by that much.

But, more seriously, the price of weaners has plummeted. I hear tales of them selling for £1 each at market. Nobody can afford to feed them up any more.

Surely worth more than £1 each at market.

Daisy with the baconers.

In the past, the cost of feeding and maintaining a sow, plus getting the boar in, would be offset by the sale of maybe half the piglets. The rest of the pigs could then be brought up to slaughter weight. In fact, I'd worked out a system whereby a couple of boys would go at 6 months, the girls a couple of months later, and a couple would be kept till the ripe old age of one year as baconers.

Daisy looking very skinny at the moment.
Well, she has only just finished feeding eleven piglets.

But when the price of feeding up your own pigs is going up and up, the last thing you need is to be stuck with eleven - and that's if you only breed the sow once a year.
I am too small scale to be able to deal with the meat from that many pigs, let alone the cost of getting them there.



So I have come to a very difficult decision. Daisy has to go. I was speaking to my animal feed supplier yesterday who was agreeing that this is such a shame, as Daisy is a good mum, a healthy pig and has a lovely temperament. She would not be easy to replace further down the line.
But, at the same time, I cannot justify keeping her just as a pet.

Besides, it would be so much more convenient just to buy in weaners as and when I wanted them. That way I could much more easily respond to customer demand. I could plan for periods when the ground could be rested and Sue and I could have more freedom to spend time together away from the farm.
And I could try different breeds of pig. Maybe Tamworths or Large Blacks, curly Mangalitsas or even those Iron Age pigs. What's more, the weaners cost next to nothing at the moment. My very problem could be turned to my advantage.

So, as you can see, it has taken a while, but I have come to a very difficult decision. Daisy has to go. (If I keep saying it, it will get easier). Daisy has to go. Daisy has to go.

That was it...till today. When things got a bit more complicated again. And now I just don't know. I am genuinely torn. I can see all the advantages of going over to buying in weaners. But breeding pigs has been such a fantastic thing to do and Daisy is such a lovely pig. But then she will have to go eventually, and the longer we have her the harder it will be.

So what happened today to make the decision harder.
First, this...

Lured by food, the three in the cage
at the back were not difficult to catch.

A smallholder friend of mine took THREE piglets off my hands. I didn't even charge him. More of a favour between friends. He has already given me a whole load of electric fencing to use when I strip graze my sheep next year.

Now, I was expecting him to take two anyway, so three did little to change my mind. But he does know somebody who may take the other two boys. Right now, I'm not even worried about getting anything for them. It just saves me money in food bills every time one moves out.

But then, not half an hour after he had gone, I sold another TWO. A couple from just down the road who want to try their hand at pigs. They won't be going just yet, as a few arrangements have to be made. I have even offered to take them back if it does not work out, and to help with the first few bags of food. And to help out when the time comes to send them off.
For things would have been so much less stressful when we started out if that level of support had been there for us.

Irresistible

So we're now down to six piglets left, two boys and four girls. And we may even get down to just the four girls. That would be ideal. I never wanted to be spending all my time trying to sell. We would have enough for our own needs and some left for a few regular customers.

All I need to decide now is... Does this mean Daisy stays???    I really don't know. It's on a knife-edge.

...   ...   ...

I don't believe it! I've just left composing this blog post to answer the door. Somebody else interested in buying a piglet.

But I still think Daisy will have to go... Just keep saying it.

Bees come out to play

New year, new climate!
An unfamiliar sight has been blue sky, the sun and the occasional white fluffy cloud.

I'd almost forgotten that we have two colonies of honey bees, but on Friday they came out to enjoy the warm weather.

The girls come out to stretch their wings

This can be a dangerous time of year for them though. For honey bee survival over winter is basically a straightforward energy in / energy out equation. And winter forays, even on a warm, sunny day, yield no food. Better that the hives stand the winter in a virtual state of suspended animation.

Inside the hive, though, a small nucleus of female bees surrounds the queen, constantly circulating to keep the air moving and to take turns at keeping warm. Or so I'm told. For at this time of year it's best to keep the hive lid firmly on so the bees can conserve their heat and energy.

But on Friday the lids did coming off very briefly, just long enough for Sue to place a lump of bee fondant into each to sustain the bees once they have exhausted their stores of honey. This looks like a lump of royal icing and I'm not sure if there is actually any difference. So when the Christmas cake comes out it serves as a good reminder that the time of year is approaching to give the girls - I say girls since all the males will have been ejected from the hive at the end of the last season, surplus to requirements - their winter top-up.
For now it's fingers crossed that our honey bees do well this year and maybe, just maybe, we will get our first ever honey harvest.

A new home for the ducks

From doghouse to duckhouse

Today was a big day for the ducks, who were moving house, not that they knew it until it was time to go to bed.
I spent the day adapting a dog kennel, adding a drop down ramp to double up as a night-time door and a drop down side so we can get access to clean. Ducks seem adept at turning a beautiful, fresh bed of straw into a stinking, muddy mess in just a couple of days. They should be marketed as compost activators.

The ducks enjoying their new surroundings

The ducks may have suspected that something was up, for I drove them into the veg garden today, previously the sole domain of the geese and any poultry capable of flight. They spent the day foraging, dabbling their beaks into the damp grass searching out slugs and other tasty morsels.

Come late afternoon I ushered the geese into the stable for the night, then concentrated my efforts on herding the ducks into their new accommodation. I had deliberately positioned it against the fence and facing the same way as the old house and, to a large extent, this plan worked.

What I hadn't bargained for was that the ducks quickly discovered that they could squeeze round the side and under the pallet which is there to raise the new duckhouse off the ground. From there, they could emerge on the other side, or double back and pop back out from the front.

One in particular decided that this was a great game to play. So each time the other three navigated the ramp, as their tails disappeared into the house, so the fourth ducked down (sorry for the pun) and disappeared under the pallet, causing the other three to waddle back out searching for the missing member of the gang.

Anyway, eventually all worked out fine and all four ducks were safely away for the night.

Now I just need to figure out how to feed them without all the food being gobbled up by the geese.

For the geese need to be able to sustain themselves on grass, with any additions to their diet being treats.
But I doubt that foraging alone will be enough to sustain the ducks. 
My plan is to put the geese to bed late afternoon, then to feed the ducks. This way they will be hungry in the morning and hopefully clear up all the nasty slugs in the veg patch, but will get used to coming to food in the evening ready to be put to bed.







... NEWSFLASH...

The ducks are growing up. Today, for the first time that I've seen, the drake was getting jiggy with one of the ducks. Maybe we'll start getting duck eggs soon.

No Rash 2013 Resolutions

This morning I let Sue feed the animals while I enjoyed a very long lay in bed! For this is a new year and I don't have to get up to see the sun rise every day. For, unlike last year, I have made no rash resolutions.

And I am looking forward to 2013. Already things are looking up as today a warm, drying wind has been doing its best to dry the land. It's still muddy, but the mud is stickier and less runny.

Getting muddy was the order of the day, for there were big events planned for the pigs.
The eleven piglets are now 8 weeks old and big enough and ugly enough to look after themselves. So I opened the stable door and let Daisy chase a couple of potatoes into the next door stable. I quickly shut the door again and that was it. Piglets weaned!

Daisy finally enjoying some moments of solitude.

The beauty of this system is that they can still hear mum's grunts. In fact, within a couple of minutes they were preoccupied with eating the step ladder I was using to take down the heat lamp. I gave them a new bale of straw and a new water trug, which kept them thoroughly entertained for the rest of the day.

Mum forgotten already.

Outside it was a glorious day, blue skies and sunshine. At one point a huge flock of woodpigeons arrived from the east. A Great Tit was belting out its "teacher, teacher" song as if it were spring already and the Little Owl spent most of the afternoon quietly hooting.


A huge flock of woodpigeons wheels around under a blue sky.

Buoyed up by the success of the weaning manoeuvre, I decided that now was the time to move the two baconers (the last two of Daisy's previous litter) out of their giant mud-wallow and down into the stables.

First obstacle was opening the gate, which required me to climb into several inches of liquid mud to shovel the gooey mess out of the way. I eventually managed to open the gate a couple of feet, enough room for a pig to get through. But past experience has shown that pigs can be very, very difficult to coax through small gaps. They prefer to stay in familiar surroundings.





However, this was a day for smooth operations. For one of the pigs followed the bag of pignuts with great enthusiasm, and the other followed. Out of the pig enclosure, along the fenced corridoor up the land towards the stable block. In fact, at one point they even trotted along ahead of me.

Wrong way!

Half way. Keep going!

A brief pause for grass intake

Nearly there.

Even the turn and the gate at the end only provided a short obstacle and a brief respite to munch on some lush fresh grass. But the lure of pig pellets sprinkled in the stable yard was enough to coax them one stage further and the gate was closed behind them.

A smooth final turn.

The pigs could stay here, safely cordoned off, for as long as necessary. For the last stage, into the enclosed and unfamiliar surroundings of the stables, has often in the past proved a difficult step for the pigs to take. Even the concrete floor is a problem for animals more used to mud, grass and straw.




A family reunion

But two years of experience is finally starting to pay off. I let Daisy out of her stable and she came out to see what was going on. She seemed pleased to see her two girls, but even more pleased to find a sprinkling of pignuts on the floor.





Then all three pigs took me completely by surprise. For as Sue appeared from cleaning out the chicken houses and walked into the stables, Daisy followed her, closely followed by the other two. Straight into the stable at the end.


Mission accomplished with not a hitch, not an ounce of stress. Pigs sorted.


I threw in handfuls of whiffy old potatoes to keep the three of them occupied. The two piglets need some final fattening up and Daisy needs feeding up too after 8 weeks of feeding a litter of eleven. In fact, I was amazed that the two piglets were not substantially smaller than Daisy. They looked a lot smaller in the big open spaces and under the expansive fenland skies outside.




But they weren't big enough to be put down a peg or two by Daisy. 

Learning to get along






Pigs may be intelligent and highly social creatures, but Daisy is a matriarch who does not apprecieate competition for food.

She put the two youngsters firmly in their place. In fact, they were a bit shell-shocked.


But I'm sure they will learn to get along. There is just a hierarchy to be established.