Snow days....and moving home.

I'm currently in a pregnant pause....we're a week or so prior to lambing starting; a week or so till we move back into the farmhouse, and less than a week until the Easter holidays begin.

I tried my best to separate these major events in our lives...however, funny as life is, it's now all happening at once.  Like the proverbial London bus - either nothing at all or they all come at once!





The builders have been thwarted with snow days, bad weather and challenging times.  I got fed up of waiting 'to be ready' and just picked a date that seemed reasonable to book our removals to bring our possessions back from storage.  I want to be in before Easter, as this heralds the start of lambing.

Lambing is an intense time for all involved.  The 'Ologist and I will be going it alone this year, so the two of us will be single handedly taking care of our ewes.  That means covering 24 hours of the day between us, mostly spent in the lambing barn.   And I was hoping to be settled and moderately unpacked enough to enter our lambing phase.  This, it appears, is not to be.

We have decided to lamb in the other side of the barn this year.  Last year we used the concreted areas, being the pony stables and hard standing areas.  While this proved to have its merits, overall we decided that we'd rather have the non-concreted area for our ewes to aid drainage.  Try as we did, last year after more than two weeks of waiting to have their lambs the ground underfoot indoors was so wet that they were starting to suffer.  We eventually turned the last few ewes out to lamb outdoors, which in itself is healthier and less stressful for them, but it means we don't have as much control and can't always see what is happening.

The other side of the barn is where we store our hay and other farm machinery.  The ground is level, but its a compacted dirt floor which will be ideal once covered in straw bedding.  We have built an enclosure using all our hurdles and the pallets we've received on the building site.  We have overhead lights strung up, and a few bonding pens in the most sheltered corners.  Hopefully this will be a good environment in which to birth our lambs.  We will be lambing just under 40 ewes, while that's not very many in comparison to our neighbouring farmer friends its plenty for us and could yield up to 60 or so lambs.  Now we just need a never-ending supply of cake, coffee and some friendly faces to keep us company!





All the animals survived the cold snap and some of our four legged friends even seemed to enjoy the snow.  Our small pony loves to roll when turned out, every day without fail.  Even in the snow!







 

The small girl also spent many hours outside in the snow, marvelling at the wonderland that had appeared in the landscape.  Being born in the southern hemisphere, and spending her first few years in the sunshine growing up by a beach, the snow is even more magic to her and she never fails to tire of playing in it.

The garden is still no further on than the autumn time.  However, the little work we did by piling inches of mulch down will definitely pay dividends in the late spring to suppress the weeds.  The chickens are enjoying spreading it far and wide so some raking and reshaping will be needed, but its not too bad.  We are getting full production from our hens currently, and half a dozen eggs a day soon mounts up.  Another reason I'm looking forward to moving back to the farmhouse and my trusty Rayburn where I'll have the space and gadgets back to be more creative in the culinary department.

While living in the cottage has been fun, there have been a few awkward issues to overcome like our small gas oven.  The gas seems to have a mind of its own, and many an evening our supper has been transferred to the farmhouse Rayburn to finish off.  This has meant tip toeing through the building debris, and wiping an inch of dust off the Rayburn before putting our food inside it....challenging to say the least - annoying, but we've overcome it and managed  ok.

An exiting new arrival on the farm is our pig ark.  It hasn't come far...from a neighbour a few fields away.  Its in good condition and has an integral base which will be good for us.  We are just deciding the best place for it and then we'll be ready to receive some weaners.  Our existing ark was found in pieces in the woodlands when we first arrived here four years ago and we managed to rebuild it successfully enough to house our first 3 pigs.  We don't think it will cope with another reinvention in a new position - and my offer of it to the small girl for a playhouse was greeted with a screwed up nose so it may be heading for the bonfire.


Some early flowers that appeared this spring have been a welcome reminder of the beauty in the garden that was here before we invited the diggers in.  Beautiful hellebores (hellebores orientalis) appeared in feed sacks in clumps of earth that I had managed to dig up and save before the trenches were cut across the garden.  Lovely bright crocuses pushed their way out of the mulch and the stalwart camellias have all brightened the landscape.

Right from the start when we first moved here I have been extremely frugal on the purchase of new plants (its been hard!)  We always knew we were going to be undertaking a big building project here and the gardens and ground has been ripped up to accommodate trenches carrying pipes to service the new holiday homes and the farmhouse. Any new shrubs or trees would most likely have gotten lost in the midst of rubble and piles of earth, and therefore a huge waste of much needed funds.

We have developed the paddock to the east of the farmhouse and last year we planted the orchard there.  Over the winter we have built my 'pottering shed', and have one raised bed filled with well rotten manure.  The chickens are housed on the side of the pottering shed and their is run beside this too.  The pig arc will be in this paddock - somewhere.  What we don't have yet are any cold frames in which to keep plants over wintered so my lack of plant buying will have hopefully paid off!  I have taken a number of cuttings and hope they make it through the snowy times.  I am making a few new plant-swapping friends so before too long I'm hoping to start to build up the plant nursery and develop a good stock of plants to be able to plant up beds round the new holiday homes.

The muscovy dusks continue to amuse us as they have a totally free range lifestyle, pleasing themselves as to when and where they go.  We have had days go by when there's been no sign of any ducks, and just as we've come to the sad conclusion they've been dinner for a local fox they arrive, literally on the cottage doorstep, keen for some attention and a shake of seeds.

We seem to have a pair of wild ducks that have taken up residence on the top pond.  This is on the driveway and the contractor traffic up and down hasn't as yet deterred them from setting up camp.  It would be lovely to see some ducklings here later, watch this space!

We have had a large amount of snow down here in Devon.  This has somewhat marred the onset of spring, but as it thaws I can feel the warmth of spring around the corner.  The daffodils are doing their best to recover from the heavy snowfalls and turn their yellow heads to the mild sunshine.  The blue skies are returning and the grass is growing.

Enjoy the holidays...hope the Easter bunny visits a garden near you!