Escaped Piglets, Metal Detecting, Aeroplane Free Skies Force to Buy Local

It's not a great picture, but the best we could do, when last evening on our way to meet friends for supper at a local pub, we met this small group of saddle-back piglets on the road out for an adventure on a sunny evening. They were having a lovely time rootling along the verge and, fortunately, they were not too far from home and they soon scuttled back down to the yard where they belonged, but they were a very comical sight with a jolly air of porcine cheeriness.
A farmer once told me a old saying that on meeting a pig out walking one should always whack it because it was either on its way to or from trouble. I think these piglings were definitely out for trouble!

With the glorious weather continuing the Farmer & Eldest Son are getting on well with field work. The new grass leys have been sown in two fields and KT volunteereed to drive the tractor this afternoon to disc another field that has been ploughed preparatory to it being sown. With some fields having been put to the plough one of our neighbours who is a keen metal detectorist (?) has come over and is walking across the fields. She has found some interesting things here on previous occasions though they are quite mundane items being buttons  buckles and clasps and bits of agricultural iron work, though some of them have been very old. No hoards of Celtic gold though!

Our skies, as are everyone else's of course, are clear of aircraft and vapour trails and it is extraordinary how much this has been commented on in conversation with friends and neighbours and in the media. How long the flight ban will go on is anyone's guess but meanwhile it is bringing up some interesting topics of conversation and an awareness of just how much flying is done.The long term impact of this period is going to be very interesting. With so much fruit  & veg. unable to come ito the country, supermarket shelves are going to look quite empty soon so maybe people will have start thinking  more about buying & producing local food and also about local i.e. UK, holidays.
For those people stranded abroad and not able to get home it must be grim though.

Organic Milk Sales, Beach-combing, Clear Blue Skies

http://www.omsco.co.uk/
Yesterday the Farmer and I attended a meeting with representatives of OMScO  the organic milk co-operative that buys our milk.
The meeting was to give us, the producers, a yearly update on the state of the market in organic milk and how it is being sold.

20-25% of the organic milk produced in UK is being exported to Europe;
62 large milk tankers (1.5 million litres of milk) are crossing the English channel every week and the milk is then distributed to  throughout  France, Holland, Belgium and northern Germany where the demand is growing. In July 2009 the sales of organic milk to Europe were 1475 million litres, by February 2010 the figure had grown to 5425 million litres.
Here in the UK things are not so good. The sales of organic milk for cheese & yoghourt production have fallen, though the demand for liquid milk has remained about the same as last year.
The demand for organic milk in the UK is heavily reliant on promotion and the British government and press are not interested in organics. The Food Standards Agency report that came out last year did not support organic production and there appears to be active opposition to organics the UK. As far as the media are concerned organics are an old story.
In France the demand is growing and the French government is very supportive and encouraging of organic farming. In the USA is has now been ruled that all school meals have to contain an element of organically produced food and this is also happening across Europe but not in Britain. Our buyers are fighting an uphill battle to sell organic milk in Britain and it is the same, if not worse for organic vegetable growers and other producers.
There is a perception here that organic food is expensive. This is not necessarily true. In the larger supermarkets own brand organics are cheaper than established commercial brands such as Kellogs & Nescafe. The consumer likes organics, but sales are heavily dependent on PR in order to keep the public awareness up.
The other fact that was given to us was that the retail price of milk has averaged 82p per litre for the last 2 years, but the price that we get as organic producers has gone down over the same period. At present we are getting about 27- 28p per litre.
Despite all these facts & figures the atmosphere of the meeting was a lot more positive than last year when a room full of organic farmers who really believe in what they are doing, was not a happy place as the buyers were not particularly up-beat about the coming months. However, thanks to the export deals they brokered we are able to see an increase in sales and demand this year. We must hope that the demand will increase here in the UK as more farmers go into organic production on the Continent who will be able to satisfy their home demands and will not require imported British organic milk.

As an antidote to the politics of the milk industry the Farmer & I went on from the meeting which was held in east Pembrokshire, to the lovely small town of Narberth and trawled the antique shops there and then drove over the Prescelli Mountains from where we had superb views of the Irish Sea and the hinterland of Newport  to Newport Beach and walked along the lovely expanse of sand in glorious early evening sunshine.
The tide was out but coming in quite slowly and we walked along the high-tide line through wreaths of bladderwrack and the ribbon seaweed known as furbelows. It is always fascinating to see what has become tangled in the seaweed and we found many hazelnuts and acorns, many of which had been opened by squirrels and even a sprig of holly. How these things end up on  large beach in the knots of seaweed is a puzzle. There were brine-buffed, sea-smoothed small nubbins of wood and a few small shells of musssel and razor and tellins which look like opened butterfly wings. We came across two or three very large jelly fish which had clearly been left by the tide and had dessicated in the sun. There was surprisingly little plastic in the debris, just an occasional bottle top or length of polypropylene rope which glared their vivid colours out of the muted sea-softened tones of the seaweed & sand.

Out walking the dogs in this glorious weather I noticed that the sky is completely clear of vapour trails thanks to the Iclandic volcanoe and the closure of the airports. Our skies are usually criss-crossed with trails of the transatlantic flights, sometimes we have counted as many as 15 or so separate vapour trails at any one time. Today we really do have clear blue skies.

Spring Turnout of Dairy Cows, Ladybirds, Home-made Ice-cream, Poly-tunnel Veg. Growing

Yesterday was Turn-out day for the dairy cows. It always a significant point of the year when the cows are put out onto the new spring grass after having spent the winter months in the yards and cubicle sheds feeding on silage.
 It is a marvellously comical sight to see them go out; the normally staid and plodding ladies go mad and leap about like young calves and bellow with joy of being out on in an open field. After about 10 minutes of exuberance they calm down and settle into cropping the fresh grass. Putting the cows out is good for the milk yield and the flavour of the milk will get richer as the days go by and the new grass grows well in the spring sunshine.

Working in the garden and walking through the fields over the past couple of days I have been struck by the number of ladybirds that are about. Usually I don't see many and then not until well into the summer, however I have seen several lately of various kinds, the usual red with spots though with varying numbers of spots, a beautiful orange coloured one with only 2 spots and a darker orange type with no spots. It will be interesting to see whether any variations on theme will be seen and if this is going to be good year for ladybirds.

Our friend the Climate Change Expert arrived just before lunch bearing a box of home-made ice-cream that he had used some of our milk to make. Having brought pudding he had to stay for lunch, and the ice-cream was delicious being flavoured with brambles and was a marvellous rich colour thanks to the eggs from his own hens, a rich creamy yellow streaked with purple.
Ice-cream making is great fun and over the years I have experimented with various methods and flavourings.
The simplest recipe  I found was to use just a quantitiy of cream, some icing sugar, lemon juice and  fruit puree. I just mixed it all to taste and then froze it stirring it every now & then. Strawberry, blackcurrant  and plum were the best, I think.
Maybe this summer I will make some again especially if the soft fruit crops well.

The Farmer has now rotovated the poly-tunnel where we had lambed the sheep and kept the hens over winter and now it is all ready for planting with the range of vegetables that we enjoy. The Farmer has a passion for lettuce of various kinds and there be will several tomato plants, sweet peppers, cucumbers, courgettes, runner beans, peas, beetroot, sweet corn and some cabbage and cauliflower and not forgetting a trellis of sweet-peas which do very well in the poly-tunnel. I often have sweet-peas through to November.
At the end of one of the tunnels we have a fruit cage with raspberry canes, currant bushes and gooseberries which all do well, though the blackbirds find their way in despite the netting.
The worst pest we have though is rabbits who occasionally get into the tunnels and mice. Slugs are not a problem because the ground is so dry as we only water the plants not the ground all around. Butterflies are a nusiance on the brassicas and we really need to put a net across the doorways.
The Farmer is hoping to get some of the planting done in the next few days, when we have time between the gypsy caravan, visitors, and farming.

First Spring Flowers, Canada Geese, Gypsy Caravan, New Milking Parlour, Tree Planting

I have just come in from walking the dogs on what is a lovely spring morning and I found the first violets flowering in a crevice of a wall. Everywhere else around the gardens and along the drive the daffodils are looking superb and although the hens have been put to range freely in the orchard they are not damaging the daffodils that grow there in profusion. I have also seen the first primroses and wild strawberry flowers. A few days of fine weather and everthing will be bursting into life. It is wonderful when the hedges start toget their first flush of green and the trees begin to have their stark winter outlines blurred by their emerging leaves. The birds are singing madly, I had a robin trilling away in an apple tree the other afternoon as I worked in the garden and the chaffinches and blackbirds are just filling the air with arpeggios.There are woodpeckers yammering away in the woods and the sound carries all around the valley.

A trio of Canada geese have taken up residence on one of our larger ponds but it is unlikely they will nest there as there is very little cover for them. The pond is only a year old and has yet to establish plants along its rim though we shall be planting flag irises and I hope to get some water lilies in the pond itself.

Yesterday KT purchased a gypsy caravan which is very exciting. She & her father drove up to Manchester to collect it and arrived home last evening when the Farmer helped to unload it into one of our barns where it will stay while work is done on it to make it suitable as a quirky holiday accommodation. The caravan is in very good condition and just needs some re-painting and the traditional queenie stove to be installed and for the soft furnishings to be renewed. It has a pull out double bed  and will be be a lovely space when we've finished the work on it. KT and I will do the painting and making of curtains and re-covering mattresses and cushions. The site for it has already been decided, in a small copse of trees looking out across our lovely valley. A little cabin will be built nearby to accommodate a kitchen/sitting room & a shower room which the Farmer is already planning.

It is weekend of a lot of travelling for some members of the family as Elder Son & KT (together with her father & brother ) have gone up to Halifax today to dismantle and bring home a milking parlour. Our current parlour is in need of renovation and Elder Son found a very good second-hand one that had all the necessary requirements but it is near Halifax which is very long way from West Wales. However, they left at 6 o'clock this morning and we expect them back late tonight. and very tired they will be, no doubt.

Later.
The Farmer & I have had a very busy day. We have just planted a row of rowan trees of various coloured berries, on the walk to the ponds and a copse of silver birch near one of the ponds. We have also put a good large walnut tree in place of a huge & very old conifer that blew down two years ago. I have still to plant a number of camellias to form a hedge at the end of the garden, which in few years time should look rather wonderful.
We have further plans for more tree-planting, mainly specimen trees on a grassy terrace overlooking the new pond and hopefully we may get that done before too long. Now is the perfect time to plant things though we must water them regularly for the first couple of weeks if we do not get any rain for a while now.

Easter Egg Hunt, The First Swallow, Field Work, Tooth Fairy

Yesterday, Easter Monday, we held our annual Easter Egg Hunt which is always popular with friends & family.
Fortunately the weather which had been so threatening all week and was forecast to be horrid on Monday turned out to be kind to us in the end. We very nearly cancelled the whole thing yesterday morning but by lunch-time the skies had cleared and we had a lovely dry and blowy afternoon.
The Farmer had laid a saw-dust trail around the farm and through the woods for everyone to follow with nests of chocolate eggs hidden at strategic points. Some of the nests were in strange places; up ladders in trees,under hedgrows and tucked behind gateposts, but it was the first one which caused a lot of shrieking from teenage girls as they had to canoe to the centre of one of our ponds to a small floating island with a nest of hay upon it and claim their eggs. However, the labradors were also there and being superb water-dogs and food fiends they sniffed out the chocolate eggs too and managed to tip the whole nest in to the water! General hilarity all round.

The teenage boys were sent off with a compass and a map to follow a seperate route devised by the Farmer (who is still a Boy Scout at heart) across the top of the farm, which proved very successful and there has been a request to make it more difficult next year.
After everyone had done the trail, which was a lovely walk for the grown-ups and choc-fest for the children, we repaired to the farmhouse kitchen for tea where the chocolate-filled kids were still able to pack away quantites of iced cake and gingerbread!

There was great amazement on Easter Sunday (4th April) when Elder Son announced that he had seen the first swallow. We have kept a record of when they arrive each year and they usually appear on or around the 10th of April, so this is very early. However, the Farmer says it is a good sign as they will only come when they know there is plentiful food supply, so despite all indications otherwise, temperatures must have risen a little and there must be good swallow food in the form of flying insects, to be found.

Today it is cold and grey but dry and the Farmer is getting on with field work. He is out harrowing the fields that have had the muck out on them for a week or so now and as soon as the weather warms up the grass will begin to grow so any tractor work must be done as soon as is possible.

Having had a house full of family over the weekend ( we were 14 for lunch yesterday), everything is very quiet today. The delightful S. family who are staying in the cottage, on their 8th visit here, have just gone out to visit Kidwelly castle, having joined us all in the jollities yesterday.
It is lovely having people come to stay year after year in the cottage. We have seen their children grow up and this is where their son learnt to ride his bicycle. When they first came their youngest daughter was only 5 months old and yesterday having tea in the kitchen with everyone her second front tooth came out. It was hoped that the Tooth Fairy knew where she was on holiday or maybe there is Welsh Tooth Fairy who looks after holiday-makers.

Basket-making, Wind- damaged Daffodils, Australian Ginger Beer, Simnel Cake

Yesterday we had a basketry course held here on the farm. Last summer I spent time trying to teach myself how to make baskets with  reasonable success, but I really needed someone to show me how to do the thing properly, so when I met J., a professional basket-maker and basketry teacher, at a  local Transition Group meeting,(http://www.calonteifi.org/), it seemed the ideal opportunity to ask her do a short one day course. We offered the use of one of our sheds as a venue and a small of group of us spent yesterday in a very cold & damp shed with bundles of willow and sharp secateurs and made some rather good baskets, not perfect but attractive and useful.
I love making baskets. Once the willows, which come in lovely colours, are sufficiently well soaked to become pliable it is very satisfying to make practical items using a ancient skill. Even my first attempts, which are to say the least pretty 'rustic' looking, are useful. The Farmer uses them for collecting potatoes and currants and gooseberries and I keep my clothes-pegs in one of the smaller ones.
Of course one does not need to use just willow; I've used cotoneaster & ivy and I've been given some wonderful red dogwood wands which I'm looking forward to using.

Both the Farmer & I are very interested in tradtional rural crafts. The Farmer has made most of our furniture from wood harvested on the farm and we try to encourage the making of things as much as we can with visitors to the farm.
One of the favourite items with visiting school parties is when the Farmer demonstrates spinning sheep's wool with a drop spindle and explains how a sheep's fleece becomes a pullover. To see the children make the connection between sheep & clothes is encouraging, though of course most of them will be wearing synthetic fabrics. However, the explainations and demonstrations may make them think about natural fibres just as the tour of the farm makes them think about real food.

The weather today is quite hideous. March has lived up to the old saying this year with a vengeance...it came in like a lamb so beautifully but is certainly roaring its way out.
 I don't think I've ever picked daffodils in falling snow before. So many of my lovely golden host were dreadfully battered by the strong winds last night that I've brought them into the house rather have to look at them laying flattened on the garden.
I was going to put 'Battered daffodils' into the title of this posting but then realised that it might look as though I had a recipe for deep-fried daffs!

I do have recipe that I must try which was sent to me by a friend in Australia, for Ginger Beer.

Queensland Ginger Beer
8 sultanas
Juice of 2 lemons
1 tspn. lemon pulp
4 tspns. sugar
2 tspns. ground ginger
1 pint cold water

Put all the ingredients into a screw-top jar for 2-3 days while it starts to ferment.
For 7 days add 2 tspns. ground ginger and 4 tspns. sugar.

2 pints boiling water
Juice of 4 lemons
14 pints cold water
800g. sugar

Pour the boiling water over the sugar to dissolve it, add the lemon juice.
Strain onto the plant through a muslin, squeeze the cloth dry.
Add the cold water.
Bottle and keep for 3 days before drinking.
It is mildly alcoholic.
I think the making of this tipple is to be kept for long summer days such as we dream of at the moment.

I have spent the morning making Simnel Cake, rather late for it to have time to mature, but nonetheless with its lovely sticky marzipan in the middle it will be delicious and with my family's passion for fruit cake it will not last long once Easter comes.
I have a lot of baking to do over the next few days as I have all the family coming on Easter Monday. We will be about 14 for lunch I think. I do hope the weather has improved by then.

Mid-Wales Holiday, Good books, Quad Bikes or Ponies

Well, the Farmer & I are back from our short sojourn in mid-Wales and lovely it was too. We were staying in a delightfully converted 17th century barn in a narrow valley near Llanidloes.(http://www.cottagesinparadise.co.uk/) This photograph was taken half-way up the steep hillside that we looked out on to. We climbed up to the top on Tuesday and walked across the summit and then down and round to the bottom of the valley again. The intention had been that we then had lunch in the pub in the village, but as luck would have it Tuesday is the one day of the week that the pub doesn't open! So we continued our walk the 11/2 miles back to cottage and had a cheese sandwich, oh and of course, fruit cake! The rest of the day was spent recovering and working through the library of books that we had with us.
(Highly recommended; 'The Matchmaker of Perigord'  and 'Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo', both by Julia Stuart. Funny and whimsical with streaks of pathos and quite absorbing.)
On Wednesday we drove over to visit our friends H. & G. near Ludlow before they flew out to New Zealand on Thursday to visit their son who is out there working withYounger Son. They will see YS and give him messages from home. We then went on to have lunch in the lovely little Marcher town of Montgomery which we had never visited before. It is a gem and has the most superb castle with views such as are rarely seen.

Mid-Wales was looking beautiful though spring seemed even further behind than here. There were lambs everywhere and our cottage was surrounded by sheep and farmers on quad bikes checking them constantly. From the top of the hill we had a splendid view of the farmers working on the hillsides below us. The stability of a quad bike is amazing, they will go on the worst slopes without any problem. Presumably in the past little rough hill ponies were used for the same purpose, though they cannot haul a trailer of feed behind them, so the sheep were not fed out on the hill as they are now.  Once or twice have I seen farmers on ponies rounding up their sheep on the open hills above Tregaron but I think it is rare sight now.

We came home today rather hurriedly as I had guests due to arrive in the holiday cottage this evening, only to find that they had cancelled this morning, due to a tummy bug. Poor them.

Elder Son & KT have held the fort while we were away with their usual efficiency and everything is now back to normal with the Farmer out in his workshop sanding the new bookcases I think ( I hope). There is certainly a horrible whistling noise coming from that direction which usually indicates some major power tools being in use.

I am going now to sort out laundry and then will go to get the firewood supply replenished for the house and try to warm it up after its four days of chill. After that I will take the dogs off to check the gardens and the progress of the daffs.

Spring Birdsong, Holiday Half-Pound Cake Recipe

A beautiful spring morning after a couple of grey wet days.
We needed the rain, especially after having put the muck out and already the fields are have a flush of green about them.
The birds are singing away and the resident population of hedge sparrows are squabbling in their usual cheerful manner in the garden. They provide a constant background chorus to the farm activities from now on and they are fun to watch especially when the ground is very dry and they take dust-baths just outside our kitchen window. The blackbirds are beginning their courting trills and there are wood-pigeons with their velvety cooing sitting in the ash tree in the garden.

The sheep have been moved to fields further away from the main farm and I walked the dogs this morning the bleating of the lambs was echoing across the valley through the early morning Sunday silence. We have still got one or two ewes to lamb and they are being kept down here on the yard until they have produced and then they can go out to the fresh grass with the rest of the flock.

The Farmer and I are going away tomorrow for just four days brief holiday. We have not had any time away for about 18 months and now that Elder Son & KT are back from their long trip we can leave then in charge of everything for a few days. We are going up to a cottage near in the Marches near the Shropshire/ Wales border and will visit some friends there who are flying out to NZ this week to visit their Younger Son and will be seeing ours as well, we hope.
I have a bag of books already packed (I have had to restrain myself from reading them before we get away) and the Farmer & I shall have lovely time with no phone and no computer, just reading, walking and generally being pretty anti-social.
Having organised the reading matter ( I know how to prioritise our needs!) I really ought to think about packing some clothes and food.
 It has become something of a family joke that one should never go away without  good fruit cake packed into the corner of a bag somewhere. Admittedly I did not send Elder Son & KT off to New Zealand with a large Dundee cake hidden in their baggage, but the Farmer has insisted that we take cake with us this week, so I have made him a good old traditional Half-Pound Cake. If anyone is interested to try it here is the recipe;

Half-Pound Cake

8oz. butter
8oz. sugar ( I use brown sugar, but granulated is okay)
4 eggs
8oz. raisins
8oz.currant & sultanas
4oz. glace cherries
8oz. plain flour
1/2 level tspn mixed spice
1tblspn. brandy (or milk, but I prefer the brandy!)

Cream the butter & the sugar until pale & fluffy. Add the eggs a lttle at a time and beat well after each addition.( A spoonful of the flour will help it stop curdling).
Mix the fruit, flour, & spice and fold into the creamed mixture. Add the brandy and mix to a soft dropping consistency
Turn the mixture into a prepared tin (8") and bake for about 21/2  hours at Mark 2 (300 degrees), until a fine warmed skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Turn out and cool on  a wire rack.
This cake keeps well.

The Farmer has just gone off on a tractor to help a neighbour move some trees that have been felled and this afternoon he and the neighbour will be planking them.
I have just taken a couple of bookings for the cottage which is great and now I am off to start organising some lunch.