Orphan Lamb, Spring Flowers, Pigs & Ducks on TV

Lambing is virtually finished but we do have one orphan who is bottle-fed. He escaped from his pen in the lambing shed and tracked the Farmer down in the kitchen and demanded to be fed. Bottle-fed lambs can be fun if you don't have too many and just one is great. They become great characters and will follow us round like a dog enjoying the company but can also become very demanding and vocal. They also produce vast quantities of wee, so they are not encouraged in the house!

We've had couple of days of lovely weather which has encouraged us all to get on with gardening, tidying up the yards and generally making the place look better after the winter. The daffodils are amazing this year and as we have so many differnet varieties they flower in sequence which means we have superb displays for many weeks. The primroses are out in full force and even a few cowslips are showing their lovely umbells of yellow heads.

Our television-star pigs are settled in and when they are not out on the yard wanting to know hat is going on and trying to snuffle at the dogs through the bars of their pen they are most contentedly snug in their ark sleeping the sleep of the well-fed.
The ducks are also having a happy life and have even started to lay eggs. if we can fidn abroody hen we shall try to hatch some ducklings. Ducks are hopeless mothers, a broody hen is much more reliable and consciensious, she will actually sit for the required 33 days whereas ducks just walk off having laid their egg just anywhere, not in a nest just where they happen to be when the urge comes upon them.
The televison programme in which they have been cast is still a work in progress and the title is being kept under wraps but all will be revealed at the end of the summer.

Spring, Lambing Nearly Over, Filming for BBC Wales

Despite the cold,wet,grey weather the primroses are putting their sweet faces up in the hope of some sunshine and the daffodils are showing their golden trumpets everywhere around the farm and confirming that spring is here,and the birds are determinedly singing their springtime welcome choruses.
I have been laid low with the 'flu-type lurgy that has been rampaging around lately. A fortnight of coughing and lack of energy after 3 days in bed, which surely must be on the wane by now...it is very boring!! especially with such a lot of gardening to be done and general maintenance in the holiday cottage and the farmhouse. Next week I have the decorators coming in so our stairwell and dining-room need to be cleared out and made cob-web-free in preparation for the new clean paintwork. All rather exciting but a lot of work.

Lambing is going well and is nearly over with only a handful of ewes left to pop. It is such a pity that is is so cold though the older lambs cope very well, we don't like putting the very new ones out just yet.

Ten days ago we had a television film crew here for 3 days working on a programme for BBC Wales about farm animals. The filming went well and was the first of several sessions that will occur throughout the summer. The crew return next week and hopefully the weather will have improved for them by then. We have hosted film crews many times over the years and it is always interesting having them here. They are very focussed on their project and there are times when we have to explain that farm animals will not perform to command and that endless patience is required but they almost always get what they want in the end. The Farmer has had to arrange for some pedigree Traditional Welsh pigs to be brought in (all done perfectly legally with the necessary paperwork in place!) and we've had to get some ducks and have a borrowed pony all destined for their 15 minutes of fame, and all rather good fun for us.

Spring is Postponed, Lambing, Empty Mid-Wales, Sheep Stealing

Yesterday was a day of clear blue skies and almost warm sunshine which made us feel spring was really on its way. Today we have lowering grey skies, vicious showers of cold rain being hurled at us by a bullying, blustrous wind...so spring has gone into hiding once more and the weather forecast is predicting bitter cold and possibly more snow for the east over the next few days, so we are back to where we were ten days ago.

Despite the return of grim weather the brave & jaunty daffodils are forging ahead with their jubilant colour enlivening everyone's spirits alongside some of the best displays of snowdrops that we have had for several years.
Each morning we hear the plaintive calls of the Canada geese as they make their way down the valley to the river and sometimes they land on one of our ponds where they spend a couple of hours majestically treading water before setting of once more on their flight path west. Trios of mallard also visit and sit quietly until something alarms them and they rise up off the water in a clamorous flurry to be seen wheeling off to another pond in the valley.

We are still just getting going with lambing with the bulk of the ewes due to start next week. We have a couple of lambs that are being bottle-fed but they have got the hang of it and so it is easy. Although ideally we would not have 'molly' lambs as they are called it is quite satisfying when they feed well and can be seen to be thriving.

A few days ago the Farmer and I had a chance to go off for the day and so we took ourselves up into the empty hills above Tregaron and drove across a dramatic landscape still scattered with pockets of snow. On of the oddest sights up in hills is that of what must be one of the loneliest letter-boxes with its neighbouring derelict phone box in the country as seen below...

This part of the country is beautiful and even in the summer there are few people to be found up there. The only sounds to be heard are the bleating of the sheep, the mewing of the buzzards, the wind through the conifer plantations and the running water in the small streamm that feed into the Llyn Brianne reservoir.

A grim note on society; earlier this week Elder Son was out checking fences in some of our outlying fields and came across a grisly find...a sheep's head, spine and rib cage along with a stinking bag containing the rotting remains of the skin and fleece. It was not one our sheep being a different breed, so must have been stolen out of a field elsewhere, slaughtered and then the two back legs taken presumably to eat, with the remains of the carcase being dummped in our field which is on the side of a quiet country lane. A criminal, disgusting act and with no chance of the perpetrators being caught and held to account. I suspect that this is something goes on more often than we would think but it is a shock when it occurs on one's own land.

Thaw, Lambing

After days of intense, biting cold and only a thin layer of snow we had 'proper' snow over the wekend thanks to a slight rise in temperature. Whilst the snow is beautiful to look at it and the grand-children were thrilled to able to use their sledges, it caused more problems in what had already been a very difficult week due to the Arctic conditions. In addition to having to thaw out water pipes & cattle troughs which all takes time the drive had to be scraped and spread with gravel in the hope of getting the milk tanker in. If the tanker cannot get here we would have had to dump the milk...a decision that is never taken lightly. We have an excellent drivers and they do their utmost to get to us and we do all we can to assist them despite not being allowed to tow the lorry (another stupid regulation. The lorries are not even fitted with tow-loops any longer). We certainly have not had the quantities of snow that other parts of the country have had to cope with and many dairy farms have had to dump their milk as the tankers have not been able to get throught snowdrifts but all snow & ice causes all farmers difficulties. Now we have the thaw and steadily falling cold rain with the attendant problems caused by the melt waters as well as the rainwater...back to mud everywhere once again.

Lambing is going well with the adoption of two orphan lambs onto ewes with only single lambs.This is usually a successful procedure with perseverence and patience on the part of the Farmer. It is a joyful sound of spring when I hear the lambs bleating in the large polytunnel that we use as a lambing shed and the mellow low tones of the ewes talking back to their offspring.

Snow, Early Lambs

A snowy morning after several days of biting cold. At present the snow is not a problem as it just a dusting though it is falling quite steadily. If it continues and schools and roads may be closed farmers have to carry on whatever the weather throws at us and snow, while quite lovely to look at, casuses huge problems for farmers with livestock out in the fields and on the hills and for those of us with milk to be collected. As I have mentioned before we now have to take out insurance against non-collection as we are no longer allowed to use emergency milk tanks to take it out ourselves to meet up with the milk lorry on the main road if the lorry cannot get up our driveway.


Lambing has begun with two orphans who are being bottle-fed and hopefully they will not have too many companions as more ewes produce. Whilst bottle lambs are sweet and pathetic to start with they do become rather a nusiance and we always try to adopt them onto ewes who have only a single lamb and plenty of milk.

February Snowdrops, Februdairy

February and the snowdrops have been appearing in hidden corners and along the drive for a couple of weeks now, a sure and welcome sign that spring will soon be on its way, though it is now very cold again and at regular intervals throughout the day we have been pelted with heavy showers of hailstones.
Late December & January were very busy with family events and now that things are getting back to normal I am catching up with myself.
This month has been renamed Februdairy! 28 days of social media posts devoted to promoting a positive understanding of the dairy industry in the face of the current campaigns by certain anti-farming & anti-dairy groups. @februdairy on Twitter is buzzing with farmers all over the country posting images and text telling the story of dairy farming in the hope of correcting the gross mis-information that has been put out by the vegan community amongst others. One thing can be certain, farmers will not stoop to the level of certain individuals in abusing and insulting those who farm this land as has been demonstrated on Twitter with posts containg aggressive and hateful language directed at the farming industry as a whole, not just dairy farmers. We will always inform and hopefully educate in a polite & courteous manner without pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Work on the farm is as always at this time of year hard & busy with feeding and bedding down the cattle every day. The sheep are now in too ahead of lambing which is due to start in late March though a couple of ewes ahev pre-empted us by producing a lamb each which was a surprise indeed. It would seem that a ram lamb missed the 'snip' & got in amongst the ladies at a critical time and so we have a couple of very early lambkins.

When not doing the routine work much time is being spent removing the standings from the old milking parlour with a samll digger in the building drilling away with a pecker at the concrete block upstands. The room is coming back to its original look and there is lot of discussion on what it will be used for. The Farmer wants to make it into his brew room with all his apple-pressing and cider-making equipment installed there as well a place for extracting honey and storing the bee-keeping equipment, while Elder Son is talking about making more calf-pens of which we can never have too many.

Christmas Past and New Year Anticipation

Nearly a month since my last post and we have seen Christmas come and go and the dawning of the New Year.
Christmas was very family-orientated and quiet despite two very excited small grand-children...do you not remember that all-consuming sense of anticipation and the longing to see Father Christmas and know that he really does exist? My grand-daughter has assured me thst she met the real Father Christmas last year at Castell Coch and I believe her! She has a photograph to prove it!
Yesterday being the Twelfth Day of Christmas we took down the decorations and removed the tree from the dining-room leaving the usual confetti of pine needles which despite thorough sweeping and vacuuming will continue to appear throughtout the year, they are ineradicable.
The daily routine of the farm continued as usual over the festive period in horrible weather a lot of the time. The rain has been incessant and it is impossible to get tractors onto the fields to start hedge-trimming. Even walking across the fields has been miserable, squelchy and slippery. This morning however we have a good frost and everything is crisp and silvered with a pale sun gleaming over the valley.
The Farmer and I managed to take a couple of days away last week joining my sister and her husband in a cottage they had taken in the Forest of Dean. It was lovely much-needed break and a good start to the New Year in a beautful place. We walked the dogs through the Forest to Symond's Yat to the high viewing point above the dramatic meanders of the River Wye. At this time of year there were very few people there but I know that later on it is a very busy tourist centre so we saw it almost empty of people and in its winter bleakness.
Now it is back to the normal routines and ongoing projects with no doubt new ones to be started in 2018.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Snow

SNOW! After too many years of snow-free winters it is a white world this morning and its still falling. Other parts of the country have had much greater snow-fall than us but we have enough to satisfy the small grand-children's desperate longing for snow, having never seen it. As I sit at the kitchen table (the unheated office is not conducive to sitting for any length of time!) writing this the falling snow has become thicker and with bigger flakes and is falling in a lovely feathery swirl from a full grey sky so dense that I cannot see across the valley. Our 4 year-old grand-son has already been out and landed a snowball on his dog-walking Granny, to his huge delight!

While we do enjoy the snow the daily farm work has to continue but fortunately the cows are all indoors and the only activity with machines in the snow is to fetch big bales of silage from our yard down the drive and to make sure that the milk tanker can reach us. At the moment that should not be problem but should the snow continue to build up we may have to re-open an old track that does not have a steep slope for the tanker to reach us. Our driveway is on a hill and in the past we have had to tow the tanker up in icy conditions. In the absolute worst-case scenario, which I doubt will occur this time round, we have to dump the milk and insurance has to taken out in case of this. Years ago we were allowed to take the milk out ourselves to the main road in an emergency mobile bulk tank, but this has been forbidden in the last few years due to food hygiene issues and the risk of contamination both of which were extremely unlikely as the emergency tank was as clean, safe and tamper-proof as the big tanks in the dairy on the farm. So, the powers that be would rather we let the milk go down the drain even though the main roads are clear enough for the milk tankers to reach the end of the drive. One of the advantages of living in an area with many dairy farms is that the main roads were always kept as clear as possible in times of severe snow, to allow the milk tankers to get to us all, even if only to entrances to the farms but where we could leave our emergency tanks. Now it is deemed better to waste the milk and rely on the insurance companies to compensate us for the loss of earnings.