Snow, Off Grid Energy Generation

The night before last we had a fall of snow...the roofs of the farm buildings were white and there was a shimmer on the fields but by yesterday morning only the high ground across the valley had snow. However this was deep enough for our neighbours to get their van stuck and sos us to take our 4x4 up to tow them out!. Just a mile up the road the snow was about 6" deep while we had nothing! Very disappointing as I love snow and looking out across a changed landscape.
It is very cold this morning with a skim of ice on puddles and hollows of water. Whether there is more snow due we willl just have to wait & see.

On Sunday (during the vile weather of the snow & sleet) the Farmer went on another 'eco-tour' with the Mid Teifi Housing & Energy Group (http://www.teifitransition.org.co.uk/) to see a domestic scale wind turbine installation at our friends who run Larkhill Tipis (http://www.larkhilltipis.co.uk/). This lovely place is entirely off-grid and with a combination of wind turbine & solar panels they meet all their electrical requirements. If we weren't milking cows and therefore having huge electrical needs we would seriously consider going off-grid but with 7 motors running during milking it is just not possible.

Looking out from the office window onto leaden skies and winter hedgerows I have been watching a pair of robins sparring with each other over territory. They flutter in & out of the hedge being very aggressive and shrilling abuse at each other. A lot of the small birds are singing as though it is spring & have been all through this mild winter.

Home Alone, Early Spring-Cleaning, Burns Night

Hammamelis mollis flowers are so lovely to see in a winter garden where everything else is rather soggy & looking a mess. Snowdrops are appearing in the verges along the drive now and daffodils are shooting up everywhere.

I am in the very unusual position of being on my own for a couple of days. The Farmer & Younger Son have gone to Austria!They have taken the opportunity to join a group of farmers on a trip to the Pottinger factory at Grieskirchen, near Linz. Pottinger are agricultural machinery manufacturers which is why I felt they could go without me! I'm sure the visit to the factory will be fascinating but may not be able to hold my complete interest for a whole day & they will enjoy a blokey trip centred on big farming kit much more without me...and someone has to be here to walk the dogs!
Tomorrow they will be visiting a dairy farm near Salzburg and then will be returning home very late tomorrow night.

I shall take this chance of a couple of days without having to produce meals at regular intervals to tackle some long awaited house-work...an early spring-cleaning I suppose, going where I have not gone before in many months I ashamed to say. Into dark corners where lurk spiders & a film of dust, polishing silver, sorting out clothes for jumble (or charity shops nowadays. What has happened to good old-fashioned jumble sales? I suppose they've been superceded by car boot sales & the charity shops.) and generally doing stuff that gets put off all the time.

This evening I have been invited out to a Burns Supper with some friends who have recently moved down here from Scotland. I love haggis but have not made it for a very long time...we have not killed any sheep recently! If I have time during my busy day of house-work I shall maybe make some shortbread to take with me. A perfect meal, haggis with mashed tatties & neeps followed by rich buttery shortbread and a dram together with readings of poetry and telling of tales.

A Good Frost, Winter Farming

At last, a proper cold & frosty winter's morning! Walking the dogs first thing was lovely with the sun glimmering through skeleton trees onto frost-silvered fields.

With the better weather the Sons are busy getting on with the last of the hedge-trimming & muck-spreading so we have a constant background hum of tractors. More unpleasantly there is the pervading odour of disturbed muck (though this soon dissipates) coming up from the slurry pit as Younger Son makes his trips back & forth filling the huge slurry tanker that he then takes up to the top fields to spread the ever important muck to encourage a good crop of grass for the summer. Farming jobs throughout the winter are made so much easier when the weather is fine.

I have my first holiday-makers of 2012 in the cottage this weekend & they are fortunate in having such a glorious morning to wake up to.

First Lamb, National Botanic Garden of Wales, Hunting & Shooting

Two days ago we were all very surprised to find a lamb had been born to one of our ewes as we are not due to start lambing until March! What we think has happened is that a ram lamb somehow escaped being castrated and has gone about his fell deeds amongst the flock. How many more lambs will appear before March is anyone's guess!

 

Yesterday the Farmer & I visited the National Botanic Gardens near Carmarthen. We have not been for several years and had been promising ourselves a trip there while there is an exhibition on of fungi that has been brought down from the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh.
The exhibition was very good with marvellous huge models of mushrooms & toadstools and very good videos of time-lapse photography showing the growth of fungi and their importance on every aspect of the natural world.
The gardens themselves and the plants growing in the great glass dome were looking very different from when we last saw them. The plants in the dome were well established now and look extraodinary though I did find it a very surreal experience and rather discomforting...it is very odd to walking round a 'garden' under a roof, it is completely artificial environment with a constant hum of the heating system in the background. There were a couple of sparrows flying around & they must have have a very strange  & unnatural life. It is not like seeing plants growing in a greenhouse somehow. There is a very attractive greenhouse with collection of bromeliads which was amazing.
The gardens proper outside were lovely, even in January & there were daffodils in flower, also primroses, pulmonaria and beautiful red hammamelis. It was interesting to see the place after a long time  and would receommend a visit.
Entry to the gardens is free throughout January.

During the week a local foot pack of hounds worked their way through the valley and caught 2 foxes, though there are many more living in the woods. Today one of our local mounted hunts is out and will be working this end of the valley as there is a pheasant shoot going on at the other end. With some of our neighbours already busy lambing  the foxes will have to be kept under control.... we lost our peahen to one recently and of course we will be lambing too in the next couple of months.
The Farmer & Younger Son have gone beating for the shoot with the labs who were very excited as usual at the prospect of a day spent rootling through briars and thick undergrowth.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!
This is a reminder of what the weather was like this time in 2011...very different to the warm , very wet & muddy conditions we have to start off 2012. Things can only get better one hopes!
Yesterday I found snowdrops in flower and have seen daffodils flowering in a hedgrow in the neighbourhood!

Too Early for Spring, Death of a Peahen, Delicious Turkey & Happy Christmas Visitors

Well, here we are at the very end of the old year and with such mild weather in stark contrast to what we were enduring this time 12 months ago. It is so mild that the birds are singing and in the garden yesterday I found narcissus in full flower & a couple of of very frail looking primroses! Daffodil shoots have been visible for a couple of weeks now & I have seen snowdrop shoots in the hedge banks for a month or more.
The holly trees are still covered in berries...is that portent of a hard winter yet to come?!

Tragedy struck last night in the form of the 'gentleman with sandy whiskers' who took a fancy to our sweet peahen and she is no more! Over the last few weeks the Farmer has been feeding the peacocks outside the kitchen window and they had become quite tame and appeared regularly at breakfast time for their daily morsels of bread or cold potatoes. I hope Charlie Peacock won't now go into a decline & pine away with loss of wife number 2.


Christmas came & went very quietly in our household. We had one of our home-reared turkeys which was quite delicious though far too big to fit in the oven! The Farmer decided to bone it  and then rolled it up with stuffing & sausagemeat and it then fitted perfectly. Boning a bird in that way is great, it means there is no fiddling around carving the bird & every scrap is eaten. ( The Famer & Younger Son did talk about putting a woodcock in a pheasant in the turkey, but we left it too late to gather the necessary birds. Another time we will definitely try that rather medieval way of cooking a fine roast bird.)
The presence of our 11month old grand-daughter was lovely. At that age all she is interested in is the wrapping paper which was was very sweet to see.
Our guests in the cottage over the Christmas weekend kept themselves to themselves & said they had had a very happy time just being on their own and thought the cottage was perfect for their Christmas holiday & I must admit it did look lovely with the Christmas tree lit up and a roaring fire when they arrived.

'A Christmas Reunion' or 'Tan ar y Comin' - Filmed at Penyrallt

With the huge number of films being shown on television at this time of year I find myself wondering how many people will catch a film that was made here at Penyrallt Home Farm in 1993 starring James Coburn & Edward Woodward. It was called 'Tan Ar Y Comin/ Fire On The Common''  or 'A Christmas Reunion'. It is shown every Christmas on at least one of the many channels that are now available, though as we don't have tv ourselves we never get to see it & unfortunately it is not available on dvd (we do have a very old video copy that is in poor condition but no video player these days).
We spent the summer of 1993 hosting the film crew & having our house taken over as a set both for interior & exterior shots. It was great fun and we met a lot of great people. As well as having Edward Woodward here for some of the time, the director David Hemmings was here as he was working in conjunction with Carol Byrne-Jones who was directing the Welsh version of the film. They worked together filming 'back-to-back' which meant every scene was filmed in English & in Welsh.
We all had great fun, with the Farmer & the Sons (who were very young at the time) all taking part as 'supporting artists' or extras. Even our dogs, poultry & cattle were roped in & our house & buildings were used from all sorts of angles and looked wonderful.
The script was based on a book by the Welsh children's author, the late T. Llew Jones who was born just down the road from the farm. He remembered coming up here to play as a child so the idea that his story should be filmed here was rather fitting. The story centres around an orphaned gypsy boy who inherits mare & her foal on the death of his grandfather, but then learns that he is the illegitimate heir to the local squire (Edward Woodward). Much trouble ensues but with a happy outcome, of course.
The Welsh version is set entirely in Wales but the English version has scenes set in Boston which is where James Coburn comes in playing Father Christmas(!). You'll just have to try and see the film!
Despite these oddities, it is good film for family viewing and has a definite Christmassy flavour.

Christmas Turkeys

Today is turkey killing day! Sorry to be so blunt about it but it is the reality of rearing table birds. At least we can say with all honesty that they have had very happy lives wandering around the farm foraging for beetles & worms as well as having an ever full hopper of pelleted turkey food, which is a world away from the lives of the poor creatures produced in intensive poutry units by the thousand.
(I saw a very funny card the other day with  a picture of a beautiful bronze turkey in fulll display mode with placard round its neck saying 'Eat Ham'!!!)
I will quite miss them being around the place with their strange turkey-talk being audible all over the farm, though they have completely shredded my geraniums and various other plants in pots that are struggling through the wintery weather.
The Farmer has taken the plucking machine down to the slaughter area and he & the Sons will get the job done cleanly, quickly & efficiently. The turkeys will then be stored in the cold-room until they are collected or delivered to their final destinations, the ovens of family, friends & neighbours. The Farmer says they will be killing out at about 12lbs + which is reasonable size I think, not too big but large enough for several meals...or enough for everyone to get heartily sick of turkey curry & turkey sandwiches, which personally I adore!