Hedgerow Violets, Dinas Head, Harvesting Wild Food

I found the first violets yesterday and the hedgebanks are begiining to look more spring-like each day. The hedges themselves are slower in that the quickthorn, blackthorn & hawthorn are only just beginning to show glimpses of green. We had one glorious warm shining day on Saturday when we were all out working in the various gardens on the place, though the Farmer was up on a roof fixing tiles most of the time which he said afforded him a splendid view of the toiling gardeners below.

Over the weekend when the weather was so lovely I had a group of Americans staying in the cottage. They were from Colorado where snow had been falling for three days just before they left last week, so Wales in the sunshine was great for them. They went down to Pembrokeshire to walk Dinas Head & could not have seen it  under better conditions.
 Dinas Head is a small promontory between Newport & Fishguard and makes a wonderful circular walk of about 2 hours along the cliff path. The walk passes through the tiny hamlet of Cwm yr Eglwys where the remains of a 12th century church can be seen. The church  was washed away in huge storm in 1859 as well  as a large number of fishing boats. Apparently a storm of almost equal severity hit that coast in the mid-1970's. We have only ever seen it on beautiful clear calm days and it is hard to imagine just how fierce & frightening the storms must have been.

I have been harvesting the first 'wild foods' , wild garlic leaves, ground elder & chickweed, all of which make delicious additons to salads as well as being very nutritious, full of vitamins. Having had a long season of winter salads of cabbage, kale & leeks from the poy-tunnel it is lovely to have fresh outdorr green stuff, though the produce from the poly-tunnel has been wonderful to have through the winter.
The wild garlic or ramsons grow vigourously and have lovely heads of white starry flowers but the leaves add a fine gentle flavour to green salad. Ground elder is an invasive weed of positively Napoleonic ambition and almost impossible to eradicate so we've just learned to live with it and eating does at least make it useful & the flowers are quite attractive though I do spend a lot of time in the summer removing them in the vain hope that by not going to seed the plant will weaken...it doesn't but it makes me feel better! Chickweed is odd little low-growing herb with insignificant flowers but a very delicate & interesting flavour that makes it a good addition to salad dishes.
So, lunch today is a quiche made with organic shiitake mushrooms (www.maesymush.co.uk) & home grown leeks accompanied by foraged green salad with a hemp oil dressing & organic sourdough bread from our friends at Mair's Bakehouse (www.mairsbakehouse.co.uk). I can't wait...but I'd better go & make the quiche!!

Swallows Arrival, Cottage Springtime Repairs, Cows & Lambs Out

Hip, hip hooray, calloo callay, the swallows have arrived at last! They are a week or so later than usual but then the weather has been so cold that one can hardly blame them for not rushing back. The Farmer & I saw our first swallow yesterday evening at Mwnt beach near Cardigan, and then this morning the Farmer reported that he had seen a couple winging around the yard, so spring has definitely arrived.

With a few days without people staying in the cottage I have been attending to the running repairs necessary after three weeks occupation by families with young children. The paint work suffers dreadfully so I have been rubbing down with sand-paper and touching up the patches of flaked & chipped paint work in the bathroom  & entrance hall. Yesterday the weather was perfect for painting and leaving the doors open to allow warm spring air to circulate. Today it is a very different picture, cold, windy & wet & certainly not conducive to spring-cleaning of any kind.

The garden has suffered badly in the last few weeks with the bitter cold. I have found that two large extremely vigourous rosemary bushes have been blasted by the east wind and are now brown crisp ghosts of  their former selves and the big strong hydrangeas have had their new buds killed off. I think the hydrangeas will recover but I'm not so sure about the rosemarys. The daffodils are flowering well though for many days they looked as though they were hunching their shoulders against the cold and they are now taking a battering by the rain & wind.

On the farm the cows have gone out to grass but are still needing to be fed silage and so they are still coming in at night. The lambs are all doing well and can be seen gambolling around the fields or when the sun shines lying stretched out sound asleep beside their vast woolly mothers.

Spring Lambs, Mid-Wales Bed-and-Breakfast

We have finished lambing, the sun is shining & the lambs are skipping aboutjust as they should be. The weather is lovely though still very cold and there is a firece little wind most of the time but with sunshine and blue skies who's complaining? Though from a farming pouint of view we do rather desperately need some rain now to get the grass growing...warm rain for a couple of days and tthe grass will get going. Fodder is becoming a serious problem for many farmers at the moment, they are running short and it is expensive to buy in.
Our cows went out the other day but it really was too cold and they were queuing up to come back in by lunch-time, however they are getting taste of what little grass we have at the moment which is already making a difference to the taste of the milk. From now on willl just get better & better, spring milk is always lovely.

Today the Farmer & I returned from  our second trip to mid-Wales this week to collect the digger tracks we had taken for repair at the weekend. This time we made a 'mini-break' of it and after stopping off in Machynlleth to visit a particular bookshop, spent last night in a delightful B & B about 3 miles out of Machynlleth.
 www.dolgelynenfarmhouse.co.uk.  Dolgelynen was a lovely old slate-built farmhouse at the end of a mile-long track that ran alongside the river Dyfi. The views across  the river & of the ring of snow covered mountains behind the little town of Machynlleth were superb.
 As we made our way along the drive we came across a white pony standing in the middle of the track. At first it refused to move but then decided to lead us on our way at a steady trot weaving to & fro across the track so we were unable to pass it. It lead us all way to the farmhouse where we learned that it was 35 years old, a family pet who was allowed to roam at will  around the farm. It was a comical introduction to an excellent place to stay.
The farmhouse was beautiful with low beamed ceilings and deep inglenook fireplaces. It was furnished with fine old traditional Welsh oak furniture, dressers with rows of pewter chargers, lustre jugs & highly polished copper ewers & kettles. We had such a warm welcome & would certainly recommend it to anyone visiting that area of mid-Wales.
We collected the digger tracks and once again drove through countryside still in the grips of much snow. There was a little less than we had seen on Saturday but still a lot blanketing the mountains and piled along the roadsides.

Mid-Wales Snow Trip

After hearing about the massive snow fall that had stuck mid & north Wales last week the Farmer & I saw for ourselves yesterday just how much snow there was when we had to make a trip up in to hills of mid-Wales above Newtown. We were on a mission to deliver the huge caterpillar tracks of Younger Son's digger to a yard where they can be mended. As you can see from the picture the roads were clear but the banks of snow on either side were the height of our vehicle where the snow-plough had just cut through.
Driving up towards Aberystwyth before heading inland to Machynlleth & beyond we could see the mountains of mid-Wales covered in shrouds of white against the blue skies looking almost alpine in their glory.  We drove on into the hillls with wonderful vistas as we went higher and the country becomes more empty & lonely but for the hardy mountain sheep all with lambs afoot. The farms are fewer and one realises how a severe winter can isolate these steadings so completely even though in real terms they may be only 5 or 6 miles from the nearest village. A spectacular view may not compensate for the struggle to get feed to one's livestock and to digging heavily pregnant ewes out of snow-drifts.

The boys from Cardiff came up to see us again a little while ago and the Farmer introduced them to the delights of lambing. They of course loved the lambs and wanted to hold them and were fascinated by seeing the Farmer milk a ewe to
stomach- tube a weak lamb. They were also able to help put tail rings on the lambs before they went out into the field.
The Farmer also took them out walking around the farm to set mole-traps. This was something totally new to them all and fortunately a mole had been caught so they were able to see what a tiny creature it is that does so much earth-moving.

No Snow in West Wales, Trapping Moles

Unlike the rest of the country we have no snow but it is bitterly cold with a vicious east wind blowing through the farm. I walked the dogs this morning up into our top fields and the wind was biting, but the sun was shining and the countryside looked lovely in its chilliness.
I would rather love to have some serious snow though...I know it causes a lot of difficulties but without seeming to appear smug, here on the farm we can just settle down to being stuck here without too much problem; we have enough fodder for the livestock and a well stocked larder & a massive supply of firewood so can be snowed in for a good while if need be. If the electricity supply goes off we have a generator so can still milk the cows. If we cannot get the milk lorry in we will make masses of butter & cream and feed the skim milk to the calves. It all works out rather well really.

Younger Son came home last Friday night having driven from the far north coast of Scotland where he has been working for the last six months. His journey south was certainly made challenging with the weather he encountered in the Cairngorms resulting in a 100 mile detour to get through the snow and again in the north of England & the Midlands. Fortunately he was not alone and was driving a big 4x4 pickup.

We have almost finished lambing with about three ewes left to pop. After a pretty awful start to lambing things improved and we've had lots of good healthy sets of twins which are all doing well.

The Farmer has been waging war on the mole population lately. When we had a visit last week by the boys from a school in Cardiff the Farmer took them round the farm setting mole-traps which was cetainly a novel experience for them. Moles are just everywhere, so twenty or so traps are set around the farm and there has been reasonable success in catching the little horrors. On my daily walks I make a point of spreading out any molehills I come across as if they are left they cause great problems when it comes to cutting grass for silage. The soil contaminates the silage whereas if the mounds have been spread the grass can just grow through as normal.

Lambing time, Cardiff School Visit Anticipated,

We are in the throes of lambing and though there have been some losses on the whole it is going reasonably well. Some of the lambs are very big and the Farmer has had to intervene to help the ewe produce her enormous child but with a good outcome each time. For one ewe that had lost her lamb we managed to find orphans from elsewhere to adopt onto the ewe  and they have taken very successfully to their new mother.
Today I found a ewe out in the field with a pair of new born twins sheltering under a hedge, all quite happy and healthy despite the bitter cold. It has been just so cold today with flurries of snow but lambs can cope with cold,  its wet that is the killer so this dry cold weather is fine for the sheep. Newly lambed ewes are brought in for a couple of days anyway just to make sure that they are mothering their lambs properly and then they go out into the chilly sunshine.

With the lovely dry weather of recent days the Farmer & Elder Son have been able to get on with field work, slurry spreading, muck-spreading (there is difference between the two!) and then chain harrowing to distribute the muck more evenly over the leys.

Later this week we are expecting another visit by the Boys from Cardiff through our connection with the Countryside Alliance Foundation (www.countryside-alliance.org/ca/campaigns.education) This will be their fourth visit to us and it will great to see how they respond to lambing. With any luck they will see a lamb being born. It is always interesting to see how these children from a harsh innner city environment who have severe social & educational problems react to what we can show them, be it sampling milk straight from the cow to cutting down trees for firewood and tasting roast pheasant. We certainly try to give them a variety of experiences and they repay us by being open to almost everything we show them and by asking questions and genuinely enjoying their days on the farm. It is such a worthwhile project  to be involved in and we love the days when we have school parties of all kinds come to visit us.
I suspect this coming visit will include discussion about horse-meat and it will be very interesting to see what the boys feel about the issue. We shall of course explain the harsh reality of why we rear lambs, that they are all destined for the dinner plate.

With this very cold weather the Farmer needs to be well fed (not that he is ever not!!) but he does enjoy thick hearty soups and dark chocolate cakes or bara brith (the traditional Welsh fruit loaf) so I'm cooking & baking in a lovely warm kitchen which is probably the best place to be as our house is morgue-like in its chilliness at present. With no central heating we have 'hot spots' in the house, the kitchen with its oil-fired Rayburn and the far sitting-room where I light the wood-burner during the morning to get it to a comfortable temperature by mid-afternoon. Fortunately as I've said I spend most of my time in the kitchen except when working on the computer in our un-heated office where I don a cashmere shawl
& Ugg boots! I'm seriously tempted to get a laptop or tablet so that I can work on the blog or the holiday cottage 'stuff' in  degree of comfort in my lovely warm kitchen.

Spring, Schmallenberg Virus, Teifi Valley

With the glorious weather we've had for the past few days it really feels like spring despite the sharp frosts each morning. The daffodils were out for St. David's Day and snowdrops are gleaming in all the hedgebanks and in great swathes in the the gardens and hidden corners of the farm. The first celandines are appearing and pussy willow and catkins are showing in the hedges. Birdsong is echoing around and our communities of hedge and house sparrows are beginning their territorial squabbles.

On the farming front with the advent of dry weather everyone in the valley is out muck-spreading while they can get onto the fields and as a result we have had a large number of red-kites wheeling around the skies looking for carrion. I watched a pair of kites fighting on the wing one afternoon while a buzzard floated around them keeping out of the way but clearly curious as to what was going on.

Our daughter-in-law has had clutch of hen eggs incubating over the last 3 weeks and two days ago 7 dear little fluffy black chicks emerged from their shells to the delight & wonderment of small grand-daughter.

Another clear sign of spring in the air, as is lambing which is due to start properly next week.
However, lambing this year is going to be interesting as there is a new disease around, Schmallenbergs which is an insect-borne  virus and seems to be affecting many flocks in the country. The signs of it are dead or malformed lambs though apparently once the ewe has lambed this year she is immune to the disease and will pass that immunity onto her next seasons lambs. There is an additional worry that it may also affect cattle.
We just have to keep our fingers crossed that our flock is not affected though the disease has now been found in Wales.

Over the past few months I have been researching the Teifi Valley where we live for a film project (of which there will be news in a few weeks time). During the the research I have come across marvellous stories and fascinating history of the area. The Teifi Valley is a part of Wales that is not well-known despite its beauty and importance in the history of Wales.
It is full of castles, old drovers towns where cattle, sheep & poultry were gathered  to begin their walk to London and other cities for the markets as well having a grear diversity of landscape running as the river does from the wild empty hills of Ceredigion to the soft lowlands near its estuary at Cardigan.
The Teifi Valley is also a place that draws artists of all kinds with its stunning scenery and beautiful light.
One these artists who lives near us is Diane Mathias who produces beautiful paintings of west Wales landscapes,
www.dianemathias.com. Her work is full of light and a joy in the natural world. I love her pictures.

Horsemeat Debacle Continues

With the horse-meat scandal becoming exposed in many more countries each day and the British government's attitude being somewhat woolly I was interested to read the following blog link that was sent to me today;http://www.howlatthemoon.org.uk/index.php?p=1_67 .
I think it sums up the situation very well.
As farmers we have been aware that the  Red Tractor scheme had flaws but when some years ago the Farmer spoke to the NFU about what the Red Tractor did not do he was told not to make a fuss , that they were trying their best & it was better than nothing. In other words they were keeping their heads down to avoid having to make the scheme actually do what they wanted the consumers to believe it did.
Once again it all comes down to buying locally from your high street butcher who should be able to tell you from which farm he buys his carcases and not to put any trust in the supermarkets who are only after profits by any means and definitely to avoid any processed 'ready' meals.
Buy Local! Buy Organic!

Also see
http://themakingprogressblues.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/horse-meat-the-hardest-thing-to-digest-is-that-its-your-fault/