Steel Kitten: smallholding

Showing posts with label smallholding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smallholding. Show all posts




Last Tuesday I made myself a fresh coffee, settled into my work chair, grabbed my planner and began my usual routine of daily organisation. There was a 'ping' from my phone and a calendar reminder came up - 'Hedges by 1st March'. My schedule for the week suddenly went out the window. 


I had completely forgotten that our boundary hedges had to be cut before the cut-off date of 1st March so we don't disrupt the nesting activity of the birds. It's in our deeds to do the hedges so the farmer can get his combine harvester into the field to cut the crops in the autumn. A hasty Zoom call to my boss and I managed to secure Wednesday and Thursday off work to try and get the bulk of the cutting done. 


Luckily I didn't have to do as much as I feared. We had cut back some overgrown laurel bushes at the front of the property in October so people could walk on the grass strip and not in the road. Also one side of the smallholding has very little hedge and more trees so that rarely needs anything, just big branches once in a while if they look like they'll catch the combine's cab as it passes. The area I needed to cover was actually only on two sides of the smallholding. All told, I had approx 160m horizontal cutting on the outside and 55m on the inside, and 80 metres of vertical cutting to take down the height. That's a lot of cutting. 


Wednesday was horrendous - high winds and 35mph gusts don't work well against with hedge trimmers and chainsaws but I managed to get some done. Cracked on again the next day and by 4pm I had manage to get about 80% of what I needed to do. I finally completed the task on Sunday in just a strappy top as it was so hot in the afternoon! All told, it took me approximately 14 hours.


I had a few dramas along the way. I have a small electric chainsaw, nice and light for a small person like me, but occasionally the chain jumps off so I have to put it back on. 



Luckily it's simple to do. 


So, over the next few weeks I'll finalise the hedge trimming all over the property, save the big stuff for the fire and the non-thorny stuff for kindling, then the rest goes on the growing pile in the paddock for a nice man with an industrial chipper to come late April to reduce it to a lovely pile of wood chip to rot down. 


The cats have loved the sunny weather this weekend. Prior to that the high wind meant they spent a lot of time indoors next to me. Baldrick wants to burrow and prefers to sleep like a toddler under a blanket...


...Missy just wants to snuggle...


And Georgie? He's just being an old cat with dementia, an overactive thyroid and arthritis. We keep him warm, medicated, and well fed and try not to get annoyed when he goes for a head rub and then bites us.

*****

I alluded to some big news in my previous post and now I have my hedging whinge out the way I shall tell you.


Martin will be retiring this year. 


Two major things have happened which has accelerated our plans for his retirement two years ahead of schedule.


1) We've found out that Martin can take some of his pension now. I hadn't appreciated that with every change of pension scheme Royal Mail made they dedicated the old fund to specific retirement milestones that can be taken without affecting the other bits. So the Final Salary scheme that closed in 2008 make up his Age 60 benefits while the Defined Contribution pension that ran from 2009 to 2018 make up his age 60 benefits. The current Defined Contribution pension accumulates and is used to pay out his 25% lump sum if he wants it (and we do). My widow's pension if he dies is the same whether we take the lump sum or not so I want to take it now and stash the cash because with COVID who knows what the future holds. So, there's a lump sum payment plus pension income to come from March. 


2) One of Martin's aunts has died, leaving a small legacy to him. It amounts to replacement salary and what we would be putting away into pensions over the next two years so Martin could retire at 62. 


We rolled around the house in a bit of a daze for a week, before sitting down and coming up with a plan of attack for the next few months. Then we found out that Royal Mail is running another round of early voluntary redundancies in his offer this spring, and if he is able to he will be applying. He has 27 years with Royal Mail and is the exact age that Royal Mail likes to try and 'ease' out 'lifers' of the business in favour of hiring younger, cheaper staff on poor employment contracts. Cue more wandering around in a daze.


I hope he gets it. The thought he could be retired and sitting on the patio by the summer makes me feel so happy for him. 


In the meantime, I'm number crunching and budgeting. All the money will be tucked away securely, and there will be very little spare money from our new income for any luxuries because I intend to go hell for leather pumping up my pensions and savings to get me ready to retire. I want to stop work sometime between 55-58 years old, at whatever point I can get the numbers to work out, so Martin and I can go and do some travelling while he is still young enough. 


Scary and exhilarating times ahead!

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Are you as fed up with this wind and rain as I am? Every day the wind has been howling and the rain lashing down, and it's causing all sorts of mischief. 

On Sunday Todd the horse was in the paddock for the last day of his spring visit, and got spooked by wind. He barged the paddock gate and the whole thing snapped under his weight, taking out a huge fence post with it. I was in the house and heard the almighty crack then spotted something in my back garden that shouldn't be there...


I've been stuck in the house for long periods of time over the last couple of weeks and I think I've got a bit of cabin fever. I won't drive when it is very windy as I dislike the way the car snakes around the road. I also won't walk around in it, as it makes me unsteady on my feet and one nasty fall and hospital visit is enough (did I blog about that??). So I haven't even been out in the garden to tidy up, meaning I've completely failed on one of my 20 for 2020 goals for February, which was to get out in the garden for 20 minutes a day. I was hopeful of being able to clean up the patio beds today though; when I went out to do the chickens this morning it was windless and sunny. It's now just gone 9am and the sun has gone, the rain clouds have moved in and the wind had picked up again. Arrrggghhhhh.....


Missy doesn't care a jot. She has turned from a timid cat that wouldn't go far from the back door before Christmas to a confident roamer of the property. The wind and rain do not bother her at all, there's too much exciting stuff to explore, and getting her in proves difficult sometimes. Previously she used to prowl the house in the evening, creating mischief and annoying Georgie because of her pent up energy. Now she's tuckered out of an evening, and likes nothing better than to sit on her chair by the fire. Glad someone is enjoying themselves in this weather.

It's a cat's life isn't it 😁
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So, I'm back. I'm feeling stronger, a lot wiser and ready to post again with some semblance of regularity. I'm still pretty tired, but that comes and goes in waves and I'm more relaxed than I have been in years.

First order of the day - Fleagle. We're very sad that she is gone and miss her very much: she was a funny cat with very human ways and her loss opened up a gap in our lives. Georgie was obviously missing Fleagle too, much to our surprise as we thought they never really got along but it appears that having another cat in the house made him feel secure. He was very clingy with us, off his food, and kept going round and round the house yowling and looking for her. He stopped going outside for anything more than a sniff of the wind and suddenly started to shadow us from room to room.


We never planned to get another cat so soon, but one thing led to another and we had the opportunity to adopt a three year old Maine Coon called Snowy. Her owner was moving from the Midlands to a small flat in London and wanted to find her somewhere rural so she could have a better life than she would have if she went with him.


We weren't sure how Georgie would take to another cat; with him being deaf and also losing his sense of smell we thought introductions would be tough. However, within a week of having Snowy he is relaxed once more, going outside for longer periods and scoffing food again. They're not 100% relaxed in each other's company but they are able to sit about a foot away from each other without incident and sniff noses occasionally. We have plenty of catnip to hand to make sure every interaction is a positive one so they build up trust.


Snowy is very timid and addicted to tuna in brine, which we are going to have to work hard to replace as it is no good for cats as anything other than an occasional treat. They need a complete food with plenty of taurine. Already after a week her playfulness and loving nature are shining through. She is extremely inquisitive and once she finds her feet, she's going to be a beautiful little terror! She knows that she is on Georgie's territory and he is the boss, which helps with the introductions enormously. When Georgie arrived on our doorstep in 2007 he was the opposite and he tried to take over, only to be repeatedly slapped down by Sophie and Fleagle. He never stopped trying. It's only taken him 12 years to be Head of the Feline Household :)


The pigs and sheep have gone to the abattoir so I now have four freezers full to them brim with meat, which should last us around 18 months.  The sheep went in June and the pigs last Monday. We won't now have any more animals until 2021. The pigs were pedigree Oxford Sandy and Blacks and were tremendous diggers, so much so we feared for the trees, but they produced some great lean meat.





I was very strict with weighing their dried food, after the last lot of pigs had kilos of excess fat due to me mismanaging this aspect. They also had all the grass, apples, pears and acorns they could stuff themselves with, plus the odd slice of bread as a treat. I kept my distance and did not get too attached, and the trip to the abattoir was as good as it gets. Everyone was friendly and calm, and they simply walked down the ramp and into their pen without any fear or fuss. I was so grateful to the abattoir staff who were exceptionally kind and professional.

The rest of the smallholding is in a bit of a state. Being so tired I just don't have the energy to do more than the basics but the wildlife will thrive on my neglect so there's a silver lining there.

I've been focusing on my physical and mental health and wellbeing. I've managed to lose 10lbs by walking for a minimum of 45 minutes 5-6 times a week, so I fit better in my clothes, and I'm making sure I spend less time doing chores and more time doing things I enjoy.

I'm knitting Martin a jumper, getting back into baking and cooking, doing some painting by numbers and lots of reading.  And of course, bargain snuffling.






I even managed a trip to Cyprus with my sister. Here's me fishing off the back of a boat near Larnaca. I was up the competitive end with a load of Russian men and I caught a fish. They didn't :) 


So all in all, still ticking along :)

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I underwent a lot of quiet reflection during our holiday.

 We've been here for two years and during this time we have not made any major changes to the smallholding. The plans we had before we moved here revolved around making us as self-reliant as possible by growing our own food and producing our own energy. Smallholding, homesteading, pioneering, that has been a strong interest of mine for many years but I was having problems making it a reality here.

 At the point we went on holiday I was drifting, wanting to do more but just not. I've felt a bit like we've been flirting around the edges of smallholding. I keep animals, but only during specific months; I don't keep them year round or breed them. I grow some fruit and veg but not extensively and in any great quantity. I harvest some of the existing fruit from the trees but not in any great quantity. We have wood burners but buy in logs instead of sustainably harvesting from our own property and finding free logs. We have a funky old (probably useless) well and plenty of roof space that yields thousands of litres of rainwater and sunshine every year yet we pay full whack for mains water and electricity. 

 It took until almost the end of the holiday, nearly three weeks away from normality, for the penny to drop. Being interested in something is not being committed to it. For a long time at the old house I was interested but not committed to living well there because I never considered it my home. We bought the old house with the intention to renovate and move on within a couple of years but we got caught by the recession and ended up living there for 11. We decorated it with sale in mind, keeping colours neutral and never quite unleashing our creativity. Everything was done with The Sale in mind. I got used to being interested in how much I could make but not committed to living in the house and I brought that here with me.

There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses - only results.

KEN BLANCHARD
I haven't allowed myself to emotionally attach to this place, I'm still not committed to it. I'm not psychologically invested and this has translated into taking the minimal actions I need to maintain the smallholding, I haven't been putting in the daily effort needed to develop and deepen my commitment. I couldn't see it while knee deep in daily life here, I needed that time away to develop that perspective.

 So, when we got back I took a look around. I actually do love this place. The peace, quiet and space, even though I don't always find it easy to live with my MIL which, if I'm honest, has contributed to me feeling unsettled.

 I pulled out my plan for the smallholding. By now we should have: 

  • a polytunnel in the paddock
  • part of the front lawn laid to veg beds with the aim of achieving sufficiency in 90% of our fruit and veg for 5-6 months of year
  • increased the energy efficiency inside the house to the maximum possible to try and get us to an EPC rating of B of above (currently D)
  • completed some kind of resource generation activity, such as solar panels, a rainwater harvesting system or growing our own biomass to burn to achieve 50% sufficiency in energy. 

So far, all we've done is installed a new efficient boiler outside when the old indoor system became dangerous, and replaced a few halogen bulbs with LED ones when they blew. 

 I realised I couldn't make up for lost time but I could make a start. 

Over the last month I found some cheap collar boxes on ebay and have begun arranging them to create an area of raised beds to the side of the house. The small patio garden will get higher beds and more soil. 
Over the last couple of weeks I have expanded the fruit trees in the paddock with raspberries, black, red and white currants, a gooseberry and a couple of tayberry bushes in front of that. All of these either came with us or were bought last year but never planted up.

The fencing is all temporary so I can make changes if necessary, but at some point over the next 12 months permanent stock fencing and a gate will go in. At the moment the chicken pen forms one side of the section, but I'll be moving that back by a pen length and adding a fenced area for chicken scratching. 

Talking of chickens, we now have three new ladies in the chicken pen, who moved in about two weeks ago at the ripe old age of 22 weeks old. They are part of the commitment plan, as they need daily care and attention. 

Finally, solar panels. I've wanted solar power for many years, but have never been able to take that step. Obviously at the old house my lack of commitment to living there wouldn't allow me to make that jump. It's not just the upfront cost but also because you commit to a) being settled in one place for a long time and b) changing your energy usage behaviour, which includes quite close monitoring of the system. A lack of commitment doesn't go hand in hand with having solar panels. 

 MIL and I are both here during the day, and we tend to run our household electrical devices then. With solar, we could get quite close to the maximum benefit possible by running all our devices when the panels are generating electricity at the peak times during the day. In addition, there are the Feed-In Tariffs (FITs), which pay a householder with solar panels a small amount of money to generate and export their surplus energy to the grid. It's only about 9-10p a kWh but it is a handy little bit of extra money into the household and is index-linked for 20 years. However, this is coming to an end on 31st March.

 I did a few calculations, working out the theoretical return on the money from the panels being drip fed into pensions vs just putting it directly into pensions, and while the panels just nosed ahead they had the added psychological benefit of the satisfaction from producing part of the energy we consume and lowering our bills. How much they lower our bills by is down to us and our consumption habits.

 I took a deep breath, did some ringing round and quote gathering and a few days ago we placed an order for a 6kWp system for the south-facing roof of the barns. We're aiming to reduce our electricity bill by 50% through a combination of using what we generate, changing our consumption habits and the FITs. In addition, we decided to have an iBoost fitted to our immersion heater, which is a diverter system that directs a small amount of surplus electricity to our water tank to heat it instead of the boiler firing up. So we estimate that for six months of the year our boiler probably won't be firing at all, which will help lower our annual oil bill. 

So, the solar panels team is coming next week to put the panels up and by next weekend we will be generating some of own power. It's only a small step, but psychologically it feels like the biggest one to date because of the mindset shift that comes with it.

 This smallholding is my home and I am committed to it. 

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So the last week has been about planting fruit trees in the paddock, which given how nice the weather has been over the last couple of weekends has been the perfect antidote to Christmas excesses. 

 We have a lot of trees in paddock but the majority of them are cooking apple trees (six full size at the last count). Our cherry, damson, bullace and conference pear trees didn't produce much, if anything, anything last year, leaving us with an abundance of cookers and the fruits from a very small Cox Pippin apple and Victoria plum tree. 

 I discovered last autumn some thick sturdy posts about a foot from the barn walls and realised that at some point these had wire between them, probably for soft fruit. I decided to resurrect them, reinstate the wire and plant cordon fruit trees. The trees came in mid-December and I finally got around to planting them over the last two weekends. There's a Victoria plum, Oullions Golden Gage, Packham's Triumph pear and a Scrumptious Apple, all on dwarfing rootstock.

There was just one snag...the sheep love the new trees, so we've had to sheep-proof the plantings. This has involved piling everything we have in front and to the side of them to stop the little bleaters reaching anything tasty. I ended up having to do a double fence in case they got over one. They are very tenacious.



It looks a bit of a mess to be frank so we've decided to completely section off that part of the paddock, from top to bottom, with stock-proof fencing when we get back. Eventually I want a polytunnel in the paddock and an area for soft-fruits as well so I might as well section off that whole area and turn it into a kitchen garden. Come March I'll be getting some more chickens so they can be inside that area as well.


It's not just the fruit trees the sheep have been worrying lately - my bank balance is also flinching slightly a I had to have the vet out on New Year's Eve. One of the boys developed a terrible limp very suddenly the day before, to the point where he couldn't stand anymore, was kneeling to eat and rest didn't seem to be doing much. With a holiday looming, I made the decision not to attempt any home care and risk having to leave an unwell animal if it didn't work. 

 The vet seem to think he had a soft tissue injury in his shoulder so gave him a anti-inflammatory injection, painkiller and antibiotic, as the leg was hot. Luckily there was no foot rot or hoof abscess, so no cleaning, bathing and wrapping involved. Three days later I'm watching the little sod bouncing like zebedee around the pen at top speed, no sign of a limp, with me wincing and shouting 'Mind the leg!'. 

 At the same time I got the vet to look at one of the others, who was what I refer to as 'a bit runty'. He looked smaller than the others, out of condition, scrappy and had bits of fleece hanging off him. He was right on the line with his weight but not malnutritioned, no temperature or mouth problems that might stop him eating. He was just a bit 'urgh' and you get some animals like that. 

 I've yet to receive the bill but once I factor in a £33 call out charge, £2.19 per minute on-site (45 minutes), the two injections and a hoof clip for sheep 1, condition check for sheep 2, nutrition advice and a worm burden check I'll be lucky if I see change from £300. 

 Growing your own is expensive...
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Cleaning up the fleeces from the two Whitefaced Woodland sheep has been an interesting experience. Who knew those two were so filthy!!


Even though I soaked both fleeces overnight in cold water both of them were heavily stained with sweat and minerals from the dirt. Still, by the time the wool is carded and spun it won't notice. 


However, what will notice is the terrible level of debris on the second fleece. Despite 90 minutes of skirting (picking out the big stuff) prior to soaking, and then a further two hours picking during cleaning, it is still heavy with debris. Processing this myself means I'm going to have to sit for a few evenings picking more of this out because while carding can remove a lot, it won't remove all of this. It could end up knitted in to whatever I make. 

Because of this, I've thought long and hard about what to do with the fleeces. I've had to admit that while I like giving things a go, the cost and time involved in carding kilos of fleece and then spinning it is too great. I already have too many hobbies that I struggle to find the time for so it is not realistic for me to try and fit more in, and i don't want to shove the clean fleece in a bag and leave them in a cupboard. Whitefaced Woodland sheep are rare breed and I want to use the wool.

So, I have contacted a small mill on the Scottish boarders who have offered to card and spin the clean fleece for me into 100g skeins of wool. It won't be cheap but these guys specialise in small batches and rare breed wool. Although they are booking fleeces in for September 2019, they've offered to try and fit me in sometime in January. 

I'm a bit torn - on the one hand I want to get it sorted so I can do something with it, on the other it's straight after Christmas and Martin and I are about to book a break away in January. 

Some serious penny-pinching and money-saving will have to happen between now and then to pay for all of this.

Just what I'm good at!
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When I took our first lot of sheep to slaughter, I was unsure if I wanted to keep sheep again. I hadn't been very happy with the experience of keeping them - they were too boisterous, I kept getting bruised on their horns and the cats and chickens suffered, as did our bank balance. But, of course, in time those memories faded and inexplicably there was a gap in my life. And that's when I found myself in a field on a sunny Sunday afternoon loading three six month old wethers into a trailer.

 So, say hello to our three male Welsh Mountain Badger-Face Torwens!

 One of them has only been separated from his mother in the last couple of days so was doing a lot of shouting when we got there. Once transported here and the trailer door was down, he shot off with the other two and has been chewing lush grass solidly ever since without so much as a squeak.

 My only concern is those long-tails - they are making me nervous, or more to the point, what lurks beneath them is making me nervous. We tried to look, with a view to giving them a clip and a wash if they were a bit mucky, but there was a mass break out of the pen in panic so we've shelved that idea for now.

 A couple of weeks of bucket treats should get them used to us and make the process easier!
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Yesterday I picked 14lbs of plums from our small Victoria plum tree and a kind farmer added another 3lbs to that. The simultaneous arrival of multiple packs of butter in the fridge signals that crumble season has begun, so this evening while dinner cooked I made six crumbles, most for the freezer. Tomorrow I'll split the remaining plums, freezing half and making the other half into jam.

I'm trying to get into the swing of doing preserving of some kind every day. The fruits are ripening thick and fast, and Martin is frequently being given fruit gifts from people on his delivery, which I don't want to waste.

I've made three pots of jam from the last of the Mirabelle plums and damsons, along with one pot of blackberry and bay jam, although I couldn't really taste the bay strongly unfortunately. It may be because I used a fresh leaf - dried herbs have a more concentrated flavour.  I've put a couple of pounds of blackberries into the freezer for later but if I get any more fresh I shall certainly be having another go and doubling up on the quantity of fresh bay.

Shortly I'll have to get serious and really crack into preserving our cooking apples, probably splitting them between apple pie fillings, some kind of spiced apple jam to go with pork and ham, and freezing and dehydrating the raw fruit.
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 I was in the paddock the other day and, yet again, got annoyed that all of the massive apple trees in there are all the same variety of Bramley-type cooking apple. There are about six of these massive trees, and there's only so much I can do with a tiny fraction of them. The apples don't keep for very long so storing for longer than a couple months doesn't work. They are no good for making cider as they are too dry and sour. Apples for cider either need to be a combination of 90% eating/10% cooking or proper cider apples to give the right bittersweet taste.

 Then there's other fruit - a couple each of damsons and Mirabelle plum trees, two cherries, one very small normal plum and a huge conference pear that hardly produces much and what is there is so high we can't gather anything unless it drops to the ground. So I end up buying apples, pears and plums! Ridiculous!

 So, we have hatched a plan to plant more fruit trees.

 We don't want to plant proper standard trees because a) that will cut down the amount of available good grazing for the sheep due to the lack of light as the tree's leaves grow or b) the sheep will chew the new trees to nubbins, even with tree guards. So, we've decided to do cordons against the barn walls and then use electric fencing to keep the sheep off. It never dawned on me today just how much space we have against the barns.


Cordons are fruit trees that have been restricted to grow on a single stem so they can be grown against a wall or be trained into an edible hedge. The real beauty of them though is that the planting distance is 2.5ft between each one, which means you can get a lot of different varieties of fruit in a small space. In fact, you could probably get a different eating apple for a good six months of the year. We intend to grow them at a 45 degree angle so we can reach the top of the fruiting stem.


I started cutting back the nettles in the paddock (yet again!) the other day to begin prepping the area for the new plants and realised that I had never really noticed there were a few very thick wooden posts.


Closer inspection revealed these had previously had wires running across them, probably for soft fruit. A great find! All we need is the wires attached to them and we're pretty much good to go.

 I have three bare-rooted apple tree cordons to plant right now that I bought a while ago, but they are label-less and they could be anything so this morning I ordered new four fruit trees - three 1-year plants for training and one trained cordon - for delivery at the end of November:

 Apple: Scrumptious
Pear: Packham's Triumph
Gage: Oullins Golden (which is what we had at the old house)
Plum: Victoria

 At the same time I ordered the wire and fittings so by next weekend I'm aiming to have the wires in place ready to plant up the three mystery apples.

 Then every year from now on we will buy a couple of different varieties of fruit and expand the harvesting window.

 I'm getting quite excited by the new project!
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I used to enjoy baking and preserving, but for reasons I didn't fully understand until this weekend I haven't done them for a long time. I used to bake cakes, pies, and biscuits, and preserve all sorts of fruit and veg at our previous house but a combination of different factors has seen this drop off to almost nothing.

First, I find doing anything more complicated than a simple meal difficult with the lack of worksurface in the new house kitchen. The layout is not set up for smallholding tasks, a surprise given it used to run as a smallholding. I find pastry on any scale particularly difficult. I've had it in mind for a while now to change the layout of the kitchen to give me more dedicated space to prep more than just basic meals and store much more than the pantry will allow. That's a post for another day though. I tried to make do for a while but because it wasn't an enjoyable experience my enthusiasm petered out.

Second, I realised lately I've been spending too long on basic household tasks and less time doing what I actually enjoy, which is smallholding tasks. Should I do the hoovering or try making soap? Prep those tomatoes for drying or change the bed? Mow the lawn or bake a cake for the week? Because I work full-time it was all too easy to narrow my sights on chores and keep things ticking over. Then I thought, what about dropping the ball a bit more? Nothing stops just because the hoovering doesn't get done. The world doesn't tilt on its axis because the grass grows a fraction longer and the bed is a little more wrinkled.

So, Bank Holiday Monday I decided to do something about it.

I walked past the bed's weekly change and the lawn mowing in favour of collecting fruit from around the property and whipping up eight jars of jam with a little left over.


I also tried something new - not using cellophane and bands etc to seal the jars. I struggle with this every year as the quality of cellophane has decreased over the years; it often tears or doesn't seal properly. This time I simply washed and soaked the jars and lids in boiling water, poured in the jam and screwed down the lid tight. As the jam cooled, the central safety button on every single jar was successfully sealed as the vacuum sucked down each one. That saved me so much faffing around.

I cooked up some Bramley apples and combined them with blackberries to make some slices with puff pastry (the picture at the top of the post). I also cooked up a gingerbread tray bake, cut it into quarters and topped some with lemon icing and wrapped up the rest for later in the week.


As for the chores? I can confirm the world didn't stop.

I did the mowing yesterday evening and later today I will change the bed.
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Right, after my last post I feel a bit guilty about claiming I have nothing to blog about. All this contentedness has made me a teeny bit lazy (as well as put on 5lb but that's another story!). There was a time when I used blogging as my diary, and have frequently referred to it when trying to remember dates and happenings. Then I've realised that I've stopped doing that and, in doing so, lost a valuable part of my personal history.

So, I sat down and made myself write out all the things that have happened over the last couple of months, then went through the digital photos. It's surprising just how much I wrote down and, in turn, how much could have been consigned to the dusty recesses of my mind to fade away. One of the more memorable things that has happened has been lard rendering so I thought I'd kick off with that.

Our pigs were fat, massively so. A pig should have about 0.5-1.0cm of fat when slaughtered, and this figure is led by consumer demand for leaner cuts of meat. When paying for meat by weight, consumers don't want to pay for too much fat. Our pigs had 2cm of fat on them!! On a pork chop you could see the natural healthy fat attached to the outside of the meat and a whacking great additional 1.5cm laid over the top. There was a visible line between the two layers. I peeled this off all of the meat and ended up with kilos of the white stuff, which was earmarked for making soap, in particular hand soap.

We get through so much hand soap here due to having animals and needing to frequently wash after touching them but the shop stuff leaves our hands quite rough, necessitating a lot of hand cream. That's because manufacturers realised years ago that the natural moisturising glycerine in soap could be extracted and sold separately, leaving behind a product that is drying. Then they cottoned on the fact they could sell us a hand/face/body cream to add the moisture back in and if that didn't work, add 'luxury' moisturising ingredients, like shea butter or almond oil, and charge even more money. It's all one big giant rip-off so that's why I want to render down the pig fat into lard and make hand soap.

So, a few weeks ago I started rendering lard. It was a very stinky greasy week, made worse by the heat. It didn't go as well as I hoped to start with but got better as the week progressed.

My first attempt was rendering it in a slow cooker (see above picture). According to the many sources I found on the internet, it was a slow gentle process and should have provided a nice clean white lard. Unfortunately, it 'cooked' the lard a bit and left it slightly orange and with a bit of a porky whiff. I need nice snowy white non-smelly lard to make soap. I haven't shown a picture of this as my camera isn't accurately reflecting the orangeness. So net result was two pints of lard that could only be used for cooking, unless I find a way of getting it pure white and non-porky smelling.

My second attempt was much more successful - I rendered it on the stove top in a large ovenproof pan, pouring off the fat at regular intervals before it had a chance to cook.


My equipment was fairly rudimentary - I just strained the liquid fat through an coffee machine filter into a re-usable soup container.




This was much better - I could see straight away it was a light golden colour, no orange in sight, and it solidified to a snowy white. I reuse microwaveable soup containers for stocks and fat. I actively look for these in M&S when the soup is yellow-stickered to 50p because they are nice and strong.


Now I have something to make soap with, but I have to render down the other few kilos of fat first. Having suffered and sweated in the heat, I've learned my lesson and earmarked that job for a cool rainy day, if we ever get one in the UK!
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So it's been a bit of a bad 10 days and I decided not to blog. The sheep went to the slaughterhouse on Tuesday, and I was quite emotional about it. Unsurprisingly. I know people say you get used to it but I can't say I ever will. I wasn't a proper snotty wreck at the abattoir like I was with the pigs - I held it together until i got back in the van and then sniveled all the way home. 

 I didn't bond as much with the sheep as I did with the pigs though. I kept getting hurt by their horns or headbutted which, when combined with the fact they broke Georgie's leg and were responsible for the deaths of the chickens, helped me retain some semblance of emotional detachment. Not completely though. The smallholding has no animals apart from the cats and it is very quiet and a little bit sad.

Anyway, the sheep will be returned from the slaughterhouse next week so I have to have a mega rearrange of the freezers to make space. Leading on from that job is rendering down the surplus pig fat into lard for soapmaking, which has been frozen down until I was ready for it. The amount in the picture is about a quarter of what is frozen.

This is a particularly stinky job and I have refrained from doing it during the last few months out of respect for my mother-in-law. However, I waved her and Martin off for a short break staying with my brother-in-law this morning so game on! 

 It's Le Mans weekend you see, a 24hr endurance race in France that Martin and his brother get together every year to watch on TV. I don't think they have missed a year so far. Not my idea of fun - 24hrs of crisp eating and watching cars go round and round a track. Nope, I usually stay with the cats and enjoy the quiet time, putter, watch box sets, cross a few jobs off the list, etc. 

 This year, in no particular order, the list of jobs to be crossed off include:

  • Render and clean all the pig fat into lard using the slow cookers
  • Wash the sheep fleeces in the bath and dry in the sun ready for carding
  • Mow the paddock
  • Spring clean the lobby and paint the skirting and wall around the front door.

Yes, I haven't stopped spring cleaning, which has now gone on so long it has become summer cleaning! We had someone to stay for a few days recently so the living room, landing and stairs were thoroughly deep cleaned as part of the preparations - apologies, I had no time to blog about that I just had to get on and get cleaning as their arrival was unexpected and imminent. Mostly a lot of dust and cobwebs with a bit of suite spot cleaning, curtain hoovering, carpet freshening and relocating objects back to their proper homes. Wasn't too bad and didn't take too long.

 So, once the lobby is finished this weekend, all that will be left is the en-suite in our bedroom and I will have completed the spring clean of the whole house. Finally!
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Disaster struck yesterday.

 I moved the chickens from their main pen into their little day pen in the paddock so they could have a scratch around. Some time in the three hours after that, one of the sheep went nuts and hurt them.

From the state of the bars, it looks like one of the sheep got a horn stuck between the bars of the small pen and dragged it round as it struggled to free itself. The welds are broken and the bars bent. Ginger was killed, broken neck I think, and Nerys injured. I found her huddled up to Ginger's body, in shock with her entire head comb missing down to her scalp. 

 I got her in the house, tucked her up in box  and syringed some painkiller and electrolytes into her. Later in the evening, she ate some food and went to sleep but this morning things had taken a turn for the worse. She couldn't stand and had fluid building up in her lungs. Despite being hungry and keen to eat and drink, she steadily got worse until it was clear she was suffering terribly, heaving for every rattly breath. I can only think she had a punctured lung or heart failure, both of which would cause a rapid fluid build up.

 We had no choice but to put her down quickly and stop her suffering. 

 Nerys and Ginger were the best chickens we've ever had; so friendly, industrious, and productive. 

Worringly, while I was in the paddock retrieving Ginger's body to bury, one of the sheep stormed past me and I realised too late he was charging up to Fleagle, who I hadn't seen had followed me in. It was only because she puffed up and screamed that it pulled up short in surprise,and I had enough time to chase her out, otherwise she would have been trampled like Georgie was. 

Enough is enough. 
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Spring cleaning has had to be put on hold this week as Martin has managed to tear his calf muscle, leaving me to hold the fort. 

 We've recently decided to modify the kitchen, and in an amazing stroke of luck we found a secondhand Rangemaster 90cm induction range on eBay in our town and went to pick it up in the week. 

 That's when it happened. Martin lifted his end of the range, but didn't even get it off the ground before his calf muscle snapped. He had very large calf muscles and it looks like they were too tight and couldn't take the strain. Luckily the seller had some friends he could call on to help us load it into the van. 

 So until further notice I've taken over all of his chores inside and outside the house, including 3-4 hours of weekly grass mowing and - a super special chore for this weekend - brush-cutting the nettles in the paddock down. 

 Deep joy.
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The sheep had a bit of a stressful day today. They were sheared.

In the UK shearing takes place in May, the earlier the better, to avoid the dreaded fly strike and keep the sheep cool during the hot months. Flies are active and laying their eggs towards the end of May, sometimes earlier if the weather has been unseasonable warm. Sheep fleece, especially moist places like around their bums, is especially vulnerable. The wounds from a bad fly strike can kill a sheep.


So, today our whitefaced woodland wethers tried, and failed, to do battle with our sheep shearer Jason. They had no chance of escape. He was super efficient; had them on the bums and sheared in less than four minutes apiece. Incredibly skilled. He can shear 300 sheep a day.


They were most indignant, roaring their heads off during the process then belting out the bleats together afterwards. Typically, the weather turned and it's been cold and raining ever since, but they've tucked themselves up in the straw in the field shelter for the night. I went in there to check earlier and it is warm and cosy.


So now I have a few kilos of dirty sheep fleece to wash. It's supposed to be white!
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