Wales!

Saturday:

Well that was a very busy day which started at 7ish when we finished packing and got ready to leave. Dad very kindly took us to Tiverton which took of a few hours off our journey, Thank you Dad! We decided in the end to take the next train to Bristol as it was quite busy. Once we got to Bristol we got quite confused as there were lots of people on one of the stations and as it turned out there was a Rugby match at Cardiff (which was on our route) and after failing to even get close to getting on the first train and seeing all the more fans arriving we spoke to the travel info guy who was brilliant. He told us to make our way to Bristol Parkway as there would be a bigger train and to go to Swansea and change there for Carmarthen. As it happened a secret extra train was waiting at the station when got there that was heading to Newport. So we actually managed to get back on track after that. The next train despite going Cardiff was pleasantly half full so we got seats and everything! After arriving in Carmarthen the bus was waiting for us and for a mere £3.20 each would take us to practically on the drive of our destination where Michelle was waiting for us with Katie (the most lovely cuddly Spaniel/collie cross). 

Katie

Firstly we had our first cuppa tea of the day, then had a little tour and then chilli and rice for dinner. At the moment Michelle is without an oven so everything is done in a pan, microwave or slow cooker, which to me is fantastic as I love hot pot type foods. After that we chilled out talking and doing handicrafts (Michelle croqueting and me sewing) and Matt got into reading on the kindle. We were both surprised to be absolutely knackered and unconscious by 11pm!

Sunday:

Got up around 8:45 and got straight to feeding the animals, I went with Michelle to feed all the chickens and ducks (there are at present 5 little productive egg groups with their very shy cockerels and two batches of point of lay, however there will be 3-4 groups left as they are not laying very often so there will be a cull later in the week).

Matt went with Phil and fed the sheep, geese and pigs. After this we had a lovely breakfast and then started the day proper we went and pulled up all the dead broad beans. Their broad bean system is brilliant they have an irrigation system of this recycled tyre piping that slowly leeches water and then over top black plastic sheeting with holes burned into it (132 of them!) which is pinned into place using a large staples. But today we were taking it all up and replacing it with a green manure (which has three purposes as it is a nitrogen fixer, can be used as a compostable material (usually through the chickens/pigs) and a winter flower source for the bees).

Where the broad beans were

I have also fallen in love with the idea of using a rotavator it is so much quicker than digging by hand. It was after we finished this that the weather turned to completely sunny and warm which was fantastic. After lunch me and Michelle got on with tying the fruit canes to the wires and Matt and Phil got on with fixing the Pig pen as we shall be moving their Pig and her little 7 young’uns out of the farrow pen into the great outside! Right now we are just chilling out and waiting for dinner in 40 mins, when we get to try real sausages from their very own pigs (from last year of course). 

Monday:

Well we have really been getting stuck in and quite quickly getting used to the routine. 8am starting with the moving the pig and all her piglets, (my they have a good set of lungs!) although they were quite quiet once they were securely handled but catching them and when they could see mum again they started back up. They seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their new surrounding from a safe distance around mum. She looked like she was really happy to be back out of the inside pen and back into the pen with lots of room.

Mrs Pig

Baby pigs

 Then we fed all the animals and let them out before having our breakfast. After that we got to help Phil with the bees. I had no idea just how organised they really are, it’s fascinating! What we were doing was just checking the balance of each of the hives making sure there was only one queen (in one there were spares that had to sorted/moved) and that there were eggs and young about and counting the number of frames that were populated by the bees. It was brilliant I had no idea that beekeepers use smoke to calm the bees and it really works. It was brilliant we were even able to see how to try and introduce a queen from another hive into a hive where there was no queens and no queens in the making. Fingers crossed she will be alright we shall find out next week when we may also get to help harvest some of the honey! So excited!

 Matt suited up and ready for the bees

Me in bee suit

Phil calming the bees with smoke

The bees

Close up of the bees

We have been eating the most fantastic food, yesterday we had a sausage casserole with real homemade sausages and they were delicious, very meaty. After a quick tea break (which are refreshingly frequent) me and Matt finished tying the blackberry and loganberry plants back to the wires, I think I have found my favourite ever job even though I was stung by some insect I have not lost any of my enthusiasm for that task. After assessing the weather and the polytunnel we decided not to attack it to try and bring it back to usable order again, we went to tie back the most amazing blackberry hybrid I have ever seen. It doesn’t look like brambles but it certainly has blackberries on it. The amount of plant growth is astounding, we just kept finding more and more trailing stems all over the place. After the weather got a bit too wet we decided another teabreak was called for. Since the weather did not really improve and it was getting late we decided to do the afternoon chores and settle in for the evening. At the moment we are just waiting for dinner, and chilling out.

Tuesday:

Right well we had a nice early start as Michelle needed to go and take produce to a coop market (WI started this and local producers have taken it over as community produce mini market). We spent the morning after breakfast finishing up tying up the loganberries and blackberries so that they are relatively neat and tidy. After a quick break we got to watering the squashes and tidy up the rhubarb beds as the weeds were trying to take over. We also got to feed ‘lambchop’ the runt of the sheep who had to be handfed who is so tiny he is named lambchop so that they don’t get to attached too him as he is a meat lamb.

I had a sheep (called Baa baa) that decided to stalk me after I stopped her from getting to lambchop’s food.

Baa baa the stealth sheep

We had the most undecided weather one minute it was bright sunshine then it was cold and rainy this evening is trying to be both. I have been attempting to finish my embroidery project and got as far as all the months names on it now lots of decoration to go.

and in Woogo's honour

I am a little apprehensive about tomorrow as we will be culling one of the chicken groups as they are no longer laying.

Wednesday:

Well today was the day I was kinda apprehensive about, today was chicken culling day. We got up and fed everything (but the fated chickens) before having breakfast and getting on with the job at hand. I decided to help Phil clean and sweep the chimney instead of doing the chickens, so we spent quite a while getting it all ready to go. Matt and Michelle were getting on with the chickens and had finished four (killing, skinning and gutting them) before the rayburn was ready to go. Rather than produce a lot of offal and bones and things to find a space to dispose of them, they put it all in the Rayburn and burn it up. I would never have thought to do this, but it is fantastic all the bits they can’t utilise get burnt and the ash is then something they can use. I actually did manage to pluck (no pun intended) enough courage to see how it was done and it wasn’t half as nasty as I had supposed. It is very quick and there is no suffering at all, they barely know what happened. I think now that even though I didn’t have the courage to have a go today I feel prepared if needed to do the deed. After lunch we got on with the last of the chickens and then (Matt) cleaned out the chicken ark and (Me and Michelle) put plenty of bark in the enclosure, ready to move the youngsters down this evening. At the moment we are just waiting to help out with a very large batch of chutney.

Thursday:

Well last night we successfully moved 27 partially unconscious chickens into the new pen (note to self this is the best way to move chickens ever!). In the morning they had a bit of a steep learning curve as they all sussed out the ramp to get out of the house. Only half of them realised that they had to go out of the run (by running away from the food) in order to get to the food. But other than that all other feedings were pretty normal, the ducks still and hissed like a bottle of lemonade and wheezed continuously. After that we got to work on finishing the second rhubarb bed. We were really lucky with the weather we had a lovely sunny day with nice breaks of clouds to cool us off (it was so nice that I may have burned my face slightly). We continued to have very nice weather all the while we were sorting out the raspberries. They needed weeding, pruning and tying back, we managed about  a 1/3 to a ½ of them done when we realised it was probably time to feed the animals and collect all their feeders. Me and Matt offered to pick plums and managed to get a medium crate full despite the tree trying really hard not to allow many of its fruits to ripen.

 After the picking we sat down with Michelle and prepared them for the freezer (and some for dessert) while listening to the archers. The Archers I am beginning to realise is a Woofing trend with them being the second place that I have been to that listens to this radio programme. We were pretty much banking on not having much to do this evening when Phil discovered that the chickens that we moved last night hadn’t gone to bed and were hiding in a bush in their pen. So we donned our overalls for a very amusing adventure. Firstly, Matt went to put his boots on to suddenly come face to face with a sleeping chicken and Phil found one on the trailer. After catching those two (which didn’t take much since they were almost unconscious) but the other 25 were not quite as easy, but eventually we caught as many as we could see and we shall just have to see how many appear at breakfast time and then a wing clipping session may be on the cards. We are now completely shattered so to bed!

Friday:

I woke this morning and to my relief I hadn’t burned my face and the weather was relatively good so we got on and dug up all the garlic with Phil. They were all grown under black plastic and it is amazing there were hardly any weeds. Last year apparently their garlic didn’t really do well but this year we have found that most of them were a good size. The smell followed us for quite a while especially when we washed them ready to be plaited another day.

Michelle had a very busy day as tomorrow is market day for Phil so she was off picking for most of the day. So we got on and helped Phil with another row of tying, weeding, and pruning the raspberries. This actually took until almost four o’clock by then we needed to get on with the afternoon feeding. Then with the help of Phil and a slightly scary ladder we harvested another 4 bags worth of plums ready for jamming at a later date. At the moment we are just waiting to see if we will need to put all the young chickens to bed or whether they will figure out how to go to bed on their own (since they have to work out how to use the ramp I am not sure!).

Saturday:

This is supposedly Michelles day off (which really means she has time to do general gardening) we got up a little later and Phil went off to market to sell goods picked yesterday. So we got to help Michelle do some gardening. We started with the drive (which included removing a dead budlea! I never thought that happened) and then taking out enough stuff in the back garden to warrant having a lovely bonfire hehe! Lots of strategic bramble removal as well as baby ash removal (they are taking over here). Then in the afternoon Michelle showed us how to cook Welsh Cakes a local recipe. That evening both of us just crashed we didn’t even really last until 9-10pm tea time!

Sunday:

This has possibly been one of the busiest days so far! Me and Michelle made around 80 jars of jam! We made marmalade, plum, blackberry and apple, blackcurrant, loganberry and apple and we attempted to rescue a batch of strawberry jam.

Matt and Phil spent the day outside (luckily in the sun) fixing the pig pen and the pig pen fencing. Matt has also really got into beekeeping and spends much of his time off reading books on beekeeping and picking up hints and tips from Phil. Matt was lucky enough to be involved with catching a swarm! Later on in the day me and Michelle finished the day with finishing a batch of beetroot chutney (which is fab! Especially on cheese on toast). Around 8pm Michelle taught me how to knit again and I am now knitting with 4 needles to make a circular object (hopefully to start making woollen socks).

Monday:

Today was again nice and busy in the morning we started by putting out 4 trays worth of beetroot plants. We also got another tutorial in beekeeping, it is brilliant later on tonight we are harvesting honey! So watch this spot!