Friday 19th February
Births: - On Thursday 18th February to Primrose and Turpin nine beautiful bouncing boys and girls. Mother and babies are doing well.
Primrose and Turpin are part of our high health Tamworth which we established at Grange Farm last year. The photo's below were taken when the piglets were 1 day old.
Thursday 4th February
Luckily all the ground works for the new pig shed were completed before the snow came in December. This is being erected at Blandsby Park Farm where due to its location has been plagued by problems with the recent snow and at times has only been passable by tractor.
Fabrication of the steelwork was carried on indoors, then finally as the snow thawed, work on the site recommenced. The final roof section of the shed can be seen been hoisted into position.
Monday 7th September
Today we have sent our first eggs from the farm hens to the shop in Moxon Street. Whilst the hens have been starting to lay we have been enjoying fabulous fresh eggs. I like to think the hens are happy, especially when they follow me round the field waiting for their corn to scratch at on an afternoon. The weather does not put them off either – if they are sheltering in their sheds they soon come running when they hear me in the field.
I think it is fair to say that summer has been very hit and miss, although we are further forward with harvest this year than we were last. Sunday saw us start to cut the Spring Barley at Grange Farm, but three times round the field and rain stopped the combine. We are hoping for a few dry days in a row so we can finish this and also cut the oats at Blansby which are also ready, perhaps by this time next week we will only have the peas left to harvest.
The heather moor where we graze the Scotch Blackface and Swaledale sheep has slowly been turning purple. In a good year the whole moor is ablaze with the vividly flowering heather – this pic was taken one bright morning (before it rained!) and shows some of the splendid view which we so often take for granted.
Amongst everything else which is going on at the farm we are having some of the traditional dry stone walls rebuilt and repaired. This wall forms the boundary to some land which was purchased at the start of last year. Over the years the wall has been allowed to fall into disrepair and the decision was made to return a number of walls around the farm to their original glory. This is the first of those walls and leads on to the moor.
August 21st 2009
Time seems to pass so quickly and while only the day to day jobs seemed to be happening while we waited for a number of fine dry days in order to make hay and start to cut the corn, we have now had a dry spell and everything seems to have happened at once.
Harvest has commenced and hay making has finished with the last of the bales still to be brought in to the sheds for storage. This will provide winter fodder for the ewes when they are in lamb and have lambed.
Last week we collected three 12 week old Tamworth gilts which now gives us seven females to start our new high health herd of pedigree Tamworth pigs at Levisham. There are a number of different female lines and ours include Lucky Lass, Ruby, Princess and Maple. Whilst the new arrivals are too young to undergo the vaccination programme which will help us achieve our high health status, the four older gilts and our new boar will start this in September/October. The boar is Stoneymoor Golden Ranger 4, and was the breed champion at the Royal Show in July. The aim of the vaccination is to eradicate a number of common diseases amongst pigs and all new stock joining the herd will undergo this programme. Any progeny should then be disease free as they will have received immunity from their parents.
The chicks which we hatched out at the beginning of July are now seven weeks old and have moved accommodation. They are now in one of the large chicken houses and are running around outside quite happily. Welsummers are a breed that are prone to feather pecking as we found out to our dismay, and hence we have a number of bare backed chicks in the group. Despite this the chicks have grown well and we will soon have to sex them to find out how many hens and how many cockerels there are.
3rd July 2009
The last few weeks on the farm have been particularly busy. In addition to the Riggit Galloway bulls we have also purchased a Belted Galloway bull to serve the heifers bought in Scotland last year. Huntfield Julius is 3 ½ and has come to us from near Dumfries. It is hoped that we will commence calving the Belties towards the end of March next year.
The end of June also saw us finish shearing the sheep. Approximately 1200 sheep, including 700 Mule ewes and 450 North Country Blackface and Swaledale ewes were clipped over two days. The fleeces have now all been delivered to the British Wool Marketing Board where it will be sorted, graded and marketed according to type and quality.
Our 450 Dorset ewes were shorn at the beginning of the month and the rams have now been turned in with them in order for lambing to commence at the end of November.
We have just finished making silage to feed to the livestock over the winter months. The beautiful weather over the last week has enabled a good, high yielding crop to be harvested, giving us a high quality feed for the cattle and sheep.
Our last entry noted the acquisition of 150 Welsummer eggs which we have had incubated and hatched. Three weeks on we now have 81 beautiful Welsummer chicks shown here at just one day old.
12th June 2009
Our newly acquired Riggit Galloway bull Park Badger, came to us from Cornwall and was the bull that inspired the further breeding of this type of Galloway ten years ago when they had nearly died out. A Galloway cow and a Belted Galloway bull in Scotland carried a mix of old genetics and produced a line backed calf now known as Badger. A small number of breeders recognised the rarity of this and looked to increase the gene pool and further the breed.
We have also purchased a young red Riggit Galloway bull from Devon, seen here on the left, from whom we hope to breed red Riggits once he has reached maturity.
To learn more about Riggit Galloway cattle please go to www.riggitgallowaycattlesociety.co.uk/
Following an extensive search for Welsummer chickens which took us as far as Truro, we have found a breeder in Ayrshire who has a strain of Welsummer dating back to the 1920's.
We now have 150 fertile eggs to hatch and hope to achieve an 80% success rate giving us about 120 chicks, about half of which will be cockerels. These will be fattened for our shops whilst the hens will become the foundation stock of the Ginger Pig Welsummer chicken flock.
Friday 4th September