Our Good Life

I have a step by step photographic guide (yes, I know, mental!) in case anyone needs any help come Xmas next year~!

Happy Hens, Happy Lambs and other stories...

The first time we viewed the plot of land we would buy, it was a gorgeous spring day. The trees surrounding the boundaries were in full blossom. The two weeping willows that guarded each end of the pretty, meandering stream were straining with the weight of the leaves on them. The stream itself brimmed over with wild garlic, mint and watercress and the lush green grass of the pasture looked as though nothing had ever touched it. I fell in love. So did Mum, which was fortunate because it would not have been possible without her! My husband and kids were as excited as I, my son planning camping trips, daughter what animals we would breed, and hubby counting the blackthorn trees and muttering things like “…. gallons of sloe gin” under his breath.

In the month before we took possession, drawings of chicken coops were sketched, an area for a pig ark and pig pen were allocated, an allotment was planned with professional looking beds, and we began growing plant and vegetable seeds like there was no tomorrow. We planned to sell our plants at local farmers’ markets along with all the beautiful vegetables we would grow and the bountiful clutch of eggs we would have from our ten chickens. We honestly thought that we could have all this in the first season, especially as I gave up a full-time job (and salary) to apply myself fully. Needless to say, sixteen months on, we haven’t been able to achieve half of what was originally planned! But, we are still working our butts off to ensure our plans all come to fruition eventually.

In the planning stages, we had not allocated any resources apart from my Mum and I, our little grey Fergie tractor that came with the land, and my old trusty wheelbarrow. Knowing what I know now, to say we were naive is something of an understatement. Everything has been a learning curve, but we have had so many laughs along the way along with a lot of heartache.

To date, we have bred from our “herd” of five Jacob’s ewes, eaten our own produced lamb, we have five lambs going to market in two weeks, all of them are already ordered by friends and family who have sampled our store throughout the year. I thought I was biased when I said it was the best lamb I had ever tasted. Apparently, I was not alone!

We now have 34 hens, all laying, who have the full run of the three acres, plus all the hedgerows surrounding. Some of the hens are escapees from a local battery farm, we didn’t have the heart to return them after their bid for freedom. They had very few feathers when they first came to us. Their feathers are now a beautiful dark red, and their eggs are a lovely brown speckled colour with glorious orange yolks, a vast contrast to the pale eggs and very pale yolks they laid at the beginning. The chicken coops have been designed by my long-suffering husband and are big enough to house about fifty chickens in each, but we allow the 34 to choose between the sheds. We have 10 Silverline’s, 12 Rhode Island Reds (including the former battery hens), and 11 Black Rocks. We have also been given a beautiful cockerel called Erol (Cock-Erol) and he has five of his handpicked hens to service. No surprise, therefore, that we have baby chicks hatching at the moment, two hatched last week. Thank God for a broody hen! Dave, (long-suffering hubby) has been training Erol to jump up and sit on his arm to eat his favourite treat, bread. It can be a bit daunting to unsuspecting visitors to the field to have a full-sized cockerel, with full sized spurs, jumping up and down in front of you! Not such a good idea, honey!

We chose our sheep because they were rare breed Jacob’s and because we thought they were goats! The sheep learning curve that we have experienced has been incredible. Having helped our local farmer friend once to catch one lamb and tag, dag and worm it, was, we thought, enough experience to handle five full grown ewes. As I said previously, we were so naive. We named each one - Maggie, Sue-Ellen, Cutie, Barbara and Minty - purely because we could make either a baaa noise from the name (Maaaagie, Baaarbara) or phonetic “ewe” (sEWEellen, cEWEtie etc)which seemed apt. We thought Minty was a boy and would be going off to market, hence the connection with sauce. Maggie was definitely in charge of everyone, including us and our German Shepherd Halle, who fancies herself as a bit of a sheepdog.

It wasn’t long before our ‘D’ day arrived, that is our Dagging, Tagging, Trimming and Worming day. We thought we were doing pretty well as all the sheep, happily eating from my hand, followed me into the stable. Dave, already in position, was quick to shut and bolt the stable door. We quickly donned our overalls and plastic gloves and placed the taggers, daggers, foot trimmers within reach of us. I carefully measured the wormer into the gun and, ready to go, we entered the arena, sorry stable. Maggie took one look at us and jumped straight out of the window, closely followed by the others. It took us another 5 days to repeat the process, this time with the window firmly shut and secured. We laugh now, but believe me, the air was rather blue that day.

Last November, a local farmer, another David, very kindly allowed us to borrow his tup (ram) to service our then five girls. The tup was called Disraeli and had obviously been “serviced” before he got to us as he promptly lay down in the field and slept for a week. We had put a raddle on him (a harness which holds a coloured marker so you can see which ewes have been serviced) with the colour green installed. Every day for three weeks we expectantly arrived at the field to see which ewe had got a green mark. None. A month had gone by and there had been no action whatsoever. Bonfire night came and the following day every ewe was covered in the green marker. Fireworks definitely happened that night.

Going by the saying “five months and five days” we worked our lambing day to be the 1st April and to our immense surprise we were right! Our confidence in ourselves as “shepherds” was growing by the day. How hard could lambing be? Surprisingly easy. The lambs were all born within 24 hours of each other, only one ewe failed to catch and was lambless. Our herd now had the additions of one set of twins, a boy and a girl, and a further girl and boy to the other two ewes. The ewe which had not produced had been the previous year’s lamb, and we were advised to try her again the following year. We duly sexed the lambs, banded their tails to prevent fly strike, and castrated the boys. Well, OK, we got a nearby farmer to castrate them. We will do it next year. We also arranged for the farmer to shear our sheep at this time and we had our first lesson in how bloomin hard it is. We also found out why the lambless ewe was lambless when the farmer accidentally nicked the poor thing’s willy. Neither Dave nor I admitted who had sexed the lambs. We were united in our embarrassment. As I said, we have had a “sheep” learning curve.

All through the winter of 2006, my Mum and I planned to the last detail what we would grow to sell as plants and what produce we intended to harvest. We started really well, the plot was divided up into four sections, and each section manured and prepared according to what was to grow there. The potatoes, onions and garlic were planted and everything began to fall into place. We were counting the days down to March when the greenhouse planting would begin in full. Hanging basket schemes were planned, tomato seed sown, and then our world turned upside down when my Dad died. I don’t want to go into this in too much depth as I still become emotional. But as you can imagine, we have been through the most emotional few and suddenly all our planning just did not matter anymore. We did dabble in the greenhouse, Mum and I, and half-heartedly planted up the allotment, but it all seemed pointless really. Surprising then, that when we started selling the plants off at the local car boot sale, we were inundated with customers and the queue seemed never ending. This was a definite boost to us and we would chat to our customers and tell them all about our little holding (too few acres to be a smallholding). We were amazed by the support from these people. These unsuspecting members of the public carried us through the past few months, giving us advice on what we were doing, supplying egg boxes, jam jars, plant pots etc etc. They loved our stories, couldn’t wait to hear about our latest additions, and generously visited our stall and spent their money with us. There are many of them now that I would happily count as friends and I only hope that we have given something back to them for their loyalty and support. Our eggs are now so much in demand (they really are fantastic!) that we sometimes go weeks without eggs ourselves in order to continue supplying our customers. Each week, someone comes to us and gives us feedback “those tomato plants you sold me have been fantastic” or “are you the Happy Hen lady? I have been told your eggs are fantastic!” The word must have got around because quite a few people have referred to me as the Happy Hen lady! As I am also referred to as the Jam Lady, the Plant Lady and the Veg Lady, I often wonder if people wander along the car boot sale looking for four different people. Well, hubby always said I had multiple personality disorder.

The latest additions are a trio of geese, 1 male and 2 females, called Lucy, Brucey and Goosey and they are happily cleaning out the stream of our wild mint and watercress……and pecking at our fingers as we try to feed them….ouch! Looking forward to our goslings hatching next year! Also collected two turkeys to “finish” for Christmas and have named them Cranberry and Stuffing.

So now we are in winter and the planning for next year is underway. The sloe gin, blackberry whisky and marrow rum are fermenting nicely. We are breeding our own chicks to increase our egg sales (and hopefully get a few a week for ourselves), preparing the allotment for next years planting, ploughing a larger plot for our potatoes, harvesting seeds from our best plants, cleaning the greenhouses (five) and have just covered the polytunnel hoops. The jam is made, all the veg has been sold, all the plants sold, all the eggs sell out daily, all the lamb is sold … perhaps we are doing something right!

Roll on 2008!