The Accidental Farmer's Blog
Meating and greating (and no that is not a spelling mistake
Tuesday, 23 March 2010 07:56 |
  
It has been a busy week and it is only Tuesday. Last night I did my own verson of the rain dance thanking Him above for finally breaking the drought it was getting pretty scary up at the farm wondering if we were actually heading into another drought. Last year the wonderful Becky left the farm for the first time in May and it was still brown and revolting as I recall. I was desperately hoping we would not have a repeat of that this year and it looks like my prayers have been answered in some small way. It does of course, mean a change of tack at the farm which up until now was dealing with scorching weather and trying to keep everyone's cool now we will be worrying about how to keep them all warm. The pigs are looking magnificent, some slightly more magnificent than others-Jack I hope you can read this! Overall the animals have survived and thrived this summer which bodes well for the cooler months to come. We have decided to reduce the number of cattle we have. Dexter cattle are gorgeous but as they are they are incredibly small they do not yield anywhere like the volume of meat that larger breeds do and we need a lot more of them to make them even close to commercially viable for the farm. So we have selected five breeding cows and their calves and of course, big Billy the bull, and are now trying to rehome the rest. |
Beef & Blogging
Monday, 15 February 2010 00:00 |
Life has been predictably busy hence the lack of blogging. I watched Julie & Julia the other night and couldn't work out how she found the time to do all the blogging, hold down a full time job and cook-then I realised no animals, no kids! My blogging is certainly more hit and miss than hers but there is someone out there reading it and even if there wasn't it is a great way for me to remember all the good, bad and ugly plus the beautiful that happens on the farm. Great memories are a bit of a theme for this blog and concen our beef the first batch of which will be available this weekend at Mt Claremont market (February 20th). Lots of yummy steaks, roasts, mince and diced beef all from our certified rare breed Dexters. For those of you who may never have tried Dexter beef before some of our lovely customers describe it as the best beef they've ever eaten. It is very tasty and reminds most people of beef they used to eat. Crazy cows and high jumping Englishmen
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 13:37 |
Neil famously once said "I don't get horses" I think we will be addiing "and cows". Last weekend two lovely wwoofers, Kathrin and Lukas arrived on the farm from Germany. We were showing them around the farm doing our very best to prove how professional we were when we spotted a cow who had calved three days ealrier. For some reason half her udder was engorged and whilst the calf appeared to be feeding ok I decided we should take a better look at her and get her into the yards. Earlier in the year we had the same problem with another cow and her calf was not feeding well and getting weaker by the hour. On that occasion we intervened and milked the cow, fed the milk to the calf and all was well. So off we went, persuaded the cow to get into the farmyard where she backed herself into a corner and was having none of it. |
Geese, crows and other life and death issues!
Friday, 09 October 2009 08:17 |
It has been a while since I blogged mainly because life on the farm has been so busy and with Spring launching itself upon us with all its verdant enthusiasm i am struggling to catch up with non-farm activities. The geese, whom I had decided were an attractive but fairly useless addition to the farm surprised everyone by producing five gorgeous goslings with feet way too large for their tiny bodies it seemed. Sadly two disappeared and I was about to blame old foxy again but then realised that a) there were no obvious holes in the fence and b) if he/she had got in then he/she wouldn't have just taken two the whole lot would have gone. So another culprit was sought out and we have concluded that this time around it is a crow which has been seen lurking (if that is what crows do in trees) above the veggie garden. In an attempt to thwart the crow I have suspended white flicker tape across the top of the veggie patch not sure if it will stop the crow but it has certainly confused the geese who are eyeing up their new 'ceiling' with very quizzical looks.
Rain, rain and more rain!
Friday, 26 June 2009 07:54 |
They do say it never rains but it pours and that has certainly been the case for the past few days. Now we have torrents of water cascading down the hill where just a few short weeks ago all we had was dust! The paddocks are all beautifully green and the animals are just loving it. We have managed to get in about a third of the crop so far and will finish off by the end of next week and with all the rain this bodes well for our harvest.
The absence of rain was matched by a dearth of piglets on the farm. The piglet drought was finally broken by Doris who produced nine gorgeous piglets on Sunday morning and not to be outdone Coco followed suit the following day with four (not so many but all perfect). My own theory on this is the pigs just somehow knew it wasn’t going to rain and hence decided there was little point in getting pregnant earlier in the year and producing piglets when there was nothing on the ground. I have mentioned this phenomenon in a previous newsletter and whilst I cannot find any evidence to back up my thesis the only other time this happened on the farm was in the big drought three years ago when nothing would get pregnant.
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