Mighty meaty

It's been a highly sociable week. On Saturday, my daughter and two grandsons came for an overnight visit. It's the first time the boys have stayed with us and grandson number 1 was very excited about staying on 'Grandma's farm'. They arrived mid afternoon on Saturday and played a bit, ate supper and got settled in for the evening. On Sunday morning it was still damp outside, but dressed in our not-so-glamorous waterproofs, we still managed to get outside and do a few chores. My older grandson helped us to move flexible fencing, feed the chickens and ducks and move wood chippings onto a particularly soggy and slippery area in the duck enclosure. 

 My daughter took this photo of us on our way to get yet another barrow load of wood chips, it made me realise that I really need to invest in some waterproofs that don't give me a Michelin Man look. I loved spending this precious time with him and hearing his squeals of delight as we raced around the yard. It seems riding in a wheelbarrow is the mode of transport for a five year old, although I'm not sure which of us enjoyed this more!

 Yesterday morning Mr J and I cleaned out the chicken shed. The eight inch deep bed of sawdust certainly made interesting scratching material for the chickens and it also helped to soak up some of the rainwater that was sitting on the surface of the ground unable to drain away fast enough.

 The chickens will scratch through this and turn it over and over during the winter months and then, in the spring, I will fence some of the area off and plant kale, spinach and other vegetables that the chickens like to eat. It will be quick and easy to feed the chickens some of their favourite leafy greens when they are growing in the chicken's field.

We then refreshed the deep bedding sawdust in the chicken shed and I treated the perches and fixings with diatomaceous earth as a preventative measure against red mite and then we headed indoors for a quick wash so that we didn't smell of chicken poop for the rest of the day.

Martha of @MarthaRoberts arrived early afternoon to deliver a couple of boxes of pork. I met Martha via Twitter, which has proved a great place to get to know some like-minded smallholders. She has a smallholding near Abergavenny on which she raises rare breed pigs that happily spend their days foraging on her hillside amongst woodland and grass. 

Photo courtesy of  Martha Roberts

A few weeks ago I asked Martha for a half a pig when the next batch of free range animals were despatched. She gave me plenty of notice so I was able to make sure that we had lots of space in the freezer.

I asked for some of the parts of a pig that aren't as popular now as they were in the past. So yesterday I took delivery of my half a pig together with some liver, hearts, kidneys, hock and leaf fat (the fat from around the kidneys).

I'm going to make liver pate, a coarse pate for Mr J and a smooth one for me. I'm going to render the leaf fat to make lard, which is high in omega 3 and I understand that if it's rendered very slowly and makes a very white lard, it is perfect for pastry as well as for using as a cooking fat. I'd like to try a rich slow casserole with the kidneys and slow roast stuffed hearts.

I'm really keen to experiment with old recipes and find ways to use as much of the carcass as I can because I feel that so much of the animal must go to waste. While we love a pork joint for a roast dinner, there are an awful lot of other dishes that can be made using other cuts.

Photo courtesy of  Martha Roberts

This experimentation has a reason. Mr J and I have been discussing our mid term plans for the smallholding and have decided that we may have a couple of pigs in the future. This certainly won't happen in 2017 and depending on how far we get with upgrading the dilapidated piggieries, it may happen in 2018 or later. In the meantime, we can learn how to make the very best use of as much of a pig as possible. There are some parts of the animal that I can't face trying, it makes no logical sense at all, but still, I don't fancy the lungs or spleen despite finding several recipes of how to cook them.

I've been searching through my mother's cookery books (like this 1961 edition of Mrs Beeton's) and looking online for recipes, hints and tips of how to prepare our new food. My plan for the next couple of months is to try out new recipes and decide which appeal to us the most and to share the successes on my blog. 

This morning Helen and Jane came to visit. Actually, Helen came to collect the flexible fencing that she kindly lent to us earlier in the year. We spent a lovely couple of hours drinking tea, eating cake and talking all things smallholding. Helen keeps pigs and Jane has sheep, so we swapped stories of muddy incidents, rainy days chasing our animals and shared lots of laughter.

This afternoon I started turned my attention to the pork. I started with the easiest joints to cook, the roast shoulder joints with crispy crackling.

I unwrapped the joints and left them to get to room temperature. I put them into a roasting tin. I scored the skin and rubbed some sea salt over the skin and into the scoring and put them into the oven on 220 degrees C. After about 25 minutes I turned the temperature down to 170 degrees C and cooked the joints until they were ready (I like meat well cooked). I poured off some of the fat and juices into a bowl after the first hour and again once they were cooked. Once they are cold, the fat and juices can be separated and I will freeze the juices in small portions until I want to use it as a base for gravy.

This evening's supper was a celebration of smallholders' food. We had roast pork, crackling, apple sauce that I made in September using our neighbours' windfall apples, gravy and purple sprouting broccoli which I picked from the garden just before dusk. We took a few moments to appreciate how lucky we are.

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Coping or managing

Most of my blog posts are about what we are up to, what's changing on our smallholding and how I've tackled various tasks with the poultry, vegetable garden or food forest. But sometimes the reasons that we've chosen this lifestyle become clear to us once again and although I try not to bleat on about being unwell, I think it's also useful not to pretend that all is hunkydory, because it's not. That said, we have better health than many people and better than many of our friends and family, so I do keep a sense of perspective and write with the knowledge that in the grand scheme of things, we are very fortunate.

It's been a funny few weeks. My thyroid has been playing up and I've been working with my GP to try to get it under control again. I had a marvelous spring and summer in terms of energy and pain levels and I have learnt how to better manage both, but at the end of September I started feeling not as well as I could (read about it here)

It seems that every now and then I will have a blip, one that I cannot manage and find it hard to cope with. Now I know how that feels and how it affects me, I can find ways to deal with it and act more quickly to counter the deterioration. 

One of those ways is to get a blood test as soon as I start feeling ill so that the GP can adjust my prescription. But this is easier said than done, getting a blood test can take two to three weeks and the GP appointment is usually a week after that. Once the prescription has been changed it can take a couple of months to feel the full effect of the new level of medication. So potentially once I start feeling unwell, it can be three months or more before I am back to feeling like me again. Clearly this is not an ideal situation, but it is one that I am going to have to learn to cope with.

Anyway, back in September a blip (often known as a Hashi's attack) caused my thyroid to function less well again and my GP increased my prescription with a view to getting my hormone levels correct, for how I want to feel, again. I have muddled through the last couple of months knowing that the medication level wasn't high enough and as instructed, I booked another blood test for six weeks after the last GP visit. Those blood tests were last week and the results show that there has been a slight improvement in the hormone levels, hooray! Although they aren't at a level that allows me to feel fully well, boo. And this week, I have been experiencing yet another blip, double boo! So today was the day to see the GP and I was going to tell her I felt I needed to increase the prescription and to talk to her about this next blip that I am having which will be knocking my thyroid function yet again. 

Unfortunately my GP is unwell and my appointment has been cancelled and there isn't another appointment for three weeks. So I have booked another blood test for two weeks time so that my GP and I can discuss up-to-date and relevant results rather than a month old results. It is not my doctor's fault that she is unwell and in the meantime I have the choice to self-medicate and increase my dosage or continue in this downward spiral of dysfunction.

Here's what I have learnt about my illness. Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease and only attacks the thyroid, which means my body thinks my thyroid is a problem and is attacking it (doh!) and little by little is destroying it. Once my thyroid is totally destroyed I will no longer have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. There will be other issues to contend with if and when that stage comes, but at least the Hashimoto's will have gone. The thyroid is the gland that controls most of our hormones and our metabolic rate is all tied up in the same system. People with hypothyroidism are often (but not always) overweight as their metabolisms don't process food in the same way. They can also have all sorts of other issues as a result of a slower metabolism, like slower heart-rate, poor digestion, swelling, pain and weaker immune systems.

The prescription that is usually given in the UK is a synthetic replacement of a hormone called T4 which the thyroid converts into T3. T3 is the form that the body can actually use to regulate all the functions that the thyroid is supposed to regulate. It seems to me that it would make more sense to prescribe a replacement of the T3 hormone, but what do I know?

When a Hashi's attack occurs the thyroid function decreases and so more T4 is needed for the thyroid to convert it into T3 and so the spiral continues. Many folks find they get to a level and stop having attacks and can function fully on their synthetic replacement, for others it is harder or more complicated. So far I am pleased to say that I seem to be responding well to the synthetic replacement and as long as do several other things to support my systems, I can trundle along pretty well.

As result of either the Hashimoto's or adrenal fatigue (which most UK doctors don't recognise) I do not absorb nutrients as well as I could previously, so I take nutrient supplements every day. These include several vitamins and a handful of minerals. A catch-all multi-vitamin doesn't work for me, so I take individual vitamin and mineral tablets at different times of the day because trial and error has shown me which times of day to take which supplements to have the most positive impact.

And, there are several things I don't do any more to help my system work more effectively. I am now on a caffeine free, alcohol free, gluten free and as much as possible an organic diet (yes, mostly that feels pretty fun-free too!).

I know this isn't my usual type of blog post, but occasionally I feel the need to take stock and to remember that even though I don't feel 100% healthy all the time (or any of the time), I have achieved an enormous amount on the smallholding over our first year and that's something to celebrate!

Time for a cuppa!

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Comings and goings

Although the weather has turned colder, the work in the garden continues. Not at such a speedy pace, but we have achieved quite a lot in the last month.

 The tree surgeons have done a splendid job, taking out five spindly sycamores at the back of the piggeries and one rather beautiful sycamore which unfortunately was going against the front wall of one piggery. We have kept the huge trees on the right of the photo and most of those on the left.

  I've continue to be surprised at the difference it makes, with a new sense of space and openess.

  And it creates an ideal space for some of the chickens to live in. We plan to move the Australorps to this area so that they can clear away the weeds and gorge themselves on the grubs and bugs that have been living here relatively undisturbed.

 At the start of the week was the Supermoon. It was overcast and cloudy as the moon first rose, but as it got higher in the sky the cloud cover was less and I took this photo of the moon over the sycamore trees and barn. I was rather pleased that I managed to include the lights of the Severn Bridge at the bottom of the photo.

 Inside the house, the latest chicks to hatch are doing well. The smallest one is a little Jersey Giant that is about two-thirds the size of these two. It had an issue with its umbilical cord when it hatched and I imagine that as it has survived a week, it will make it to maturity. But, I'm not holding my breath, these little chicks are vulnerable and their immune systems aren't fully formed yet, so there is every chance that the smallest, weakest one may succomb to infection. Usually by a week old I would have transferred them to the nursery pen in the stable, but as they were a very late hatch, I'm going to keep them in the warmth of the house for an additional week or so to give them more time to grow some feathers and get stronger.

Today two new Jersey Giant pullets arrive on the smallholding. They are coming from the breeder that we have had hatching eggs from, the girls are surplus to his requirements and very much wanted here, so it's a win-win situation. These girls will join our tiny flock of white Jersey Giants to help us increase the flock next year and to offer hatching eggs for sale.

Jersey Giants are lovely birds with docile, gentle temperaments and although very big, they have a grace to them. They were bred to be large meat birds, similar in size to turkeys but without all the gobbling noisiness. I now have two bloodlines of white Jersey Giants which means that their offspring should be strong and healthy (and we hope happy) birds.

My friend Kayt mentioned that she would be happy to have more chickens and I know that her girls also live in a large open space, so I asked her whether she wanted some of the hyline girls that we have here. They are producing far more eggs than we need for the kitchen and if we aren't careful, we will end up with too many birds and far too many eggs. So on Sunday she is going to have half a dozen of the layers that we have here to add to her flock. I know that her birds have stopped laying at the moment, so I'm sure she will welcome the eggs that our girls are laying.

I have started to think about ways to sell our surplus eggs, vegetables and fruit and to that end, today I will be researching and start approaching local food outlets and also finding out whether I need to register as a food business, take out specific insurance etc. if we find somewhere to sell the surpluses. As there isn't a huge amount of produce to sell, it may not be economically viable, so today's research will be to find all of that information to be able to make an informed decision.

And before I start the research I think it must be time for a cuppa!

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Moving gestures

 Our new friends James and Dee of Happy Homestead are due to move house very soon and because they are moving to a remote croft on the Scottish islands of Orkney, they have decided that taking their chickens on the long journey north would be too much for the girls. So we are giving them a home with us.

Yesterday afternoon they brought the girls to our little smallholding to start the next phase of their lives. We have put them into a house of their own in a section of the field away from the other chickens for a week or two to allow them to settle in before they join the main flock of layers.

As it was dusk when they arrived, the chickens were put straight into their temporary house, so we didn't really get any time to spend with them. They also brought with them a selection of fruit bushes that they are kindly giving to us. The plant pots were put on the edge of the shrubbery for ease of storage until I had the time (and daylight) to move them into the food forest.

I am so excited by these gifts, James and Dee's generosity should give us years of harvests and I feel touched by their kindness. They were going to give us the water butts that they have been using to collect rainwater, which we could definitely do with more of.

 But over a cuppa yesterday, I suggested that they took these bulky items with them and filled them with items that they are taking to their croft, so that the smaller items were protected by the plastic and they could save on the cost of having large items delivered to their new home.

As sun rose this morning, I let the birds out of their houses for the day and spent a gentle half an hour or so moving the new fruit bushes to the food forest area. Placing them where they might eventually be planted and then repositioning each one until I was happy with their placement.

James and Dee returned this morning with a second car-load of plants for us as well as some bags of potting compost and ericaceous compost. We talked some more about chickens and ducks, about how easy the different breeds are to care for and they told us more about the new life upon which they are about to embark.

So in a blink, the food forest has a dozen or so additional bushes which include raspberries, gooseberries, currants, honey-berries, a loganberry, rosemary, mint and several varieties of blueberries. Growing in one pot, below the blueberry, is a cluster of strawberries, which I'll use as ground cover.

Earlier in the week, we had more new arrivals. Three little chicks hatched on Wednesday and Thursday. One is the offspring of Big Red and either Jack or Diesel (we aren't sure which one yet) and the other two are white Jersey Giants to add to our small flock of these majestic white birds. The Jersey Giants are from a different breeder (and different line) to the ones that we have here already, which means that next year we will have a breeding flock and will be able to offer hatching eggs for sale.

I also had another nice little surprise on Thursday. 

When this month's Country Smallholding magazine arrived in the post, I found that I had been included in an article about the first few months of smallholding. I'd been asked to write a short piece about three months ago, but didn't know whether it would be included in the magazine. It was equally nice to see that our friend Helen had been included too, with her pigs, the Swanbridge Porkers. 

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been posting a three-part review of our first year on the smallholding. There has been a lot happening here and it has left me feeling quite tired. The tree surgeons have been to remove the spindly trees behind the piggeries, I've raked up and moved several cubic metres of leaves to make leaf mould and I've also been busy studying. 

I've enrolled to take an online course with Oregon State University and have been engrossed in reading, researching and absorbing information from the Introduction to Permaculture course. It's been useful to confirm that many of the practices that I've used (in the garden) fit perfectly from a permaculture perspective and I've learnt in more depth about using the natural lay of the land and water flow to make the most of the space we have. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will have completed the course and done well enough to be awarded a badge, which I will proudly display on my blog page.

So this evening's plan is to watch a couple of gardening programmes that I've recorded and then get back to studying. But first, it's time for a cuppa!

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Year One part 3 Permanent Planting

   The Shrubberies were put in early in the year to make a colourful welcome as we drive along the lane into our yard.

 Our friend Jane gave us several shrubs and others were lifted from the area next to the piggeries and stables.

  I planted the perennial shrubs along the length of the border and have added a few more since. 

 After a few months of growing the long shrubbery has filled out and has given us some colour every month. Some of the plants in the shrubbery have uses in addition to looking attractive. The buddleia has attacted many butterflies and other pollinators as have all the flowers on the shrubs. I've harvested the lavender flowers, dried them and I will use them to make lavender bags, lavender sugar and to refresh the pot pourri in our home. The roses will produce rosehips which I will add to the rosehips gathered from the hedgerows and other sources (read about rosehips from my sister's home here).The fushia bush should provide us with berries, although as yet it hasn't produced very much and having never tried fushia, I'm keen to find out whether the berries from this particular hardy bush are sweet or have a bitter aftertaste.

The short shrubbery is still only half completed but is already starting to look good.

 We brought with us several pots of raspberry plants that had been lifted from Mr J's parents' home, together with shrubs, herbaceous plants and a couple of small trees.

Jane helped me to dig the turf from the area that would become the herbaceous border (actually Jane lifted the most of it) and we planted it with the plants that she had given to us and some that we had brought from our previous house. Over the year I haven't weeded the area anywhere near as much as was needed and as a result we've had a display of weed and wild flowers amongst the cultivated perennial plants.

The Food Forest

I decided that creating a permanent planting area filled with edible plants and supporting plants would be a good use of a large space. The more I explored the ideas behind permaculture and the way to use the land in harmony with nature, the more I realised it fits exactly with our thinking and a food forest should work really on this site.

I've had to make some compromises with how to start the food forest, but I'm happy with how it is coming along. Wood chippings have been poured onto the area and composted wood chippings used to make planting beds. It was a bit tougher than just pouring wood chippings, because finding a source of wood chippings took me several months. My budget for the garden is close to zero and it was important to find a free source of materials, but luckily I have now found a local tree surgeon who brings a trailer load of chipped wood on a reasonably regular basis. It gets dumped in the front garden and I then move it one wheelbarrow load at a time to the place I want it. 

 We made a small wildlife pond using a butyl liner that was already on the smallholding when we moved in. It's not very pretty, but as the planting around the edges grow, it should hide the liner and attract beneficial wildlife.

We've recently bought 17 fruit trees which I am in the process of planting and below them I've put fruit shrubs like currants and raspberries (lots and lots of autumn fruiting raspberries), herbs and ground cover plants like strawberries. I've been researching perennial vegetables to include in this area and in the meantime, for the next couple of years at least, I will use some of the food forest area to grow annual vegetables that will act as good ground cover (like some of the squashes I'd like to grow).

 It will take a few years for the food forest to establish and there will always be some maintenance tasks to do there, but it should be more productive in relation to the effort put in as time goes on. 

Hedges and boundaries 

There is very little hedging around the boundary and whilst that gives us fabulous views across the adjacent land, it also gives us no protection from the wind that whistles across the area from the Severn Estuary.

In early spring, Jane helped us to plant a hedge around the east and south sides of smallholding. It is mixed native hedging, that will be good for wildlife, pollinators and food and although still very small, it has started to fill out over the year and I'd imagine that by their fifth year, the hedge plants will be around shoulder high and knitted together to form a thick wind shelter and a good place for birds and other wildlife to live. I used weed supressing membrane and planted through it in an effort to slow down the invasive weeds coming through the stock fencing that surrounds the smallholding. 

I've put up some wind break fabric on the stock fencing to reduce the impact of the wind on the plants in the garden and as some relief for the chickens who were getting blown around by the wind. Much of the winter and spring brought winds of 30 to 40 mph and a few times it reached up to 60mph, which, if you are a small chicken (or a large human) is pretty miserable to be in.

We still need to plant some hedging along the west boundary and I've ordered some more native hedging to put in the ground later in the year together with some elderberry trees that we can lift from below our trees. I'm also going to add some fast growing trees like eucalyptus which I'll keep cut back so that they are large bushes rather than tall trees.

Now that we have divided up the paddock and are happy with the area designated for the chickens, we've put in a more permanent fence. I've started to plant some fruit canes along the fence that can be supported by it, offer more protection for the chickens, look attractive and be productive.

I've written further blogs looking at the vegetable garden and our animals . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

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Year One photo tour Animals

We lost our beloved cat Archie shortly after we moved here and haven't found another cat to fill his galumphing boots as yet. But we did find a lot of other animals over the year.

 Bluebell, Jack and Diesel were the first to arrive.

   And Jack has laid some huge eggs over the year (read about this huge egg here)

   The six Crested Cream Legbar girls arrived in February.

 And Laddie joined us a few weeks later, sadly he didn't survive very long, but it was long enough to fertilise a couple of eggs, which we hatched.

 And Big Red was hatched on 3rd May together with Little White, our first white Jersey Giant. (read about the hatching here). She was a beautiful chick, who grew into a beautiful chicken and we were very excited to be able to sample her first egg.

 At twenty-three weeks old she started crowing and we had to accept that she was not a she at all, but a robust and good natured cockerel.

 By twelve to fourteen weeks old Big Red was already a very promising cockerel, over the rest of the year he has grown into a large, happy and healthy boy.

 Our next batch of eggs gave us two more Jersey Giants, an Australorp and hybrid cross.

These four chicks have now grown into lovely birds, the Australorp is almost at point of lay and the Jersey Giants appear to be a hen and cockerel, but I'm not going to be sure that the hen is a hen until it starts laying.

This splendid looking bantam cockerel came to stay for a while, he arrived with scaly leg mite which we treated until his legs were clear and he fathered four little chicks, two with Jack and two with Diesel. The two Diesel chicks are sweet little white girls with the occasional black splash feathers who have joined the flock as potential layers, although I don't expect them to start laying before spring. The cockerel went to live with our friend Helen when we got a replacement for Laddie the Cream Legbar cockerel. 

His replacement was Jarvis who looked splendid, but the girls didn't take a shine to him and he was quite rough with them. They did, however, like one of the younger cockerels that we got at the same time as Jarvis. So Jarvis was dispatched and the Cream Legbar girls now live happily with Squeaky and Poo, who so far haven't fought over the ladies and seem to co-exist with relative harmony.

I continued to buy in hatching eggs.

   And the Dirty Dozen were hatched at the end of July. Eight Australorp chicks and four hybrids (the bantam's offspring).

 At eight weeks old, we separated the Australorps into their own enclosure. It looks like we may have one female and seven males. So together with the Australorp female from the previous hatch, we should be able to breed our own birds next year.

 

At the same time as raising new chickens, we also got ducks and raised ducklings.

 Frederick and Mrs Warne arrived in mid Spring, a young pair who had bonded well and she was already laying eggs almost daily. I added a couple of her eggs to the incubator and our first two ducklings stole our hearts.

 

  At around ten weeks old the ducklings joined their parents in the main duck field and have integrated well. 

The next batch of eggs were bought in from two different sources so that there is an introduction of new genes into the flock. From those eggs we hatched five ducklings which are seem happy and healthy and are now almost ready to join the flock. Once we have established which of the young birds that have hatched this year are male, we will select the one or two that we want to keep for breeding and dispatch any other males.

 As I type, I have one more batch of eggs in the incubator. It's very late in the year to be raising birds, but we will keep the young chicks under the cover of the stable until they are fully feathered and ready to venture outside in the winter cool.

Looking back over the first year on our smallholding, we have achieved so much, learnt so much and laughed so much. We still have much to do, much to learn and hopefully much, much more to laugh about.

I've written further blogs looking at the vegetable garden and permanent planting areas . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

 If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

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