Oh Holy Sat Nav

The "Greedy Cockerel" - as named by the kids - has obv been a  busy rooster as 7 chicks have hatched out this week.  Each time we have new chicks I forget quite how cute one day old chicks really are. Thanks Sam for helping me move the two mum hens and the chicks into a separate hen house and run. 

 

 

The cockerel is still aggressive however, and has a nasty habit of attacking you as you walk away from him, unsuspectingingly, with your back turned.  People have taken to sort of shimmering across the chicken field, side stepping, so as to be able to keep one eye on the Greedy Cockerel at all times. Still, with 7 babies produced, I have a new fondness for the old boy.

 

 

Elsewhere, we are finally making progress with the planning for the riding school.  Its really exciting, designing the yard from scratch and being able to choose exactly where the windows should go, how the yard should be configured and what size everything should be.  I am now thinking rubber floors, asphalt yard, roof pitch and drainage.  Not to mention ventilation!

My training with the RDA (Riding for the Disabled Association) is going well and I have started being able to offer riding here on the field once a week too, which is great.

We have not been at all successful with the quail.  After starting with 6, we are now down to only two.  A ferret / rat or similar had been digging in and taking one quail away each night.  Anyway, hopefully Russell has now fixed the problem and made the quail enclosure safe.  None of the eggs hatched either:-(

However the turkeys are still going strong.  I have taken quite a few orders and have only five or six more to sell.  They are absolutely driving me insane now at bed time.  We're going to have to trim their wings again to stop them flying up on to the turkey house.  It takes me about 15 minutes every night in the pitch dark to chase them round the field and into bed. 

A few weeks ago we went to Peppa Pig world for the day as a treat for the kids.  We were very late home and when we finally got back it had been dark for hours.  I was so worried that a fox had got all the turkeys that the car journey home was stressful to say the least.  When we finally got home the turkeys were exposed, sat on the roof, but all fine.  Luke cheered me up on the car journey home though by saying that the sat nav woman must be God's wife, as she always knows where we are and which way to go.

I am a firm, firm believer in the Hugh Fern Whittingstall approach to eating meat: that it is ok to do as long as the animal has had a life worth living i.e. that it is better off having being bred for meat, rather than having a horrible, sad and miserable existence from which slaughter is actually a relief.   I also agree that it is too easy to buy processed meat without any thought to the animal from which it has come.  Having said all that, I am finding it hard to eat our own cockerels - they have had a natural, free range life and so I am doing what I believe in, but it does feel rather odd.  Hopefully it is something we will get used to.

My vegetation step daughter was here when I cooked a cockerel recently.  It was a little unfortunate, she came home just as it was , without any dignity, defrosting in the roasting tin on top of the oven. She said "that's a funny looking chicken".  I said "ah, its actually one of our cockerels", "Oh my God, did it die?" " Erm, yes, sort of ............."

Anyway, blog about the farm not the kids, as Russell keeps telling me.  So the final piece of news is that we are making plans to plant around 100m of native hedging, bare rooted, in the new 12 acre field we have seeded with grass.  To try to keep costs down, Russell and I will do this ourselves.  First job is to cover the area we want to plant the hedges in with plastic, so that the new grass dies off.  I am very excited about growing this hedge, very excited.

xx xx

I'm now taking Christmas Turkey orders

 

 Brook Cottage Farm

 

Free Range, HeritageTurkeys

 

Please call to order

 

01279 777235 / 07919 888655

 

 Traditional and rare breed turkeys - Norfolk Black, Cambridge Bronze, Bourbon Red, Slate Blue and Lavender, reared slowly having been fully free ranged at low density on a generously sized grass paddock (see picture).  Humanely slaughtered on the farm to reduce transport stress: compassionate farming and the highest standards of animal welfare are at the heart of what we do. 

Traditional breeds do not have the "double-breasted" conformation of modern breed commercial birds but they produce meat with superior texture and flavour. 

 

Please call to order your turkey.

A £20 deposit, balance payable on collection from Furneux Pelham.

 

As this is our first year of production, we are pricing at an introductory discount rate of £10.50 per kg.

 

Louise Seddon

 

Harvest Time

I always did understand the importance of harvest time, of course, and why it is celebrated religiously around the world, in each country at around the time of the main harvest for the crop that is grown there.  Traditionally in Britain, poeple took along harvest baskets to the church service, with produce from their own gardens and allotments, to be distributed amongst the local poor.  This year, I have really taken pleasure in the harvest festival (not least because of our village celebrations that are great fun) but also because I can see the wheat has been harvested from our fields, the apples from our first little apple tree (thank you John and Ann) have been picked (we have 3!) and the garage is full of sweet and new smelling hay for the ponies and sheep for the winter.  It is a nice feeling. Below is my favourite harvest hymn "Lord of the Harvest":


Lord of the harvest
Lord of the field,
Give thanks now to God in nature revealed.

Give thanks for the sun, the wind and the rain
And thanks for the crops that feed us again,
The corn safely cut is gathered inside
We thank you , oh Lord, that you can provide.

The trees ripe with fruit stand proud in the sun,
We gather them now that summer is gone.
For yours is the wonder, yours is the power,
Yours is the glory of fruit and of flower.

So in all our plenty, help us to see,
The needs all round whatever they be.
With food for the body, strength for the soul,
It's healing and caring, making them whole.

News from the farm this week:

The turkey with the poorly leg, remember him?, is better. The turkeys are starting to be quite difficult at bed time.  There is one, the largest, who seems to be the ring leader and encourages the other 6 or 7 wayward turkeys to fly up on to the turkey house roof every night instead of going into the turkey house, like the good turkeys do.  These naughty turkeys are, for some reason, extremely difficult to get down from the roof and into bed.  Russell has been doing this task for the past few evenings, it is just at the wrong time of day - he has finally got home from work and just wants to have his tea and instead he has to put on his wellies and a head torch and chase the turkeys around the field for 20 minutes.  Last night it reached a climax and in pursuit of the most wayward turkey Russell actually pushed himself through the electric fence to catch it - both the turkey and Russell got severely zapped.  I think he could have wrung their necks then and there.

Tonight, I went out with Claudia and between us we managed to get them all in.  The turkeys are less afraid of me, when they see Russell they go a but mental.  As if he's going to kill them or something ....................................  You see, maybe they are not as daft as we think! In  fact, generally they are very curious and inquisitive - a sign of intelligence surely?

We have lost a quail and I think it is the boy.  We have lots of little brown field mice in the garden and they have ben digging little holes all around the quail enclosure so they can get in and eat the corn. Russell has now put chicken wire along the ground so it is mouse and rat proof, but before he had chance to do this the boy quail must have got out through one of the holes cos I found him, headless (yuck) in the garden yesterday.  All stiff and headless, poor thing.

But we have a broody quail, sitting on some eggs, and a broody Light Sussex, also sitting on eggs.  We'll have to wait and see if anything hatches.

There is NO NEWS and there are NO DEVELOPMENTS with the planning for the stables, The env consultant has been away on holiday again.  ARGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

All fine here on the homestead though, the animals are settling into their winter routine (ponies are now in their stables in the night and out in the field in the day) and the sheep are being fed daily.

Happy Harvest time everyone.


xx