Eggs are here!

We are very happy to finally announce that eggs will be back in the shops at the end of the week! Hooray! Hope you enjoy them - we are!! They are so good - lovely strong shells and bright yellow yolks. The hens are very happy and friendly and doing well.

Lambs arriving!

We have had a couple more lambs now and they are doing well. As it is half term this week - we have help at home - Dan, our son, is going to give Farmer Head a hand setting up the penning in the big shed today, ready for lambing before we get into the full swing of it. We have also got some friends coming up this morning to catch up with farmlife and my brother tomorrow - all good fun - I love school hols!

Holi-noons and lovely lunches!

Been over a week since a bit of wittering - it isn't that we have been doing nothing....except we did treat ourselves to a couple of afternoons away from the farm and lunch out. We had a lovely lunch at Boscombe sea front in the Urban Reef Cafe - fantastic view of a very moody day with big waves and a grey sky. The food was delicious - all well sourced and well presented. Worth checking it out! Service was delightful too! The following day we had lunch at the Salt Pig in Wareham - the best thing to happen in Wareham for a long time. It just never fails to be delicious and with utterly charming service!! If you haven't visited yet - you are missing out!

Monday...

Today we have a new lamb! This is a bit earlier than planned .... but it is fit and healthy so no problem. PDing in the rain was ...well...wet! The results were not as good as we had hoped, but as our lovely vet, Andy, said, at least we know early and can deal with this before it has an impact. There are lots of reasons why this could be the case and we are investigating them all to see what is going on. We'll keep you posted.

Thanks Tom!

Morning! How lovely it is to see the sun after all that rain! We did the usual checking and a bit of feeding at the weekend. Sunday, unfortunately, we had to return Tom to his parents in Devon! He has been a fantastic help to us all week and is no doubt going to be a great farmer of the future. We are going to need them! Thanks Tom for putting up with us for a week!

Busy!

Afternoon! Been a busy few days - the boys finally finished sorting out the white fluffys and Farmer Head was showing his age by complaining about muscles he had forgotten he had! The egg numbers are steadily rising - 40 the other day! Last night one of our beautiful Hereford Cows unfortunately appeared to be calving rather early and having gone out a couple of times during the night to check she is ok, we brought her in this morning and she has lost her calf which is a great shame. She is fine now, after a bit of tlc. Although pelting rain does not help cheer anyone up, nevermind the poor cows! Digby doesn't mind though....all the more mud for him to get covered in on our walks! This afternoon's project is moving the cattle handling down the road so that we can PD (pregnancy diagnose) the cows (ie to see if Eddy the bull is earning his keep!!) which is first thing tomorrow morning. For those of you who don't know what cattle handling equipment is - for us it is a lot of heavy metal high sided pieces of fence, with gates and a thing called a cattle crush - which is not as bad as it sounds - it just encloses the cow in a small gated section so that they can't hurt themselves while we look after them.

Today I had the pleasure of the traditional farmhouse kitchen experience - a fellow farming friend turned up for a cup of tea (putting off feeding his cows in the glorious rain!) and we put the world to rights. Marvellous! Contrary to popular belief - this is a rare treat not an everyday occurrence! Unfortunately there was no cake - that had been demolished at breakfast....!

Forests for sale?!

Just got to ask - why on earth are the government even considering selling off one of our most important assets? Talk about short term gain for long term loss....madness! Who came up with that one?!

This week we have help - Tom, on work experience with us. Today Farmer Head and Tom have brought the ewes in to check them over and to particularly look after their feet which involves turning over every one! They just had lunch and were half way through so hopefully all will be done by dark.

windy!

My word been a bit windy round here -blowing an absolute hooley! Fortunately Farmer Head had the forethought to make sure he had pegged down the poly tunnel to stop the hens being blown away. In fact this morning it was sooo windy he opened up only one side of the shed (normally two doors either side of the shed are opened - known as pop holes - to give the hens maximum access to the outside). We thought they might get blown about in the shed and really the shed needed to be shelter for them. All is well though. 20 eggs today! Fortunately no trees down and all the rest of the animals were where they should be this morning.

Outdoor learning!

During the last year we have been really privileged to be involved with a brilliant new initiative run by Sifunda, giving kids who benefit from learning out of the classroom the chance to do just that! They come out on the farm and help us out and they do the same with Studland Stables down the road. It is all very new at the moment and we just met with Os from Sifunda to plan this year and what we are all hoping to achieve. It is really exciting to be involved with such a positive initiative. Keep an eye on the blog - more news will follow soon! Check out their website www.sifunda.com.

More eggs!

Sunday and Monday we had 10 eggs, but today we have a 20% increase with 12! O yes ...they are on their way!

Today we fed the chickens, started dismantling the fence the cows trashed and then the really interesting bit...paperwork. Farming generates a lot of this. O joy! And we did a bit of planning - always a good start to anything actually happening!