A busy start to the year

A busy start to the year

You'll have to excuse the lack of posts so far this year. We welcomed our second child (a healthy little boy) into the world at the end of January so have been a little busier than usual.

Whilst you could mistake a lack of posts for a lack of activity around the smallholding, we've been busy behind the scenes making preparations for spring and summer. We'll be telling you about some of these in more detail in the coming weeks, but (in no particular order) we have so far:

  • Ordered 20 Ross/Cobb chickens, which we're going to be rearing for meat;

  • Ordered a few more hens to replace some of our older layers, although the Marans have been doing an excellent job now that the days are a bit longer;

  • Started incubating some of the eggs from our Aylesbury ducks, the first of which are due to hatch towards the end of this month;

  • Reserved six Tamworth weaners from the same award-winning breeder as last year;

  • Reserved six pet/orphan lambs from a local farm; and

  • Installed automatic drinkers in all of our livestock paddocks.

So, as you can perhaps tell from the above, it's been a fairly busy couple of months (and we're only just getting started). We're hoping that the good weather we've been having recently will continue for at least a few more days so that we can get on top of the weeding in the veg patches and finish the preparations for the new chickens that are due to arrive next week. It's full steam ahead!

The field in spring