Matt & Gillian

pork

Rare breed meat boxes

We’re now taking orders for this year’s rare breed pork boxes, which will be ready for collection or local delivery in September. We also have gammon, bacon and sausage boxes available to order now for collection / delivery in December. If you’re interested in buying some delicious joints,

pigs

The patter of tiny trotters

We made our annual trip to Kenilworth a couple of weeks ago to collect seven weaners (8-10 week old pigs) from the breeder that we source our pigs from. Collecting the pigs is always a highlight of our smallholding year to as we love to have pigs in our field.

2018

Looking back on 2018

January is our quietest month on the smallholding. With only a few chickens and ducks to look after it's a good time to catch up on odd jobs around the house and to reflect on the previous year. 2018 for us was dominated by extremes of weather - from the

pigs

Four legged rotovators

Rain, rain, go away... Like many other parts of the country we've had a very wet end to winter and it seems as though it's taken forever for spring to properly arrive. As we write this however, the sun is shining, the puddles are drying and the grass is growing

cider

Making cider

Our small collection of mature apple trees have done very well this year, producing loads of fruit and leaving us with the very enjoyable challenge of wondering how we're going to use them all up. After spending a couple of weeks stocking the freezer with apple pies, apple sauce, apple

website

A fresh look

If you're a regular visitor to this site then you might notice that we've made a few tweaks recently. Most of these are to the template that's used for our page layouts, but we've also made a couple of changes behind the scenes to keep the security of the site

summer

Summer 2017

As you may have guessed from our lack of posts, it's been a busy summer on the smallholding. Now that the days are getting a little cooler, and the nights a little longer, it feels like a good time to update you on some of the highlights since we last

overwintering

Overwintering veg

One of the real assets on our smallholding is our polytunnel. It came with the house when we bought it and, whilst we were initially unsure if we'd use it all year round, we've found it ideal for getting the growing season off to a good start by overwintering some

chickens

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

2016

Looking back on 2016

Early January is a good time for reflecting on the previous year. With not much to do out in the garden / field and weather conditions often not being conducive to working on the few items that are in the to-do list at this time of year, it's an ideal time

courgettes

Courgette glut recipes

Whilst it's pretty much the end of the courgette growing season in the UK, if you still have a few left that you're wondering what on earth to with then you could do far worse than to try the following couple of recipes. * Courgette and pistachio cake with zesty lemon

sheep

Views from our field

One of the joys of doing morning and evening rounds every day is that we get to see our land in all weathers. The last month or so has been particularly good as the slightly later sunrises that we get at this time of year coincide with the time that

honeycomb

First honey harvest

After keeping bees for a little over a year, last weekend we were finally able to take our first proper harvest from one of the hives. Smallholding can definitely be a game of patience sometimes. We’re glad to say that the wait was worth it as the honey, which

aylesbury

A growing flock

Last week we moved the final two ducklings from this year’s hatches out to their permanent home in our field. Having reached that little milestone we thought it was a good time to look back and reflect a little on how we’ve done with our ducks this year.

vegetables

Summer harvest

As well as rearing our own pigs, lambs and poultry for the table we also enjoy growing as much of our own fruit and vegetables as time permits (we are only part-time smallholders after all). Despite a slow start (thanks to a cooler-than-average June) the warmer weather in July and

pigs

Pigs 2016

Wow, that two months went by quickly! Time to bring you up to speed on how some of our livestock are doing... At the end of May we brought home six Tamworth pigs from an award-winning breeder in Warwickshire. It was a bit of a squeeze to get them all

bees

Swarming bees

It's been six months since we did our last full hive inspection so the recent warm weekend gave us a long-awaited chance to see what the colony had been up to over the winter. The bees had ideas of their own though; rather than waiting for us to open up

marans

Marans chickens

Regular readers will know that we hatched out three Cuckoo Marans chicks [https://www.limesendcottage.com/marans-chicks/] towards the end of last month. Being slightly disappointed with only getting three chicks from a dozen eggs (and realising that we had two cockerels and one hen) we decided to look around

pork

Rare breed pork boxes

We’re now taking orders for this year’s rare breed pork boxes, which will be ready for collection or local delivery in September. If you’re interested in buying some delicious joints and sausages then please take a look at our pigs [https://www.limesendcottage.com/tamworth-pigs/] page for

marans

Marans chicks

The weekend after our last post [https://www.limesendcottage.com/getting-ready-for-spring/] we had four little Cuckoo Marans chicks hatch out in our incubator. One of them was sadly a little too weak and didn't make it through the first 48 hours but the remaining three all appear to be healthy

incubation

Getting ready for spring

The first day of March marks the official start of spring in the meteorological calendar but things have already started to get a little busier for us as we gear up in anticipation of longer days and warmer weather. After the long dark evenings of winter the lengthening days are

chickens

A new arrival

Towards the end of January we came across a bantam cockerel wandering around the entrance to one of our local woods. It was getting dark and we found the headless remains of another chicken nearby (presumably the result of a fox attack) so we decided to take the cockerel back

bees

Feeding bees in winter

After a week of snow and frost it seems as though we’re back to the combination of mild and wet weather that’s been the backdrop to most of the winter so far. On the upside, with daytime temperatures reaching 12°c last weekend we were able to do

turkeys

Christmas turkeys 2015

Happy New Year everyone! With the festive period already feeling like a distant memory we thought we'd look back at our second year of rearing turkeys to remember what we got right and think about where we can improve in 2016. Sticking to the basics We’ve had some superb

pigs

How to make home-cured bacon

Now that the weather is finally getting colder a whole host of opportunities for home curing, smoking and air drying meat become possible. One of the easiest of these is making your own home cured bacon. There's a few good reasons for making your own bacon as a smallholder: 1.