Major Updates

I have been rather absent recently, but there have been a number of additions to our smallholding. Taking them in chronological order, first we collected two pedigree Oxford Sandy and Black gilts from near Watchet.



They are both birth notified pigs, and the breeder is obtaining the herd book certificates for us. This means that we can breed from them and, assuming we use a registered boar, register their offspring as pedigree OS&B which can attract a premium both for their meat and as breeding stock.

We have now moved all eight pigs to a local Estate. At the moment this is a bit of a joint venture with the landlord as he has some areas of woodland that are overgrown with brambles. The Estate also has amazing gardens which are currently being redesigned and will hopefully be opened to the public in the future - the plan is to be able to sell meat produced on the Estate to visitors to the gardens. The pigs caused a great stir when they arrived - half the Estate turned out to meet them! They've now settled in and seem very happy, if a little uninterested in the brambles - we're planning to cut their feed down a bit in the hope they do some more foraging.



Earlier this week we collected six point of lay bluebell chickens. We have a small shed in our garden (one of three - check us out!) which the previous owners left behind that we've (read: Ed) converted in to a chicken house, complete with an old sideboard (also left behind) as a nest box.



They also have an outside run, which we're planning to put a roof on for extra fox protection, particularly if we're a bit late getting them in.



That's about it on the smallholding updates, though I did look at a pony the other day........

Two amazing recipes

I cooked two amazing recipes on Friday that I thought I'd share. This post may appear not strictly to the point, but it is relevant in that part of what we're trying to do involves eating sustainably and in season, so I'll probably drop in the odd post about recipes that I find and love. I should probably interject here that I have a slight obsession with recipe books. My current favourites are:

River Cottage Everyday

Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook

and Nigel Slater Tender

Anyway, I digress. On Friday I made curried fish pie and rhubarb clafoutis, both from the River Cottage Everyday book, for some lovely friends who were visiting for the weekend. They were A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. I tweaked them slightly and changed the wheat flour for rice flour as I have a wheat intolerance, which worked absolutely fine. I can't put copies of the recipes here as a) I don't have the books with me and b) it would probably be infringing some kind of copyright. Suffice to say, they were delish and the leftovers were vigorously fought over on Sunday morning after the guests had left!

Edited to add, Hugh has very kindly posted the curried fish pie on the River Cottage website, you can find it here

We have lift off!

Well, pigs anyway. The farming (well, perhaps smallholding would be more accurate at this stage, but there's no harm in being ambitious) operation is underway.

On Saturday afternoon we collected six Saddleback cross Landrace weaners. They're all 12 weeks old and from the same litter, not that you'd know from looking at them.



They had been living inside so it really lovely to see them exploring their surroundings - and getting used to electric fence...! We're going to keep them in the pen we built, which is about 25m x 25m for the next two weeks or so while they get used to us, and living outside etc and then move them to the woodland we're renting (more about that later).

The people we bought them from have been feeding them weaner pellets, about 1kg each per day, so we're keeping going with that for now even though they can forage outside as they will be using extra calories to keep warm. We'll keep an eye on this though and review as necessary. We're planning to weigh them before we move them so then we'll have more idea when they might be 'ready'.