More uplifting news

So after yesterday's unremitting doom and gloom I wanted to give you the more exciting and uplifting news - Barley has had puppies. They were born about 36 hours after Flynn died so it was a bit of a rollercoaster weekend. She had six, though one was born dead and one died at four days old, but the others are hale and hearty and already great fun.


Puppies at 13 days old

We've decided to keep the yellow one (a girl) and call her Fig, the others are known as Hector, Bramble and Hickory (though we can't tell Bramble and Hickory, both girls, apart yet!).

The other exciting (!) news is that we have the pork back from the first five animals we sent off, but I will post more about that later...

Sad news

When we started down the path to being farmers, we accepted that along with life there would be death, and we've experienced our fair share of that over the last few months. Two weeks ago we had the saddest loss, which we're both only just beginning to come to terms with - we had to have Flynn, the horse I'd owned for six years put down. As anyone who has pets will know (and yes, he was a bit large to be considered a pet, but that's essentially what he was) it is completely devastating to lose them. The poor chap developed an acute neurological disorder, we're not sure what caused it, we fought all day to save him but in the end had to admit defeat and let him go.

RIP Flynnie, you were loved.

Hay there!

Ed has been manic for the last week or two trying to make enough hay to see us through the winter. There is meant to be a photo here of the finished product in our barn, but I forgot to email it to myself from my work computer so you'll just have to imagine it. Ed decided to make big square bales of hay as they are cheaper than small bales but easier to handle than round bales. We think we've got the equivalent of about 200 small bales which should hopefully do the horse(s?) and pigs for the winter, especially now we've had some rain so won't have to start feeding it in August! We're also hoping the grass might have a growth spurt and actually give us enough for a second cut.

The first two pigs went off last weekend. We took them to a local abattoir on Sunday afternoon to give them time to recover from the journey and calm down before they were killed on Monday. I had serious misgivings about taking them early, and felt they would be less stressed at home with their friends in surroundings they knew, but at the moment we're listening to those who have far more experience than us. I have to say that the process of unloading them was very calm and none of the animals seemed stressed or worried. Whilst producing the meat is obviously the point of our business, we are both very concerned that our animals have a good life, partly as we think this has the biggest impact on the flavour of the meat but also because animal welfare is of paramount importance to us.

The pigs were picked up by a local butcher on Tuesday who said they looked good, if a bit too fat. We are therefore taking the last three saddleback cross pigs off this weekend and will have to be more aware of when the animals are ready to go. It's all part of the learning curve!