Tag: winter

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Starting from number eleven there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number eleven there are five new photographs on the Photo Page.

The first three photographs were sent in by Sue.

Just a couple of pics from when I spent a few days with my friend in devon in october,
this is the view from her back garden
the next one wasa stallat the German Christmas market. Sarah.

Just after I had finished last night Diary Thornton very quickly started to get better. So much so that he got the devil in him and on seeing the door that leads to the upstairs open he made a dash to get upstairs. As soon as he saw that I was in pursuit, he must nearly had broke his own speed record running around one of the bedrooms. So that I would not catch him he made his exit from the bedroom by jumping onto the bed. Once out of the bedroom door he had two choices of what way to go. One was running up our long landing or the other down the stairs. Knowing he was in trouble he decided on the stairs. Unfortunately Thornton is a lot slower going down the stairs than he is at going up them, more the pity as I would be able to catch him well before he reaches the top. Thornton is now eating and drinking as he should. Thornton most defiantly had a blockage in his gut. You could see that his droppings had a coating of the liquid paraffin that he had been given to clear any blockage.

Arnie is also better with no signs of what ever it was that caused him to be unwell. He is also eating as he should and I don’t have any concern about him now.

Here is a warming thought for you, today the 21st of December is the date of the Winter Solstice. Gradually the days will now start to get longer. Although we still may have the worse of the Winter to come, at least the longer days start to lead into Spring.

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Starting from number one there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number one there are five new photographs on the Photo Page sent in by Lindsay.

West Bay, Dorset from the other direction. Lindsay.

Wild Mute Swans on the Somerset Levels in winter. Lindsay.

West Bay,Dorset.A strange cliff in the winter light.I think Vicky has a similar photograph. Lindsay.

Glastonbury church in winter.Lindsay.

Reed Mace and Sedge,in winter at the Shapwick nature reserve in Somerset.Lindsay.

To our great relief all of the Reindeer have stayed in their Field today. The Reindeer getting out is a worry that we don’t want. If we need to put special deer fencing up it would cost in the region of

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There are five photographs on the Photo page starting from…

There are five photographs on the Photo page starting from number six.

I took this shot of the tree but i quite like the clouds on this one. The crop growing in the field is corn. Karen Stoke.

JANETS FOSS NEAR MALHAM COVE. LYNNE.

I’ve just returned from visiting my Brother with Mum today. It’s the first time I’ve been to his house and was amazed by his garden! He is VERY keen to encourage all types of wildlife into his garden, so has allowed parts of it to become fairly wild. He has a beautiful pond filled with lilies where there are frogs, newts and toads as well as the odd dragonfly and damselfly. So here are a few photos from today’s visit.
A shy little frog:
Two damselflies – they were flying around attached like this, so I’m not quite sure what they were doing!!
Lovely lilies. Julia.

Where the Sheep were kept housed through the Winter they did very little walking, that resulted in their hooves to be overgrown to the extent that they have needed for them to be trimmed. When you have as few Sheep as we have it is a back breaking job and one that I don’t relish. Although I had to stop doing the cottage and kitchen today it had to be done. The hooves did need a lot of trimming, but fortunately there were no problems with their feet other that them being overgrown.

Some breeds of Sheep that we have had in the past have had to be trimmed very often, others we have never needed to touch. The Sheep we have now are Texel and Texel Cross. Their feet needed trimming at least once a year, but they don’t tend to get foot rot that a lot of Sheep get. Again I have found that some breeds are prone to foot rot other are not. Mind you I am not a Shepherd. Shepherd would know best and they would tell you that as well as a Sheep breeding the ground that they graze on would also be a factor in foot rot. A few years back I let a Farmer have our fields for Sheep keep during the Winter. More of his Sheep were lame because of foot rot than were not. I regularly had to tell him to sort his Sheep feet out.

When I was showing our neighbours Sheep during the Winter a number of you commented that some of his Sheep were lame, If a lot of the Sheep are of the same breed it looks as if the Sheep have been lame for a long while, when it is normally a different Sheep that has only that day got a problem. It doesn’t pay for a Farmer not to sort out Sheep feet problems. If they are killing Sheep they will quickly loose condition and breeding Sheep with Lambs at foot will soon start to produce less milk for the Lambs. Our Sheep feet are now trimmed and tidy except for Ewy.

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The Photo page has increased to 15 1 and 2…

The Photo page has increased to 15 1 and 2 the Butterflies. Scroll down to see the other today’s additions starting at Pats Poppy.

Mr. Farmer, attached are 2 photos of butterflies that I raise. The single butterfly is a Giant Swallowtail nectering on Pentas in my garden. The others are Monarchs that are nectering on various flowers. The Monarchs are inside a butterfly house that my husband and son built for me. I raise them from eggs, to caterpillars to butterflies. After the butterflies lay eggs inside of the butterfly house, I release them outside. The butterflies stay around my yard nectering on the flowers in the garden. I love the butterflies and it is a very fascinating hobby plus it helps populate the butterflies back in the wild. Karen, Florida, USA

Hi Mr. Farmer, Herewith a photo of our little Poppy lounging in one of her favourite places. It was taken three years ago. Poppy died, aged 15yrs. She was born feral in some one’s outhouse and a friend found out about the litter and asked if we wanted one of the kittens. We said we would love one and what a beauty she turned out to be, she was a Persian cross. She was a lovely pet and is sorely missed by my family and Busby & Penny (our other cat). Pat

THIS IS A PHOTO OF A SIGNET TAKEN IN MARKEATON PARK IN DERBY, VICKY, DERBY.

Canada Geese at Golden Acre Park near Leeds.
Elsie

Hi Mr. Farmer, Staying on the birds theme I attach a couple more. One of a beautiful pheasant which came up to us at Chatsworth House. The other I have to admit is not one that I took but it is so good I have to show everyone. It is of a male Sparrowhawk which was sent to me by a friend who lives in Scotland. Pat

It is going to be a short Diary tonight, as I have Ministry Farm paperwork to do. You would never believe the paperwork Farmers have to do. The amount of literature, mostly unimportant that we get every year must be using a rain forest in trees to produce.

I was contacted by a Lady last night, about the Badgers. The Lady hadn’t looked at the webcams for a while. On looking last night she couldn’t see any, and was concern if any thing had happened to them. They are a lot quieter this time of year. Badgers don’t hibernate, but will stay in their Setts, some times for many days in prolonged cold and very wet conditions. The Badger in our Sett don’t like heavy winds either. The Winter of the first year that we did the webcams, we had a longish period of time without seeing the Badgers. Since then we have seen them every day. Although they come out at different times in the Winter.

I phoned the previous owners of Eminent Lady our new Broodmare. She belonged to a Stud Farm that have a number of very good Stallion, one of them being Trans Island, the Sire that Eminent Lady is in Foal to. As I expected the Mare didn’t have a Stable name, she was known by her racing name. We cant call her Lady, so we have given her Emmi as her stable name. They told me that she like her food. The way I was told I think that they were suggesting she was greedy. Mind you I haven’t noticed that yet, if anything she is not eating her feed as I would expect. They also told me that the Foal is due on the 20th of February, nine weeks away. A lot early than I was told. As Horses can give birth a month early I will be watching from the middle of January. They also told me what the Foal is. You will have to wait and see. Cruel, yes why not.

The Foal wants to be friends with us, she is a bit nervous, but it wont take long for her to come around. Her eyes are a bit runny, it could be a cold, I will see how she is in a couple of days. If it persists I will get something from the Veterinary to treat it with. She does look a bit scruffy and sad. Most of that is caused because she has her winter coat. She wouldn’t have been rugged, so her coat will grow to help her keep warm. I am calling the Foal, her and she, I forgot that we had given her Gypsy as her stable name.

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The weather was not as bad as was promised last…

The weather was not as bad as was promised last night and this morning. We were woken in the night with the wind, definitely not the 70 to 80 miles gusts that was forecast. The forecasters managed to get it wrong again. The better way this time. With it being wrong the right way still gives us problems. High wind forecasts make us spend unnecessary time and work with making sure every thing is safe from being blown away. The Telescope Observatory is open to southwest winds, as forecast. If the high winds that were forecast came, it may have been damaged the Observatory, causing the Telescope to also be damaged. The Telescope is far to large to take in and out of the Observatory, so we needed to secure the Observatory with a rope. The rain has been constant for some days now. Today has been really miserable, just very dark and grey with driving rain. The Valley camera make the weather look quite good, but I am able to brighten the picture on my computer. The fields are quite sodden, much to wet to let the Horses out. The fields have been quite dry for a while, so with a dry spell they will soon recover.

I don’t really mind the rain. Horses droppings are not particularly good for grass leys, and we would by now have harrowed the Horse field to break up the droppings. The dry Autumn has allowed us to leave the Horses out for longer than normal, so we have left the harrowing. The rain being as heavy as it has been breaks up the droppings, so we will now probably harrow the field late winter, early springtime, before the grass starts to grow.

Arnie really dislikes being stable during the Winter. His stable has a large opening facing the Horse field, he spends a long time looking out of it towards the field. Last year his stable door got broken with his heavy weight leaning against it. We didn’t replace the door as in front of the main stables is a corralled area that so he is free to come and go into the stable as he wants. Breeze is stabled in the same area, so this year we have left her stable door open, so that she has a bit more freedom. We leave the turnout rugs on because if it rains you can be sure that they will be wet in the morning.

Lady and Willow are stabled in a different stable block that has not been corralled off, that is why you very often see Branston head peering in to Lady’s stable. With the way we have seen that Arnie and Breeze take advantage of the corral, we are going to start to corral in front of Lady’s stable block tomorrow. Lady being in Foal wont be able to go in and out of her stable as much as Arnie and Breeze, but it will give her a bit more freedom during the Winter, when the Horses cant go into the fields. At the moment Lady and Willow spend most of the day in the corral with Arnie and Breeze.

I have posted a new photograph of where the Sheep are now housed. It is the same place that we stabled Bliss and Misty last Winter. It is a gated area of about 30 x 15 feet. A good large area for the two fillies to have a buck and chase about, that they often did, and of course we were able to keep them together for company. I will try to get a camera installed showing the area on Monday or Tuesday.

Elsie, didn’t get your photograph

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After seeing Jan s entry on the forum yesterday I…

After seeing Jan’s entry on the forum yesterday, I spoke to Peter, the Manager of the Lock of the Lowe’s about the Grey Squirrel that she saw. He told me that they do get the odd Grey Squirrel from time to time. They are not there for very long. The theory being is that the Pine Martin may kill them. The Grey Squirrel is not as fast or maybe agile as the Red Squirrel and are easier prey for the Pine Martin. I also mentioned that the webcams or the IR lamps were not working at night. Peter has been on Holiday for over a week and had not known. As long as there are no major problems they will on on of a night soon.

Continuing on from Sheep castration on last night Diary. It is common practice for Dairy and Beef Farmers that do not have Sheep, to let their grass in the Winter months for Sheep keep. Cattle are normally housed in the Winter months as they will poach soft Winter ground, It is also easier to manage them in the Winter when housed. Sheep being a lot lighter will do very little damage to the land, and will eat the grass that the cattle don’t eat, and of course their droppings fertilize the land. Sheep are very good for land management. They wont be allowed on the land any later than the end of March, very soon after that the grass start growing, the new grass being wanted for the cattle.

Three years ago we advertised our land for Sheep keep, as we do not have very good fencing for Sheep we offered it free of charge, it would then allow for any electric fencing that needed doing. The going rate would be about 30p per Sheep per week. After speaking to a number of Farmers, we decided to let the grass to a Farmer with a hundred Ewes, not in Lamb from about ten miles away. Our conditions were that I wanted him to visit to check on the Sheep daily, that would be normal anyway. The experience started wrong from the first day. The first lot of nine Sheep arrived tightly packed into the back of a pickup truck, without the Farmer having put any electric fencing up. They have never broken out and wont stray he tried to assure me. Of course I didn’t believe him, The Sheep were a mixture of cross breeds that looked in poor condition and had obviously not been on decent grass for a fair while. I shouldn’t have thought that his Sheep would have wanted to stray far from the decent grass that we had at Denbury for a day or so, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt as long as he did it.

Over the following week the rest of the Sheep arrived tightly packed in the pickup truck. Up to then none had disappeared even with out the fencing. These Sheep must have been waiting for all of their mates to arrive, for as soon as they had, the very next morning they were all gone. I tried his land line and mobile phones, both were not answered, so I left a message. As the Farmer had not contacted me or come to find his Sheep I had no alternative but to look my self. It didn’t take long to find them, they were in the wood, after a lot of running about I got them back into the field. Next morning they were gone again. The Farmer had not been to Denbury or had he phoned me. I wasn’t going to be running after Sheep again. That afternoon the Farmer arrived at the farm house door. I have got electric fencing he assured me and help to find the Sheep. The help was his aged fragile Mother, who was hardly able to walk, let alone chase after Sheep, the fencing was hardly enough to fence to fence in twelve Sheep let alone a hundred.

Next morning even after fencing, I had a call from a neighbour, the Sheep were on his farm. I made sure that afternoon that he got the fencing up and working. As the fencing posts had not been secured, Deer had knocked the fencing down the next day. I cant imagine where he learnt Sheep keeping from. Eventually the fencing was sorted out, but the agreement that he would come and check his Sheep every day, never happened.

One day when on looking in the Sheep field I saw a black object. On closer inspection it turned out to be a dead Lamb. The Ewes were not meant to be in Lamb. The Farmer assured me that the Ewes had not been running with any Rams. Over the coming days more of the Ewes Lambed. The Farmer had left his Ram Lambs that had not been castrated with their Mothers for to long. What possessed me to have my own Sheep again after that experience, I will never know.

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The land that we rented when we first move to…

The land that we rented when we first move to Somerset, before we had purchased Denbury was to small for the amount of Sheep that I had purchased. If I remember correctly it was 117 Ewes that I had purchased all together. There would be ample grass through the Summer, but as soon as the ground got wet through the Autumn and Winter, 468 feet would soon cut the ground up, making the fields muddy. To make matters worse, that year was pretty wet, and there was no grass on the fields for the Ewes to eat. Most of them would have been in Lamb, so it was important for them to be eating well. Fortunately I had made a deal with a farmer who I allowed to use part of my twenty acres, for fifteen of his young Heifers to graze early in the Spring, in return for a large amount of hay. The hay allowed me to feed the Sheep in my field until the Ewes were due to Lamb and through to the following Spring, until the grass started to grow.

The building on the land I was renting was also to small to Lamb in. My farmer friend allowed me to use one of his buildings. It was a bit to far from the house that we were renting, to keep on going back and forward to check on how the Lambing was going, especially as I would have needed to go at least three times a night. My Horse box had a small living area, with a very large bed above the cab, that became my home at night for many weeks. Through the Winter, every night for weeks I was up checking to make sure that the Ewes were not having difficulty lambing. I was cold, miserable and believe me fed up to the teeth with Sheep, and worse still the building was alive with rats, that could climb walls like mountaineers. Every morning I would return any of the Ewes that had Lambed, in our Estate Car, to the field that we were renting. You wouldn’t have wanted to buy that car, when we were finished with it.

It soon became clear that the field was to small and muddy for the Ewes and Lamb to be in, and they had to be taken back to my friends farm. He had a very large farm, my Sheep would graze his fields through the Winter, to eat off the grass to allow the Spring grass to grow better. The Ewes and Lambs were in a fields, that part of the River Tone passes through. Not the large River that it eventually turns into, I suppose up to twelve feet across, but quite fast flowing, especially after long spells of rain, when it would sometimes flood part of the field that my Ewes and Lambs were in.

Twice every day I would go to check that the Ewe’s and Lambs were well. One day after a long spell of rain the fields that the Ewes and Lambs were in had were partly flooded, close to the very fast flowing river. All the Ewes and Lambs except one Ewe were close together, well away from the river. I made my way over towards the Ewe, she would not have been on her own without a reason. As I got close I could see that the Ewe was one that had twins, and they were not with her. They could well have been swept away in the River. I put myself into a position that should have made the Ewe run back to the flock. Instead she ran straight into the raging river. I was down stream to the Ewe and managed to grab hold of her fleece as she passed me, I up to my knees in the flood. The Ewe was struggling in fear and making it difficult for me to hold onto her. By this time her fleece had absorbed so much water, that her weight was making it more difficult for me to hang on to her. By this time I was up to my waist in the flood. I didn’t want to let go of the Ewe, as she would have been swept down the river to her death, but I was finding it more difficult to hang on to her and I was in danger of being swept away myself. I can swim, but I would never have been able to save myself in that raging river. We must have been washed to a more shallow position, and I was able to lie partly on my back that made it possible with one last gasp to pull the Ewe out of fast flow of the river. I don’t know where I got the strength from. It was a very cold day, my body was numb all over with the added cold of being wet. When I returned the next day, I found that none of the Lambs were missing. Shortly after I sent the lot back to a friend in Kent to look after for me.

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That s a bit of a worry out of the…

That’s a bit of a worry out of the way, as some of you saw, we baled the hay this afternoon. A couple of weeks back I was getting very concerned that the bad weather would stop us from making any fodder at all, let alone hay. With the hot sun this morning it had made by lunchtime. Just as well as the forecast is showers tonight. It was a bit of a gamble to try to make hay with the forecast for in the middle of the week being wet, but I did not have an option. Mind you I have never not made hay in all the time that I have been at Denbury.

We made 141 bales, that is with out cutting a small paddock at the end of the valley, that we would normally cut, up about 19 more bales from last year, although the contractor reckons that the bales are tighter than last year. I will try to sell 50 of then. Last winter we used 109, about four a week I would guess. Some people would say tat we feed more hay than we should, but I would rather have fat warm Horses in the winter months.

All going well the bales will be taken from the fields and stacked in the barn tomorrow. So that the bales can be put into the barn we have had to let the Sheep out of the pen, that they have been in for a six weeks or more. The Portlands should have been taken to market this morning for the Rare Breeds Sale, but the restricted movement of Cattle, Sheep and Pigs because of the Foot and Mouth outbreak, the sale was cancelled. I had intended to keep the friendly Texels, so we have put up netting and gates around the lake to hopefully keep them in. All the Lambs have now been weaned off of the Ewes, so we should not get them breaking out of the area we have put them in.

Although the distance from the barn to the lake is only about fifteen metres, it was a bit of a problem getting them to their new area. The first thing that they wanted to do as the passed out the gate was to graze, and they wouldn’t move. Tass and Kye were deliberately put where the sheep could see them, which blocked off one area, just in case they decided that they wanted to go in the direction that I didn’t want them to, I stood on the other escape route. After about ten to fifteen minute, with a little coaxing they went into the lake area. Hopefully that is where they will stay.

It is possible we could soon be looking for a live in Groom to help with the Horses, and other odd jobs on the farm. The person would need to have experience with Horses. If you think that it may interest you, please email me at info@denburyfarm.co.uk telling a little about yourself.

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Woody has been a lot better today eating all her…

Woody has been a lot better today, eating all her food for the first time in days. Hopefully she has got over the worst of the virus, although she did get a lot better a week or so back and then deteriated again. The first we knew she was unwell was when we found her laying flat out in one of the paddocks, the other three horses she was with were chomping away on the hay. For sure Woody was unwell for she is never last in the queue when it come to eating. I must admit she seemed so unwell we thought that she may not get better at all. With a lot of looking after and a bit of luck she is now over the worse.

Some of you may have seen the tractor on camera 2 hedge trimming. The trimming can be done in the autumn or late winter just before spring, we always try to do it this time of year. I reckon it paid off this year, the mild winter has caused the hedges to have a little none stop growth all through the winter. The main reason it is done this time is so as not to disturb the birds nesting. Don’t reckon they would be too impressed having the trimmer causing them have to make a new nest.