Author: Adrian Doyle

Up until recently, the winter weather has not been too bad.  It hasn’t been too good either, but from a smallholding perspective, it has been OK.  By that, I mean it has been relatively warm.  That means that the grass has continued to grow, albeit slowly.  In turn, this means the sheep have eaten less hay which in turn has meant less work for us.

However, it has also been unrelentingly dull.  Cloudy, damp days.  That’s one reason there has been such a gap between blog entries, it has been much more tempting to curl up in front of the fire with a book.

In fact, I think we have had only two or three properly frosty days.

Lately, it has been stormy, wet and cold.  Again, it’s hard to get much done when it’s blowing a gale and raining at the same time.  The ground is soaking.  At least, living on a hillside, we don’t get flooding here, but there has been a lot of standing water.  The rivers have been raging too.

The last couple of weeks have brought some snow, but the weather doesn’t seem to be able to make up it’s mind, one minute it’s snowing, then it’s raining.

I think it’s fair to say the sheep have not been impressed by the weather.  They have spent many a night sheltering from the torrential rain and wind in the shelter.  While that keeps them warm and dry, they also get bored.  However, they are not keen to head out into the hills when the weather is so bad.  They just nip out, grab some hay and then it’s quickly back in to chew the cud.  Nicole has, on occasion, also been giving them hay in the shed.  They quite like that, eating a little before trampling it into the ground.

However, when the rain has eased off, they have been out and about.  Selene is getting quite good at leading them off first thing and bringing them back around four in time for a hay top-up.

That all said, today it has cleared up and the sun is shining brightly.  The wind is light.  Bliss.  I took the opportunity to plant some more trees.  That’s about 450 this year, 250 of those being willow cuttings.  I hope they grow strong and healthy.

It’s also the time of year to cut future firewood.  We still have some tree trunks lying around from last year’s coppicing and they’ll be the first to be chopped.  Then it will be into the willow wood to take out the damaged and fallen trees and maybe do a bit of coppicing.  Then, we’ll see where we are.  Hopefully in the not too distant future, some of the trees planted this year and last year will be ready for coppicing themselves.

Aside from that, Hoggy, our resident overwintering hedgehog is doing fine and blissfully unaware of the outdoor conditions.  Her outdoor residence awaits, but it has been too cold to release her.  In the meantime, she amuses herself by turning everything in her run upside down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have a lot of stone dykes here and over the years, some have fallen into disrepair while others have been, shall we say, modified.

One such modification was a gate fitted in between two fields.  While this gate might have made sense when all the fields were part of this farm, over the years bits have been sold off and the gate now sits between ours and a neighbour’s field.  In fact, it had become kind of a gate to nowhere.

The problem is that the gate was rotten and the gentlest of nudges would have pushed it down.  Not a problem until you have rams in one field an ewes next door (see “hello boys“).  We could have replaced the gate, but there was not much point.  There is already a proper farm gate about 50m away, so there is access between the fields.

So, the decision was made to ditch the gate and rebuild the wall.  The only problem was all the stones that had formed this part of the wall had long gone.

We had recently been give a pile of stones from a house in town where they are renovating house and garden.  However, there were not enough even for this small gap.  Also, they were all pretty small, not ideal for dry stone dykes.  Off I went in search of some more, larger stones.  I found a few and ferried them over with the quad bike.  The wall itself was up a bank, probably around 1.5m (5ft) high.  I had to get all the stones I needed up this bank.

It was easy for the small stones, I just lobbed them up.  The larger ones were a bit trickier.  One in particular proved nigh on impossible to get up.  After three attempts had resulted in me losing my grip and having to jump out of the way, I named the stome Sisyphus and sat down to ponder.  I could have gone and got the tractor and lifed it with the front loader, but in the end, I rolled it up the track, got it up onto the bank where it was lower and rolled it back again.  Of course, having done that, I realised I could have just put it on the quad bike and drive in it round to the other side. Doh!

Having got all the stones ready, I retired for a cup of tea and a rest much to the gratitiude of the dogs who were, by now, pretty bored watching me moving stones.

Next morning, under the not so watchful eye of the dogs, I rebuilt the wall.  You can see Sysiphus bottom left (under the very white stone).  They never look quite so big once they are in place.

The small stones turned out to be a pain, so I had to scrounge a few more stones.  Luckily, there are a few just lying around.

We are pretty pleased with that little job.

Still plenty of stone dykes to repair though.

A cold snap in November seems to have been a regular thing ever since I was a kid.  Each year, the frost would come and it would look like a white christmas was in the offing, only for it to warm up again.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty chilly.  The good thing is that after a spell of heavy rain, it has given the ground a chance to dry out a bit.  Nevertheless, winter is here and it we’ll be dealing with mud for a while now.

The best part of the frosty weather is the sunrises we get here.  Looking out to the east, we see the sun rising over the hills casting it’s red and orange glows across the sky.  It’s a very peaceful time of the day.

It’s a pleasant walk up to find the sheep and see what they are up to.  Mostly, it’s lying around after a good night’s sleep out in the cold air.  The sheep do like a bit of cold, dry weather.

For us, after the walk around to check all the animals fine and that the hen doors have not frozen shut, it’s back inside to our Aga warmed kitchen for a breakfast of good Scottish porage.