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Stone dykes restoration

stone dyke at house

We have a lot of dry stone dykes here which we really like.  They are basically stone walls made without mortar, just careful positioning and gravity holding them together.

new gateway in dry stone dykeHowever, there are a few bits of wall that need repair.  Last year, I did a course which gave me a basic grounding in how to build stone dykes.  One freezing and snowy day last winter, Nicole and I put this into practice by putting a gate inbetween two fields.  The course hadn’t covered how to do the ends of the walls, but we just copied what we saw elsewhere – basically use big stones.

new flower bedNicole has been working hard transforming the gardens around the house.  The flower bed to the left is close to the front door and can be seen from the kitchen window.  Nicole has reshaped it and cleared the mass of weeds including ground elder.  The plan is to plant roses (which are on order and will be arriving soon).

Now, many of the dykes around the house are covered in a mix of brambles and honeysuckle.  We are not sure if this is by design or simple invasion, but to us, it is a shame to hide these beautiful walls.  So, in a burst of energy over the weekend, Nicole cleared the above pictured wall.  Only, underneath, the wall had collapsed and had, so it would seem, been clumsily repaired.  It was, basically, a mess.

With the roses coming, it was time to act. Thankfully, we were enjoying a spell of bright, if cold, weather.  Perfect conditions for stone dyking.

stone dyke repairs beforeThis wall was tricky, as it turned out, as all the stones were quite large.  This meant the normal process of building two walls sloping towards each other was out of the question.  So, time for plan B – big stones on the bottom, smaller ones on top.

First, I pulled down all the bits of wall that were leaning and levelled off the base.

stone dyke repairs duringThat done, I started on the end.  I poached a couple of large stones from other parts of the garden.  I then had to go and recruit a neighbour to help me lift the big stone onto the end (the one you can see pictured left).

stone dyke repairs completeThat done, it was a case of building up the rest of the dyke.  I think, in reality, more time is spent pondering which stones to put where than actually lifting and placing them them.  I suppose that could be one reason why we do jigsaws as kids – preparation for building dry stone dykes!

I should really have stopped and rested, but completion seemed so close so I kept going.  My back has still not forgiven me!  Nevertheless, I got it finished and we are both very happy with the result.

Now all it needs is the roses and it will look amazing.

But for me, it’s on to the next repair job, the wall that blew down in the storm……

hen run stone dyke collapsed

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Sheeps’ Patio completed

patio for sheep

The field shelter we built for our sheep has proved very popular with them.  They especially like it when they seek out shade.  We are planning to plant some trees to provide more shady area for them in the summer, but for now the shelter works well.

However, in the winter it can get a bit wet here.  And the patter of multiple sheep hooves can soon turn wet ground into mud.  So, we had a conference and decided that what was needed was a patio.  It was also suggested that redirecting the water from the roof away would help.

So, multiple slabs were transported.  And I mean a lot.  Fortunately, I had help from Matt, my brother-in-law. for most of them.  To be honest, we didn’t lay a flat base, we just put them down on the ground.  That said, we did ensure they sloped away from the shelter itself.  The hay feeders also have slabs on both sides.  We have, in the past, tried hard standing, but that just gets trampled in.  Slabs are a better bet.

field shelter water systemI also installed guttering all around the roof so as to catch all the water.  I also installed a water trough and tank and an underground pipe to take all the extra water well away into the woodlands.

This means that in the worst of the weather, the sheep will be able to reach food and water without getting their feet wet.  This is especially important, as it turns out, as some of our sheep are becoming senior citizens and one, poor Sarka, has developed arthritis.  She’s getting supplements to help, but being able to reach food and water without having to wade through mud will be a great help to her.

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Sarka update

sarka eating haylage

Sarka went lame over the weekend appearing to lose all movement in one of her back legs (you can read more details here).  She had pretty much continuous TLC from us both and, fortunately, Saturday night excepted (when we carried her and put her into shelter), the weather has been OK.

sarka having a drink
sarka having a drink

Well, on Monday morning, it was my turn to sit with her and she was eating and drinking, but not much.  To be honest, she didn’t seem any better so, I phoned the vet.  He felt it would be a good idea to check her out, so we booked in a visit.

The good news is that there was no sign of any injury, for example break or dislocation.  It seemed like, as we had thought, she had hurt it, perhaps stumbling or falling awkwardly.  So, a quick painkiller injection was administered.

That helped a lot and over the day, she improved a lot.  This morning, she was up and about and Nicole was even able to lead her down to the main field shelter.  She’s much better off there with hay and water on hand, shelter and plenty of hard standing.

We’ll be administering painkillers for the rest of the week (every 48 hours) and see how she does.  Fingers crossed.

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Birds feeding time

bird cake home made

I have always been one for feeding the birds.  I really enjoy watching them tucking in, feasting, squabbling, all the usual behaviours.  I try hard to cater for the various types of birds, some are happy on feeders, some like the table and some prefer to be on the ground. And different birds have their preferences on types of food.

birds at feeding stationSo, we have two feeding stations, one catering mainly for the tit family (peanuts and seeds) and one for finches and siskins (niger seed and peanuts).  I also made a large quantity of bird cake, pictured above, as most birds are omnivores and a bit of fat goes a long way in the cold weather.

These feeding stations have proven very popular, especially with coal tits.  The dunnocks and chaffinces mop up what is dropped to the ground.  We also have regular visits from a pair of nuthatches and a great spotted woodpecker.

birds at feeding stationOn the ground, we still have windfall (apples) which are most popular with the blackbirds and the occasional visit from the ever shy and retiring fieldfare.  Strangely, no sign of siskins as yet – they were regular visitors last winter.

The bird cake is very popular.

Robins, well they are aplenty here, but prefer me to do a bit of digging or feed them mealworms directly.  One particular robin appears every time I go out so he gets his own special delivery.

 

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Auchenstroan Fashions

Nicole and Sparkle

Nicole modelling PonchoAside from their lovely natures, one of the benefits of coloured ryeland sheep is that they produce amazing wool.  We have been getting ours spun into yarn and Nicole sells it through her Etsy shop.

As well as the wool, Nicole is now making ponchos from our wool, super soft, lace weight knit, un-dyed, organic and non-scratchy!

If you are interested in treating yourself to one of these, please let us know via our contact page.  Thanks.

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Sarka in trouble

Sarka

Sarka has been with us for a few years now.  She has always been a bit nervous but Sarka and Nicole have a very close friendship.  I think she quite likes me too!

As it turns out, she has a heart condition.  This means that if she gets anxious, she can get into quite a panicky state with racing heartbeats and shallow breaths.  Last year, the vet’s prognosis wasn’t good.  However, straight after that vet’s visit, she started to improve and has, basically, since then been quite a healthy sheep.

Sadly, recently, she she seems to have developed arthritis in one of her front legs making it a bit difficult for her to walk.  The vet said nothing could be done.  Nicole wasn’t having that and after some research, found that willow is a favourite of sheep and has painkiller properties.  Well, we have plenty of willow here.  And it worked, she became more mobile and seemed pretty happy.  Just a clicking sound when she walks, but the vet assured us that was nothing to be worried about.  We had to take quite a lot of willow in because the rest of the flock tucked in with gusto as well.

With autumn and the leaves dropping, we have switched to willow supplements.

Anyway, in the last couple of days she has developed a problem with one of her hind legs.  We can’t tell if she’s twisted it or whether the arthritis has spread.  It coincided with the rain on Thursday so she could easily have slipped.

We have been quite lucky with the weather recently, cold but bright.  That is the sheeps’ favourite.  However, today winter conditions arrived with a vengeance – driving heavy rain, and 50mph winds.  The sort of rain that soaks through waterproofs in about 10 minutes.

sheep happy in autumn sunshineOn the morning inspection, Nicole found Sarka right up the hill.  On the picture to the right, trace the wall up past the copse and she was up there.  In fact, Sarka was about as far away from the main field shelter as she could get!   Nicole took some food up; hedge stuff (which Sarka really likes), veggie garden produce, willow and haylage (also very popular).

Of course, at this point, I was reading the news on the computer.  However, with Nicole being out for a while, my brain cells started to work and I thought I should go and check everything was OK.  I found Nicole filling the hay feeders with hay, much to the sheeps’ delight.  Sarka, however, was up the hill and so we returned to check on her.

sarka warm and dry in pig arc
Sarka warm and dry in pig arc while rain lashes down

To me, she seemed OK, but also a bit out of sorts.  My intuition was telling me we needed to get her out of the rain.  But how?  We couldn’t exactly put her on the quad bike and she certainly wasn’t able to walk anywhere.  Thankfully, we have a pig arc up in that field (you can’t see it in the photo, but it’s over to the right).  It was a fair way from Sarka (about 50m or so) but it was downhill.  On impulse, I started to lift her.  Now, your average sheep weighs around 80kg so this was easier said than done.  I needed Nicole’s help to get up on my feet, but I had her and set off I set as fast as I could.  The ground was tricky – sedge grass, puddles, soft bits – we had to be careful.

Sarka in pig arcSarka was heavy and my arms tired quickly (I was carrying her in what I call a “dog lift”, my arms wrapped around her legs).  Every few steps, I had to stop and let Nicole take the weight for a few seconds.  As I neared the pig arc, I could feel Sarka starting to roll off me, but Nicole answered my panicky cries and between us, we got her into the pig arc.

Nicole had already filled it with fresh straw, so it was very warm and dry.  We are so relieved and will be looking after her carefully.

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Brambles, brambles, brambles

bramble invasion

We have spent a lot of the summer dealing with brambles.  Our hen run was overgrown with them in places and large areas near the house are, well, just overgrown with the prickly monsters.

We decided to act.

We started on the stone dyke bordering the hen run.  It was completely covered in a mix of honeysuckle and brambles.  It took weeks to clear that.  Then the area behind the lambing shed was also bramble heaven.  Lambs can get caught up in brambles and get trapped.  So Nicole spent days digging them out.

Bramble free zone
Bramble free zone

And the other side of the hen run stone dyke was also overrun.  Nicole heroically cleared this area.

But still they come; and come; and come.  It can be hard to get the roots out, so you have to go back and keep cutting them back.  We turned our backs for a seconds and they were invading the lambing shed!

I reckon we’ll be clearing brambles for years to come!

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Getting out more

Clatteringshaws Loch from Benniguinea

We live in a beautiful part of the world (windfarms notwithstanding – don’t get me started), but in the year and a half we have lived here, we have yet to explore any of it.  So, as part of our scaling back, we promised ourselves that we’d make the effort to get out more.

Our first trip was to nearby Clatteringshaws.  Clatteringshaws has a dam (hydro electric, a loch, walks and a visitor centre.  It’s home to one of two Bruce’s stones sited in Galloway. I found a walk there listed on www.walkhighlands.co.uk and printed out instructions.  The dogs were ecstatic – new smells and new places to explore.  We walked up the hill  Benniguinea) through the forest following the instructions.  Of course, we missed our turn and walked all the way to the top!  But it was worth it for the views.

Cleaning HariboWe found the turn off on the way back down and it was a lovely wee path through a mix of broad-leaf and pine forest.  Of course, Haribo found the smelliest fox scat in the area and proceeded to roll in it.  He managed to get it right under the collar and all over his neck.  Cue impromptu bath in a nearby ditch.  Boy, I cannot begin to describe how smelly that was!

Talking of Haribo, he really has chilled out lately.  He came to us with many problems but, aside from a bit of fear aggression, he’s a happy dog now.

Anyway, we had brought a picnic and came down to the loch and found a nice wee beach just down from the visitor centre.  We thoroughly enjoyed our tea and sandwiches.  A day out is definitely a great tonic.  We have, since, also located excellent walks down on the coast between Kippford and Rockcliffe.  These are helped hugely by the excellent we cafe in Rockcliffe.

Clatteringshaws Loch
Clatteringshaws Loch
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It’s been a while

Adrian and Pinkie

Blogs are a blessing but also a bind sometimes.  The need to add updates sort of nags away at the back of one’s mind.  That said, I haven’t paid much attention to that inner voice having not posted anything all summer.  How did that happen – well, one day at a time!

Anyway, here’s a bit of an update.  I’ll add some more detailed stories shortly.

As you can imagine, the summer months were as busy as ever.  Looking after cows, sheep, dogs and hens as well as each other takes a fair amount of time.  Then there’s maintaining 27 acres of mixed woodland, keeping the house sorted, the gardens, the veggie patch – the list of jobs never seems to get any smaller!

gypsy caravan - front
needing attention

So, what have we been up to.  Well, the hot summer months early on provided an excellent opportunity to refurbish the gypsy caravan.  It had suffered somewhat from last year’s long wet summer and then the harsh winter.  Paint was flaking off, the canvas was tearing – it needed attention. Desperately.

gypsy caravan restored
gypsy caravan restored

So, between us, we got to work.  I mainly did the outside.  Nicole sorted out the inside.  And over a period of weeks, we transformed it.  We still have some artwork to add, but the weather closed in so we’ll do that next spring.  I’ll add a more detailed account of this in another post.

chicken and chickLast year, one of our hens produced 13 chickens.  Four of these are females and this year all four of them took it upon themselves to go broody.  Between them, they managed a grand total of one chick.  Pipette, as we called her, has now grown up into a lovely hen.  We are looking forward to her starting laying soon.

The others, well one sat on two eggs all summer before giving up.  Another sat on a golf ball and the fourth lay her eggs under a bush and then abandoned them.  We’re not quite sure what happened, but our cockerel was getting on a bit and he was also their father.  Inbreeding can be quite a problem.  As chance would have it, one of our neighbours had a lonely cockerel (his entourage of hens having been killed by his ex’s new dog), so we took him on as a replacement.

Given we were being run ragged, we had a discussion in the summer and decided to scale back.  As a result, we have sold our cows to a lovely farm just west of Kilmarnock.  The new owners make amazing chocolate, so we’ll be keeping in touch with them.  We also sold our tups (we’re having some time off lambing and also, they are related to too many of our ewes).  They went to a lovely smallholding just outside Peebles.

Talking of lambing, we did well with our lambs this year, 18 in total (10 girls and 8 boys).  We have sold 4 lambs and two gimmers (also to the farm near Kilmarnock) so we still have plenty of sheep.  The 8 boys were castrated and that has made life much easier as we don’t have to separate them.

Other than that, we upgraded the sheep field shelter with a water system (gutters,  drainpipes and a trough).  We had problems with one of our tanks leaking so this gives extra water security.  Digressing, we had to hump a lot of water up during the hot spell – pumping out of the river into a 600 litre bowser and towing it into the fields.  Then the cows drank copious amounts, so it was an ongoing job!  Back on the shelter, we also added a lot of slabs as it can get a bit muddy at times.

Our veggie patch has been a success producing turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions, beetroot, courgettes, kale and brussel sprouts galore.  We did have to remove a lot of caterpillars, otherwise it might have been a different story.  The leeks are coming on nicely too.

Nicole has been doing a lot of gardening and is slowly getting things the way she wants them.  She has ordered a batch of roses to go into new flower beds.  Also, the small flower meadow continued to flower right up till a few days ago.

And, of course, with winter approaching we are having to turn the heating on.  It’s powered mainly by wood, so that means much chopping – we get through a lot of wood!

wood pile and George

 

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Wildlife in the summer sun

baby swallows close up

Running our wee patch organically, we get some pretty good wildlife.  The swallows are back, albeit a little late, but are back nesting in both our large shed and our smaller open garage.  In the latter, the nest is just above head height.  If you look closely at the picture above, you can see four baby swallows.  There are certainly plenty of flying insects here for their parents to catch.

ragged robin
ragged robin

Up in one of the fields, we have a large area of ragged robin.  According to the UK’s wildlife trusts, this is an increasingly rare site, so we feel quite privileged.

We’ll keep it safe from the cows until it has seeded.

The tadpoles are long hatched and over the last few days, we have had to tread carefully as there are baby frogs are everywhere.  Makes cutting the grass a worrying task!

Sadly, we don’t seem to have the sand martins this year.  There is some evidence of tunneling, but no sign of nests yet.  Also, the house martins have chosen not to build their nest on our house this year.  Oh well!  Maybe next year.

We also caught a quick glimpse of a lizard on one of our stone dykes.  First time I’ve ever seen one in Scotland.

The bats are regular visitors.  I have only seen Pipistrelles flying round the house and garden.  I really ought to blow the dust off the bat detector and head down to the loch to see if there are any other species of bat flying around.

Thankfully, there has been no sign of the badger returning.  We like badgers, but not when they’re in the hen house!