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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!

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Enjoying the summer weather

sheep resting

After the rather long cold and wet winter, we have to say we are quite enjoying having a bit of decent summer weather.  The midges can be a pain on a still summer evening, but they are a small price to pay for the fun of  being able to have lunch in the garden.

All the animals seem pretty content.  Having been sheared, the sheep are not at risk of overheating.  Plus, they are in a field with some tress providing shade.  They hate the midges though.  Nothing seems to phase the cows.  Their new “river” field isn’t quite ready yet, the bracken proving somewhat tenacious.

flowers front of house
flowers front of house

That doesn’t mean we have had much time to be sitting about.  Nicole has got the bee in her bonnet about sorting out the garden.  She has been working hard, furiously pulling out weeds and planting flowers.  The main focus has been around the front of the house and the area leading up to it.

Bit by bit, “inappropriate” planting is being replaced by sympathetic flowers and so on.  Being a professional gardener, she knows what she’s doing and it’s all starting to look really good.

sheep poo pile
One of two sheep poo piles

While Nicole has been gardening away, I was dispatched to clear out the second sheep field shelter.  As I mentioned before, a year’s worth of straw and poo has been compacted.  Nicole’s back has been giving her trouble, so I was on my own this time.  It was hard work not helped by the fact that the shelter is about 5 feet high and I’m 6 foot 1!  That pretty much did for me last weekend (but one).

newly laid track
newly laid track

Of course, having got it out, I still had to move it to our designated dung heap.  But that’s what tractors are for.  I still had to load the tractor using a fork, but it was then just a wee drive and the front loader did the rest.  I combined this job with laying a track.  It’s our main route from the house and outbuildings to the paddock and it gets very muddy in winter.  Finally, it has been dry long enough for it to have dried out properly.  So it was shift a pile of hard standing (using the tractor) one way, rake it, continue over and collect a load of manure, take that back, repeat.

new flower bed - mulched
new flower bed – mulched

This was duly delivered to Nicole’s newly cleared flower beds.

That was Saturday.

Sunday was general maintenance, moving a water trough and repairing the roof on hay bay which had collapsed under the snow.  It was baking on Sunday and I got a proper “farmer’s” tan on my arms.

It’s sometimes hard, with all these things to do, to take a moment and look around.  But I did today and our fields are turning into lovely meadows.  It’s what you get when you mix cows and sheep on pasture.  It’s what you get farming the old fashioned way.  Not to mention a bit of sun and rain of which we have had plenty.

meadow flowers
meadow
meadow flowers
meadow flowers

Also, there was a nice sound of buzzing, lots of bees going about their work.  And they need all the help they can get these days.

Anyway, though it’s a sunny evening outside, I might just watch a bit of the football now, maybe the Spain game.

 

 

 

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Running to stand still

nicole planting new veg patch

Where to start! We are finding out that owning land creates lots of work. Owning animals just adds more! We keep thinking we are getting there, but then we dream up new projects.

veggie patch complete

One example is the veggie patch already featured on this blog. It’s pretty much finished now. I added the rose arches over the gates as the final touches. No roses yet, they’ll go in in the autumn. Nicole has been busy planting it up. I keep saying I’ll help but I always seem to end up working on some other project. It’s starting to look fab with good crops of turnips, carrots, parsnips and sprouts. We’ll also have kale, courgettes and beetroot. They were sown direct and are not quite showing yet. All this planting was helped by two thunderstorms which gave everything a good soaking. More about water later.

rows of onions and salad
rows of onions and salad

Nicole has also been busy moving self seeded daisies out of the other veggie patch and into the borders next to the new veggie patch. So, soon, it will be surrounded with flowers. All that planting created the room for all our onions which Nicole finished planting today. We even did a bit of a landscaping (after yesterday’s storm) but the midges soon put a stop to that.

So, what have I been up to that has stopped me from helping? Well, the weather went from wet to dry overnight, and stayed dry. This is great, except that the grass growth was slow and our field water dried up, Annoyingly, the big tank we put in last year has sprung a leak somewhere and I think I am going to have to dig a hole to find it, a big hole.
Anyway, we have two rivers that are merrily running through our patch. So I suggested we extend one of the paddocks down to include a bit of river. The cows would certainly appreciate that!

So I have been off doing that, knocking in posts and fencing it all. The fencing is now all done but there are two stone dykes that need some repair where they have fallen down. If our sheep got to those, they’d be up and over in a flash. I think the cows would probably give it a miss though. So I’ll be repairing those later in the week.
It’s also infested with bracken which is poisonous to cows and sheep. So we’ll be down dealing with that too!

Talking of cows escaping, coming back from the garage one day last week (my new car had some faults needing fixing), I realised that one of the cows was the wrong side of the fence. In fact, Bluebell had taken down a bit of fencing and we reckon she’d been out for a day or two. We headed down to round her up wondering how it would go. Highland cows are pretty stubborn at the best of time. However, she was waiting by the gate. When Nicole opened it, she wandered back in of her own accord. Miracle!
In between all that, we had the sheep sheared on Thursday last. You may remember that Nicole and I did a sheep shearing course a couple of years back. Well that and the experience of shearing three sheep made us decide this was best left to the professionals. Finding shearers for small flocks can be a problem, but this year, on a recommendation, we managed to hire a top shearer.

They arrived with a professional rig on a trailer with two shearing stations and two shearers and a third person to roll up the fleeces. Our plans of leading the ewes in one at a time from the paddock evaporated in an instant. In fact, we ended up charging around and catching and rounding them up. We only just kept up with the two shearers but, of course, we then had to collect the sheared sheep and get them back. It was borderline panic for the duration, but they are all sheared, and it was a great job too. The sheep must feel so much better in this heat.

After that, we had to inoculate the lambs. Rather than rounding them up, we caught them one at a time. Nicole gave them the injection while I held them. The girls struggled like mad doing their best to headbutt me (by flipping their heads backwards). The boys, harder to catch, seemed only to shrug with vague indifference when the needle went in. Some of the lambs were very flighty – once they know you’re after them, they can move out of the way pretty quickly. Nicole’s pretty good at sneaking up behind them and catching their legs. One managed to wriggle out and tried to run past me. I’m not quite sure how I did it but a stuck an arm out and caught him and quickly had him in a hug. Which would have been great had I not, in my moment of self satisfaction, then stepped on some sheep poo ( we were on a hillside) and slid landing flat on my back. I held onto the lamb though, who was safe on my chest. We have to do it again in four weeks, perhaps we’ll pen them up. They might be a bit heavy to carry by then.

Nicole is on top of the sheep worming. We don’t blanket worm them. Nicole collects samples and we have the vet do an analysis so we know who to worm and what to treat them with. There are a few dirty sheep bottoms out there, often a sign of worms, and one of Nicole’s less exciting jobs is keeping their rear ends shaved (it’s called dagging) so that we can avoid fly strike.

In-between all that, we have been trying to comb the cows. They haven’t had much attention of late and Bluebell is not entirely sure about being combed. This is not helped by them moulting their winter coats which creates humungous knots. They are hard to get out, but amazingly satisfying when you get one.

And if that’s not enough, some of the chickens got infested with lice. So, we had to catch them and Nicole cut all the eggs off and we treated them to kill the adult lice. Sounds easy, but catching chickens is incredibly hard! You can wait till night time and get them out the chicken house – they tend to be quieter then. Bu these days, in mid June, that would be around midnight and we are fast asleep by then.

And tomorrow it’s Monday and back to the day jobs! We’re still waiting for that elusive day off! I haven’t even had time to take pictures of our sheared sheep or new paddock, but I’ll try and get some tomorrow and add them.

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Poo Glorious Poo

Having got our veggie patch built, our thoughts turned to mulch.  We have compost bins but, to be honest, by the time it has all rotted down it doesn’t go that far.  Happily, our sheep provided the answer.

Last year I built them a field shelter.  It is heavily used by the sheep, especially when it rains, snows or even when it’s sunny for the shade.  Well, it seems to pretty much have been raining since last June and we certainly had plenty of snow over the winter.  So, Brookside (as we call the field shelter) has been well used in the last year.

Now, sheep, while great, do have one or two not so pleasant habits.  One of these is the tendency to poo wherever they happen to be.  Even when sleeping.  I sometimes wonder whether they even bother to wake up.  In fact, you can tell where the sheep have slept because there is a gentle imprint in the grass and a pile of poo.

This is fine outside where sun and rain and even the dogs, who are partial to a bit of sheep poo, do their bit to dispose of it.  But in Brookside, the poo tended to linger.  So, Nicole dutifully lays down straw to keep things nice and clean.  However, unlike with horses, we haven’t mucked out.  Yet.

Time to muck it out and spread it on the new veggie patch we thought.  So while I was hanging the gates, Nicole headed off and duly returned with a trailer full of mulch.  We spread this.  If you have ever mulched, you will know how this went – a trailer full covers a postage stamp sized area!  After two loads, Nicole was starting to tell me how hard it was.  I went over to help (the gates having been hung).

the poo face
the poo face

Well, a year of poo, straw and trampling had built up a layer about a foot deep that was quite intent on staying exactly where it was.  Also, the shelter is about 5 feet high so it was bending over work and lots of banging heads.

Not one to complain (ha ha), I got stuck in on the excavation, or mining as Nicole liked to call it.  As I lobbed piles of strawey poo out through the doorway, Nicole moved it into the trailer.  Then, back over we went to spread it out.  We managed to cover two of our 6 veggie areas before seeking refuge in a bottle.  Well, we went to the pub actually where I had fish and chips and Nicole munched her way through two helpings of lasagna.

veg patch mulchedNext day, we used the tractor instead of the trailer.  We could drop the front loader much lower making it easier to load at one end.  At offload end, I could set it to wheelbarrow height which also made things much easier.  I don’t quite know how she did it, but Nicole mined the mulch out from Brookside faster than I could collect and spread it.  By the end of the day, one of the sheds (there are two) was clear and the veggie patch covered in a thick layer.  It looks great.

The only downside is that we have to do it all again in the other shed.  We are already thinking up strategies for the coming season which involve a more regular mucking out.  But, at least we are putting all this poo to good use.  It’s quite a good feeling really.  We celebrated with a take away pizza (neither us having enough energy left to cook).

And we decided to take today off :).

 

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A fine year for Veggies?

veg patch slabs

“After lambing” we said to each other, “it will get easier”.  To be honest it has been a long winter with little respite.  Having livestock is a 7 day a week responsibility and we sometimes think we have taken on too much.  So, after lambing we thought we’d start to scale back a bit.  And most of the infrastructure is now in place, perhaps we would be less busy.  Maybe we could even plan a weekend away.

veggie patch
veggie patch before

And then we looked at the garden.  And then we looked at the veggie patch.  We had inherited a reasonable sized veggie patch which was now a bit weed infested.  Nicole, last year, had covered another area with some membrane to kill the weeds.  We’d taken that up and done some mulching.  But it all looked a bit, well sad to be honest.

We could border it with sleepers, one of us suggested.  Sounds like a plan.  I did a small plan on paper and soon after, 36 sleepers were duly delivered.  We had to sell some farm machinery to pay for them.  Well, we had already decided making hay was to stressful so the hay bob went.  And we’d never used the post stomper or fertiliser spreader so they went too.

One fine Saturday morning, I headed down with the tractor to start moving them.  I could get two into the front loader.  Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to move a railway sleeper.  They weigh nearly 100Kg!  By the end of the day, I’d managed to move 12 of which a grand total of 4 had found their final resting place.  Talking of resting places, at this point I was to be found lying on the grass, knackered.

veg path sleepers in place

On the Sunday, I managed to get 5 more in position.  This is not a job for one person I concluded.

As luck would have it, I bumped into our neighbour Jake a couple of days later.  He’s mid 20s, strong and self employed.  So I hired him for a couple of days.

And that was one of my better decisions because, in two days we had it all laid including the concrete slabs making up the path.  And I even had the strength to lift a beer afterwards.

In the meantime, Nicole had completely weeded the existing patch including ripping out carpets laid as weed barriers that had rotted and failed to stop any weeds.

veg patch with stobs

We are delighted with the results.  Just have to fence it off to keep chickens, rabbits and dogs out and then we can start planting.  The fence posts are in but a delivery company let us down and pret

ended two attempted deliveries of the chicken wire we’d ordered.  They’d never been anywhere near us – don’t you just hate that?  (DX in case you’re wondering).

Oh, and never, ever, buy a Gardman rose arch.  Made that mistake – it’s in the bin and that’s two hours of my life I won’t get back.  Now we have two bought solid steel arches to frame the two gateways into the veggie area.  More photos when they arrived.