The Autumn so far

The summer as has been documented was one of the worst growing seasons in living memory. Most crops have been between three and four weeks late right through the season. In my experience most crops catch up by mid summer but this year crops stayed behind for the whole season which effectively meant three weeks lost from the season.
Surprising for me was the fact that Leeks that need lots of daylight were early compared to last year, nothing is straight forward with organic growing. Most of our various crops are or have been harvested but production is generally much lower than previous years.

The Ram is in with the ewes and has done his job on 3/4 of them. We are looking at lambing from the end of March onwards. At the Hill Radnor show and sale I sold all the ewe lambs except one and they fetched a reasonable price. This year will see the last of the other breeds of sheep on our farm and we will concentrate on Hill Radnors.

Following the loss of my sheep dog Millie we bought a trained dog which we've called Shiv. A mature dog who initially was very shy and nervous, she was unsure of everything so was 'sticky'  when working and hesitant taking instructions. Now after four weeks of back to basics training she is starting to show what she is capable of.  

The bees have produced about a quarter of last years crop which in itself was poor. The main concern though is how well the colonies will winter. The poor summer will have meant patchy mating of queens  which could result in high losses during winter due to queen failure. There is little we can do to influence this we just have to wait and see.

We still have four sheep from last year waiting for the Farmers Markets. These are Badger Face with one Wiltshire Horn cross, looking good with particularly neat hair or fleece style all hand finished.

Working the dog with Badger Face is different from Hill Radnors our usual breed. Badger Face will take off at the slightest approach from the dog. Seen below Millie has got them to a standstill but she has to work well back, any closer and they will bolt and they can really shift - the only sheep I've seen move quicker are the primitive sheep like Hebridean and Soay.

This years lambs

Millie about to round up the lambs for a quick inspection

This years crop of lambs looking good so far, I am hoping to sell the ewe lambs at the annual Radnor sheep sales while the males will be fattened and sold as mutton

Good, bad and lessons learned

This is the strangest season I've known  we are by my reckoning four weeks behind what we have come to regard as normal. By far the most demanding of years as almost everything has been negatively affected.
The vegetables such as carrots parsnips leeks and beetroot have been slowed down but should hopefully produce a crop they require relativity low growing temperatures. All the most marginal crops however have effectively lost a month of their growing season. While we may get some tomatoes, courgettes, fine beans and squash the shorter growing season will  dramatically reduce the harvest.

The bees have had it rough I've not lost any colonies but have had to feed once in June. The swarming this year has been phenomenal. In one apiary I had all 14 colonies swarming in July and even had a swarm issue in the last week of July.      

The sheep have enjoyed the good grass growth and we have one the best crop of lambs. The hay though still has not been cut as our contractor was away during our only (so far) good week. We're sweating on three or four consecutive rain free days, none in sight so far.

So what have we learned this year?
We have an urgent need to build diversity into our systems. the climate now can produce drought or flood, poor light levels or searing heat. To produce economic crops in these variable conditions there has to be a range of crops able to cope with these extremes.
The poor growing conditions have highlighted a fertility problem here. When there are low temperatures and poor light, fertility needs to be high in order to take advantage of  what warmth there is. Our green manure system will be incorporated with the animals (hens and sheep) to boost nitrogen and phosphate levels.   

Keeping the bees with young queens is vital in poor years, to loose half your bees and the stores to a swarm can spell disaster for the honey crop. This year has been the worst for swarming by an order of magnitude Next year we will be raising queens for all the colonies from the earliest possible date regardless of the
 age of the queen. We are aiming for each colony to have a queen of the current year and a partner nucleus hive with a young queen.

The sheep this year have done well, lambs are looking good with no signs of the fly and worm problem of last year. We have developed a comprehensive health plan with the vet and so far it seems to have produced the desired results.

We may have to look into our own hay making equipment this year, the opportunity to make good hay can have a  tiny window that small hay producers like us need to be able to respond quickly before the chance is gone. 

Lambs weaned today

At last I ahve weaned the lambs today, a couple weeks later than planned but I should be able to put the tup in with the ewes a bit earlier this year as the ewes are in much better condition than last year. So a week or so on poor pasture before moving onto good grass should get them in condition to take the tup in late September. I may have to resort to some additional feeding if they are looking a bit thin.

Hand shearing, progress made

 So far all the sheep here in Hopesay are done. See here some examples of my work.

Speed is  (slowly) increasing and the amount of collatoral damage seen as small dots of blue spray are reducing.

The whole process is strangely empowering as although the time taken and cost are far in excess of contractor shearing, we now have control of timing and are not reliant on the availability of busy contractors.  

Summer and un-sheared sheep have always been a time of worry for me as a small flock keeper with the spectre of fly strike at the back of my mind. So far we have only had a single fly strike incident. One of the few benefits of this cold wet season is that the fly population like every other insect is significantly reduced. Every cloud......  

Sheep shearing

We normally have a local guy do our shearing but this year he's retired so now we are resorting to hand shearing. With the purchase of some fancy shears we've already tackled the three tups, and will start on the ewes tomorrow.
Will post some images in the next couple of days. The Tups are done, not pretty but done and protected from fly strike for the time being.

Sheep update, Hill Radnor Lambing and local Abbatoir

Lambing finished over 7 weeks ago now, the last ewe lambed a full 7 weeks after the fist. Next year we are looking to get the breeding ewes in season at the same time. The dry cold summer of last year reduced both the quality and quantity of the grass so the ewes were not in such good condition as I would have liked. The plan for this year id to reduce the flock and keep a much closer eye on the quality of feed, we will give a  supplementary feed to bring the condition score of the ewes up.

The young ewe that was very ill (previous post) has made a full recovery to my surprise. She was so ill that we left here in the back garden with no fences and she stayed put for a week or so anyway. Now she is a round as a barrel and showing a healthy interest in the Ram, she definitely needs fencing in now.

We lost just the two lambs twins still born to an unwell ewe otherwise all our breeding ewes lambed although a lot more singles than last year. Our percentage lambing was 120%  compared with 140% last year, we are hoping for better this year with the new grazing regime.

The worst news regarding the sheep enterprise this year was the local abbatoir closing at a weeks notice. It was a community based business  started 18 months ago with local farmers buying shares but it looks like we have all lost our money. More important is the loss of yet another small welfare friendly abbatoir. There is some hope that a new facility may rise from the ashes of Daysdrove.

Hill Radnor Lambing

The lambing continuing slowly we now have four lambs, three ewes and one ram, the last two have been singles and are huge compared to last year.

All well so far with the last lamb and mother turned out in the orchard with the other lambs. Looking forward to small gangs of lambs bombing round the field.

Hill Radnor Sheep

Never a dull moment keeping sheep, this little one is from last years lambs she was one of a twin which had a difficult delivery her brother died from a pneumonia infection. She was on antibiotics but pulled through. Always smaller than the other lambs she has a feisty character and can hold her own.

But last week she was found "down" on the field with the other hoggs as floppy as a rag doll. We don't hold out much hope but have taken her to the vet. She had antibiotics for pneumonia and Vitamin B jabs and for the fist night we used a drench gun to give her water and sugar mix in an attempt to keep her alive.

So far she has survived and I'll update with progress

Latest on lambing the Hill Radnor sheep

raising animals can bring real moments of joy, these are our first lambs born this week, a ewe and ram lamb, both doing well. Gave me a big lift seeing them both in the field they needed no intervention and were both standing and suckling in minutes, All I had to do was Iodine the umbilical cord and leave them with the ewe to bond for a while.

They have since been put out in the field away from the expectant ewes and are growing well.
The next day we had a ewe produce to dead lambs, its heart breaking to see her lying next to her dead lambs and defending them from the dog or me. In the past we have removed dead lambs quickly but this seems to cause distress to the ewe as she calls for her lost lamb. This time left her with them until the morning and she seemed a lot less stressed with no frantic calling and searching.
A sad sight, the ewe was very thin and didn't put any condition on despite extra feeding, the vet thinks she may have detached the placenta early due to her poor condition, we have yet to find out why the ewe is so thin.

The rest of lambing has stalled ewes are getting fatter but not producing any more as yet.

This is the first day of lambing in theory, the ewes were mated five months to the day. So far no sign, we haven't had them scanned so have no idea what we will get, We know that the Tup has done what he can, he was 'raddled' so theft his mark but what the ewes will produce is unknown.

These Radnors do not bag up like the Lleyns making it difficult to see how far on they are, we shall just have to wait and see.

Millie here playing with the neighbours Collie Rob who despite looking so similar doesn't share any of her breeding. Rob doesn't work sheep as he apparently developed a lameness problem when working so has been let go as a companion.
Millie not showing any signs of a season yet but should be some time in March

Season so far

We are in an unusually warm spell at the moment a trend which has developed over the past few years of warm period late winter early spring. We may gamble on that next year and bring lambing forward by a month to February.

Lambing is on schedule for first week of March, the ewes are slow at putting on condition so I've upped their rations Perhaps it is a feature of the breed but they will need more condition during lambing, something we will need to keep an eye on over the next few weeks.

The bees have been fed twice during the winter and have been treated for Nosema, I have omitted the Varroa treatment this year a fact I am increasingly uneasy about. I may resort to a late treatment with Oxalic acid over the next week, will have to see how the time goes. I think that to allow some pressure from Varroa every now and again is useful in preventing Varroa resistance to Oxalic or Thymol. But that doesn't stop me worrying about the upsurge in Varroa especially in this warm winter.

The vegetables have not got going yet, Broad Beans, Garlic and Spinach are all in and growing and we have just planted the Leek seeds in a cold frame.

As for the year ahead we are hoping to expand the bees, transfer the sheep flock over to Hill Radnors exclusively. Perhaps move at last to Care farming and last but not least have a litter of Pups from Millie. She has been going great guns recently but more of that in a later post.

The new lambing year starts here

We are breeding only from 10 Hill Radnor ewes this year, and aim to slowly build our flock from our own replacements. Once the present Tup's daughter ewes are over two years we will replace him with the young ram we are bringing on at the moment.

Hey up, who's this

The new kid on the block, our tup is introduced to the ewes for the first time since last autumn.

A quick getting to know you time

And we're off, a new season starts

Job done, nice green mark on her back shows all is well. One down 9 to go.

It is important now not to run the ewes around for about two weeks or they could loose the embryo before it is set.

Hill Radnors ready for the tup

Just one more week and we put the tup in with the ewes, this time we will only put the Radnor ewes our Radnor Tup. Last year we tried a Lleyn Radnor cross but were disappointed with the results. We were hoping for some hybrid vigour with the resultant lambs but their growth rates were less than the pure Radnors.

The ewes and the Tup are both on our best pasture in an attempt to 'flush' the ewes and so improve conception rates. We recently had blood tests done which showed up a Selenium deficiency which we have rectified via a Selenium injection.

As we have such a small flock we don't have teasers,( sterile rams which help to bring all the ewes into season together) so we have kept the tup and our ram lamb in the field next door in the hope of synchronising the ewes seasons. Next spring will tell.
Millie as always is keen to help with the final sorting of the Ewes before the tup goes in, once he starts serving the ewes we won't move them for a few weeks. Any disturbance at that initial period before the embryos are set can result in loss of the embryo and the ewe will be at least one complete cycle out from the others.

Seasonal update

Been a long time since my. last post, so a bit of an update on where we are, the photos are from a visit by a friend in Shrewsbury who offered to do a poster design and print that can be used in the market hall.

The vegetable crops have been acceptable this year, poor growth rates due to the dry and cool conditions we've had this year but they have just about bulked up in time for harvest. That is apart from the Cucurbits, we sowed all the squash, marrow and courgette left them in the tunnel to harden off..../every last one was bitten off just above the soil level, a complete write off. You have to accept some failures every year.

Chickens so far progressing well, we raised all our replacements from day old's again this year and have so far had no repeat of the sheep dog attack of the past two years. Egg sales are also keeping up but feed costs at over £500 per tonne stop us making too much profit from the birds.

The sheep are progressing as planned we put 8 Radnors and 7 Lleyns to the Radnor tup and got 22 lambs, the Lleyn cross have been a bit disappointing with poor growth rates but we have been very happy with the pure Hill Radnors. As a result we will convert the flock to all Hill Radnor's this year.

No Bee related pictures but the bees have been struggling this year without any sustained period of plus 25c temps so the harvest has been mediocre, somewhat down on last year. On a bright point we have acquired three extra colonies as swarms who helped themselves to out empyu boxes, one gave a crop of over 60lbs welcome in a poor year.

we will set to work soon preparing them for winter and topping up their winter stores.

My first breech

Was left at home with toothache while Nicky did the market, she left our latest ewe giving birth to what I thought was twins, both healthy although Nicky had to intervene due to a "leg back".

So this novice was left with the after care of mum and babies. Then the ewe produced a bag, Oh oh, I think this means another lamb. Still should be OK provided there is no complication then that is probably be fine provided its not a breech. Quick check, just a tail.... its a breech
OK the main thing is not to panic, luckily my son Sam has just turned up. He being a joiner also has no experience of lambing.
We check the book, get the gloves, soap flakes, warm water, iodine and take the book to the shed.
With Sam holding the ewes head I get up close and personal with the ewe pushing the lamb back into the womb so I can bring the two back legs pointing outwards and delivered her out backwards. All was well she was soon up and suckling after some encouragement. Just to be certain that she had colostrum, we made some up and fed her from a bottle.

What a buzz my first difficult delivery and we were duly delivered one healthy ewe lamb that otherwise would not have made it.


Some of the earlier lambs out and about with their mothers.

More Hill Radnor lambs

We had this pair yesterday, two of the tiniest lambs I have seen.

I'll be interested to see how they get on, I've heard that they can be born small but develop well despite this.

Nicky put them in the shed last night thinking they were too small to survive the night and tried to give them a supplementary feed too boost them. But they were having none of it and mum who is a first timer was getting a bit stressed so she left them too it.

In the morning all three were in the middle of the field looking fine.

We are bracing ourselves for a rush of lambs this weekend and next week, typically with our busiest week of the month with the monthly Moseley Farmers Market on Saturday.

Lambing has started

The first lambs of the season and the first pure bred Hill Radnors born on the farm. These particular lambs were bred by Juliet from Ystrad Organics two healthy boys.One of which depending on how they develop may become my stock tup in a couple of years.
I got way too excited by these new arrivals as they mark the new flock and a change over from the more commercial Lleyns to rare breed Hill Radnors. This will give more options with local outlets. She lambed unaided and the lambs were up and moving around before we got in to check them. All we had to do was dip the cord in iodine and leave them to it.
The Radnor lambs are born with a thick covering almost felt like which would protect them against almost any weather.
Although the mother is very defensive the lambs are very trusting and are quite unpeturbed by being picked up and handled.

Millie has continued with her training, now just over 2 years old she is driving well, flanks are OK but could be wider and her fetch is acceptable but she needs to keep a back off the sheep more. Seen below I stopped her on the drive to avoid the helter skelter run and chase you get with the dog trying to catch the sheep and the sheep running faster to keep in front. She will (hopefully) get to understand that she can control the sheep from a distance.


Millie has got to the stage when she can help me with the sheep on a regular basis, you can see her here 'walking the troughs.' When we start feeding the ewes before lambing they become less repectful of the shepherd and can be a problem trying to get to the trough before I've finished putting the feed in. Millie keeps the sheep back until I've finished putting out the feed.