Emma Heseltine: Alex, one of our Monday helpers and I are checking the ewes and lambs at Wallacefield. It doesn’t quite add up and I can hear a plaintive baaing coming from the vicinity of the river; someone is lost.
20 May 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: This week we get the goslings. They come up as day old chicks and we raise them for the Christmas market. I had one last year and it was a rare treat indeed. There is another farm locally who is getting some too so they go meet our man in Newcastle and then we pop over to get them from the farm. We have ordered 40, that’s the limit we can sensibly house. They are very free range and have the run of the farm on a day time, but like the chickens they need to be locked up on a night to stop our four legged friends running off with a goose-shaped snack or two.
09 May 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: We have nearly used all the silage at Wallacefield. Now I know the cattle love it but it’s a massive pain, we don’t have a tractor so we pull the bales apart by hand and fill the quad trailer with it, and then take it out to the cattle.
29 April 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: The spring barley went in last week on the Park at Wallacefield. It’s been rolled too, not by me this time and the next job is to get rid of some of the boulders that have turned up. We track back and forth picking them up then move onto the winter oats to get the smaller ‘combine breakers.’
22 April 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: I’m at Willowford and one of the Dorset’s is having her lambs. I bring them into the shed as the weather is foul, hail and wind, not good lamb weather. The second of the lambs is looking a bit limp and lifeless, it’s moving about but without much enthusiasm.
16 April 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: I’m moving some of the ewes and their lambs to the hay meadow at Tarraby. They stay in the pens a couple of days so we can make sure that the lambs are okay, that the ewe is mothering them properly and we can give them a pedicure. Then they can go out into the field and enjoy the new grass. I’ve been doing some of the foot trimming and I can tell you it is not easy to tip a mule, they are big sheep and they are most unappreciative of my efforts. It’s a fairly easy job loading them into the trailer, the ewes will follow their lambs so we just pick them up and pop them in and the ewe follows.
13 April 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: We have started the week with more excitement at the Croft. The other week I had a phone call from Tim Perrett at the Soil Association. I met him at a seminar during the winter and he was telling me about a project based on the very popular lambing live which was on TV the last couple of years.
05 April 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: This morning there is a difficult lamb being born. The Ewe has had her first and is having a rest before the next comes. We come back to check on her and discover a head and one leg sticking out. This is no good, we need two legs, that lamb has got to go back in.
25 March 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: Lambing is due to start this week at Houghton and sure enough, Monday night one of our girls is early. I’ve been sent to bring the sheep up to the field just by the house so that we can keep an eye on them easily; I’m doing this by jiggling a bucket of wheat.
21 March 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: Anne is about a week overdue. This morning its extremely windy and throwing it down, so of course this is when the calf is born. Im doing some cleaning of ice boxes for meat when one of the boys from the Gilford centre comes running up to tell me to come quick.
26 February 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: It almost feels like spring is in the air, there have been several days this week when the temperature has got up above 9 degrees and the sun has been shining. To make it feel all the more like spring there was a new calf this morning.
19 February 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: It never rains but pours. This morning when I was feeding the ewes at Houghton I noticed one hanging back on her own when the others came to get their wheat. This is never a good sign although she looked perfectly healthy.
11 February 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: Whilst I was away there was a tragedy. A sneaky four legged fiend got into the hen house. It was a massacre, we had 24 hens and now there are only 10. I’m kind of glad I didn’t see the carnage, it must have been horrible.
05 February 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: The boss is away and I’ve been left in charge. This is quite a daunting prospect as things tend to keel over as soon as she goes away. Today disaster is averted though when I spot Beechnut acting oddly at Wallace field.
29 January 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: The lambs I picked out for Brampton market are all at Houghton, they are going to the abattoir tomorrow. Before they go we have to give them a little trim. For hygiene reasons the abattoir doesn’t want muddy or daggy sheep, we have to tidy them up a bit.
22 January 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: There have been some escapees at Wallace Field. The heifers in Big Dipper are looking mighty happy and smug when I come down to feed the creatures, I wonder why?
08 January 2012 |
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Emma Heseltine: Im feeding the creatures at Houghton. Six bales are in the trailer and two dogs are eager to assist. It’s a fairly simple process although with all the gates it does involve a lot if jumping on and off the quad.
26 December 2011 |
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Emma Heseltine: Today we took the heifers in chestnut field; the ones who decided to jump the fence and visit some neighbouring black and whites, back to the main part of the farm. I was a little wary after the previous incident so stood by the fence (repaired by my own fair hand) that proved no barrier to them last time.
18 December 2011 |
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