Under Construction

This time last year, we were still shovelling ourselves out from under a record snowfall. This year we've had record high temperatures and a couple weeks without much rainfall. Our heavy clay soil is dry enough to get big machines and tractors on it, and to start some bigger projects.

Project no 1:  Mike's new poly tunnels-

Gertie is looking for the pheasants already 

Mike and six helpers with a telescopic handling machine put them up in a couple of days. I was surprised how straightforward they are to put up.

We acquired them from local fruit farmers when they upgraded their equipment. The tunnels are getting a new lease of life as a pheasant shelter. It will help protect the laying hens against extreme weather and rain while we keep them penned in and collect their eggs.

We're trialling it on the coldest, wettest part of the laying field. If it is successful, we will cover the rest of the pens next year.

Project no 2: The estate has also put some stone and hardcore around our barns on the laying field. The big trucks were getting stuck in the mud trying to deliver pheasant food. Now there's hard standing, a clean path to the pheasant sheds and plumbed in water - no more buckets!!

The work was done by a proper construction company but, as it's a small village, the guys in charge of the construction work are also in my shooting syndicate and drink at the pub where I work. I know their wives and they know what I look like in my pyjamas ( I wasn't getting dressed just to bring them a cup of coffee!)

The photo is of the "before" and I did a little video of the "after" this morning.

When I refer to "sheds" I mean the broody huts we use to raise young pheasants under heat

Project no 3: While the construction guys were here, they kindly levelled my old pig enclosure for me.

Oh yes, last year we got our first pigs (Spoiler Alert - they are already in the freezer)

We bought six 12 week old weaners: Mangalitza x Gloucester Old Spot. We wanted them to root up and kill (or at least weaken) an ever-expanding patch of bamboo. Then we wanted to eat them.

We didn't have a pig ark but went to a local food factory and picked up a giant plastic barrel used to ship concentrated orange juice. It's there in the background of the photo. It worked great filled with straw bedding as a temporary pig house.

The six pigs were owned cooperatively; Mike and I bought one, and other workers and families on the estate bought the others to share. Each paid the cost of the weaner, one sixth of the feed, and one sixth of the slaughter and butchery charges. We fed and cared for them while they proceeded to decimate the invasive bamboo in our garden. And everyone ended up with plenty of outdoor-reared delicious pork for their freezers.

Oh yes, so, the construction guys levelled the now rooted and mostly bamboo-free pig area with their machines and added some top soil for good measure -

Instant garden!

I checked with our agronomist and I can go ahead and plant straight into the soil, no worries about illness or disease from the pigs. I'll be using half of the area this season to grow my courgettes, pumpkins, and some cut flowers. It's doubled the size of my vegetable plot so now my squashes can run wild and unhampered. Well, unhampered if I can keep the dogs and rabbits from eating them.

I've already bought most of my seeds for this season and drawn up a rough plan, which I can expand to fill the new space.

Mike just told me that rain and strong winds are on their way tomorrow. I let the horned ewe and baby out of the barn and into a grass pen in the garden, just after I made the video, to get them both grazing.

I think that they will be going back into the barn later, until the worst of it passes.

It feels like spring but it's not. Not yet.