But I'm told that bird sh*t is lucky

It's buck season now, the Glorious Twelfth has marked the opening of grouse season, and our own shoot team has had its annual barbecue and clay shoot. We get together before the season starts to talk dog, guns, and disappointment in our respective vegetable gardens (there have been tragic losses during this cold summer). We exchange cakes, jams, and even homemade hooch.

This is how my voyage of self-discovery started. With a gift bottle of alcohol.

One (OK, three) glasses that evening and my inhibitions yielded. I got straight on the Internet to fulfil my apparent heart's desire. Do you know what I did?

I booked myself on a welding course.

I did the equivalent of drunk-dialling an adult education centre. Who knew my yearning to weld was so strong? I'm not sure if I think this is sad, or a sign that my life is so replete that all I crave are some skills to stick two pieces of metal together.

The course was full, probably with sober participants, so there was no room for me. However, it seems that our work experience student Ian is competent welder. He stays with us most weekends and gains 'keepering experience working alongside Mike. On hearing my story (after he stopped laughing), he offered to bring over his arc welder and teach me the basics.

Have I mentioned that Ian is 17 years old? These farm-raised kids have serious skill sets.

We found a spot in the yard away from anything we could burn down or blow up. Ian gave me a quick demo - rod goes in here, tighten, touch rod to metal, weld. And it is that easy when you get the hang of it. Which I didn't. At least not right away.

I started by making what Ian called 'bird shit' welds -

It's a result of moving the rod too fast and too far away to properly heat the two bits of metal until they 'weld' together - a rookie mistake. It's a weak weld and wouldn't hold up to the kind of abuse it would get on a farm or pheasant shoot.

Besides technique, there are safety tips to learn. Firstly, assume everything is hot. Inner core, centre of the earth hot. Secondly, sparks. Nothing to panic about, unless one happens to go down your boot. Then you'll be dancing the funky chicken and the running man at the same time, trying to get your boot off.

Occasionally I could smell burning and later noticed tiny holes in my sweatshirt. Wear old clothes. And safety glasses. I forgot to put them on when I cleaned the slag from my weld, and a small piece landed on my left eyelid. It was hot enough to blister the skin. It's scabbed over now, but sore. It would have been serious if it went in my eye. I'll take that as a shot across my bows from karma.

That's a lot to learn in a first lesson.

With more practice I got used to looking through the dark screen of the welding helmet and a better feel for the materials. In moments of clarity, I produced an inch or two of good strong weld -

Ian gave me 'the nod', which around here means 'It's acceptable'. It's the closest thing to praise in Dorset. It means I'm ready to take on a simple project. And I have just the thing -

courtesy www.dpi.nsw.gov.au

A wool packing frame. It holds the bag so I can pack my newly shorn fleeces ready for sale to the Wool Board. Even if my newbie welds aren't perfect, they will be strong enough to hold up a bag of wool.

We've been busy with other projects that I'm equally inexperienced with. Our hay has been cut and baled -



It was nearly two months later than last year but it's a reasonable crop. The grass benefited from a dose of fertiliser in the Spring.

We also managed to dig out a yard at the entrance of our hay field, lay a hardcore base, and crane the horse shelters into place -

The shelters can double as lambing sheds for the next few years, until the flock outgrows two small buildings. The sheep and their lambs can graze fresh shoots following on behind the cut hay, and overwinter in the field.

The horses are still living in their summer residence, which they share with a nest of swallow chicks. I know the chicks are still there by looking at Alan's back -

Bird shit. Those baby swallows wouldn't be any good at welding either.

Sheeps Week

We're in a phase of adjustment here in Dorset. The clocks went back last Sunday and we're still adjusting to losing that precious late afternoon hour. The dogs are adjusting to their workload retrieving shot birds. The pheasants are adjusting to the disturbance of shoot season (perhaps with less enthusiasm than the dogs). The ewes are adjusting to the trials of motherhood. I'm still maladjusted.

My sheep experience continues to increase, slowly, through observation. At least that's what I tell Mike, that I'm "observing sheep behaviour" when he catches me hanging over the fence mooning over the lambs. It's partly true. So far I have noticed:

1) Both the ewes are flexible about feeding each others' lambs - up to a point. The ewe loses her patience when a queue starts forming at her back end.

2) If something startles the lambs, they will start to suckle furiously as soon as the danger has passed. It seems to comfort all concerned.

3) The little ewe lamb is more reserved and clings to her mother while her rambunctious hooligan brothers are rough-housing. She's super cute though -

The lambs are growing really well. The weather has been kind and they've been able to put all their energies into getting bigger rather than staying warm. Moreover, their mothers have been good milkers and attentive. But the lambs grow on at the ewes' expense -

When you can see a ewe's spine and hip bones like this, it's time to start feeding the lambs on hard food and to move the ewes to richer pasture.

The trick to feeding the lambs is to build a creep feeder - essentially a box around the feed with bars spaced wide enough to let little lambs through and keep big ewes out.  I haven't had time to build one yet but a solution presented itself as a result of my sheep observing habits: the lambs usually napped together inside a wire tree guard too low for the ewes to get under -

Perfect. Lazy and effective.

The ewes and lambs have been in the paddock at the bottom of our drive. Now that the lambs are strong enough, and now I've ringed and tagged them, they were ready to move to Milkweed. Yesterday, I penned the ewes with their lambs, loaded them all and moved them by myself, which was a rewarding feeling.

On the theme of laziness, I decided I would just use the quad bike which was already attached to the sheep trailer. As it's not road legal, I had to take a cross-country route along field margins and rutted tracks. Here's something else I've learned: wear supportive undergarments. Quad bikes and potholes are a poor pairing. I had to drive one-handed and keep my other arm across my chest to protect my own poor pair. The sheep faired better than I did on that trip.

Lady S had kindly rented me the lambing paddock and it was time to pay up. Total cost: 2 oven-ready chickens. I dropped them in to the big house kitchen and the chef sent me off with a bag of fresh out of the oven scones. I was starving but I had a few chores to finish before I could sit down to a cup of tea and scones with jam. I left them on my counter top without thinking. I came back to this -

Empty plastic bag and guilty shepherd. Well, at least the ewes have something to eat. And what was I left with?

Another downside to using the quad bike. I might ask Santa for mud flaps

A dirty trailer that still needed cleaning.

I hope I'm painting a pitiful picture of woe and deprivation for you.

It's not all bad. I still have a lot of windfall apples to make into cakes and pies (which will NOT be left within the reach of counter surfing dogs). There are leeks, cabbages, carrots, and beets in the garden, and the chickens are still laying.

In fact you can see a clutch of Barbara's eggs at the base of our apple tree. She is not making the adjustment from summer to autumn. Barbara has been doggedly sitting on those eggs every day for the past week, and every night I lift her off the nest and put her in the hen house. Every morning she goes back to "incubating" the eggs. She's like the King Cnut of chickens, pushing back the tide of autumn with her determination to bring off another brood of chicks.

I'm also losing the battle against the tide of autumn leaves, but I don't really mind. And my activities give the cows on the other side of the hedge something to look at -

Cows are surprisingly good company, if lacking in conversation. And they don't steal my baked goods.

I wish I could say we were slowing down and taking it easy with winter coming. But pheasant season continues, and doe / hind season has started. There's space in the freezer that wants filling before the deer lose condition. Alan the horse will be back in work this week, and the flock all need worming and foot trims by next Sunday. And I need to build a creep feeder and field shelter before the wind starts coming in from the north.

We're not prepared, we're not organised, and we're rarely efficient, but we are consummate adjusters.

Overcoming hurdles

I've been preoccupied with fencing this week. The contractors have started putting the posts in for the boundary fence at Milkweed. This is our permanent field fencing, to keep horses and sheep from paying unexpected visits to the neighbours. Within the field I'll erect temporary fencing to separate the sheep from the horses, and control their access to grazing. I rely on movable and relatively inexpensive electric tape held up by plastic posts. Modern and convenient.

But what did they do for temporary fencing before electric tape, UV stabilised plastics, and the car battery? They made wattle hurdles -

courtesy of www.thebridgemill.org.uk

That's just what I did on Thursday, with friends from the village and our tutor Pete.

Class in session

Pete and his family have been living in the Dorset woods for over 15 years producing hurdles and furniture. He worked as an engineer for many years before turning his skills towards more traditional crafts. Pete says it's given him a bad back but peace of mind. That's probably not a bad trade-off.

I won't try and reproduce the course in a blog post but, if you are interested in having a go, full instructions for making your own hurdle can be found here on the BTCV website. Instead, I'll tell you what I learned from my day with Pete.

I learned that hurdles are the ultimate in efficient and renewable engineering. Hurdles are usually made from hazel (sometimes willow or chestnut). Hazel grows in straight stems and can be harvested without killing the parent plant. This method is called coppicing. Making a hurdle uses all the sizes and parts of a stem. Pete says if a hurdle is made properly, what's leftover should only be usable as kindling in your wood stove.

The short and thick stems make the uprights, which stand in a frame -

The thinnest. longest stems are what you begin weaving between your uprights. By using the most flexible stems, you can get a tight weave. By using the longest stems, you can twist the weave back on itself for strength.

Once the thin stems are in place, you fill in with split stems. Select one of medium thickness, find the centre with your billhook, knock the blade in to begin separating the stem in two halves and work slowly twisting your blade side to side, to control the split -

Swearing isn't mandatory but it's probably unavoidable. Splitting a long length of hazel without getting hung up on a knot or running out the side takes practice. Years of it apparently. For every one stem I split correctly, I ruined three others. Well, relegated them to other uses - nothing is wasted in this process. Pete also noticed the name of the maker stamped into my bill hook: Stanforth's SeverQuick. I hoped their claim referred to the hazel only and not my fingers.

In the end I managed to complete a small hurdle, with a lot of help from Pete -

I don't know why I look so proud, it took me half a day to make that. With help.

But I had need of this particular hurdle; not to keep sheep in but to keep chickens out of my flower beds.

I think it looks pretty good. If my wrists and elbow joints ever recover, I might attempt a second one for the other bed.

These days hurdles are mainly purchased or commissioned as decorative garden fencing for fancier homes. Originally, they were an important tool for shepherds.

Shepherds moved their flocks constantly, to maximise grazing. As sheep moved and grazed, they gave birth to their lambs. Hurdle pens were erected to protect a ewe and her lambs, and to keep them together. The uprights have points on the bottom, to make them easier to push into the ground and sturdy once they're in.

Some hurdles were made with small rectangular gaps at the top. When the lambs got bigger and needed to eat grass, the hurdles were turned over. The gaps let the lambs out to graze and play, but kept the ewes contained. The ewe called her lamb to keep it close, and was on hand for food and warmth.

When lambs were weaned and big enough to travel, the shepherds just picked up the hurdles and carried them on. Nearly all hurdles have a small hole or slot woven into them. The shepherd could poke a pole through a stack of hurdles and carry them on his shoulder. Hurdles were just right for the job.

Now there are metal hurdles, and I use some of those to corral the sheep when I want to work on them or give them meds. They're fine too but they lack the romance and artistry of a finely woven hurdle, a design which may have been used since humans became sedentary and took up agriculture.

Pete says he can make a 4ft x 6ft hurdle in about 2 hours, with a good wind behind him, so even with experience it is still a labor-intensive job. It only takes me half an hour to drive to the local feed store and pick up another roll of electric fence tape. Romance will always give way to my laziness.

Tomorrow I'll be managing the other end of the fencing spectrum, watching the tractor and its hydraulic rammer pound posts into ground and define the boundary of our little field. But I can imagine the old shepherds who once grazed their sheep on Milkweed, and it's nice to think that it only takes a few interwoven split stems to keep a ewe and lamb safe.

Half-Assed and How Not to Do It

If I was ever qualified to write a book on a subject, it would be doing a job with only half the knowledge and a limited box of tools. That or finding novel ways of almost killing yourself.

Because of our way of life, I know that I'm going to have to do things I'm not completely prepared for, which are inherently dangerous. Farming has just come top of the league table as the most dangerous profession in England (we don't have Alaskan crab fishing industry to compete with).

Some things are always best left to a professional - electrical wiring for example - when tools and knowhow will save your life. With some jobs you can gain a modicum of proficiency if you know your limits. Like chainsawing.

I have passed my basic chainsaw qualifications and I feel comfortable using my chainsaw for straightforward jobs like logging and felling small trees that aren't under power lines. Contractors are coming to finish the fence on Milkweed so I needed to clear 300 metres of overhanging trees to speed up the fencing process and save some of the cost. We decided to let the contractors put in the rest of the fence because they have the hydraulic post-rammer. The posts will stay up longer than if I pounded them in by hand (see? - better tools.)

We had to improvise a mobile platform to reach the branches and the truck was our best option. It has the tailgate for lower stuff, and the top of the tilt for the 'up high' branches -

I admit this picture isn't the best representation of safe working, but we assessed the risks and did our best. That doesn't mean accidents don't happen. I stood on the tailgate and leaned to reach a branch, just as Mike let the truck roll forward slightly. The truck and I parted company and I chucked the saw away from me, as I was taught to do in case of a fall. I only sustained a bruise, but I managed to hit the truck with the saw -

Completely minor. But in hindsight, I know better than to reach too far and I know I should stop when my muscles are getting tired. But the fence line is clear now and the fence guys are coming mid-August.

While my muscles and my pride recover, I thought I would get on with some more sedate work: processing fleece. My crafty friend Colette managed to borrow a couple of drum carders for us to try. Neither of us knew how to use them, but we were unlikely to cause ourselves major injury by trial and error. A few scraped knuckles at worst. 

Until now I have hand carded all my fleece. A laborious task. It can take up to a year of picking and carding to get enough fleece to spin enough wool to make a jumper.

picture courtesy http://www.wcu.edu/craftrevival/crafts/carding.html

The drum carder is a technological leap forward. It was invented in the late 18th century. It can process fleece in less than half the time of hand carding. This takes the process from unbearable to just tedious.

You can read a synopsis of carding wool and its development here.

Colette had the foresight to look up a couple of YouTube videos, so she talked me through the basics. It goes something like this:

Take pile of clean(ish) fleece -

Pick out a handful and tease it into a loose bunch -

Feed bunch into drum carder by cranking handle -

Pull carded fleece from drum -

Now you have a batt of fibre. You can leave it as is, or roll it into a little cupcake-shaped ball for easy storage -

They're ready to spin. Colette lent me one of the carders to take home. I reckon I can now process both of my Polled Dorset fleeces in a couple of months. God bless the industrial revolution.

Something else I get a lot of practice with?-

Washing fox shit off of the dogs. It's not dangerous - it just smells that way.

We have had another chick appear from a sneaky clutch of eggs -

It's a Phoenix chick. The mother is flighty and distracted, so the chick is constantly peeping for attention. I tried fostering the chick on Susan but the chick rejected her new mother, fell out of the nest box and peeped furiously until I returned it to the original haphazard hen. The chick is just going to have to take its chances now.

This breed is pretty but not one I would recommend. Although the cockerel is lovely natured, the hens are highly-strung during breeding season. I'm tempted to take the whole family to the specialist poultry auction once the chick is big enough.  Someone with more fancy chicken know-how than I have would love to own them. I'll stick to breeds that thrive under my improvised trial-and-error efforts.

Making hay (and chickens, lambs, and strawberry pie) while the sun shines

Our meat chickens arrived plucked and gutted at 8am yesterday morning -

I must be getting a "farmer's stomach" as the sight of eight flaccid, raw birds on my breakfast table didn't put me off my morning coffee. I drank my coffee while I wrapped the chickens ready for the freezer.

Strawberry season is here and I headed off to the local Pick-Your-Own, on the grounds of an 800 year old Cistercian Monastery. I've stocked the freezer, and had enough to make a strawberry and rhubarb pie. The English don't have a culinary history of fruit pies. If you say "pie" to an Englishman, he thinks steak and some kind of offal or stinking cheese. I'm trying to right that wrong. This pie is guaranteed offal-free and I'm teaching Mike to eat it for breakfast. After tasting the pie, he claims he's converted. Well, monks once lived where the strawberries grew, so I guess a religious experience was inevitable.

The cooking kept me occupied until it was time to collect my new ewes. I wrestled the sheep trailer onto the truck (it's all about leverage) and drove to Mr. Baker's Farm.

This is Mr. Baker -

Mr. Baker farms cattle and sheep. He's always got a smile, and a sensible answer to my never ending questions. And infinite patience for my never ending questions. He was late getting back for his supper because we were "talking sheep". Sheep talk is very serious stuff. You can tell how serious by the look of concentration on my face. We're checking his notes to calculate when my ewes are due to lamb - 

And looking over the three rams, discussing their conformation and reproductive prowess -

Here we are examining a lame ewe's foot  -

Mr. Baker gave me a quick sheep anatomy lesson using his willing victim. Did you know that sheep have sweat glands on the front of their ankles? And by their teats? I guess I'd sweat too if I had to wear a wool body stocking all year round.

Mr. Baker had my ewes in a box on the back of his tractor, which he just backed up to my trailer-

The ewes simply stepped from one into the other. I wondered if it would be so easy when we unloaded them at the other end. After all, we didn't have a canine back-up plan -

Mike's helpful but he's not as well trained as this pair.

The ewes were sheared last week. Mr. Baker saved me their fleece, which is soaking in the bath as I write this.

Look at these beauties, ready for their ride back to Dorset -

Just before we left, I noticed a collection of old horseshoes on a nearby wall. Mr. Baker says his plough is forever turning them up in the soil. I know from experience horses lose shoes for a past time, but this collection was a visual reminder of the history inherent in his land and the days before tractors. When horsepower meant horse power.

From my museum days, I recognised the age of some of the examples. At least one was over 300 years old. On the way home, I asked Mike how long Mr. Baker had been farming there.

"Oh, it's a new farm. He's only been there 40 years" Mike said.

"How is 40 years not a long time?" I said

"I mean it's not been farmed by his family for generations." Mike said

British people have a difference concept of what constitutes history than Americans do. At least we agreed that the Cistercians monks were pretty damn historical.

We got our new ewes home and I eventually backed the trailer into the narrow lane leading to their paddock (thank god for the "Learn to Reverse your Trailer" course at the local agric college.) There was still 10 feet between the back of the trailer and the paddock gate. That's a lot of room for a sheep to misbehave. I crossed my fingers and dropped the ramp on the trailer. The ewes walked right in with only a little arm waving on our parts.

My orphans ran at the newcomers, and bleated a group welcome. A bit of sniffing and they all walked off in a gang -

When I'm not playing sheep rodeo or jabbing myself with vaccine, this shepherding gig isn't as hard as I thought. According to my Old Farmer's Almanac, the gestation period for a ewe is about 150 days. My two new arrivals are already a month or so into their pregnancies. This gives me four months to figure out where I'm going to build a temporary lambing shed in my backyard.

At least I know we'll be able to feed them. We just had Milkweed Farm baled and we harvested 478 bales-

That's about average for this hot and dry summer. In a good year we can expect 900 bales. If we'd only collected ten bales, I would have been excited. We kept the hay we needed and sold the rest to the contractor to pay for the work. He will store our bales as well. This crop saves us the cost of our biggest winter feed bill. More importantly, this winter our own home bred lambs will be eating our own home grown organic hay. It's a good start.

Spring Harvest

We harvested half of the meat chickens yesterday. They just couldn't go on any longer. Their bulk - i.e. all the tasty bits - were too much pressure on their joints and internal organs. The biggest ones had to go. I would have harvested them all if Paul had room in his chiller, and time to pluck them. I may end up doing the last 6 by hand over the next week.

We're still here, it wasn't our turn yet..

I never thought I would believe that a chicken was better off in an indoor rearing unit than as a free range bird, but this breed is. When I collected the chicks, I visited the unit. It was a high-tech chicken palace. I've had apartments in college that weren't as nice.

The temperature and humidity are regulated by computer and it was pleasant, not too hot or stuffy. There are skylights to let natural light filter in. Food and water is ad lib, measured out by computer so drinkers never ran dry, and bigger birds didn't push smaller ones off the feed. The shavings on the floor were spotlessly clean and dry. The chicks weren't cramped, and as they grew half were taken away to double the floorspace and accommodate the remaining birds. In fact it was the perfect environment for a lazy, quiet, fast-growing chicken with no desire to range about exploring.

Forcing a healthy outdoor lifestyle on this bird was a mistake. One had a heart attack. Most of the others we killed had corns, or bumble foot, from carrying its own weight. One had feathers missing from the back of its neck where it looks like a buzzard attempted to harvest it first, but was defeated by the size of its potential meal. The meat chicken was too big to have taken any evasive manoeuvres, if it even noticed it was being attacked.

They didn't show any curiosity in kitchen scraps, so they only ate pellets which is less efficient economically speaking. When I drove them back into their hen house at night, they needed a rest stop to complete the whole 5 foot trip.

Even if the end result is exceptionally tasty, I think we're putting this breed in the 'no' pile as a future table bird for Milkweed Farm.

I put 20 buff orpington eggs (and some hybrids) in the incubator as our next test case, but the fertility has been poor - only 25%. We used our neighbor's stock and he has a new cockerel. We will see if we can figure out what's gone wrong and try to set another batch.

The wild birds in the hedgerows are having a bumper year of chicks. I have to re-home a fledgling on a near daily basis that's fallen out of its nest onto the road. Usually it's easy to find the nest and tuck the chick back in to it. I found a swallow fledgling on its back in the road, exhausted from whatever endeavours a swallow gets up to. I put it in an empty hen house overnight and it recovered enough to take flight when put back in a tree. Success!

We also have a few new additions - quail. They were a gift from a local breeder. I just keep them for quail's eggs and for the sweet chirruping noises they make.

All mothers are out with their chicks now. Susan has already started laying again even with a chick still dependent on her -

The dogs can have them for tea. The pheasants have stopped laying so the dogs are back on chicken eggs.

Gertie has done a stellar job with her mixed brood -

The morning I let her out to range with her chicks for the first time, Gertie stood at the entrance of the house clucking and pruupping to her chicks. It sounded like a lecture - "Stay close, don't go running off, if I call you I expect you to come right back. Don't sass me, don't fight with your sister, and stay away from the dogs.". Kids and moms are the same regardless of species. The chicks are behaving impeccably, to her credit.

So that's the start of the spring harvest. I'm just off to meet with the contractor who's cutting our first batch of hay from Milkweed Farm. Our first hay harvest, to feed our own animals. I'm really excited about it.