February 2002

The sight of a new born animal warms our hearts. We had the honour this month of greeting three. British White cows are beautiful anyway, white with black ears, noses and sox, but these little ones would steal any show and melt almost any heart.

Norman was the first to arrive. Norman because he arrived close to the date our youngest daughter, Emily, passed her driving test and her examiner's name was Norman! He was there suckling his mum one morning when we woke up. There were gentle moo-ing noises coming from the barn for the next couple of days as mum (Rabbit) and Norman got to know each other!

Next to arrive was Evening Primrose. We had some friends over for supper that evening and Mark went to check on the cows just before we sat down to eat. Primrose's mum, Morning Glory, is obviously a natural in the mum stakes. A few days after her birth the wind got up and it was very chilly. Norman and Primrose were snuggled up together in the corner of the barn and Glory was lying positioned as a wind break for the little ones. The good news is that we are at least able to tell the mums apart now and the calves are showing a variation in marking that is helping our recognition skills!

The final one for the month is Snow Moon, born of Sea Lop (don't ask where that name comes from!) around the time of this months full moon. We had the privilege to be present at her birth, it brought tears to our eyes. There was a slight panic initially as we could only see one foot and this could have meant that the second leg was tucked behind, and that can cause problems with delivery. However, as Mark rushed over to our neighbours to ask whether we should panic or not, Lorraine rolled up her sleeve to check things out and all was well. (You may want to think twice before you shake her hand again!) Snow Moon was born 15 minutes later into the muckiest pile of straw her mum could have chosen! Sea Lop knew exactly what was expected of her though and promptly set to licking her calf clean with great enthusiasm, so much enthusiasm that the calf was being rolled round all over the place just by the power of a lick! She kept nosing her to encourage her to get up and when the calf did finally take the initiative, she was gently balanced on her knees with her bum in the air, ready for the final push when Sea Lop came in with an extra friendly nudge that sent the little calf topsy turvy and back to square one! Suffice it to say that after a little intervention from farmer Mark, the partnership has cemented and all is well.

We await the arrival of the last of our batch for this year, Patsy's calf.

Photos can be viewed here.

If you have interest in sponsoring any of the animals on the farm, please visit our Animal Sponsorship Scheme page. There are many ways to support what we are doing here and this is one of them!

One thing we have been increasingly aware of this month has been the lengthening of the days. We used to shut the chooks up at 3:15, now they're still around the yard until 6:30! We can feel the turning of the season and Spring is tickling the hedgerows into life.

Having chopped down some willow, we have planted little sticks all over the place to see if we can create some coppice windbreaks, both in the garden as a fedge and around the goosehouse.

Talking of gardens, we have designed ours. Some visitors to our helping hands weekends in October and November will remember we laid much of it with manure in the autumn and covered most of that with black plastic! It is unlikely that we will accomplish everything this year, but much to our delight, bits of the paper plan are coming to fruition on the ground. We had a thought to plant an orchard and Lorraine's parents gave us some money to buy a couple of trees to get the ball rolling. In the event, our friend Jules and Lorraine hit a garden centre that is closing down and picked up fruit trees for £5.00 each!!! So, we have an orchard of small apple, pear, plum and cherry trees, along with a little nut tree. They have survived the high winds of the last couple of weeks and a couple of them show signs of blossom.

As for the feathered ones... the geese seem to have decided that they like the neighbours pond, the chickens are happily foraging around and clearing up the yard and Louis, the cockerel, has taken to attacking unsuspecting visitors with alarming regularity, which is not good news. So we are planning to create a home paddock in our front field and have been looking at the best way to do this to provide a good sheltered habitat with pond for the geese, plenty of varied grazing and scratching for chickens, protection for us from Louis and hopefully some space for our planned traditional free range, chemical free, all singing, all dancing turkeys for Christmas this year. (We plan to try 30 this year and have already sold 5, so get your order in now!)

Helping hands was a quiet affair, which suited us both fine. We mostly spent time with horses and watching the very wet world go by (from inside!). Our next weekend (March 16/17th) will be a different story. We have plans to scatter some wild flower and herb seeds in the horse pasture, inspired by an ecologist who came to talk with a group of us here about just such things. We have been trawling through seed merchants catalogues to find the best deals and the species he recommended. We've also got some work to do with the brush cutter and a home paddock to set out. So bring your wellies, gloves and sense of humour if you're up for a different kind of weekend in the countryside!