Pigs # 16 - New Pigs Nearly Here!

This weekend I arranged with James at Morris Free Range Meats & Horticulture in Coedypaen to have 2 more weaners (Welsh Pigs this time) in the next couple of weeks.  Exciting!  As we're getting them at a much more sensible age (about 10 weeks instead of 16 & 20 weeks last time) they are obviously going to be much smaller, and James had advised me to go around the boundary of their enclosure again with this in mind to make sure it's secure for 'little pigs'.



An extra 'little pig' strand above the bottom!

The fence posts in the photo above are Yew - homemade and hopefully indestructible!  Hope to be reporting on their good condition in 20 years!

Back fence - scene of the last escape!

The house is cleaned, the fence is in good condition, just need to mend the leak in their water trough now before we're ready for our new arrivals.  Really excited!

An interesting and natural environment!

Our plan for these 2 pigs is to try to sell them as 1/4 or 1/2 pigs - check out our SPECIAL OFFERS for full details - if you are in Usk or the surrounding area it would be brilliant to supply you with some wonderful free range pork!  We'll keep the pigs until they are around 30 weeks old, so they should be ready late January or early February - can't wait!

Firewood # 7 - Silver Birch

Last weekend I had logged up the main trunk of the Silver Birch (see Firewood # 6), leaving what I estimated at about 5m more stuck in the hedge (!).  Today I thought I'd pull the rest out - until the we can make the smallholding pay enough to buy me a tractor, the hardworking Polo will have to do (see Chickens # 8)!



Cut end of birch sticking out of hedge!

The first thing to do was to hitch up the end of the tree to the Polo.  I use some 'salvaged' webbing straps for pulling and lifting tasks around the farm - amazing what gets thrown away!

Polo hitched up to the tree ready to go!

Ben & Jo came to spectate (Kate was asleep after a hard day helping Daddy to buy barbed wire, smokey bacon, woodshavings, and doing a lot of swimming!).

On the move!

It took a while to start moving, but the trusty Polo didn't let us down - the wheels were spinning at times, but suddenly it freed and off we went!



Out of the hedge!

I'd previously guessed that this section was about 5 metres long.  Now we can see exactly what we've got it is actually 8 metres long!  That means the tree was actually 20 metres (65ft 7 and 13/32 inches!) tall.  A whopper!

Have to deal with this next weekend!

There is a lovely fork in the tree about 6 feet up from the bottom.  I'd love to use this in one of our woodland cabins or yurts in the future (see Vision # 4).

Sausages # 2 - Sausage Sunday!

For our mid-morning snack we had Basic Breakfast sausages.

Before!

Brunch!

Unfortunately Ben & Kate weren't very hungry so Jo & I had to eat 2 sausages each.  Incidentally I would love to have shown the picture above on homemade sourdough bread, but unfortunately I had to respect the law that sausage sandwiches have to be served on factory-produced sliced white with Ketchup!

For lunch we had Cumberland sausages with mash & broccoli, also delicious.

Our last sausage meal of the day was dinner.  I ran out of skins for the Paprika sausage so this first batch has been cooked 'burger-style'.

Paprika Sausage-Burger-Delight!

The Paprika burger was really delicious - tasty, a bit too heavy on the chilli, which would be better remedied by serving with some sour cream rather than reducing the amount I think.  Very, very pleased!  Definately going to be making all three of these varieties again!

Looking forward to "Sausage Monday" tomorrow!

Firewood # 6 - The Wobble!

We have quite a few trees growing uncomfortably close to the house, and as we slowly tidy up we are trying to get rid of them, with the plan of replacing them hopefully with better trees planted in more appropriate locations.  Around the smallholding there are tons of Silver Birches, and one in particular is too close to the house.  I've been hesitating about cutting it down as it is very tall, and, in one direction it is about 6 metres from a telephone line serving our neighbours house and 4 metres from the lane, and in another direction it is about 8 metres from the house.  In other words if I got the felling wrong I would either be in trouble with our neighbours or Jo!

After many months of hesitation and procrastination, yesterday I thought I would sieze the day and sieze the chainsaw and go for it!  I've been eyeing it for several days, circling it to see which direction it naturally leans in the hope that it is away from the telephone line and away from the house!  Ideally I wanted it to fall directly away from the road, and luckily it does have a very slight lean that way.

There are plenty of step by step guides on the Internet and in books so I won't go into too much detail, the drawing below shows what I did to fell the tree:


How I Felled The Silver Birch

This is the biggest tree I have ever felled, and I must admit it was a massive relief when it all went according to plan and fell just where I wanted it to!  Jo had helpfully been telling me horror stories about someone who accidentally cut off his wife's head with a chainsaw which had increased the pressure to get it right and fell it safely quite a lot!   The first 2 cuts determine the direction of fall, and the 3rd cut creates a 'hinge', which allows the tree to fall in a controlled way.

The Hinge

Like everything, practice makes perfect - I'm sure the next one will be neater, but I'm still fairly happy with this.

The Result!

I measured the 'vital statistics' of the tree with results as follows:

	Circum.	Diameter	Area
Units	m	m	m^2
Top	0.4500	0.1432	0.0161
Bottom	1.1500	0.3661	0.1052
Length	12

'Bottom' means around 20cm above the ground, and 'Top' means the point where a single trunk stops and starts to become several smaller, but still vertical, branches.  It's a little bit difficult to see quite how much additional height above the 12m there is as most of it is stuck through a hedge at the moment(!) but from what I can see I would guess maybe 5m or more.

I wanted to calculate the volume, density and then derive the total weight of the firewood the tree yielded.  It would be really useful to have a rule of thumb by tree type to use in the future when, hopefully, we're using wood to cover all of our heating needs.  Anyway, the starting point for the calculation that I used was to assume that the main trunk of the tree is a truncated cone.  This would allow me to calculate the volume of the 'theoretical' cone (i.e. if the tree actually ended in a sharp point), and then subtract the volume of the part from diameter 0.1432m to the sharp point.  Cutting a simple cube, measuring it and weighing it gives the density and then we're in business!

 Beautiful Section - Future Cheeseboard I hope!

I cut a block, measured and weighed it and found that the density is approximately 1000kg/m^3, so our firewood pile is approximately 0.65m^2 x 1000 = 650kg


Propping prior to first sectioning cut

It was a bit nerve wracking but overall really pleased with the result - had a momentary 'wobble' just before the tree fell when I thought for a second it might be going the wrong way, but it all worked according to plan with no roads blocked, telephones disconnected, buildings or vehicles crushed!  Result!  I will be more confident on the next one!

Finally - apologies for the awful formatting of this post - hope any mathematicians have their microscopes on standby!

Ben explaining about sawdust to Mummy & Kate

 

 

Daddy's Little Helper!



Sausages # 1 -First Attempt!

@Lucyapley bought me Paul Peacock's "The Sausage Book" a while ago, and I made up my mind last week to use some of our pork mince to experiment with.  I ordered some sheep's intestine and some sausage nozzles from Amazon for our vintage Kenwood Chef.

I decided to make 3 different varieties: Basic Breakfast Sausage for the kids, Cumberland for Jo, and Linguica (a Portuguese Paprika sausage) for me!  After a morning of logging up a Silver Birch and going out for a last minute ingredient shop I began.

Ingredients!

This is the method I used:

Paprika Sausage: (based on Paul Peacock's Linguica)

Put 10g Smoked Paprika, 4g black pepper corns, 13g rock salt, 5 garlic cloves (crushed), 1 teaspoon of Chilli powder and a small glass of red wine into a blender and pulse until it looks like this:


Paprika Sausage Sauce!

I bought a bargain 'reduced' loaf of Polish brown bread and spread it out over the shelves of the oven and heated it in the oven at 100C for about 25 minutes until is was nice and dry, and then, in a clean blender jug made 100g of it into breadcrumbs and combined it with the Paprika Sausage Sauce.  Meantime the pork mince had defrosted (about 700g), and I added it to the bowl and started kneading.  I thoroughly kneaded and combined it - very similar process to breadmaking at this stage.  At this point the mixture looked like this:


Paprika Sausage Mix Ready for Stuffing!

Stuffing update at the end.

Cumberland Sausage (Based on Paul Peacock's Recipe)

I combined 10g black pepper corns, 10g sea salt, 5g nutmeg powder, a few shakes of mace, a small glass of white wine and blended them.  Same process as the Paprika sausage with 100g breadcrumbs to make a smooth paste.  Then I added 700g minced Saddleback Shoulder and kneaded to a lovely looking sausagey mix.

Basic Breakfast Sausage (Based on Paul Peacock's Recipe)

5g black pepper corns, 5g sea salt, 100g breadcrumbs and a glass of water, same process as the previous recipes.

Stuffing!

I soaked the sausage skin in cold water for about 2 hours - I was expecting a horrendous stink as described in Paul Peacock's book, but actually there wasn't any unpleasant smell.  After soaking I then ran tap water through the skins - easier said than done - it's quite tricky to open up the end and I'd managed to get it into quite a tangle during the soaking.  However, finally managed to get it all untangled and rolled onto the end of the sausage nozzle.

It worked really well - a few hiccups, most significant being running out of skins after the Cumberland and Basic Breakfast sausages!  Still - quite looking forward to Smoked Paprika burgers!



Tymawr Farm Cumberland Sausages!

Ben & Kate enjoyed eating their Basic Breakfast Sausages for tea tonight - Ben (2 and a half) ate 1 1/2 big sausages with mash, and Kate (nearly 9 months) ate nearly a whole one with mash.  Really glad about that - quite an achievement with normally quite discerning customers!

Jo and I ate one each too as a snack and they were really delicious (though I say so myself) - surprisingly peppery though (which we really like, but surprised the kids liked them).  Quite fortunate that they are nice as we are going to be eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 2 days!


Chickens # 9 - New Arrivals!

Jo, Ben, Kate and I drove over to Stewart at www.salspurebreedpoultryinwales.co.uk on Sunday morning to pick up our 10 new Light Sussex hybrids.  He is BRILLIANT, very nice set up, nice and knowledgeable guy who, whilst selling us the chickens, gave us a massively inspirational look at his beautiful house full of home-sawn (by a mobile saw-mill) and self-felled wood beams, staircase and joinery.  We left there just amazed at the kind of things which are possible without resorting to dealing with 'big business' for building materials & full of projects! 

Anyway, I digress, back to the chickens.  We transported the chickens in a big cardboard box in the boot, and when we arrived home, between us managed to manhandle it onto a wheelbarrow, and then set off around the back of the house and into the field where I've got their run and house set up.  I wheeled the barrow into the run, closed the gate, opened one end of the box and stood back.



The Start of the Expanded Tymawr Farm Flock

As usual in that situation, nothing happened, and only with a mix of gentle tipping, grabbing and persuasion did all the chickens emerge.  They seem to have settled in really well - they've now been with us for two and a half days and I've just come in from shutting them up.  All ten still present and correct, all bright eyed, clean and smart!

They're just over 16 weeks old now, and I expect them to start laying at 20 to 24 weeks.  Full production level in time for Christmas!



The rest are hiding around the back!

The Land # 4 - Green Manure Update

Some photos of the Mustard's progress below.  Its going OK, and is fortunately being joined by a strong showing from the weeds.  Hopefully this will help to provide some interest for the next batch of pigs and also help to improve the texture and fertility of the soil as they root and 'plough' it in.

Still a lot of mud in evidence though - maybe time for a second sowing of Mustard?  I would really love to have a lot of Wild Garlic growing in this area - bound to be good for the taste of the pork!  Will have to find out how to encourage it here.

Chickens # 8 - Moving the coop!

There was a very big, neglected old chicken coop in one of the Alpaca sheds (see Chickens # 5) which we'd thought for some time would be useful when we expand the flock.  There were a few problems with it however: it was very, very dirty; due to it's position stuck in a corner it was impossible to see if it was intact or damaged, although it looked ok in most areas and a bit ropey in others; and, finally, it had been boxed in with an improvised fence which would have to be dismantled before it could be dragged out into the field.  I suppose there would have been an option of leaving it where it was, but I think animal housing is much healthier if it can be out 'in the field', in the air and sunshine if possible.

Last weekend after doing some basic cleaning out, we decided to drag it out of the shed and into the field.  Jo stayed in the house with the kids as I picked up a big pile of webbing straps that I use for pulling tasks, threw them into the boot of the Polo and drove up the lane to the field-gate. Jo said 'Are you sure this is a good idea, the fields still a bit wet?', 'No problem' I replied with a confidence I still felt at that point.



'Before'
 

I hitched up the Polo to the coop, having first removed a fence post, and, after a bit of lining up, we were off!  Slowly we rolled into the field.  My plan was to drive fairly straight into the field, and then make a gradual turn in a big arc around to the left, eventually leaving the coop with it's back to the fence and neatly parallel to it.

The first 30 seconds of the journey went brilliantly, the second 30 got a bit more tricky - it became apparent that the four fixed wheels on the coop meant that turning corners, however shallow, was not really an option.  At that point we reached a very, very slight incline, the front wheels started to spin and we ground to a halt.  After several attempts to get moving again (trying slowly at full lock in each direction, reversing a bit and slowly moving forward on firm ground), it was obvious that while the coop was attached, the Polo wasn't going anywhere.  Fortunately, when the (estimated 3-400kg) coop was unhitched, we could still carefully drive around the field.

After a quick lie down in the field, gently sobbing, I revised my plan.  I unhitched the coop and carefully turned the car around and positioned it to drag the coop back down the incline.  My new plan was to get up some momentum down the slope, and then turn around a nice arc, stopping perfectly in the optimum coop position.

Incredibly, it nearly worked, with the exception that I got a bit carried away and drove a bit too far and had to push the coop about 10 yards backwards.

Success!



Got to brush this and get a coat of bitumen paint on it tomorrow night!

This will benefit from some wood preservative I think!

Can't wait to get the chickens installed in their new home - going to get them after the Usk show on Saturday!