Pigs #19 - Update

The Tymawr Two are still enjoying life in the Alpaca shed, full of beans and with great appetites.  I'm going to keep them in for 2 more weeks until they have grown a bit more and follow the bucket a bit more reliably.  They're getting a bit braver and more used to me, and are happy to eat their food next to me (if I'm safely the other side of the gate!), but are still far from friendly!


The Tymawr Two!

You may be able to get a sense for it in this photo, but a rule in pig keeping seems to be 'Lop Ears' = 'well behaved pigs' and 'Prick Ears' = 'naughty pigs'.  I think in future I will be exclusively keeping lop eared pigs!

Charcoal # 1 - Forestry Business?

I've been pondering for some time the most productive use we can put our 2.5 acres of woodland to.  My long term plan would be to alter the 'demographic' of the tree species in the woodland to create something really valuable - perhaps Oak for timber, Ash for firewood, Black Locust for Fenceposts, and Cherry and Walnut for timber and also food.  I'd been thinking that we could clear the undergrowth using our pigs, and gradually remove those species which I normally think of as 'weed' trees: Hazel, Elder, Birch for firewood (OK, maybe not the Elder!) during the replanting process.

Thinking further, another use for this 'waste' wood might be Charcoal, which may provide a decent income during our 'improvement' process.

I've seen a really interesting 'how to' guide from MIT (http://www.greenempowerment.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/practical-action-technical-brief-final-charcoal1.pdf) aimed at producing charcoal from non-timber biomass, but hopefully applicable to timber too (maybe a good use for that Elder (in addition to a cracking wine!)?).

On the 'back of an envelope' my basic calculations are as follows:

Using a 55 gallon drum (200 litres), and assuming that maybe 30% of the inside space is lost to air gaps of one kind or another (the central 'chimney' space and gaps between pieces of wood)) that leaves us with 140 litres of wood.  Assume also that about 75% of the volume is left after burning, that leaves 105 litres of charcoal.  Our 'wet' (freshly cut) Birch was around 1000kg/cu-m density.  Charcoal is about 208kg/cu-m ( http://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/Charcoal) which gives us about 21.84kg of charcoal per 'burn'.

This kind of product (e.g. http://www.nigelsecostore.com/acatalog/Eco_Charcoal.html) can sell for £9.95 per 3kg , giving £72.44 of value per 'burn'.  Whether anyone buys at that price remains to be seen!  I've also seen stories of Tesco selling charcoal for £0.99 per 5kg! (http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=41347)  We'll have to see whether this enterprise makes any sense in due course.  In the worst case it should at least save us a bit of money in the barbeque season!

Incidentally the going rate for quality hardwood firewood seems to be £150/cu-m.  If you assume that 20% of that cu-m is fresh air (gaps between the logs), our wood would have been worth (140/0.8)x£150/1000 = £26.25.  If we can actually market the product and sell it in decent quantities that's a deceent value add!

I've got a steel drum, plenty of 18 month seasoned Hazel, and a ton of enthusiasm - I feel an experiment coming on!

Pigs # 18 - The Tymawr Two!

Sunday was not the proudest day in my farming career!  In the morning I found I'd lost a chicken to a fox, due to my slack shutting up last night (normally meticulous in doing the headcount and chasing up any escapees, just missed it last night).

James arrived with the weaners at 11:30ish, I'd double checked all the fence, cleaned their water / food troughs, really excited about their arrival. Around 2 minutes after James drove off both weaners escaped through the fence! They are only about 10 weeks old and are TINY in comparison to the pigs we had last time (16 & 20 weeks) and I just underestimated this when I went around the boundary.

The chase started badly, their escape route took them straight onto the lane (luckily just an access road for us and our 3 neighbours so no traffic), and they galloped madly away into the distance. Their first stop was our neighbour's garden (thankfully they were away for the day but they will have some interesting CCTV to watch on their return!!). I so nearly had them, but unlike our previous pigs, who obediently followed the food bucket, being newly weaned, and with me being an unfamiliar human, they were more scared than greedy. Within about 10 minutes one pig had escaped into a 5 acre field on our neighbour's farm. After several attempts to use some plastic garden furniture as a barrier to trap the remaining pig into a corner of the garden the second pig rushed past me and back up the lane. Jo, Ben & Kate then did a brilliant job of fielding her back into our yard. I puffed back a few seconds later (note to self, do more exercise!), in time to watch her easily going through the fence again, back onto the lane and down to our neighbour's house again. The pig rushed up and into a field with 4 or 5 horses in it, and covering around 4 acres. Again, I very nearly had it several times until it ran back up the lane, to be successfully navigated back into the yard by Jo, Ben & Kate.

The short summary is that I then spent the next 2 hours with my neighbours tracking down one pig around a mile away, culminating in a brilliant rugby tackle from Matthew Lawrence. I was totally overwhelmed by the kindness of our neighbours who spent hours of their valuable time helping me. Just hope I can repay it one day. About 2 hours later (time which I spent trudging around the woodland / fields / stream with James) we got a call from Barbara down on the common who had spotted another pig near her house. We jumped into the cars and sped down, and after 10 minutes or so James and his dog managed to track down and corner the remaining weaner, which we then managed to put in the boot of my car. After the 2 hours running around muddy fields and woodland, topped off with me slamming his head with the car boot, I'm pretty sure that James will refuse to do business with me ever again!

Lessons learnt:
1. Your neighbours are brilliant - help them freely - it will be repaid tenfold!
2. Weaners are small and scared - keep them in a barn or shed for a few weeks until they are used to you, follow a bucket and are a bit bigger!
3. Don't give up on a search! No animal gets left behind!

All's well that ends well, but I went to bed that night painfully aware that I'd wasted lots of good people's time and come VERY close to losing 2 lives prematurely. Other than learning the lessons above it just makes me increase my resolve to start farming properly and doing whatever it takes to change our lives for the better!

Cute pig photos to follow!!

Pigs # 17 - New Weaners Coming Tomorrow!

Organised with James from Morris Free Range Meats & Horticulture (https://www.facebook.com/#!/morrismeats) to get 2 new Welsh-Pietrain cross weaners tomorrow!  I've got a few bits and pieces to organise (fix a leak in the water trough, improvise a feeding trough) early in in the morning.  The pigs are TINY (in comparison to the last 2 pigs we bought) but they are around 10 weeks old instead of the roughly 18 weeks old that the last pigs we bought were.  Its made me think that perhaps the work I did last weekend on the boundary fence maybe needs to be improved!  I'll try to spend another hour on it tomorrow morning I think too.

After this batch of pigs, I think we will invest in a really good pedigree sow (most likely either a British Saddleback or British Lop), and some quality semen, almost certainly from a Duroc boar.  Putting the 2 together should give us a characterful, tasty, docile, friendly and efficient pig.  Combining that with an interesting woodland environment should give GREAT pork!

Cider # 5 - Disasterous Apple Season!

After a promising start, this apple season has been a bit of a dead-loss.  I would estimate that we have around 1/20th of last year's crop.



Bardsey Island Apple - One of Two!

The Bardsey Island Apple tree which did really well last year has only produced 2 (!) fruits this year after a pretty comprehensive 'June Drop'.  However, they do at least look delicious.  I'll have one in my packed lunch tomorrow and Jo will enjoy the other one!  No cider this year unfortunately!

Vision # 5 - Independence Plan Basics

We need a 'roadmap' to layout how we are going to get from where we are now (totally dependent on a job at a large company) to where we want to be (independent, working for ourselves, more connected with the land, setting a great entrepreneurial and creative example to our children).  We have so many ideas, but also a lot of constraints - the age of the children, the size of the mortgage, availability of capital and so on.  The transition is going to have to be carefully managed and will take quite a few years.

My starting point for laying out the plan is simple - adding up all of our current income and calling it 100%.  I contribute to a work pension, and my employer also contributes, and this isn't taken into account in the 100%.

There are 4 points on the 'road', and effectively 3 'stages' on the route.  The four points are:

1. Dependence.  Where we are now.

2. Subsistence.  The next step, where it is possible to eliminate the main job, and replace it with a mixture of savings and new income streams, replace our current income to the value of 100% (i.e. same potential 'living standard' as today, but without making any pension provision for the future).

3. Sufficiency.  The step after subsistence, where approximately 110% of current income is achieved.  This means we have todays potential 'living standard' AND we're building a pension fund at the same rate as today.  At this stage it would be great for at least one of us to have totally eliminated 'outside' work, focussing 100% on Tymawr-Farm.

4. Abundance.  When income comfortably exceeds outgoings, say a minimum of 130% of current income, it should be possible to lead an enhanced, modern and generous lifestyle.  At this stage I see all 'outside' work being totally eliminated, and even to bring other partners, contractors or even employees into our business.

To be clear, when I use the term 'income' in all of the above, I don't mean to distinguish between making a cost saving and increasing income i.e. if we eliminated oil as a fuel to heat our home and saved an amount equivalent to 5% of our current income I would treat that as 5% additional income in my analysis.  In fact, cost saving ideas can be even more effective than income generating ideas as they are not subject to tax (i.e. for every extra £1 I earn I take home ~ £0.70, but for every £1 I save I REALLY benefit by the full £1).  However, as a wise man once said "No-one ever cost-reduced themselves to glory"!

Having made some basic definitions, the next part of the plan is to organise our ideas by stage (Dependence-Subsistence, Subsistence-Sufficiency, Sufficiency - Abundance), and then work out what is feasible / manageable in a given time scale.

Other key factors on the timeline are the ages of our children and our own ages: the former determines when nursery fees stop, and when days become more structured (school); the latter defines a 'latest feasible' point for the plan - I don't want to start working on the smallholding when I'm 65!

Going to go back to basics and put the above on paper (with a pen!) later, will scan and upload later this week.

Initial 'back of an envelope' scribblings suggest that it may be possible to 'go it alone' and at least start the Sufficiency-Abundance stage by 2020, which seems like a long way away right now.

Back to work tomorrow!