Baylham House Farm

Fingers crossed

2012-03-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

It is raining and has been for much of the day. I know we need it but I can't help thinking - why Sunday? Why does it have to rain at the weekend when it could rain during the week and most people would be at work and hardly notice.
When it is so damp outside the temptation is to stay indoors. But I was getting a bit stir crazy so I have just spent the last half an hour in the lambing tunnel, sitting amongst the lambs (it is one of the perks of the job). They are getting very naughty now. As they get bigger, they get more confident and with confidence comes the desire to push the boundaries. So whereas I used to be able to sit in the middle of the pen and only a few brave lambs would venture over to sniff me, chew my sleeve or try to nuzzle into my pocket - now they all try it. And their antics begin almost as soon as I sit down. Some lambs start to climb up my back, some to chew my hair (well, it does look a bit straw-like), while others jump across me, as if I am just a continuation of the straw bale.
So far these lambs have spent their whole life in the lambing tunnel - they don't know about the world outside, the cold winds, the rain and the grass. But by the end of the week they will be out on the field, in a very different world. And for a few days they will be shell-shocked. When we open the tunnel gates their mothers, who have been locked up for the last 6 weeks will make a dash for it. Given the opportunity they will run as fast as they can. Despite their colossal size and their huge udders, they will sprint along the track, towards the field. Some will stop at the first sign of succulent-looking grass, others will just keep their eye on the horizon. None of them will even think of their lambs until they reach the end of the track and the closed gate. Meanwhile the lambs will remain, now traumatized, in the tunnel. The stampede over, the door to the big wide world open, the lambs will be in a state of shock. Their world has suddenly been turned upside down, their confidence vanished they try to hide in corners or stand their ground, bleating for their mum. Then, little by little, one or two will go through the gate, a couple more will follow and before long a group of them will be on the track, trying out the grass and weeds.
Meanwhile, having munched their way through some of the tenderest shoots they could find and realizing they can't get to the field as the gate is closed, their mums will suddenly remember their babies. They will start bleating and retracing their steps, and before long, the whole lot will be bleating and looking around for their off-spring. Then one will lead the stampede back down the track towards the tunnel and before long, mothers and lambs will meet, pair up and let themselves be led to the field.
It follows the same pattern each year but I never tire of watching it. But as I sat in the tunnel this afternoon I found myself looking at these healthy young lambs and thinking how lucky we had been to have been spared the Schmallenberg virus, the latest disease to hit sheep and other farming livestock. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the ewes that will be coming into the tunnel at the end of the week, ready for Easter lambing, will be as lucky.

2012-02-13T14:55:00.000-08:00

David Millward's photo - thanks David

Warming up

In the weeks leading up to closing for the winter many of our visitors wish us well for our holiday. Leaving the shop they will say something like "Enjoy your break - you deserve it" or "Bet you are looking forward to putting your feet up for a while". Usually we smile and agree - but just sometimes we find ourselves saying - We are closing to the public, not having a holiday!. But when we say that, it is usually because the weight of the workload ahead of us is praying on our minds. Because closing to the public is just that . Everything else on the farm carries on, all the animals still need to be fed, cleaned and cared for and all the jobs that we can't do when the public are there each day, can now be started.

We start the 3 month "downtime" with a plan. This could be called the Preposterous Plan. It lists everything we want to do but it takes no account of the fact that:

there are only 3 of us to implement it;

only 3 months to complete it;

downtime is the start of winter and the weather will make many jobs impossible.

Oh, and then there is Christmas right in the middle - with a magic combination of all the family descending on the farm to be fed and watered and all the farm helpers staying at home with their faimilies.

Sometimes, if the weather has been kind, one month into the plan will still make everything seem possible. We will have made good progress with preparing the ground for new fencing, laying down a new foot path, demolishing an old field shelter but then the snows will arrive or one of us will get (and pass on) a virus. Something always happens to throw the plans off course.

So, like most people, we end up working really long hours for the few weeks just before we open. By this stage we are working hard not because we are trying to finish off the list but because we are trying to get the farm in an orderly way, from the havoc created by starting item 1 or 2 in the list (items 3 to 20 never got a look-in).

And so it was this year.

Close to the top of the list was to re-work the shop toilets and replace the pig fencing.

The toilet facilities have been unsatisfactory for a while - as there were three urinals and one toilet for the men and only one toilet for women/disabled and nappy changers to share.

So we arranged to have all the area re-designed and agreed with the plumber and builder that they would be out by the end of January. Unfortunately - like most building works - this over ran and although most of the job was completed and cleared away by the 4th February, the final touches were finished on the 10th - less than 24 hours before we were due to open.

With most of the builder's rubble out of the way on the 4th, I started cleaning the shop, painting the toilets and shop and getting the shelves cleaned and the stock put out. Brick and plaster dust are always a nightmare to clean up and the shop took much longer than I had hoped.

A large part of Friday was spent baking, with the remainder being finished on Saturday morning. But by Saturday morning it was clear that the drop in temperature overnight had led to all the water systems in the shop to freeze over. I finished the remainder work in the house, while everyone else tried to get the pipes defrosted.

In the end, it took all day to get the water moving. Without any water for people to wash their hands we were unable to open to the public. It was so disappointing and strangely ironic. To have put so much effort in to getting the toilets finished - it was then not possible to use them because the water was frozen.

As for the pig fencing, I can still see the stack of fencing posts in the disabled parking bay. They were delivered just before the temperatures dropped and the snows arrived. We could no longer see where the posts were due to go, let alone make holes in the frozen soil.

So all in all, an inauspicious start to the year..... Things can only get better.

3rd February - we must be nearly there - surely?!

2012-02-03T00:36:00.000-08:00

It is the same every year. We close at the end of October and it seems like we have all the time in the world to put in hand the maintenance jobs that aren't possible when the farm is open to the public. November slips by, some progress is made and we all feel quietly confident that everything is possible. Then December whizzes by- a blur of cooking, eating, shopping and entertaining. On to the New Year.
January arrives, slaps us round the face and demands to know how it is possible to finish all the jobs we have started before we open our doors mid February.
By early February and the birth of the first lamb, the full horror of the situation is all too apparent. We have a week left and about 1000 hours of work to complete. Yet again, we have taken on way too many jobs, assumed there would be no hitches and forgot to factor in that we are only a small team.
By the time we open, on the 11th February, some things will have to be sorted. The lambing pens are ready and our first twins are happily leaping around the pen. There will be more.
The posts for the new pig pens are still in the disabled parking lot. Yesterday's efforts to start driving them into the soil failed as the ground is now frozen rock solid.
As I write, the builders who have been changing the toilet arrangements in the shop (who promised me they would be finished by last Friday) are still very much here. My efforts to clean and prepare the kitchen yesterday were thwarted by the fact that the plumber still hasn't finished the pipe work and therefore there is no water.
On the positive side, once we start lambing we have to check on the lambs round the clock. As I got up this morning to do the 3am check, I began thinking that it would be a good idea not to go back to bed, but to head to the shop and start painting. But the thought of my nice warm bed was too great. I went back to bed and worried instead. At this rate, this time next week, we won't even be going to bed.

The Year End

2011-10-25T02:53:00.000-07:00

There is a strange disconnect between the world I see around me on the farm and the calendar. Outside the grass is still growing, most of the trees still have all their leaves, there are raspberries on raspberry canes and roses around my window. Yet, at the end of this week, the farm closes for winter. November is only a few days away and yet I frequently see our volunteers out and about in short sleeved T-shirts.
Closing the farm to the public always creates a mixture of feelings: the end of another year; the beginning of the big tidy-up; a time to look at what we do and why/how we do it; time for a break. Of course, the last of these really only applies to me - as the majority of my work revolves around the shop - serving, cooking and stocking up. The rest of the farm, like all live stock farms, carries on as before - the pigs still need feeding, Gigi and Grace (our pet goats) still need daily cuddles and at some stage presumably the weather will deteriorate and the animals will have to be moved under cover to avoid the worst of the winter.
But today - no need to think of the winter gloom. The first visitors of the day are arriving. I better head to the shop and open up.

No angel

2011-09-03T07:18:00.000-07:00

I am one of Gigi's greatest fans. From the moment I saw her it was love at first sight. Her mum, Geraldine, was my favourite animal on the farm and as she died giving birth to Gigi, I think I just transfered my affections. There is something about Golden Guernsey goats that I don't get from other goats. They are serene, gentle and very curious about humans.
However - Gigi was trying my patience yesterday. She spent the day showing Grace - her half-sister - all the best places to nibble greenery. I was too late to rescue my palm - it is now a stump. All the sweet pea pods (that I had planned to pull off, dry and plant next year) have been eaten. And I seemed to spend the whole day carrying Gigi or Grace out of the shop. In fact, even my extremely laid back cat was getting annoyed and could be seen batting Gigi whenever she came by.
So she was already not in my good books when I ducked into my flat to grab some paperwork only to discover she had relieved herself all over my leather sofa. YUK!
I suppose it serves me right - I shouldn't have left the front door open. You would have thought I would be wise to the perils of an open-door policy on the farm, after the piglets came in and ate all the cat food. But some people never learn!

Dear Old Mrs P

2011-08-21T05:32:00.000-07:00

I woke this morning with a feeling of melancholy. Looking out the window I could see a few early "autumn" leaves being buffeted about by the breeze and it brought home the realisation that summer is nearly at an end. All our "babies" are growing up and all except the baby goats have now been weaned. The ducklings still do not have the right kind of feathers to make them waterproof - so they aren't on the river yet - but other than that the piglets, the lambs, the chicks now look like miniature adults rather than babies.

I was also still thinking about Mrs Pugwash - one of our old favourties. Mrs P, as she quickly became known, was a Large Black pig and had been with us for nearly 14 years. She had had many litters of her own but in recent years, when it was no longer possible to breed from her, had taken on the role of a surrogate mum. We were never sure if she actually fed the piglets that seemed to cling to her or if they suckled from her for comfort. But she seemed to be happy to have them around and they would often have "sleep overs" in her ark.

But over the last few months she had seemed unsettled and lost her appetite for normal food and often had to be coaxed to eat - she would finish her food provided she could see a treat such as fruit or cake to finish with. Finally even these treats couldn't tempt her and the vet confirmed what we feared - that she had an inoperable tumor.

We will all miss her - even those who feared her grumpy moods (she had been known to try to nip a couple of the people who worked here).

So perhaps I feel melancholy today as it feels like the end of an era, as much as the end of summer.

Cuddling goats

2011-07-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

Gigi continues to be clingy, huggy (and with a taste for nibbling hair). As I walked around the farm yesterday, I can't tell you how many times I saw her sitting on someone's lap or trying to get in a push chair. A couple of times she ended up in the shop and had to be carried out. But she is so gorgeous, I noticed that there was no shortage of people who were prepared to carry her out (and have a bit of a cuddle on the way!)
However, this morning her aunt, Ginger, gave birth to a beautiful little kid (a nanny). They are both in a pen in the tunnel at the moment. But once we have made sure they are both eating well and healthy, they will return to their paddock. Gigi will then have a friend and maybe, just maybe she will stop following people around the farm and start kidding around with her own.

Please may I park my goat here?

2011-07-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

Photo Karen Steel

Gigi seems to be going through a clingy stage. Orphaned at birth, we have got through the first few weeks when we just had to hope she would take to the bottle, where we worried that the long birthing process (that proved too much for her twin and her mother) would have left her with insurmountable health problems. Now it is clear she is a healthy, happy goat. But she is a bit clingy. Three times yesterday I had to physically separate her from different groups of visitors as, having latched on to them, she had followed them around the whole farm and finally ended up in the shop. And then, just as I was heading up the stairs in the house I heard her bleating behind me. Shops and houses are no place for a goat - even one that walks to heel better than our dog, so I carried her out and tried to shut the back door. But no sooner had I started to close it, than her little nose poked around the door edge. I tried carrying her further afield but she ran back to the house more quickly than I could. It was becoming a very tiring game!
In the end, the only solution seemed to be to find someone who could take over as mum/entertainer. And so it was that I found myself in the orchard asking a very nice lady, seated on a bench, if I could park my goat next to her. She readily agreed and the deal was done. She stroked and petted Gigi and I legged it back to the house, closed the door and was upstairs before Gigi realised what had happened. In fact, all of us were delighted by the transaction - Gigi had an attentive audience and "Grandma" landed the prize that her grandchild so desperately wanted to find. "She is going to be so jealous" the lady said "She left me on the bench while she went to look for Gigi and yet I am the one that has ended up with her sitting on my lap!"

A lesson learnt

2011-07-04T02:03:00.000-07:00

It was good to see Neil had learnt from experience..... Last week he decided to rearrange his bees. As usual, he wore bee-proof clothing on the top half of his body but only his normal work trousers on his legs. Unfortunately his work trousers keep getting caught on the fencing and end up with holes in various (and often quite revealing) places. But the pair he wore for this bee work just had one hole, the size of a golf ball, at the back of the knee.
The work he needed to do involved dismantling part of the hive and taking out and checking each of the frames. So within 5 minutes he was surrounded by frames and bees. It didn't take long for one of the homeless creatures to find the hole in his trousers. It took even less time for him to call his mates. So within a few seconds Neil had a rather large number of bees exploring every nook and cranny in his trousers and boxer shorts. And, of course, as soon as one of them stings, it releases a pheromone that brings even more bees and even more stings!
Realising what was happening, but with the safety of his bee colony at stake, he couldn't just run, shedding his clothes as he went. He had to put the frames back, one by one - whilst pulling handfuls of bees from his pants!
As he flew through the bedroom door, pulling off the remainder of his clothes he shouted "Check me- are there any bees left?" I looked around - about 8 bee-stings but only one bee (that quickly found the window and left).
So this week, guess who's wearing nice new, hole-less trousers to do his bee work!

Wooly piglets?

2011-06-10T02:40:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we had our annual sheep shearing and wool festival event. As usual we had a really nice group of spinners, weavers and felters - all happy to show their skills and help our visitors develop theirs. The sun shined, the visitors came and everyone enjoyed themselves but there was one complaint. The spinners normally have the complete run of the covered area of the farm to spread out in - to set up their wheels, display their finished products and allow the visitors to mill about. But this year, because of the four litters of pigs born within the week, they had to share their space with Pippa and her six piglets. However, they all agreed she was a very well behaved mum and her piglets were completely adorable.

Our thanks to Lavenham and Diss Spinning Guilds and the individuals that took part and our special thanks to Jen and Zoe for taking on the role of felters, in the absence of Helen, our regular felting guru.

What a day!

2011-06-10T02:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday showed all the signs of being a normal, relaxed day. Yes - all the animals needed feeding; Yes - the absence of rain meant the farm was looking more like the Serrengetti than pasture but the sun was shining, a reasonable number of visitors were walking the farm or enjoying coffee and cake and there were no signs of any goats about to kid. But then, mid afternoon, everything changed and the peace of a tranquil afternoon was gone. One of the visitors came into the shop and announced that she had just seen a piglet being born. This was strange (and highly unlikely). None of our pigs were pregnant - except perhaps Wilma and her piglets wouldn't/couldn't be due for another couple of months. I called for Neil (livestock manager, farmer and general man-for-all-crises). He headed out to the field - expecting to see something that could - at a long distance, with the sun in your eyes - look a bit like a piglet.

However, what he saw was shocking, completely unexpected and de-railed his plans for the rest of the day/week.

Out on the field not just one, but two pigs were farrowing. One, was a Middle White pig, called Polly. She went on to have 11 piglets. The other, was Wilma, the Kune Kune we had been trying to breed with Sam (also a KK) and she eventually, had 7.

So it was all hands on deck. We had 4 volunteers in that day - Josh, Georgina, Katherine and Katie. They assisted with the births, fed the rest of the pigs - to keep them out of the way of the farrowing mothers, cleared and cleaned the farrowing stables, and finally set out the stables so they were equipped for pig and piglets.

While Neil was crawling around on all fours, making sure the mums did not roll over on to their young and that the piglets latched on to the teat he had time to reflect on what must have happened (apart from the obvious!).

At the beginning of the year we had 3 Middle White piglets - two sows and a boar. We knew we could not provide a home for a boar (as we normally only keep one or two sows from each breed and would not want to keep their brother for breeding). As we hadn't found a buyer, he was destined for the butchers. However, he clearly planned to live it up a little before that. Despite his young age, he obviously mastered the art of jumping the electric fence and he used this skill to visiting the surrounding sows. More unusually, he obviously worked out that he needed to jump back again into his own pen to ensure no one knew what he was up to. So if he was out and about, whenever he could, it was likely that he had visited the other sows in the area.

So once the farrowing was done, Neil then checked the other sows that had been out on the field in February. And, sure enough, two others are also pregnant and expecting any day now.

We are a small farm. I don't think we have ever had more than 15 piglets at any one time. And now we have 18 and probably, by the end of the week, will have 30 to 40!

The first two litters have now been transported to the farrowing stable (in a wheelbarrow). The other two pigs are now under close surveillance so that we can get them into proper accommodation before they start having their litters. 30 May 2011