August started as July finished – wet! After the incredibly dry spring, when everyone was hoping for rain, the weather is back to normal – lovely weather, rain, often both on the same day. Some of our fields are muddier now than they were in February or March – very odd. We can only hope that we have some form of Indian summer – probably once the kids go back to school – we certainly need it – by the end of August, I had managed to pick the sum total of ONE red tomato. Without a good dose of Autumn sunshine, I will be digging out the Green Tomato Chutney recipe again 🙁
Much as the tomatoes are struggling, the blackberries, apples and pears are ripening well – very happy with them and filling the freezer so we can have yummy crumbles through the winter
As Carlos the Large Black boar left us last month, so this month saw the arrival of Bertie, the Oxford Sandy & Black boar (Official name is Tan Alexander) who has come calling on our two OSB sows, Blackfoot and Minnie. He’s a BIG lad – but seems to be gentle enough with his ladies so fingers crossed. We don’t have our sows scanned, but as far as we can tell, at least Carlos was quite busy – one of the Large Blacks is in-pig so we’ve got a date in mid-October pencilled on to the calendar – hope we are right! Large Black piglets are just the cutest – huge floppy ears, they look like mini-elephants!
The Guinea Fowl chicks go from strength to strength – they have certainly found their voices and, after a spell of being allowed out during the day only, they are now fully free range and jostling for position with the adults on the roosting bars in the roof of the barn every evening. We’ve also bought in some eggs from another farm to hatch – we like to add some fresh blood every year to keep the gene pool healthy – so they are in the incubator now – looking forward to the hatching mid September.
Robert’s been busy topping fields – it has been a continual task this summer – the combination of sun and rain has had everything growing like crazy! But don’t feel too sorry for him .. the tractor cab has air-con and a radio so I think he’s quite happy out there!