April
is the best month for blossom. Starting with sparkling white blackthorn
early in the month quickly followed by more bride-white pear (so early
they can easily succumb to late frosts), then rosy-pink apple and
sweet-smelling lilac, and by the end of the month, may-blossom, cherry,
damson, quince and plum.All of this free nectar and pollen tempt the honeybees out, and the orchard-hives have been buzzing with their frenetic activity. In the woods, there are carpets of tiny, nodding wild daffodils, while under the orchard trees and all along the lane violets and cowslips, celandine and daisy take their turns to delight.
Not to be outdone, the birds don their finest plumage and sing their hearts out to attract a mate, and the swallows end their long journey from Africa in our barns. Whether or not it’s as a result of the wettest winter on record I couldn’t say, but this spring has been quite the most spectacular I can remember.
April also means lambing here at Green Farm, and – spot on cue; our first three (twins and a single, all ram lambs) arrived conveniently at 8 and 9 o’clock on the morning of the first – my little April Fools! My lambing notes read as follows:
Did 4a.m. lambing shed check this
morning, ewes 10 and 20 doing a bit of ‘nesting’. At 8a.m. 10 had given
birth to twins … and as she was nursing one, 20 decided to steal the
other, licking it furiously and looking very pleased with herself!
Retrieved 10’s lambs and put them all in a pen. At 9a.m. 20’s lamb
showing – a nose and two tiny trotters; shortly after she delivered a
very good-sized lamb. Penned up. Tally so far: 3 excellent ram lambs
I find keeping detailed notes like this really helpful; I know which ewes are good mothers and which might need help. Ultimately, it informs my decisions about which ewes, and which of their daughters to keep in the flock.
Apart
from one case of mastitis, which we successfully treated with a course
of antibiotics (but have been bottle-feeding her twin lambs), we’ve had a
pretty good lambing this year. The ewes and lambs are now all out in
the field on some of the best grass we’ve ever grown, and it’s a lovely
sight to watch the ewes cudding while the ‘lamb gangs’ hurtle about – no
gentle ‘gambolling’ here, they do everything at top speed!Interestingly, we’ve had strong gender theme with our lambing this year; of the 21 lambs born, only 5 are ewe lambs!
To keep the ‘spring’ theme going, we’ve also hatched some chicks; not as many as I would have liked – of the 14 eggs we put into the incubator only 4 turned out to be fertile, so I shall not be using that source again! However, the four we have are all robust little things, and, at a week old, are beginning to feather up well. The two lighter chicks are New Hampshire Reds, and the two darker ones are Cuckoo Dorkings, one of which we know is a cockerel as the breed is sex-linked – meaning the early plumage is different in males and females.
Cuckoo Dorking chick
New Hampshire Reds
We’re
always busy at the start of March getting the ewes vaccinated, treating
any lame ones (a few this year, mainly due to the mud and wet ground),
twice daily feeding and ‘crutching’ ready for lambing. As we’d also
decided at the end of March to bring them into the lambing shed early to
get them off the wet fields, we had additional work filling hayracks
and bedding them down night and morning. The main benefit of this is
that the ewes become much more used to our presence, resulting in a much
calmer lambing shed and ewes that are more accepting of help, if help
is required at lambing.
As
we have an Entry Level Stewardship agreement, we only cut our hedges
every two years and deliberately keep them fairly tall and thick to
provide lots of habitat for birds, insects and small mammals. However,
the wet weather had prevented us getting any heavy machinery anywhere
near the fields last autumn, and leaving more than two year’s growth can
make it almost impossible to cut, so I was really pleased to see Geoff,
our ‘Really Helpful Contractor’, bowl up in his big red tractor on the 8th – just as the ground firmed up and well before any birds would start to think about nesting.
The
arrival of a bit of sunshine was all I needed to get out onto the
vegetable plot and start sowing seeds – so, in the greenhouse we have
butternut squash, cucumber, salad leaves and 3 types of tomato, and in
the raised beds the broad beans, cabbage, beetroot, carrots, leeks and
parsnips – all starting to sprout nicely. We’re still harvesting last
year’s crops of purple-sprouting broccoli, onions and garlic fresh from
the garden, as well as squashes, potatoes and onions stored from last
year.
As
we’re at last getting into gear with our ‘Poultry on Your Smallholding’
series, I’ve recently attended a specialist poultry health-training day
with Minster Vets in Leominster. The course was designed for vets who
are seeing more and more poultry in their surgeries, and covered poultry
health, production and disease in-depth. It was a fascinating day, the
highlight of which had to be the practical chicken post-mortem session –
a real eye-opener and a really useful way to gain a good understanding
of chicken physiology.
And
finally, April Fool’s day dawned with the birth of our first lambs this
year! I knew from my 4 a.m. visit to the lambing shed that lambing was
imminent, but was slightly thrown to find one ewe nursing a big ram
lamb, and another ewe (who was in the early stages of birth but had
obviously not had a lamb yet) nursing its sibling! Thankfully neither
ewe seemed put out by the mis-mothering and mother and son were happily
reunited while the temporary foster-mother got on with the job of
delivering her own whopping ram lamb! A happy outcome, and a lovely
start to this year’s lambing!