Bleep, Bleep, Flash, Flash

Posted by Simon

The snow is now melting slowly away although it is now getting a bit slushy and wet. Christmas Day is over and the boys are still playing with their presents and none seem to be broken - famous last words -yet.

We went to our friends Ian and Jane for Christmas lunch which was very nice - thanks once again to them for having us all. Home produced turkey and loads of veg. As usual everyone 'pigged' out. A very pleasant day had by all.

The boy's Granny gave them a digital camera each (joint Christmas and birthday present) and these have been the highlight of all the presents. The cameras recharged at least three if not four times.The memory cards have been downloaded quite a few times. And still the bleep and flash of the cameras are all around us.

Everything and everyone has been photographed. There are a huge variety of interesting photos including floors, ceilings, dogs and cats - all from a selection of differing angles. Clouds, sky, buildings and pigs have not escaped the eagled eyed photographers. Christmas presents have been lined up for still life and the Christmas lunch table is firmly set in digital celluloid. Nothing has been safe from the lenses of two future David Baileys. And, of course, being little boys bottoms were not ruled out of the equation (I believe deleted before mum or dad saw - or so they thought).

All their presents seem to be a hit but especially the cameras. Everyone had a good Christmas and lovely presents. BUT how much memory does this computer have - I wonder?

Ho ho ho

Posted by Father Christmas

Happy Christmas one and all.

No Title

Posted by Simon

The snow is, for the moment, slowly melting away but the scenery has been lovely and great for taking photos. Although walking the dogs in the snow has been hard work - either deep snow or ice, taking the camera with me means I can get a short rest whilst taking photos.

As Rosie has posted we have been reducing animal numbers and we are improving our skills in that department - I was quite pleased with my lamb butchery, especially the chops. I must admit the bowl for off cuts and 'slips of the knife' still seems to fill up resulting in plenty of meat for mince, therefore it's rather lucky we all like mince!

In between meat preparation, I have continued insulating the attic. The actual insulation and most of the boarding in is complete now. Next I'm going to make some shelves and then we can sort all the 'junk' that is in the attic before I continue with the construction work. It was good to have a HelpX who helped carry up a lot of the materials. This meant I could spend more time getting on with the construction work instead moving materials around, which seems to take up a huge chunk of time. The photo shows the house and gite a couple of weeks ago and it is pretty obvious which side is not insulated. This week the whole roof has evenly thawed out - so it seems to prove it works.

And finally the piglets are growing fast and giving us a great amount of amusement. The second batch (of 4) follow in their mother's footsteps and bury deep into their bedding hay to sleep. Feeding and checks results in one of us tiptoeing carefully around their pen and then a small circle of hay starts to slightly shake - and lo and behold 4 little piglets appear- except for one morning, then only three appeared. There I was searching around - checking where every step was placed. No piglet. I was just about to go and get extra help when in the corner of my eye I noticed the other sow had 5 orangery coloured piglets suckling away - I'm sure she only had four orangery ones. A couple of counts and sure enough she had one extra mouth feeding from her.

And Rosie did return the right piglet to the right sow on the second attempt and after a few little squeals. All now seem correctly 'connected' although we are still not sure how he got into the wrong pen, but he is now called 'Adventure'.

It's only 6 months .....

Posted by Rosie

...... to the longest day of they year. So in case anyone is getting just a bit fed up with all this snow and cold weather here's a reminder of sunnier times to cheer you up.

Phew - now I can start to think about Christmas

Posted by Rosie

Sorry we have been a bit sporadic with posts over the last couple of weeks but we have been working flat out with slaughtering and processing the pigs, lambs and turkeys thus keeping animal numbers to a minimum over the winter. It is never easy to bid farewell to an animal you have known since birth but there is huge feeling of satisfaction in the knowledge that the meat we eat has so few food miles attached to it and the animal has had a good life and quick end. This is also very pleasing to see - 3 full to the brim freezers ready to give us lots of home produced meals over the coming months.


Despite my panic we did manage to get everything in with even a little bit of space left over - phew.

So now all the plucking, sheepskin preparing, meat processing, stock making, ham and bacon preparation etc etc is almost finished I can stop and think about Christmas, which as ever has sneaked up quietly and quickly without my noticing. I have a list and have cracked open the sloe gin so everything should just fall into place now ......... I hope.

Snow Fun!!

Posted by Ben

This morning we had lots of snow and I had the idea to make a snowman - a BIG snowman!! So first I made a snow tower then I turned it into a ball which I showed to Mummy and Daddy. They both said "Wow!!". Our HelpX volunteer then said roll it on the ground to make it even bigger so Tom and I pushed it halfway down the front drive and Dad had to come and help us get it home again because it was too big and heavy for us.

Here is our finished snowman - we haven't given him a name yet - can you think of a good one?

Now It's Piglet Watch

Posted by Simon

Our second sow has had 4 piglets yesterday - so now we have a total of 13. We are now paying the price for making a slight error of judgment with the breeding plan - we didn't have one!

Just under four months ago, without thinking through the consequences, we put both sows in with the boar. It suddenly dawned on me that this was not a good idea and that the plan should be to have piglets at different times which obviously means putting the sows in at different times.

Rosie and I rushed back down to the pen to remove number 2 sow. Well it was very noticeable that we were a little too late. I could see no way of stopping a very large boar from doing what only comes naturally to him without him being rather disgruntled. And asking him to stop, however politely, seemed a pointless exercise. Although we did move the sow later we now know it was a case of shutting the gate after the horse has bolted!

So here we are on cold December day with a mum who has decided to 'nest' right near to the door of her barn and under the ladder hatch to the floor above (a 2 metre square hole). She was shivering as was one of her off-spring, who also we had not seen suckling. Our first idea was to move the nesting site away from the draughts but we have found out it is impossible to re-house a pig - even a couple of metres.

The next idea was to put plenty of hay bales around her and block the hole above and any other gaps. This seems to be working, the pens are much warmer and the piglet is suckling, although we are still a little concerned about it.

Unfortunately this sow now has a slight infection and this evening we tried to give her an injection of antibiotics - away from the piglets. One not happy sow with a tough hide, one bent needle, one Simon with scrapped knuckles (down the wall) caused whilst trying to hold sow - one syringe still full. Tomorrow I think one of my first jobs will be to build some form of pig clamp as we have to give her 5 doses.

And the other 9 piglets all seem to have settled in well, getting bigger by the day and a couple of them were even seen venturing out on a cold winter day.

Freezer Tetris

Posted by Rosie

I have unashamedly borrowed this title from Colour it Green's blog and I am sure anyone who produces their own food, be it vegetables, fruit, foraged food or meat will fully understand what I mean. There comes a time (late Autumn/early Winter for me) when suddenly everything is at the time to be slaughtered and has, somehow to be fitted into the freezer - well actually into the THREE freezers we own (not counting the little drawer one in the kitchen).

This year we have frozen more veg to see us thought the Winter and we had a very good fruit crop. We also had ducks for the first time and all in all I am having a major panic. I have squeezed in all the ducks, chickens and pork but I need to find space for the lamb and turkeys. I am manically taking stuff out to cook - lemons to make elderflower and lemon marmalade, plums for jam, rhubarb for chutney and crumbles and home made ice cream with every pudding. Anything in a less than full plastic pot has been repackaged into a space-saving plastic bag and old pigs trotters I had every intention of doing something with have been cooked up for the cats. THEN, neighbours who are moving kindly gave me the contents of their freezer - well I could hardly say no to a bag of frozen fish, French beans and various other bits and pieces could I?

Help may be at hand though - friends of friends are away over the Winter and have said our friend can use their freezer. A full freezer is more economical than a half full one so I think that may be where some of our turkey meat will be heading. Thank goodness because whilst I am quite good at freezer tetris, there comes point the freezers are so full it is impossible to get anything out ................. or any more in!!

Pig Watch Lenault Style 2

Posted by Ben and Tom

We can now report that we have 9 piglets. Tom and I got to see them being born and when one came out of the Mummy's tummy it slipped across the floor quite a long way!! .......... (Video not for the squeamish)

Isadora and her piglets are doing well today and we are trying hard to think of 9 new names.

Pig Watch Lenault Style 1

Posted by Simon

All could be happening soon - the sow is nesting. So keep dipping into the blog for a progress report

On going list!

Posted By Simon

I've been back here a week now and it has been it's usual non-stop list of jobs to get on with. The snow here was washed away by Saturday and although cold the weather has been better than in parts of the UK.

One of the jobs was to slaughter the first three of our Kune Kune pigs. This was done Friday and then on Saturday we butchered them up into various cuts and loads of mince. A chop was quickly fried up on top of the wood burner and divided up for a taste test. I think Ben summed the taste up by instantly asking for more or even better chops for dinner - duly actioned. The rest is now in the freezer although Rosie made faggots this evening which were lovely. There is something very rewarding in producing your own meat from birth to table - the slaughtering aside!

We now have another helper staying for a couple of weeks so we are getting on with insulating the attic and are splitting it up making it into a guest room cum living room and a storage area. This job was started over a year ago put on hold whilst we finished the gite and now it's happening again. Proper storage will be great as there are still boxes that have not been unpacked since we arrived here. Also the extra room will be blessing when people stay - especially pleasing Tom who is nearly always moved to accommodate guests.

Returning to the subject of pigs we should be - well the sows should be - having more piglets very soon. So one other job that had to be done was to separate the pigs into their own pens. This entailed some fencing being done and making each their own bedroom. As seems the norm, this one job led to about another 3 or 4 jobs that were not on my list. At least we got some other areas tidied up and sorted that were not urgent but it does all helps.

Anyway check the blog for updates on 'Pig Watch Lenault' - we could be busy in that department very soon.

Advent is here

Posted by Ben

Tom and I are both opening the advent calender on Nature Detectives. Dec 1st was making gingerbread trees which Mummy and I made and Tom helped to decorate. This is a picture of me with one of the trees. It tasted very gingery and was yummy scrummy.





Mummy made some advent calenders and and so far I have opened a Christmas Pudding, some presents and a snowman. Tom has had some holly, a rock star snowman and a Christmas tree.

It's Snow Fun!

Last week I went over to help a friend do some chainsawing and catch up with some friends whilst there. The trip ended up as eventful as the beginning i.e. missed ferry!

We worked Thursday to Tuesday with the Sunday off. Which I know my back was definitely pleased about. Until the Tuesday the weather, although cold, was fine and the conditions good for the work we were doing. Tuesday was a completely different matter and 6.5cms of snow had fallen by 7am and it was still coming down.

It was fun (well sort of) at first and the woods were very picturesque. Then one chainsaw gave up working and the snow got even harder. We got wetter and wetter and the conditions got more difficult. Eventually we had to stop as we couldn't even see the tops of the trees and by then we were soaked through and apart from it being dangerous, enough was enough.

The conditions were getting worse and the traffic news for Kent was not good and we were able to get packed up and changed quickly and then got on the road. Fortunately I knew the back roads to the M25 and we arrived at the Orpington junction to find stationary chaos. The roads to Orpington and Bromley totally blocked as was the road from the motorway.

We risked going onto the motorway and on the roundabout over the M25 we looked down and saw the Northbound carriage way moving at less than a snail's pace - southbound completely clear. And we were going snowbound. As we drove further round the M25 the conditions improved but listening to the traffic news we knew we had, by the sound of it, got out just in time.

I really didn't fancy missing another ferry although I did have a days leeway as I was staying in Poole on the Tuesday night! But I was hoping to visit someone on the way to Dorset but decided getting there was the priority.

I got home late Wednesday evening and the snow was not too bad here. For most of the journey the roads had been gritted and were clear. Well except for the last two steep hills which I took very slowly.