Hello
my name is Sarah. I am a WWOOF from Germany working with Beth and Lee for the past 4 weeks. To be honest, it's quite hard work, especially getting up very early in the morning. But to see all the animals being happy, makes it all worth it. And that is my main task on the farm. Make sure that everybody has enough water and feed. That includes the sheep which are now having their lambs, the pigs and their piglets (which are nice and fat now), the hens and chickens, the horses and the cattle. Apart from that, there are always quite many things to do. Yesterday, we got all the posts for 2 new fences sorted out, so that we can start putting up the fences very soon. It's to separate the horses, some sheep and two pigs from each other and make them move into another field, so we can broadcast seeds for having nice and rich grass for the animals this summer.
Today, we had a new lamb. It was the first time ever for the ewe having a lamb and in the beginning she didn't really know what to do with it. So, it was up to us to keep the lamb warm, milk the mother to give the lamb its first drink, which is very important because of the colostrum and make sure that the she doesn't abandom its lamb.
Last weekend we caught some black lambs from last year, measuered the weight and moved them into another field. It was quite difficult to get them all together and catch them. If you have ever seen a sheep running away from you, you defintely know it's hard work to be quicker and grab them. Sometimes, it even seems impossible. So, instead of being quicker, we just thought of being smarter: we put up some hurdles to make a small path which had on either end the weight scale. We waited till the sheep went it. It all went very quickly as we just had to move a little closer to them to make them go in. As soon as their were all in, we took another hurdle and closed the construcion which made it appear as a little shed. One by one, we wrote down their weights and numbers and released them into the new field.
What is really fabulous about working on a farm is all the machinery we have to use to get things done. Beth and Lee let me use their quad bike e.g. to take posts to where the fence is going to be, to take new and fresh straw down to the pigs stables and hens house to make nice and cosy beds or just to carry heavy things from one end to another.
As now the weahter is getting better day to day, it even makes more fun to stay all day outside and get things started.

Lambing starts

Heavily in pig Welsh sow in her favourite position

In-lamb ewes, making the most of the excellent red clover silage we managed to get hold of this year. We would have suffered a shortage of forage without the help of a fellow local organic farmer to keep us topped up.

Frozen veg can still be fresh veg?

Triplets up and about within 10 minutes of being born.

The new hen house. Pleased it wasn't too windy when I erected it, as my arms weren't quite long enough in the first place.

Ginger, a few weeks off farrowing.

The packing shed progress.

Pleased it's 4x4 - snow mobiles would have been used if available!

When the lady loves good hay.

Sunrise, out delivering one morning.

A few memories of summer to cheer us up.

Fearnley helping prepare for our annual organic inspection

Spring has definitely sprung here at Christmas Farm - we've had clear skies and fair weather for at least a week now. It's amazing how cold it must have been when you start to think 3 degrees is a good opportunity to work in a T-shirt.

The slightly better weather has coincided with the first lambs being born, and it's going well so far with only one single in the flock, and a set of strong triplets has made up for that. Piglets are all doing well and are desperate to be out of the farrowing shelters they have been in for nearly four weeks now. It's the first time we've housed pigs inside for farrowing at Christmas Farm, which says something for the lousy weather we've had. To keep in with organic standards the finished pigs can only be kept inside for a fifth of thier lifetime, so we need to get them out as soon as the ground dries up.

The cattle are going through a frustrating time watching the ewes get the best silage, nuts and high energy lick blocks, whilst they have some straw and crushed barley. The smaller ones have worked out that with a little limbo'ing they can get underneath the creep bar that should be keeping them out, and once the bigger ones see this they just jump over the fence anyway.

Winnie is coming up to foaling time and is being fed like a dairy cow, again this must be frustrating for her welsh pony companion, who is on basic rations but stands and watches closely at feeding time.

New stock arrivals have been kept to a minimum with lambing coming up, but we did manage to get a new batch of table chickens put into the newly fenced off orchard, which should help us keep the grass down this year. It feels like I spent ages last summer just keeping the grass down, so this year we are trying to maximise the under-utilised areas for stock, which will not only keep the grass down but also fertilise and condition the soil.

Jobs we've been busy with:

• Fencing off the orchard and veg beds


• Lambing


• Attempting to tidy up


• Moving the little polytunnel


• Digging ditches


• Planting garlic, beans, and radish


• Putting black membrane onto beds in the kitchen garden, ready for planting


• Building a new hen house that we can pull around the field to clear up after the veggies have been harvested


• Planting trees for a windbreak


• Having our organic inspection


• Delivering boxes, feeding the animals etc

Jobs we should have been busy with and need to get done before April:

• Building the big polytunnel


• Planting the 1000 strawberry plants, 200 blackcurrants, and 100 raspberry canes that have been waiting for the ground to thaw


• More ditching, and scraping out a duck pond


• Filling in the bare patches in the hedgerows


• Cleaning all the mud off the entrance track, and filling the winter's pot holes


• Getting the old tractor fired up after sitting out all winter (fingers crossed)


• Laying the rest of the concrete for the new packing shed base


• Finding some more customers for the box scheme (any ideas?)


• Pruning fruit trees and bushes, and trying to get the veg beds sub-soiled and mucked by a contractor

It feels like we've still got a winters worth of work ahead of us, and only a few weeks to go before we need to start planting this season's veg. The plan for this year is to use more WWOOFers at the busiest times for planting and harvesting. They can be a lifeline for getting jobs done that we otherwise wouldn't have time for, and our current volunteer (Sarah, from Germany) is saving us a lot of time with the feeding and bedding duties each day, although the 5:45am start is six hours ahead of her usual wake up call, she says!

It would be nice to get some volunteers from the UK through the scheme, as nearly all come from Europe and need a reasonable length of stay to make it viable. Most also want to use it as a summer break too, which is the time not much is going on other than weeding and harvesting. As a host, it would also be good to be able to call on people for a weekend for jobs that need lots of hands for a short period, like re-sheeting polytunnels, or digging potatoes.