Blog

Moving On Up!

13th January 2012

 

Big news at Gilbury Farm... we are moving! We are in the process of buying a property just down the road from us here, about 1.5miles away, where we hope to be able to expand both the farm business and Rob's tree surgery business also. It's basically a case of less house, more land. The house is a three bedroom 1980's bungalow and is nice and spacious inside; we hope to be almost entirely self sufficient for power, heat and water as it has a bore hole already with a septic tank, no mains gas at present, we will replace the oil heating with wood and install solar panels straight away. There is 32 acres of excellent pasture and a large agricultural barn. When we when to view it and walk the land a barn owl flew out of a beautiful old oak tree, covered in ivy which is situated in the middle of one of the fields... Caitlin's first ever wild encounter with a barn owl!

We are hoping for a relatively quick sale and to be in within a few weeks; not least because the animals are currently miserable in mud here but mainly because our third baby is due to be born at home in about 15 weeks time!

So it's all major change and excitement in the Dean household and we are super busy with packing and discarding (major downsize in the house means lots of stuff to get rid of!).

In other farm news, we have some great new wwoofers, Aela and Thomas, helping us out for a few weeks, the cows and sheep are now all pregnant (well, the ones which should be) and the pigs are currently with a lovely boar which we have hired. The chickens laying should pick up again soon, once the days start getting longer and for the first time in about 4 months the weather forcast for the next few days is DRY... woohoo!

Hopefully our next blog will be once we are in the new place with lots of photos for you all. Happy New Year!

 

Onwards and Upwards

7th October 2011

It has been a busy few months at Gilbury Farm... too busy to write blogs! But things are winding down now for winter and we have lots of spring time projects to prepare for. Monday saw our first annual TB test, which was nerve wracking, but we passed with flying colours and that meant that yesterday we took our three of our cows, Sicillienne, Georgette and Bracken off to visit a bull in Tiverton. The field looks quite empty with just Bankimoon and the one remaining steer. We have also separated the lambs from the ewes and will be taking the ewes to the ram any day now leaving an even emptier field! But we are hoping to buy in more steers soon in order to have a more regular supply of beef for our customers. And the arrival of lambs in March and calves in June will soon fill the field back up!

Probably our biggest news is that we have put Gilbury on the market and are hoping to move to a bigger farm. We have fallen head over heals for the farming lifestyle and want to do it on a bigger scale. Our current situation means that we are unable to be self sufficient for animal feed and therefore forego any profit! We are on the hunt for about 100 acres and hope to stay nearby to our current location and certainly in the South West. Our other big news is that Baby #3 is on the way and all going well should be joining us in May.

In the meantime, while the property market is slow, we are still working hard here and expanding in a 'moveable' way. We have announced dates for another wonderful course which will be run by Jo; Touching Earth is an introduction into a variety of ancient rural crafts such as spinning and weaving with wool, making little willow baskets and corn-crafts. Please see the Touching Earth Page for more details and how to book. In the spring we hope to experiment with some arable crops (on a very small scale) and will be sowing some traditional varieties of wheat, oats and peas, which we will then harvest and process by hand next summer, hopefully with the help of some willing wwoofers.

 

Apologies for the lack of pictures... I'll post some more recent ones soon.

 

 

Shearing and Spinning

21st July 2011

At the end of June we sheared our sheep for the first time! Sheep need to be sheared for husbandry reasons; they can develop fly strike if they are not sheared which is often fatal. Most farmers get in professional sheep shears for the job because it is hard work and if you are not experienced then it is time consuming and difficult! However, to get a professional in you need to have a few more sheep then us... so we did them ourselves! Well, Rob mainly but Caitlin did one of the lambs! It was hard! When you watch footage of professionals shearing sheep on you tube or you watch them competing at local agricultural shows they make it look so easy and the sheep just sit there letting it happen... well, if only! Our two older sheep seemed to know what was happening and were fine with it, even seemed to enjoy it! I think it was a relief for them to get all that hot wool off... but the younger two and the lambs! What a fuss! To be fair, having never been shorn before they must have been pretty scared but really... they just added to the danger element so much with their jumps and kicks! Sheep shears are sharp and quite awkward to manoeuvre for the inexperienced, it is easy to accidentally cut the sheep, or yourself! It was a stressful process but we had a huge sense of satisfaction at the end and Rob got really quite good. The difference between the first fleece, which came off in chucks here and there, and the last fleece, which came off in one whole neat piece, was amazing!

Here is Rob and Caitlin Shearing:

And Caitlin, very proud with her freshly shorn lamb!

Our current wwoofer, Jo, just happens to be a rather experienced spinner! Having looked up about how to treat the freshly shorn fleece we decided to experiment with using some of it totally untreated and soaking the rest of it in cold water to remove most of the dirt. There are various schools of thoughts on washing/soaking/doing nothing to the fleeces and having experimented we have decided that in the future we will do nothing! But here is a picture of one of the fleeces soaking in a paddling pool and drying in the sun!

The next step is carding the wool which, gets the bits of grit and dirt out, straightens out the fibres and makes it easier to spin it evenly and finely.

Then you spin... to create beautiful wool to knit with!

We now have a enough wool to knit with and my next challenge is to knit myself an entire jumper. Jo, our wwoofer intends to knit herself a bikini from the lambs wool, which is softer and finer.

We still have vast quantities of wool and so are going to run a course in September. It will consist of 2 days (Saturday Morning - Sunday afternoon) and will include accommodation here at Gilbury Farm, food from our farm and entertainment on Saturday evening (in the form of a sing song, cards, a camp fire or a trip to the local pub, depending on the weather and what people fancy). The course will cover basic sheep husbandry and meeting our flock of Jacobs sheep, sorting the wool, carding, spinning using a drop spindle and a wheel, two plying and niddy nodding. There will be the opportunity to learn about felting and spinning with other materials such as cotton, flax and silk. The course aims to get you in touch with the spiritual nature of earth based crafts and the essence of where our clothes come from and the animals and plants providing the raw materials. The cost will be £150 per person and is based on two people sharing a room and will include the wool which you can take home. Please see our Course Page for further details or contact us to book.

Spring

22nd April 2011

Again, it has been a long gap between blogs and we have lots more to tell... 5 lambs were born in March! Both in lamb ewes carried 3 babies each but sadly one little lamb died when it was born so there are just twins on one, the other ewe is now happily feeding all three lambs, although we had topped the littlest one up for a few days to start with in case the mum couldn't cope. It is quite incredible the speed at which they are growing and it is so wonderful to see them playing in the field. There are four boys, which will go to slaughter in a years time (commercial breeds of lamb are slaughtered at around 4-5 months) and one girl which we will keep to breed from the year after next. The births were fine and they didn't need any help although one of the ewes developed a blocked teat which the vet came out for and showed us how to unblock and milk her to prevent it re-blocking.

 

Peggys piglets are due on Tuesday so there is much anticipation and excitement about that. Aunty Mary is hopefully in pig now having returned from the boar and Doris is now visiting his brother (a slightly smaller boar as Doris isn't as massive as Aunty Mary). We have had Doris and Peggy's first litters slaughtered now and the meat is spectacular! We sold a lot of it last minuet but we still have a variety of joints, chops and sausages in the freezer and can deliver nationally. We have also introduced a 3kg taster box for £20. Please contact us if you would like any pork.

 

This morning we have AI'd Sicillienne for the first time since she lost her calf, which would have been due in a few weeks so fingers crossed this time will be successful. If it has worked then her calf will be due at the end of January. We now have a grand total of 5 cows as we have bought one more young heifer to breed from and we still have the two steers, although one of them will be off to slaughter at the end of the summer.

 

Probably our biggest news from Gilbury Farm is the arrival of WWOOFers in our lives; World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Volunteers can contact us through the WWOOF organisation to arrange a placement on our farm, we either accept or not and then when they arrive we provide accommodation (in our case the caravan) and all of their food, in exchange for voluntary labour on our farm. Our first volunteers were Evelyne and Nick; French speaking Canadians. They have been travelling around Europe and wanted to experience life on a small farm. They stayed for three weeks and were absolutely excellent. The litter in the new field is pretty much clear and the fencing is all secure. They fed all the animals for us and cleaned out the chickens and pigs and we built a fantastic cattle handling area and race to the crush, without which there is no way we would have been able to AI Sicillienne. Next we had André from Alsace in France who help Rob to finish the fencing and single handedly built us a couple of fantastic raised vegetable beds using wood from the old demolished extension and cleared out the greenhouse ready for some tomatoes this summer! We now have Marion here, from Bordeaux in France, who is getting stuck into the animal care and will hopefully give us the time to get on top of the various accumulating house matters.

Evelyne and Nick:

The damage from the fire is now all fixed and the final bits of carpet went down yesterday in the landing and en suite. We had a bus crash into our car two weeks after the fire but the whiplash is now better and I have my car back after 5 weeks of repairs. The sun is shining here is Cornwall and the bluebells are out in force... Spring is well and truly here!

Here are before and after shots of the vegetable beds that André made for us:

 

 

 

 

 

So much to tell!

23rd February 2011

Deepest apologies for the long gap since our last blog... Life seems to have run away with us recently and we have just been so busy! We have so much to tell you...

Our cows have settled in really well now and are just beautiful; we have also added some steers to our herd, which we purchased from Penare Farms. The first one went to slaughter last week and is now hanging at the butchers. His delicious beef is available to buy direct from us and is an absolute bargain at £9/kg (significantly cheaper then the supermarket premium ranges). We will be selling beef in mixed boxes of either 12 or 25 kilos and can arrange delivery. Contact us asap if you are interested.

Just before Christmas we completed on a new 10.5 acre field, which is about ½ a mile from the house on the road to Milltown. It is absolutely perfect for us and has a barn already on it. January was mainly spent fencing and litter picking (which is rather ongoing as the field was somewhat neglected) and it is finally ready to move the cows up there... now we just need a break in the rain so we can get the stock trailer into the field!

January also saw a disaster with a farrowing... it didn't happen! Aunty Mary was due to produce her second litter of piglets on the 3^rd on January, but it seems that they must have been reabsorbed or aborted early on and her seasons haven't restarted properly. After treatment from the vet she is now having a normal cycle again but will not stand for us to artificially inseminate her so I have arranged for her to visit a local boar in a couple of weeks time... fingers crossed he'll have more luck.

On the plus side, we artificially inseminated Peggy on New Years eve and have been successful! Her second litter is due at the end of April. We also now have a doppler to pregnancy diagnose and so hopefully we can avoid another non-farrow. A doppler uses ultrasound waves to listen for certain sounds (the uterine artery, placental vessels and foetal heartbeats) and as Caitlin is experienced in their use in humans (used to diagnose arterial insufficiency in legs) we figured it would be an easy enough skill to learn.

We have lots of piglets which will be going for slaughter at the start of April and we can guarantee that the meat is better than any pork you will have tried before! If you would like to book some then please contact us to discuss your requirements.

This week has seen more new arrivals at Gilbury Farm... Jacob Sheep! We picked up two ewe lambs from a nearby breeder in St. Neot, Debby Hext which we can breed from next year, and also two 'in lamb' ewes from a top breeder in Launceston, Stephanie Cornelius, an inspirational shepherdess at just 16 years old! The latter two are due to lamb twins in mid March; very exciting! Our flock is assembled! Caitlin now needs to create a sheep page for the website so keep your eyes out for that, hopefully within a week... hmmm, best not hold your breath though

Life at Gilbury has been fairly full on recently, in addition to all the farm comings and goings, we had a lovely but busy Christmas and New Year with various family members from both sides. We got our first ever tax returns in just in time and have become VAT registered, which is all very satisfying, especially for Caitlin who turned 30 at the start of January and now feels very grown up! Rob's tree surgery business is really taking off and Caitlin is taking over the day to day running of the farm as well as doing some locum Practice Nursing; which rather explains the lack of time for Blogging.

Many of you will also have heard about the house fire we had here... Last Wednesday the joists in the loft caught fire because the insulation had been packed in around the Rayburn flue. Luckily we are all fine and the fire was discovered so quickly that the damage was really very minimal. It seems there is no legistaion regarding insulation distances from flues and I would therefore urge anyone who has recently had insulation put in or a flue from a woodburner or Rayburn worked on to nip up in the attic and check that nothing at all in touching it or too close. The firemen, who were excellent and arrived very quickly, also recommended putting a 10yr battery operated smoke alarm in the attics, which we will do. It has rather shaken us up but we feel we have got off incredibly lightly and were basically thanking our lucky stars!

Anyway, as you can all imagine, we are very busy at the moment and so I must stop typing as I need to sort out the paperwork for the sheep we picked up today and send off the movement forms...

We'll look forward to lots of enquires from you all for beef and pork orders soon ;)

PS. Sorry for the lack of pictures with this blog, there appears to be a problem with the programme I use to alter the size of them, I will try to do a mainly picture blog in the next week or so, in the meantime I will upload pictures to our Facebook page