Late Winter (at my place)

As I've been away from the blog world for so long, I'd like to update you a little on what's been happening at the smallholding...

Our main news is that we've converted our timber barn into a home! This whole process went relatively smoothly (a huge relief, given that so much else was happening last year). We moved in just before Christmas and we've all quickly made ourselves at home here, as you can see...

We previously had a log burner in our cottage and loved it - so we treated ourselves to a new one when we moved in here. But it did help send the local building regs officers into a health and safety spin. The prospect of this in a timber building, meant that we had to comply with lots of regulations. Not only have we had to rig up loads of smoke alarms, but we were also told at the beginning to paint all walls and ceilings with fire retardant paint. We very quickly found that this stuff was a) very expensive and b) was sort of like mud mixed with treacle (in consistency and appearance). And it didn't dry! So we abandoned that and had to come up with something else instead to meet regulations...

Which was this....

A fire sprinkler system! Fortunately, the small pipes, when painted, blend in very well (luckily no great industrial-looking pipes everywhere).  But look at the little red vial in the photo - this mustn't be knocked accidentally.  So I mustn't swing the vacuum cleaner (or anything else) round wildly otherwise gallons of water will gush out and probably sweep me right across the fields!

We love our new home and the animals are really close to us now, which means the sheep can watch us through the window...

We now have two old male sheep and two young coloured ryeland females, so it's a bit like two grumpy old men with two lively young girls driving them mad.  Two more coloured ryeland lambs are coming later this year (so the old males really will be outnumbered).

Did I mention that conifer jewellery is all the rage this year?

We still have chickens, and only four geese. Cador, the young gander, became too aggressive with his father and so he now has a home at the farm next door, where he'll have new females to protect.

I now have just two bee hives.  They survived the wasps last year (last year was a very bad year for wasps and hornets). Here is one wasp trying its luck and hoping to sneak into the hive to attack the bees and steal the honey...

I peeked at the hives the other day and both colonies are surviving the winter, although, before Christmas, one hive had been knocked right over.  I don't think it was our local badgers, because they would munch their way through the honeycomb. So, instead, here are the prime suspects...

It's not a good photo I know.  This was taken on a misty morning in the autumn when they were in the field just behind us. Although I keep looking for them, I haven't seen any evidence of them recently, so they must have moved on to somewhere else in their large territory.

Anyway, this was just one of the special wildlife sightings I've had here recently. I look forward to sharing with you some of the others very soon x