An escape waiting to happen.

Do you see the little left hoof of the middle piglet? Yes, he is thinking about climbing through. I better fatten him up quick so he cannot fit.

They are getting harder to take photos of, as the moment they see me they race over to see what I have got. Every morning I cut down a few stalks of heritage sweet corn for each animal and chop it up for them so there is no waste.

This old fashioned corn is higher in protein and lower in acids.

You know that i pull and feed the weeds to the chickens and pigs well we also practice Permaculture on the farmy. As in returning the waste to the land, via the stomach of an animal.

I am very slowly pruning this forsythia hedge.  I do this every year as the flowers (one of the first flowers for the bees in the spring) come on first year wood. This year I am cutting it very low and I feed everything I cut to the animals.  The animals love to eat the prunings and it gives them great variety in their diet. They need to nibble on bark and sticks to maintain their stomach health. But I only prune as much as they will eat that day so as not to waste the resource so this will take a few more weeks.

Good morning.  Shortly I shall go out and cut another two forsythia plants and collect about twenty corn stalks and a couple of buckets of windfall apples and  lambs quarters then throw them over the fences to the animals. I do this twice a day.  The corn is only a few days away from being perfect eating for us too. But don’t worry I have hundreds  and hundreds of GM free sweetcorn plants. This crop is for people and animals.  And not one leaf will be wasted. In the end I will be bringing  the last of it in dry and storing it in the barn for winter feed.

Next year the Farmy Fellowship Forest will have willows growing and these will join the summer feed programme too! Willows are excellent for moving worms out of ruminant bellies.

This morning I am alone for almost the whole day for the first time since Christmas. The 7am builders have gone, the painter is finished and the cabinet maker is busy with another job for a while.  And being of a solitary nature I have been longing for this day. I am the kind of person who needs a lot of time to myself. I have always thought I would be a perfect hermit if I could only find the right cave!

Today is Thistle day. I will take out my sharpest favourite spade and dig out any thistles in the fields.  There are a few out there too. It might take me a while. I shall take Sheila with me, she enjoys the wander.

Have a lovely day.

your friend, celi