Monday 8 December 2014

Latest influx of Birds



Over the weekend, We've visited the legendary Zolibacsi and returned with some more Animals :) Most of these are "proper" non-hybrid animals which means that the chickens are dual purpose (eggs/meat) and should also be able to hatch out a batch or two of Chickens. So in no particular order, here are some of the additions - 

Naked Neck Chicken (x3) and Rooster

These quaint birds are a local breed which despite their exposed neck are really tough in the cold and heat. They are a good medium-size bird

Mini-Chickens 

I'm not sure of the exact breed but these are proper chickens but just tiny, the cockerel in the photo is smaller than a standard roof tile. They also have "little-man syndrome" where they are very loud and aggressive. The small size also means that the chickens fly high and far and can easily flap over the farm buildings!

Brahma Chickens (x3) and Rooster

These are Huge chickens covered in feathers all over their bodies and legs and feet. So far, our chickens have been a bit mellow but we will have to see how the new arrivals cope with the established Brian

Turkeys 

The gobble gobble machines are huge, they have the body shape of a pheasant but are about twenty times bigger. It's also fun to stand next to them and play the call and answer game with them :)


Cat

The internet needs more photos of ducks and here is nibbles our blue cat!

Saturday 15 November 2014

No news is Good News?

Noticed yesterday that I've not updated the blog for a while so I thought I would give a brief outline of what is or isn't happening with the animals

  1. Dogs - Seem to be ok, no major escapes though crunchy did manage to kill a cat!
  2. Cats - Small but growing the 4 cats (Táp, Nibbles, Spot and Patch) are doing a good job. They are going everywhere and I've seen some evidence of mouse hunting
  3. Rabbits & Chickens - We've the same Joys and Problems. Our existing animals are doing well but we are having problems with getting rabbits pregnent and keeping chicken/rabbit babies alive
  4. Grazing animals - Everything is calming down after the very aggressive 90kg Ram was slaughtered. The babies goats are growing well and we are hope all our female goats/sheep are pregnant. Our flock could potentially double or increase by 75%!!! We just need to build an outdoor shelter, reinforce a fence or 5 and then the goats/sheep can stay out all winter
I think we've learnt out mistakes from this year, so come next spring we should be firing on all four cylinders 

Monday 22 September 2014

Final build of the summer

The Harem
Extended rabbit hutches
Summer is coming to an end and this is the final end to the works on the farm. Our Rabbits hutch has been at maximum capacity for a while and problems have been racking up as the small rabbits become teenagers. 


Egg laying Boxes
New Gates
Zolibacsi, our amazing friend and designer  came to our rescue. He made "The Harem" a female colony where we can have lots (12+) lady rabbits who will live without fighting  and caged in the base of the existing hutch so  for our bucks. This will enable our rabbits to grow bigger before butchering. We've also got two side cages which currently have a mother chicken and her younglings and the other has our 13 teenage egg laying chickens (which only 3 seem to be hens). Zoli also gave us two A boxes for chickens to lay in and added some roosting perches. He also brought some iron gratings which works excellent as a new gate.






Tuesday 9 September 2014

Mower update


It seems destined that we must always have a mower needing repairs. We've recently had the scissor mower's drive gears fixed and will be finding a place to get the blades sharpened. A non-trivial task after 14 years use and one needing the touch of a professional.

The sit-down mower's battery has finally bitten the dust. One of the electrodes has corrosion damage from an acid leak and has now sheared off. We now start the search for a shop where we can be a suitable battery.

The bio-mowers are doing a great job and have been complemented by an army of ducks :) Jimmy, the boy goat, has developed an elvis-esq quiff 

Wednesday 27 August 2014

It is finished


Who would have thought wanting to put up some shelves would be a project which would dominate our August. A two day job of building shelves from scratch has stretched out in to a 20 day marathon work which will only truly be finished next spring. The problems arose when Zolibacsi and Andy went to put the shelves in the utility room and the floor(left) prompt sunk under Andy's weight. It seems that the washing machine was leaking and the floor wasn't concreted in. The Tiles were just placed upon compressed sand. The water from the washing machine had soaked through the sand and meet a layer of clay, presumable from the previous building and this resulted in a build-up of water which eventually led to the floor collapsing. So the tiles were ripped up; Sand dug out; completely new overflow water system added with accompanying hole through 20cm of wall; sand replaced; concrete floor laid; Tiles placed and then shelves finally installed. During this time, we've also concreted in our external water supply so it will be more stable for winter. The big realisation is that this tiles on sand flooring system is throughout the whole house so we will have to plan, budget and relay all the floors in our house next spring. Hopefully this should stop the mouse influx which we have recently been suffering.  The new room looks wonderful and isn't done justice by the photo below and we have more storage space now then ever before.

Wednesday 13 August 2014

Ruben

Its been about a week since Ruben left us after living with us for about a month. Ruben was in need of a place to stay in Hungary as his tourist visa has run out and he was still in the process of applying for a humanitarian pass. He was a friend of a friend of a friend of OACi.

Overall, he was a great motivation for us, he helped us build an extended electric fence area for the dogs and helped clear up our garden. He also house sat for us whilst we were on holiday and provided a memorable quote re goats.

"I let them out for a walk and Wonky sat down and started to give birth, so I called Laurie and said Help, this isn't in my skill set"

He also was fun, positive and a joy to be around. He suffered at the hands of Romanian paperwork but it never got him down and he saw the good in all situations. 






Monday 11 August 2014

Giant haystacks

Hold your horses ITV wrestling fans. This isn't a post about Martin Raune  but a post about our latest buck breeding rabbit called Giant Haystacks. He is a MASSIVE dutch rabbit and in this photo fills Kimberley's lap. Hopefully, his descendants will share this attribute

Saturday 9 August 2014

One step forward...

Today has gone differently from planned. The tree cutter didn't turn up and Andy was supposed to be fitting some shelves into the utility room. However, whilst putting up the shelves, Andy managed to put his foot through the floor. The washing machine is leaking and it now seems that our flooring is directly laid on the ground. The increase in moisture has lead to the floor moving.

Shelf installing cancelled and Monday will be spent laying a concrete floor

Bio Mowers

Loads is happening at the farm so there will be lots of posts in the next few days. The last addition to the farm is a pair of bio mowers aka sheep. We've bought a pair of  unrelated Black Racka Sheep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racka) who hopefully will breed this autumn. Their immediate job is to eat all the wild grass and hopefully we will be adding 3 more lady sheep in September to the flock. We are planning to keep about 5 sheep and have the rest for meat.
The sheep are called She-epy and He-epy :)

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Balastya Brie

The Balastya Brie
This is one of the early batches of white cheese which I've made from our pasterised goats milk.
It has an authentic smell and colouring. The texture is quite strong and not very runny whilst the taste is definitely not standard goats cheese but has very mild french-esq taste.

These difference have occurred as the cheese slowly matured in the fridge for a few weeks before allowed to stand at room temperature.

The cheese is about a 6/10 and most of it will be used as a cheese starter for a second generation brie.  

Saturday 2 August 2014

Change m'dear and not a moment too soon

The title is inspired by the first words of the (underrated) 6th doctor and this summer has been a period of reflection for us both and one thing which has cropped up is how we use our farm. For the last few years, we've tried to be self-sufficient and that has included trying to grow lots of crops. Our first year was very successful but this year hasn't really worked as well as we hoped, so we've decided to scale back the vegetable patch and focus our efforts into animal rearing and fruit trees.
The main reasons for this are 
  1. Time: Animal feeding takes about 1 hour a day, everyday with cleaning/maintenance a extra 2/3 per week. Working the land requires periods of hard long work. This small regular time commitment fits in better with Andy's other responsibilities which are mainly located in Szeged.
  2. Resources: We've had problems efficiently watering our plot and to maximise our yields would require major investments
  3. Energy/Motivation: We are currently more motivated to make fruit and dairy based products to eat than to spend hours hacking bindweed out from between potatoes.
  4. Cost: The killer is that we can go Szeged's Mars Ter market and find big good-quality vegetables which are extremely cheap. Home-grown is supposed to the best but is does not make financial sense to work hard and long hours to produce expensive, bad food. Meat, on the other hand, is expensive and having Goats/rabbits/chickens and their by-products to eat does make sense.
So next year, we are going to simplify the veg patch, potatoes, peas and grains (probably oats) and make a small kitchen garden for growing a few tomatoes, peppers and herbs. We'll see how this goes :)

Here is the moment :)

Sunday 22 June 2014

Goat update and Burnt Milk/Cheese

We have swapped Brownie boy goat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RS44IHI8lY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDtwOkEs6s) for a white baby buck from Mako which we've named Jimmy white (left on the photo below). He is completely unrelated to any of our goats  so breeding in the autumn this year should be fine and should happen naturally. He also is quite full of life and love and is very hard to distinguish (from a distance) from Snowdrop
Jimmy White (left) and Snowdrop(right) with old and new (white) chickens 
One of the side products of this swap is that Goaty is producing lots of milk (~2 L/day) and so with careful management, we are starting to make cheese again in 10 L batches. However, disaster struck during the pasteurisation of our milk - Our 10 L enamel pan has started to burn milk! There is a scratch/fault on the bottom of the pan and this has resulted in the current batch of curds being tainted with a nasty burnt taste. The Dogs will be come mid-class for a while and dine on Goats cheese and Mixed dog food whilst the big pan will be relegated to water-heating duty and large pasta/potato and rice cooking.

The solution will be a nice 15L Stainless steel pan which can be mercilessly scrubbed without affecting any subsequent heat treatments


Tuesday 17 June 2014

Meggy Harvest

In a corner by our vegetable patch, we have a thicket of wild fruit trees. This years' warm/wet weather has results in a large amount of budding fruit. The first to appear this year is the sour-cherries. This 15l bucketful of cherries is about 55% of all the fruit on the trees but all I could reach with the assistance of a walking/goat herding stick. We also have fruit from new trees which have naturally grown from fallen seeds.

It looks like we will be making a lot of cherry jam and cherry wine :) 

Our job for the cold weather will be to top the cherry trees so that they grow out instead of up and to remove the non-fruit trees so we can access next year's harvest a little easier

Monday 12 May 2014

First Fruit

Today I'm happier than a Fraggle as I discovered our first fruit(vegetable technically) is ready for harvesting. So for the rest of the week, we'll be eating radishes



Wednesday 30 April 2014

Lawnmower joy!

Grass is a wonderful thing and I can use it to feed our growing collection of animals on the cheesefarm. However, one of my continual banes has been finding a machine to cut the grass. Also, the mixture of April rain, warm and sunshine means that patches of grassland have been a knee-high jungle which is home for flies, ticks and wet legs when walking in the garden early in the morning.

So, Mower news time

  1. Bio-Mowers - We've recently increased the number of mowers to 5 (see here) but unfortunately, they are quite picky and are slowly and reluctantly munching the grass. The rate of mowing is quite slow and highly affected by rain, unlike sheep who are unaffected by all weather. However, the mowing is cheaper than feeding them grain! These are also the quietest mowers
  2. Scissors Mower - We've resurrected The Mother-in-Law's old Lawnmower which looks a bit like this one.
     
    (Actual photo pending home internet - see here for reason why) by installing a new petrol engine upon the base. The engine was about £160 (cmp with >£500 for a new machine) with the installation costs about £15. The machine is basically a two-wheeled hedge trimmer. It goes very slowly, makes a terrible loud noise but is virtually unstoppable . The oscillating cutters chomp at  ground level anything up to 10cm in diameter. It is very effective at making long grass short and all-terrain cutting but it's not very good at a fine lawn finish and that is where ...
  3. Sit-down lawnmower - This is the finishing machine especially as it pulls the lawn sweeper and collects the grass in big piles. This machine has been broken more times then i can remember. Starter motors; ignition switches, wheels. tyres, the machine has virtually been rebuilt. The latest woe was a slipping drive belt when starting and changing gears. The expensive drive belt has taken some punishment and I was expecting a trip back to the repair shop when I had an inspired moment. The problem wasn't with the belt as issues happen when the cluch is depressed (a safety requirement to start the engine). The clutch works by reducing tension in the driving belt, reducing the  motor speed, thus enables gear changes. The problem  was I was looking for the problem in the wrong place as source of my troubles was the hook which kept the slack drive belt on the pulley system. It had been bent away and thus when the clutch was depressed, the slack drive belt fell out of the drive system and the mower stopped moving. One quick bend and everything now work :)
The breaking news is that we have all the tech ready to cut the grass, the ear plugs are primed (so I can still hear in my later life) but now need the good weather to get mowing!

Monday 21 April 2014

Baby farm



This Easter time is very exciting on the farm as we have had an abundance of Babies. The first litter was Rabbits and we've had two litters(9 & 11) using Snowball as the dad. The older litter are in the boiler room whilst the smallest litter are in a nestbox with the main colony of rabbits
The next babies were day-old meat chickens which we bought from the local market. We've been raising them in a custom-box heated by a glass jar with a light in the centre. These chickens are only 2 weeks old and are massive. When all their feathers are grown, we will add them to the current flock and start again. They should be ready for in June/July

The latest addition to our animal family is Snowdrop and Brownie. They were born, we think, early easter Monday and they are doing great. Snowdrop is a girl and Brownie is a boy and Goatie produced them all well and fine without any help. Brownie was a little wet from the birthing process but now has dryed out a bit. They both seem fine, a little unstable on their feet but big and strong goats :) Mummy Goatie is also bleating to them lots and has lots of milk. Steve did his job




Wednesday 9 April 2014

Mixed Bag of Spring feelings

Spring has sprung and with it has come a new season and it is a bit mixed.
The Joys
The dogs are finally out of the inner gardern and running around within the electric fence. They seems to like the freedom, space and for Carmen to jump on the roof of the kennels. The lack of dogs in the inner garden means we can lay some old floor tiles and get out the Hot-tub in time for the Summer! 
Our goats (2/3 suspected) are pregnant which means we could have little kids running around any moment now. Andy has felt the hoof of a baby from the outside and its very exciting combined with a little nervy. If we get a girl, we will try to sell her but boy will be castrated and fattened up for the winter chop!
We've also got our first batch of meaty day old chickens and they seem to be doing ok. They huddle up to a light in a glass jar in a custom box which we've borrowed. They should be ready to meet the rest of the flock in about 6 weeks time and be ready to eat in 3 months. We will do another batch or two of meaty chickens and then refresh our laying bird but this all depends upon growth speed etc
The majority of the Veg patch is planted. We've peas already shooting up and looking for life from our grain area (oats, barley, wheat and sunflowers). We've bought tomatoes, celeriac  and aubergine plantings and will add to the collection with some tomatoes, paprikas and cucumbers in May

The Woes
Our Rabbits - We've had to dispatch several breeding rabbits (1st and 2nd generation) as they have had a hip and skin problems. They have had dislocated hips and others have had large areas of skin and fur coming off. They weren't happy and this was rather sad. The remaining rabbits have not successfully bred after their infections. Fortunately, Snowball, a borrowed buck, seems to be able to do the business with some 2nd generation girls so we have about 9 week-old babies and about 12 month old bunnies
The lawn mower - Our sit-down lawnmower is continually giving grief. The current battle is with the drive belt from the motor to the wheels. It seems to be overheating, stretching and falling off. We've decided to retire this mower to maintenance, lawn sweeping and general tractor pulling duties and resurrect an old hand tractor (doubles as a snow plough) which will be better for cutting the wild Hungarian grasslands. The old mower needs a new motor which is expensive but should then do the job
Watering - the season long relationship with the sprinker and moving it every 30mins has begun and with the watering comes the weeding. Andy is determined not to let the veg patch become a wild grassland.

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Goodby winter, hello blogging spring

Winter seems to be finally over. The nights are now regularly in the positive celcius and the sun is now warm when standing in all of its yellow glow.The blog has been bare and barren like the ground as it didn't seem riveting news to regularly post about not much changing.

We've tried to get our goats pregnant by borrowing "steve the stud" from a local neighbour whom we met via our local vet. Breeding Goats is a mystic art and we aren't sure if we were successful. The worse case scenario is that we have three "living lawnMower". Also, our rabbits haven't been so productive, we have about 20 young rabbits but a couple of our older second generation rabbits have died and our original colony aren't producing litters. Hopefully, we won't have a major bunny problem

The main news is that our dogs have been moved into their doggy area, which is secured by electric fencing, barbed wire, tiles and so much more. They've seem to learnt that the touching the white cable is bad (6000V hurts!)  and are behaving better. The next step in garden development is to expand the region protected by electric fencing  so they have a larger area to run around in and to look mean and scary!

The big plan this year is for chickens, We are aiming for about 45 new chickens with 30 being meat chickens. This should sort out our meat needs for the year, give us some stock to sell and refresh our laying chickens.

The warm march weather has heralded the first wave of planting. Potatoes and peas are the first crops going into the ground. We're scaling up the spud production this year and will be adding seedling when they appear at the local market I'll add some photos when there is something to show!