Pigs & Poultry

What an end to this years showing season! Our homebred January gilt took the Lop of the Year title at the final in September.
Throughout the year there are qualifying classes at the major county shows for British Lop boars and gilts born after the 1st of January. The final is then held at the Melton [...]

Finally, we have had some decent rainfall. It has been incredibly dry and we were looking in danger of becoming the Lake District without lakes.  As June progressed even the larger rivers were beginning to dry up. Many farmers have been carrying water to their stock as the smaller becks had long dried up. [...]

When you have done the last show of the year and winter approaches it seems an age to the first show of the following year. However, suddenly show schedules start arriving on the doormat and the new season looms.
Our first show is the Newark and Nottingham in early May. Of course, preparation starts months ahead [...]

Finally, spring has started to make a tentative appearance. The grass has begun to grow and the buds on the trees are more noticeable but it very slow. Isaac spotted a swallow at the weekend and there are primroses in the woods. The first few lambs are appearing on the lower intakes and we all [...]

Finally, our first pigs to the Actress gilt have arrived. We bought this gilt at Melton Mowbray last September at the British Lop Show and Sale. She had come all the way from Cornwall and it looked like she would be going back there when she didn’t meet the reserve.
We hadn’t taken a trailer because [...]

The cold snap continued well into the New Year.  The Lake District looked beautiful but conditions under foot were treacherous. I managed to stay on my feet most of the time but inevitably you were going to go at some point! The worst being when having fallen carrying a full bucket of feed the goats [...]

Snow is falling all around us……..
After all the rain of November, December has brought us snow and lots of it! All our pigs are in and housed for winter although both the British Lop and Large Black can happily live outdoors all year round.
The ducks and geese are not all bothered by the cold snap [...]

I don’t think there is any doubt that Cumbria’s rainfall in November exceeded all previous records. Our land has a river along one boundary and in the twenty years I have been here it has transformed from a meandering watercourse to a raging torrent on more than one occasion. I have, however, never seen it [...]