Welcome to our February newsletter

(Nearly got caught out by the short month!) 

I think the best days of the year are not the long hot days of summer when it’s light well into the evening and it’s warm enough to eat outside, but those very first days of spring (or perhaps ‘fools spring’) that you sometimes get in February or early March. When the sun burns off the morning’s frost and leads to a crisp bright day with, perhaps by midday, enough height from the sun to feel a little warmth.  These are the days which can coax the first sulphur yellow male Brimstones from their slumber. They emerge and patrol up and down their favourite stretch of sheltered warm hedge looking for the slightly more subtle coloured females.

The first two weeks of February have given us many days like this, although I’ve not had a chance to visit my best early Brimstone spot on one of these occasions.  The beautiful weather has encouraged Song Thrush to begin singing, easy to recognise as they normally repeat each phrase 3 times before moving onto the next triplet of flutey verse. The Blackbirds have also started up their singing, also easy to identify as their tune always has a touch of the blues about it. These two top songsters at this time are also joined by the percussion of the first Great Spotted Woodpeckers drumming from high up on a tree to attract a mate.

Turkey

We had a few turkeys left from Christmas, these were immediately frozen as either whole birds, crowns or beautiful small turkey breast joints. These will be fantastic centrepieces for an Easter feast and are priced to sell. The quality is just the same as a fresh turkey.

They can be pre-ordered on the website or will be available at the pop up shop on Saturday 4th March. We are also more than happy to arrange an alternative collection day if you can't make Saturday.

We've also got a fantastic offer on turkey legs and wings.

Trees

Each January and February we have to harvest enough timber from around the farm to keep our biomass boiler running for the following winter. It heats water which is then circulated to the farmhouse and my house to provide heating and hot water in an almost zero carbon way.

This year the trees to be harvested were seven 25m tall poplars growing on the left hand side of the track by the farm exit. They were planted from cuttings in1987 after the big storms we had - Dad planted the cuttings which came from another poplar that had been blown over just opposite the farm exit.

We had, for a few years perhaps, been putting off felling these because they were so tall, and we knew they would damage some fencing when they came down. We felled seven because they could all be removed in the same direction and therefore once repaired, the fence should be safe for another 30ish years. The timber hopefully will last us several winters so next February we’ll have nothing to do!

Most of the trees we harvest are willow or alder which regrow from the cut stem, this is called coppicing. We coppice them on a 10-15 year rotation. Poplar will coppice or grow from suckers but because of the size of these trees I think the shock may be too much for them. As a back-up, Mum and Dad planted cuttings from the felled trees in the same way they did 37 years ago.

Poplars support about 100 insect species which is great, but oak, willow, birch, hawthorn and blackthorn all support more so some of these will be added to increase diversity.

If you want to learn more about our boiler it’s in the shed in the car park so please ask myself or Dad at the pop up shop and we’ll talk you through it.  

Pop-up farm shop - Saturday 4th March 10am - noon

Park Farm, Hook Street, SN5 3NY

Our next pop up shop will be on the 4th of March 10-12, we’ll have lots of fresh beef as well as all our other great local produce – milk, eggs, bread, lardy cakes and lots more. If you’ve never been, please do come along, it’s so much more sociable and fun than going to the supermarket! And don’t forget your turkey for Easter.

Lindsay's shepherds update

So far 23 ewes have lambed, and I have another 7 ewes left to lamb over the next week. There have been some challenges: poorly ewes and poorly lambs but, touch wood, all is looking well, and they are on the mend. However, I am missing many hours of sleep and currently consist mainly of coffee and cake!!

I have been incredibly lucky with the weather, and this has meant that the lambs have been venturing outside with their mums from 2 days old. They spend the first day/24 hours in a lambing pen. This is a hurdled pen 6ft x 6ft that allows the ewe and lambs to bond and also means I can keep a closer eye on them to make sure they are feeding etc. They come back into the shed at night as we have a lot of foxes around and I feel they are a little vulnerable whilst small. Talking of small I had the smallest lamb I have ever seen born on the 10th Feb. She weighed 1.8kg and her twin sister was 4kg. Usually, twins are 4kg+ and singles 5.5kg+. I was very worried about her as she was so small but as Shakespeare said “Though she be but little she is fierce”, she is holding her own with the bigger lambs and is thriving (See photo above)

Van lamb has had a baby! For those of you that don’t know the story of Van lamb I shall explain… In January 2021 a ewe had a slightly difficult lambing and lambed twins. Sadly she rejected one of them and that lamb went hypothermic (Hypothermia is quite common in lambs and usually is the result of the mother not licking the lamb dry and the lamb not being strong enough to have its first drink, hence they have to be kept a very close eye on). I had to take this lamb away from the ewe and warm her up in front of the fan heater in the campervan and stomach tube her some colostrum which I had stored in the freezer. Colostrum is the first milk and contains essential antibodies for the lamb to fight any disease/bacteria that may be present. I was now in effect this lamb’s mum and she relied on me completely, she stayed in the campervan with me and Colin (the dog) so I could feed her regularly and keep her warm. Being a slightly weird and superstitious person, I felt if I gave her a name it would somehow jinx her and she wouldn’t thrive (not all my sheep have names but they are usually referred to or known as something), so when talking about her to Chris she was referred to as Van Lamb and this has stuck. She is the first (and hopefully last) lamb that I completely reared myself and she is pretty special to me. She had a little ram (boy) lamb on Valentine’s day at 6.30am. When a ewe starts lambing they usually start baaing and van lamb has a baa that sounds like she has a 40 a day habit so I immediately knew it was her! She has taken to motherhood very well and I suppose it means I am now a Granny!!!!

Wildlife

Once or twice a year I get the chance to walk around the farm with my friend and top naturalist Nick Adams. I first met Nick when he led a dawn chorus walk around Neigh Bridge nature reserve. He opened my ears to birdsong and once I learnt how to identify a Chaffinch song I was hooked. I’ve been bothering Nick ever since then with all my nature questions and he generously shares his knowledge with me.

As we walk around the farm Nick has the ability to spot and identify things from a far greater distance than anyone else I know. While most people need a decent view of a bird to identify it, Nick’s experience means that distant things can be identified by silhouette, posture, speed of wing flap and a whole host of things that would pass most people by. As we walked we saw a selection of the normal farmland birds, before a finch like bird flew across the field in front of us. I didn’t really give it a second glance, probably a Goldfinch – lots of those about. But Nick followed it with his binoculars, tracking the distant black dot left to right. When the binoculars were lowered Nick casually said “Brambling”.

I tried to play it cool and contain my excitement (I failed). I’ve never seen a Brambling on the farm, in fact I’ve only ever seen them twice before. 

Bramblings resemble Chaffinch, they feed on beech mast and if winters are bad or food supplies low they fly from Scandinavia south. For this reason Brambling numbers vary from year to year. Sometimes they form into large flocks and in eastern Europe they’ve been known to mass into flocks of several million – anyway, I was thrilled with just one.

The Brambling is now the 101st bird on the farm list.

Farm tours