Shearing at Saddlescombe in the 1860s . . and today

The photo below is from Maude Robinson's book 'A South Downs farm in the sixties' - in the book Maude recalls her childhood memories of growing up at Saddlescombe Farm in the 1860s. This book is obviously very special to us, not only because it helps to visualise what Saddlescombe would have been like over 150 years ago, but it reminds us just what a small part of history we are and the responsibility we have to look after Saddlescombe for future generations, including hopefully Molly and Freddie.

Anyway, we have included this photo as last week we sheared all our flock for the first time at Saddlescombe and the team effort seemed no different to the 1860s. Shearing time provides an opportunity for everyone to get involved, young and old, and amazing Emma, who helps us a couple of days a week, and Alex, who was on work experience, had a go at shearing a sheep!

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle

Shearing at Saddlescombe 1860s

Shearing at Saddlescombe 2014

Alex teaching Molly and friends to roll a fleece

Emma learning to shear

Alex learning to shear

Haymaking - an emotional rollercoaster

Believe it or not but haymaking is a complete emotional roller coaster. To make some good hay ideally you need 5 cracking days of sun, and lots of kit (farm machinery . . . toys). This year we decided to avoid the frustrations and challenges of making hay and make silage which is basically a little easier as you cut it, bale it and wrap it in plastic (expensive) and some would argue less stressful in terms of not checking the weather forecast every 5 minutes!

Well, when we checked the weather forecast and saw 5 days of blistering sun, we could not resist making some hay! Our neighbours, Mark, Gary, Michael and Oliver Lee have been incredibly generous with lending us some of their machinery and helping out. The first three days went well. Michael mowed the field, we tedded (fluffed up) the grass twice to dry it out, and then the forecast changed, and it rained! It's so upsetting, but we got a grip, the sun came out again, we tedded the grass to dry it out and Matt the baler man baled it up for us. We then raced to get it in the barn . . . all ready for the winter. Job done. 

Next year we're going to make silage ...

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle

Michael mowing

Tedding (fluffing up)

Molly assessing if the grass it ready to bale ... NO ... too green

Matt with his baler

Our first Saddlescombe bale!

Our first load aboard

Safely in the barn

Henry and his wives

Not Tudor times but 2014 here at Saddlescombe!  Having discussed calving times with some helpful and informed friends and family we decided it was time for Henry to meet his wives which means we will be calving for the first time here at Saddlescombe in February and March 2015.  We weren't sure how loading him into the livestock trailer would go, but it seems those boys always know, just like the rams do when it comes to their time to meet the girls.  He trotted up and happily skipped out of the trailer and did a good circuit (running) around the field until he found them.  He seemed even bigger out of the yard and in the field and compared to the cows coats, his seemed very dull in colour.  Now it is gleeming like the others and looks wonderful, such a deep, velvety brown/red.  The cows remain a joy to have on the farm and going to visit them is a treat, they are so quiet as we walk amongst them.  We take a bucket with a few treats so we can have an excuse to give them a cuddle!

It probably seems like the sheep are taking a bit of a back seat at the moment, well they're not honestly.  The lambs are growing really well, and the final ewe lambed only last week!  So lambing 2014 is now officially over.  Routine annual jobs like protecting them from fly strike (making sure flies eggs do not hatch out into maggots on their fleeces) to worming are all happening at the moment and then Brian is due to come down and shear for us at the beginning of June.

Our piggies arrive mid July, 3 girls (gilts) from the Tedfold Saddleback herd where I went on my pig keeping course back in February.  Really exciting.  They will live in the traditional piggery behind where Belle currently sleeps.  Not sure what she will think of her new neighbours when they arrive!

The farm like everywhere at this time of year is looking particularly stunning, cow parsley, buttercups, butterflies and the swallows have arrived and busy finding somewhere to nest.

We now have lamb burgers available with our lamb packs for easy suppers and delicious barbeque treats.  Pork and beef are a little way off yet, but watch this space!

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle

Some amazing new residents have arrived...

....what is the saying, always ask a busy person?  As lambing just started to slow down our bull (Henry) and 15 traditional Sussex cows and calves arrived!  Suddenly the farm really does feel busy with many of our lambs now out in the fields with their Mums enjoying the spring grass and our cows already looking very at home in their new surroundings.  Henry the bull has taken up residence in his own pen next to the sheep who are waiting to lamb.  He seems so big!  and apparently is a little overweight so we are being careful on how much hay we are giving him, poor old boy, it seems amazing that an animal his size can fatten on just hay alone.  His wives are out at grass with their calves.  They are a wonderful deep red/brown colour depending on the lighting.  They are so quiet and seem quite happy to let us walk amongst them.  The day they arrived the youngest calf got separated from her Mum and sat on her own which allowed us to give her a big cuddle! They are so soft, almost like velvet.  That evening Roly scooped her up and reunited her with Mum.  My favorite visit to see them so far has been 2 days ago, we walked out to see them just after it had stopped raining and the sun had come out.  Their coats against the blue sky and spring grass was just so lovely and again noticing just how quiet they are.  We can't quite believe they belong to us!

Other big highlights of the last couple of weeks have been our 2 open days, the sun shone for us, we were so lucky and we welcomed lots of visitors to see our sheep and the girls performed with lots of people being lucky to see lambs being born.  Thank you to our amazing team of helpers who were just fantastic. To see some photos from the weekend click here

We've had wonderful vet students again this year, Annika and Charlotte from the Royal Veterinary College in London and Maria studying veterinary science in Liverpool.  All of them have worked so hard for us and really taken care of the lambs and ewes, and definitely chosen some favourite lambs who are real characters.  This season has thrown all the usual challenges at us from difficult births and adoptions but we've had what we think were some badger attacks out in some of the fields which have injured some of the lambs badly.  We brought them back in to take care of them and thankfully most are recovering well.  So we've had to be careful where we let lambs out for their first few days until they are big and strong enough to out run any predators.  Henry (our first ever orphan lamb) has really done us proud this year and had 2 of the most lovely lambs, well we think so, and we will keep them both in the flock for future breeding as luckily they are girls!

The farm is looking so beautiful now everything is greening up, the cow parsley is coming out and our new hedge is looking wonderful.

Freddie is just tractor mad already and Molly has been so busy helping feed the orphans and sweeping the yards and  helping Annika and Charlotte.  A real shepherdess in the making.

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle

Lambing 2014 highlights - Week 1

Ewes expecting twins strategically positioned in lambing paddocks

Meanwhile ewes expecting triplets get the lambing yard with en-suite facilities

Our first arrival over 7 days early . . . we're never quite ready

Strong set of twins born with Saddlescombe Farm and Devils Dyke in the background

Belle has to wait patiently during most of lambing

Old hay rack meets new hurdles

OH! Get off my hay!

Moving new born lambs into the trailer to take back to barn before night fall

First of the banners goes up - no going back now!

More to follow

From pleaches to pigs, from cows to crowds

Last week we saw our first hedge being layed and we watched in awe! Wow.  Thank you to the South Downs National Park team and their amazing instructor Gary Moore (national hedge laying champion). It's been a wonderful week of taking part and learning about this incredible skill and language - 'to pleach' to cut into the stem of the hedge which enables new shoots to appear and the old stem to bend over to create the new thick part of the hedge. Problem is now that it has made us so impatient to do the rest of the hedges.

There is so much going on at the moment from our new meat room being built to the sheep flock being pregnancy scanned and then crutched (the fleece around their backsides being removed to keep them clean during lambing and the newborn lambs find their mothers teets).  Oh and the most exciting thing of all buying our cows and calves!  They are a small herd of Sussex who currently live about 40 minutes away from us and we hope (SUBJECT to the vet health check) they will arrive with us right in the middle of lambing.  That really will be a big moment for us at Saddlescombe.

Other livestock who will be joining us are 4 little piggies in mid May.  I went on an excellent pig keeping course a couple of weeks ago with Neil and Michaela Giles who have pedigree Saddleback and Middle White pigs.  We will have 4 of their Saddleback weaners who are going to live the other side of Belle, in the traditional piggery outside our cottage.  What Belle will think of her new neighbours we're not sure!  I'm particularly excited about this as is Molly and I'm already worried about attachment issues but we will cross that slightly uneasy bridge when we come to it.

We're waiting for a few days of dry weather to start planting our spring barley.  It seems unbelieveable that we haven't had successive dry days to date and we are now in March.  Fingers crossed our farming neighbours Mark and Garry Lee who will be helping us, will be able to crack on in a few days.  As well as our spring barley we will be planting our wild bird seed crop as part of our environemental stewardship here at Saddlescombe.  This will act as a giant bird table (equivalent to 2 football pitches) for the birds in the winter in addition to the spreading of bird seed we are currently doing (see picture of Molly).  Bruce our RSPB adviser will be doing a survey of birds in a few weeks time so we are really looking forward to seeing what is making our farm their home.

Lambing is fast approaching and we have started to feed the ewes an additional high protein and energy feed as they enter their last weeks of pregnancy . . . having said that, we did have a surprise set of triplets born a couple of weeks ago, don't ask! We are busy getting ready for our Lambing Open Days (12/13 April), we are really excited about it but slightly worried how many visitors we might get given Brighton is only 5 miles away!  The barns are going to have such a wonderful atmosphere, we can't wait to share it.  We will be selling our lamb burgers and Kerry and Mick will be open at the Hikers Rest café for all other refreshments, yum!  We did a thank you barbeque for the hedge layers on Sunday and got fantastic feedback for our burgers, so the chalk grassland is clearly helping us produce delicious lamb.

Finally we were part of a great school visit last Friday which the National Trust had organised.  St Lukes school from Brighton came (all 90 of them) and they had time with us doing sheepy jobs, time with Catherine doing a trail around the farm and with Graham they learnt about scrub clearing.  The feedback has been really good so we are looking forward to doing more.

Soon I will be blogging about lambing....and calving . . . and then harvest, we can't believe it!

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle

A very different kind of January...

....we are still getting used to the idea that we are going to be lambing outdoors in open yards for the first time this spring here at Saddlescombe and feel very excited about it. Once the ewes have lambed they will be taken into one of the maternity wards in the wonderful old traditional barns, which have not housed a sheep flock since the 1940s, which will make it even more special. All our ewes are still outdoors, previously in Oxfordshire they would have been inside by now being fed hay and even shorn.  We're unsure how the ewes feel about still being outdoors and having to put up with getting very wet!  They don't appear to mind as there is still plenty of grass and during a big sheep move manoeuvre across the farm on Monday they had a pit stop in the farm yard for us to take a good look at them and make sure their condition is in good shape. At this time of year when the ewes have their winter fleece, it is only by putting your hand on their back can you really access their condition. The good news is they are doing well on the grass at Saddlescombe.

Moving the sheep around the farm has to be well thought through and will always involve us asking for an extra pair of hands to help us get them across the road.  The latest move with the ewes was fun as they have moved from one end of the farm to right opposite the farm entrance, so it is lovely seeing them every time we leave or come home.  Molly enjoys saying good morning to them!

Soon "Bob the scanner" will be paying his annual visit to us to tell us how many lambs they are having to make sure they get the appropriate feed in the build up to lambing. This is an exciting job but makes us feel a little apprehensive too as so much depends on it.

We are busy planning for our lambing weekend on the 12th and 13th April.  We are looking for helpers so please get in touch with us if you are able to give us a hand, jobs will be everything from helping in the lambing yards to car parking.

Our lambs born last spring have been grazing some stubble turnips on the highest point of the farm and enjoying some amazing views of the sea, Devils Dyke and Brighton - all from one spot.

Last week we had a real scare when Freddie our 11 month old boy was taken into the high dependency ward of the childrens hospital in Brighton with Bronchiolitis. He is heaps better now, thanks to Dr Patel and his amazing team who took such great care of him and Gemma, Lisa, Natalie and Anna, his amazing nurses. Whilst we hope Molly and Freddie will have a wonderful childhood growing up on the farm, having Freddie in hospital for fours days and nights did remind us just how difficult it is being a parent and shepherd to a lot of sheep. We decided to postpone Molly's 3rd Birthday until Freddie was back home and we could spoil her with a trip to the beach (above). We think we got away with it, until she can read these blogs!

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Freddie, Boris and Belle