Week 2

This week has flown by - Ben & William made more raised beds for the poly tunnel out of old feeding troughs on Monday.  David & Hilary planted seeds - corn salad, carrots and acorns - then planted some chitting potatoes - that i found at home!  We also have a lovely door handle on the poly tunnel curtesy of Ben & William.
Wednesday and Thursday the weather was lovely - cold and bright.  We mucked out the hens & ducks with Danny, and then set off to collect top soil from all the mole hills in the field!  This has been put into the ex-feed troughs in the poly tunnel along with some lovely rotted manure from our horses. Danny helped rake leaves for a few minutes, but again his attention wandered very quickly - and he was really only interested in finding Lucy (sister) to go and check on 'his' turkeys!  We checked the portland sheep again in the afternoon - and cleaned out their water troughs.
Thursday, Bob brought his bird nesting box over, with some offcuts of wood, that Travis Perkins had kindly donated, so that the students can make their own boxes.  The morning was interrupted as the sheep were being 'scanned' before lambing, and i thought the students would like to watch - unfortunately we got there rather too late, but the 'scanning man' very kindly showed the students how his machine worked, and how it calculated how many sets of triplets, twins or singles each ewe sheep was going to have.  We have 4 sheep that are not in lamb.  Back to bird boxes then, and our three students have made one each, and painted them.  Next week, they hope to 'sight' them on the farm, and then keep a diary of 'who goes where'.   According to Bob, they will mainly attract Great Tits!
Steve did a great job helping me finish raking and clearing leaves in the garden - and putting them onto our compost.
I had a call last week from someone wanting to practise their dry stone walling - great news!  So, Rob turned up today and spent the morning working on our wall - in the bitter cold - brave man!