TONTO!

We have a new arrival - in the shape of 'Tonto' ....a magnificent Wilthire Horn ram.  A friend has very kindly lent him to us for a couple of months to run with our 15 ewes.  He looked very happy to be let out onto the bank last night, and has already met some of the girls!

It's five years since we started the Care Farm - i can hardly believe it...we have come such a long way since those first few months (with no electricity!) and we still have some of the original students here each week!

We had a visit from Judy at \Butts Farm last week - she came to look at our livestock and see if we could show one of our ewe lambs that we are rather proud of!  Gerry has been halter training her in readiness and we were very pleased that Judy thought the same as us - so hopefully we will get her to one or two shows next year.

We are having a stall at the local school in North Cerney's Christmas Fair - in the Village Hall on saturday this week 10am to 2pm

we were very lucky to have been invited up to the Star College last week, by The Wiggly Worm Charity, to an afternoon's cooking in their Star Bistro!  We took along lots of our produce; heritage tomatoes, parsnips, rocket, apples, and lots of hedgerow fruit.  Six of our students took part, and all thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  Sue Guilding from the charity led the afternoon.  We split up into three groups, and made 'rocket pesto', sloe chutney, blackberry & elderberry jam, followed by apple cobbler, fruit flapjack and blackberry yoghurt cake!  At the end of the afternoon, we all sat down and had a delicious meal.  Sue made pasta to go with the pesto, and a lovely stroganoff and bolognese, and we had a beautiful tomato salad, made with all our heritage tomatoes!  Everyone had a very jolly time, and thank you so much to Sue and her team for making it possible.

Our heritage tomatoes - delicious!

Danny stirring the jam!

Helen & Charlotte looking very pleased
with their fruity flapjack!

It's half term this week, and we were due to pick up the ram we borrowed last year - but the day before; the owner rang and said he had died!  Luckily, another friend in Chedworth is lending us one of his...so we are going to pick him up on Thursday next week

My Birthday cake made by Gerry -
obviously it's Manny !

one evening shutting the poultry in

We have had some really beautiful

sun sets recently, and i managed to 

get this one on my phone last

week

DON'T FORGET THE CHRISTMAS FAIR ON SUNDAY 8 NOV

AT STAR COLLEGE ULLENWOOD!

OPEN DAYS!

This week we had another lot of Open Days and we had a very special guest on Monday - no other than TWEEDY from Giffords Circus!  He was brilliant - arriving with his iron in tow; dressed up and with a wonderful umbrella with bells hanging of it all playing a different tune!  The students loved him and showed him all the animals.  He even juggled with our hen's eggs whilst standing on the table in the garden!! (photo to follow)

Tidying for the Open Days!

We had a group from The National Star College on Wednesday, and the students loved showing them round too.

Gerry starting to train one of our ewe lambs!

We took 3 of our lambs off last week to the abattoir, and have pre-sold most of them, so we are taking another two tomorrow.  All our lambs have done so well this year - the ewe lambs look fantastic.   We are going to try and show a couple of them next year, so Gerry is going to try a rope halter on them on Monday!  We continue to round them up each week, and put them through the 'race' as it means that some of our less able students can really get the feel of them.

Week 3

This week we have a new student starting and she has joined our Wednesday group.  So we now do three full days per week.  Some of our students wanted to do two days per week, which is a great tribute to the work we are doing here at the Care Farm,  It goes without saying, that we couldn't do the extra day without help from our very willing volunteers so a huge thank you to all of them.

our beautiful lambs

We have been weighing the lambs regularly so that we can choose 3 or 4 to go off next week.  We try to have lamb to sell in October, and then pork for November/December.  We will have 3 lambs ready for the weekend of 10 October.  They look fantastic this year; better than ever.
The ewes are still on the bank, but we have reduced their field size so that they don't get too fat, before the ram comes at the last week of October.

Our veg boxes are still going well - we now have loads of runner beans, and delicious yellow and red tomatoes, and yellow and red raspberries!  Salad bags, and a mixture of kale and purple sprouting.

We had a group from Nationwide Building Society here a couple of weeks back - they spent all morning 'hedgerow' picking - ready for us to make our special Christmas Jellies.  Then they spent the next hour stacking all our straw bales in the yard ready for the winter - there were some very impressive photographs!  A big thank you to the group - it's great to have volunteer support from local businesses.

Nationwide volunteers bale stacking!

Blackberries and Sloes picked by the volunteers
 for our hedgerow jelly

We have more Open Days planned for week of 5 October, so anyone interested in the Care Farm can come and have a look round.  Our students love showing people round!

new term!

We had great weather for our Car Boot Sale on Bank Holiday weekend ....not enough car 'booters' but a good lot of punters!   Next year we are going to make it a Family Fun Day, with lots of different attractions.  Thank you to all our helpers - especially Neil, Karen, Jacqui, Gerry and of course Mike, Luke and Mia - who were on traffic duty!  A special thank you too to Fi and David Symondson for the loan of their field.

Patch at his first show...winning
a rosette!

It's our first week back with students and they have all been working really hard.  We have been busy cleaning out the yard; in preparation for the winter and storing straw for bedding.  We managed to get about 50 straw bales loaded, unloaded and stacked in the yard on thursday - i'm sure all our students slept well that night!

The lambs enjoying themselves next to the Care Farm

The lambs have been weaned and are in the field by the Care Farm - we have 3 cracking lambs ready to go off to the butchers at the end of the month.

We have had a good summer for vegetable boxes - supplying three or four families each week;  together with eggs from the hens and ducks.

We have a week of Open Days coming up again in October - so do look at the website for details

Our regular students are now on holiday for 5 weeks or so, but of course there's still lots to do on the farm!  We had a lovely end of term picnic lunch last week and gave out our 'in-house' certificates and worksheets to the students.  They especially loved the mugs Gerry had ordered for them - each one had their own name and a photograph of their favorite Care Farm animal on the back! My mother came to the lunch along with Sue, one of our fantastic Trustees, and it was lovely to be able to show them what we had been doing this year.

The ducklings that Cheltenham Ladies College hatched for us are enormous!   They have now been out with the other ducks for a week, but still sleep in their own house while it's so hot...The chicks are also all in together with the main hens at night, but there is a definite 'pecking order' when they are let out!.

the ducklings sampling the pond!

can you spot what's in this photo? 

We had a visiting group of volunteers here today, from Mira Showers in Cheltenham.  They worked tirelessly painting the porta cabin and weeding, strimming and clearing the banks and round the back of the portacabins.   We are so grateful to everyone that can give up their time to help....and the whole site looks great now - ready for our School Age Summer Activities starting next week!

If you haven't booked your children in - it may be too late, but worth an email to Gerry just in case....
gerryfouracres@hotmail.co.uk

Dont forget to come along to the CAR BOOT SALE in NORTH CERNEY on SATURDAY 29 AUGUST at 10am!

JULY ALREADY!

Oh dear yet again i've got really behind with my 'blogging' - sorry!   So much has been happening here....we sold 9 of the weaners last month, and have kept 3 boars and a lovely gilt.   The two breeding gilts have gone to a lovely new home near Wallingford, and hopefully will be breeding before long.  Did you know that there are only 500 registered Oxford Sandy and Black sows in this country?   We are really pleased to be part of the breeding programme.

The fab four!

The weather has been SO hot this week, that we moved the 4 piglets up to their new home in the woodland where they have masses of room and lots of shade and they are loving it.  Sandy is in the next woodland area having a well earned rest.

We have had lots of chicks hatching from two of our bantams, but no such luck with the incubator...we bought 18 fertile eggs and incubated them, but yet again we only had 2 chicks hatch!  They are lovely lavender arucanas, and we are really hoping that they are both girls!
We have been given 5 lovely ducklings that were hatched by Cheltenham Ladies College pupils - gosh they are filthy little blighters, but very endearing!  They have been under heat lamps in the porta cabin but we have had them out during the day.

All our raised beds are brimming with vegetables and we have been thinning and picking regularly.   The salads are huge in the poly tunnel, and the fruit is coming along beautifully.  The sweet peas are flowering, and so we have been picking furiously to make sure they keep coming.  We delivered the first 70 stems to Oops a Daisy in Cirencester today - hopefully we will be able to keep supplying them for at least a month.

We had 3 very successful Open Days in June with lots of visitors and some great feed back. Open Farm Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, and Gerry and Jo with Danny, showed everyone around.  Lots of local people came having googled farms listed on the National Open Farm Website.