I have added to my solar powered world with a solar powered oscillating fan in my polytunnel! I got all the bits from.....ebay for a good price..... and connected them all up to one of my electric fence batteries. To my amazement it works and keeps the hot air circulating rather than becoming humid and its very good! I have also connected one to the ducks fencing along with a little gate made from a pallet to get in rather than climb over the electrified netting. Itworks so well and keeps the battery topped up so well the ducks, who are prone to diving through the netting and raiding the hens food have not been near it!
I also planted my tomatoes in the polytunnel a few weeks ago and mulched them with good old waste wool and installed a 'leaky pipe' a recycked rubber hose pipe with deliberate leaks that trickle feeds the bed with water. Its great and the aubergines are now planted too. peppers and chillies will follow when big enough as will the cucumbers any day. Pete obtained a tomato planter in a job lot of bits and bobs at an auction, it is now lined with wool, filled with compost and home to 2 totem variety basket cherry tomato plants

Just before I found out I had got the funding for the felting project I went to Wonderwool in Builth Wells. I had my knee surgery 2 days before and was told not to drive for 2 weeks.....in fact the pale and pasty indoor type surgeon (who is very nice really!!) had said I wouldn't be doing much farming for a few months........what planet does he inhabit.....us self employed folks don't get sick pay and the sheep won't feed themselves!.........Anyway off I went with the most splendid person as my co conspirator....Lucie Wilby sheep artist extrodinaire!

I must explain..........when I booked my stand at Wonderwool I had a double stand including a pen for some sheep booked. I was due to exhibit the Ouessants but due to the Blue tongue movement regs could not. I had a brainwave (it occaisionally happens) that if not real sheep some pictures would be good....and the artist responsible sitting painting them too!
So Lucie and I set up our wares and retreated to an amazing b&b with the best hosts ever thouroughly shattered!
On the following morning we were back at the showground bright and early and sampled some of the foodie delights as the show was sharing with the Mid Wales Mouthful starring Anthony Worral Thompson........and yes he is very short and very plump!!!
After a very hectic busy day selling a lot more than we could have hoped for we had some dinner and followed a fellow sheep breeder (coloured sheep and Ouessants) back to her remote Welsh farm to look at some rams with a thought to buy.
Now I live in Wellies and am even seen in the supermarket in them.......but of course both Lucie and I had our glad rags and shoes.....we had not even contemplated buying sheep. So whilst Lesley sent her sheep dog over a distant mountain to find the rams we found ourselves in a boggy field being approached bu a herd of Dexter cattle intent on loving us and rubbing their heads all over us. Well I was still not to steady on my feet so rather than be knocked over by the amiable cattle we climbed a gate into the next field where we had 2 stark choices 1. go back through the cows who were convinced we were bearing gifts of food and were all looking longinly over the gate and were too tame and friendly to be shooed away or 2. ford a small stream that in our normal wellied state would be easy but was like crossing the Nile in new shoes!!
Lucie decided to do the stepping stone hop.....and promptlu slipped and got her feet soaked. I decided that as I could neither jump nor hop due to my knee a cold paddle was in order and removed socks and shoes and waded across much to the horror of the flock of sheep who were making up the spectators!
Eventually we both got to solid ground, the sheepdog found the rams and I agreed to purchase Josh a Wensleydale x Charolais x Icelandic coloured ram and I also put my name on a nice little Ouessant ram to be collected at weaning.
Sunday passed with hectic sales and Lucie and I returned home tired but happy with several purchases too! I bought some icelandic wool tops to knit and felt into bags, some dye stuffs and a skein of Colinette yarn that I took a fancy to trying out as I am having some of my wool made into slub yarn later this year. I made a cosy for my coffee pot and am making a tea cosy with the rest........as you can see I am a wool producer not a knitter!!
Thanks all for the very positive response to the felting project.........its going to be amazing and will hopefull raise the profile of wool!

STOP PRESS NEWS!!!!

The funding for the felting plant has been successful so we will be up and running by the autumn!!
The eco business unit that the project will occupy is a recycled ww2 building on an old ww2 airfield at Dunkeswell in the Devon bit of the Blackdowns! It now has a new roof, good insulation to the roof and walls, a latest technology compost toilet and a wood pellet stove that will use local wood chips!...........it is fab and I saw it today!! This felting plant will hopefully be up and running by the autumn..........more news to follow soon!

Have been working hard in the veg garden and here are some pics to show you what I have been up to! I manured several beds with very well rotted sheep and cow manure (rotted for 2-3 years until crumbly) I am now putting a weed cover over through which I will plant beans, courgettes etc!
The cabbages, kale and white sprouting broccoli are in a bed topped with home made compost and to keep the pigeons away......and the rabbits of which we have lots, I put several large flower pots over the bed and stretched netting over the top. A few old give away CDs on strings to sparkle and flap completed that bed....and they are growing nicely. Some blue water pipe I found has been used along with some netting to keep birds, cats, errant hens, and other marauders off my onions and seeds....parsnips, persil (a german parsnip type root) and carrots......very good results so far and a good use for the pipe! Plastic sheeting could be used instead to make a temporary tunnel.
I have also bought a huge trailerful of wood chips for £5 to cover the paths and areas around the beds. This has a triple function.....1 it stops slipping and sliding, as the veg plot is not flat. 2 It acts as a mulch/weed suppressant on the pathways, and 3 the slugs and snails hate it as it is sharp!! With that around the beds, the hens ranging around 2 sides and ducks on the other 2 sides hopefully I will have good slug control......we will see!
The Ouessants are grazing the new orchard where temporary tree guards have been built with free recycled wire and non treated posts that were 5p each. There are a lot of nettles in this area which are going to be strimmed regularly for the sheep to eat as they like cut nettles, and also to encourage grass growth. Have also planted potatoes and they are through. Now installing leaky pipe system in the polytunnel to combat water running downhill too quickly.....more to follow soon.
On Wednesday last week I went to the hospital for my knee surgery and was in and out in 5 hours! Well they found not a torn cartiledge but a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament so now I have no ACL in either knee! I will now be put on the list for the ACL physio clinic and knee ligament reconstruction at a later date......oh joy!

Beautiful knitted christening shawl..........a real work of art was knitted in my Dorset Down 4 ply type knitting wool by Sarah D an amazing knitter and owner of the blog linked on this blog....the 21st Centuary housewifes unbought blog!

This is a commission knit..........so if anyone else wants an heirloom, get in touch!
This wool is being used by a lot of people now and I have it on cones for weaving and knitting machines too!

We had snow last week......lots of it, enough to throw snowballs! It was all gone by lunchtime but I went out and took some photos to prove it. The recycled fencing is now all finished and had a couple of second hand gates added to it and very smart it all looks.....ok so the stock wire is not quite as tight as if it were from a new roll since it was pulled from its previous home with a tractor but with Petes skill as a fencing contractor among other skills its not bad!

Some friends came over to move some manure for me on Saturday and we now have 3 raised beds topped up with very well rotted(3 years) crumbly black gold! I will now put on some more mulch and the beans are going to love it! Got some tomato plants in the country market in Taunton 2 yellow, 2 plum and 4 cherry toms. Peppers and chillies are in pots and its all looking good.
Sunday I went to a meeting of some of the creative living forum to catch up with one or two and have a natter....I really don't get out enough! Knee being repaired next week......counting the days!......will have to take it easy as I don't want to spoil the repair, but am off to Wonderwool a few days later........I am going to sit down and rest (?) whilst I'm there!
I have just tendered for and got a big bit of community development work in Dorset so will be working hard over the next few months. I have a lovely student from Bournmouth Uni as my assistant!

Red tape.............!
This morning I should have been talking on the Radio this morning, on the Beeb, about all sorts of stuff including the embryonic wool felting business I'm setting up called Woolly Waste......but I wasn't there at the studo due to a variety of factors, mostly my knee that decided to hurt like crazy whilst getting out of bed!.........dangerous activity getting out of bed with a torn cartiledge!
So having been promised an appointment 'within 2-3 weeks' I have waited 3 weeks and .......nothing! So at 8.30am right on the start of their opening time I phone hospital.....and the conversation went something along the lines of.....you are booked you say.....yes, please can you tell me a date yet......mmmmnnn ummmm well we have no record of you are you sure you saw the consultant and went to the pre op assessment?.....YES (through gritted teeth).....have you a reference number from your letter?.... No, because you havent sent me one yet!.....Oh! Ok I will see what we can do the earliest appointment seems to be August as I know we are chokablock until the end of May.........but I cannot wait until August I have a life to get on with and cannot even take the dogs for a walk or safely handle my sheep, infact I cannot even cross the road without risking my knee giving way (at this point I burst into tears) ........oh sorry, we have found you on the system and you are under non urgent surgery.................BUT IT IS URGENT I sob, feeling rising hysteria.........Right we will see what can be done and phone you back.

I was so devastated.....if I was rich or a footballer or the queen I would have had it repaired by now but not being able to do my job properly, having to have someone help me with my sheep, someone exercise my dogs, someone carry the washing downstairs, and friends and family helping with ordinary tasks such as heavy shopping bags is classed as non urgent! What is this country coming too!!

Phone went at 11am......hospital.....they could fit me in on the 23rd April.....2 weeks time!
Well why had it taken me getting hysterical on the phone for that to happen? Probably the same reason that by my persistant phonecalls had got me an appointment with the surgeon originally, out of hours at the private hospital and cost me £120. I have had to buy a very uncomfortable metal hinged knee brace too at £75 to be able to walk outside the house and do tasks.....if it were not for that brace I could not even walk down the field or feed the pigs let alone lay a hedge. If I try to do anything quickly or suddenly or carry anything I am in trouble.

So I will get knee repaired on 23rd 7 weeks after the initial accident. BUT the important issue here is if I had not the capacity and confidence to make a song and a dance, and not the money to pay.....I would still be waiting for the initial consultation let alone be on a list even for August....best health service in the world the NHS......thats what my father thought.....I don't agree!

Add to this a phone call I received last week at 7am............from Animal Health the dept that sends us ALL those forms and regulations. They wanted to know if my animal records were accurate! They had some queries......firstly why had I only recorded 2 sheep deaths. I answered because I only had 2 sheep die ......well what about lambs.......well yes we lost a few one to a fox (no body to be found), didn't mention the 2 to the dog as they were very tiny and we incinerated them. Well she was very 'official' and said we must report ALL lamb deaths even aborted ones.
Well.....I obviously have been at this too long....we can bury a dog but not a tiny aborted lamb foetus.....we must take it to the appropriate disposal facilities....brings to mind a story I was told this week by a dartmoor farmer who put 150 sheep out onto the moor but when he got them in for lambing only found 141. Animal health of course asked him to account for the missing sheep! Hid reply was 'well they is probably dead' the animal health officer wanted to know how he had disposed of the bodies to which he looked blankly at them and said you'd be best asking the crows and foxes that my dear........which right flummoxed them as there were now at least 9 once eartagged skeletons on the moor.....along with all the other hundreds of bodies of deer, ponies, sheep, cattle etc that have dies over the years and not been found!!! Scandalous!!! ;o)

Lambs! We have 2 ouessant lambs a ewe lamb born last week and a nice ram lamb born yesterday. We also have some Dorset Down cross lambs and the new owners of my pedigree Dorsets that I sold last year sent me a lovely pic of 101s lambs....ewe on the left ram on the right!
I have also been busy.....making lemon curd....jars full of it to keep the egg mountain at bay! and I took a pic, along with bread and apple buns. We make all our own bread, shop bought is not the same and everyone loves home baked bread here. Also am posting a picture of the veg plot....so that I can hopefully see something growing when I take a snap later on!!!
Its been beautiful here the last few days, warm and sunny with little fluffy clouds. As a result I have mowed the grass, strimmed under the electric fence, painted the fences and me with one of those sprayer things that is supposed to be quicker than a brush....mmmm! Unpainted me and my jumper!! planted my onions and spuds and generally tidied up.....!
Wrenched my knee despite strapping and knee brace..........(wish they would hurry up with my appointment!).......climbing over the chickens electric fencing. Oh the joys!!

Pete won a class at the Blackdown Hills Hedge Event.........and a large shield is now on the shelf for the year!! Here are the before and after pics.
I have finished the hedge shown in a previous post and it is shown here along with a picture of Pete making pea sticks and hedging stakes.
The material taken out of a hedge when it is laid is a lot, probably half of the stems in a thick hedge are coppiced out and as this hedge is hazel we made a lot of useful items such as bean poles for this years beans, pea sticks for both growing the peas on and protecting seedlings from the pigeons, a lot of stakes for temporary fencing and for staking a north somerset style hedge at the national championships which Pete will be entering in the autumn and lastly stems to put by for making walking sticks. A little of the waste was tidied up and burnt but in true permaculture style the harvest from this hedge was huge.....coppicing is an example in true low input high output!!

I have recently explored my family tree via some interesting websites and got right back into the 17somethings with some of the names which are unusual! Most of my family come from Devon, Dorset and the Somerset/Gloucester border where they were variously agricultural labourers, sailors and horse dealers!. However my paternal grandfather was from Freston in Suffolk, just down the road from 'Constable country' and came to Devon when sent as a policeman to Devonport dockyard near Plymouth, why I don't know, but he met my grandmother whilst there! He was a great grower of veg and though blind in his later years would grow veg along lines of wires so he knew where the parsnips etc were located by touch....fascinated me as a child!My father was also a hobbyist woodworker who actually built 2 houses in his spare time and who grew veg!

His father, my greatgrandfather was the local postmaster and a smallholder who grew industrial quantities of veg.........he, my gt grandmother and their garden, including conservatory that apparently contained vines, are pictured above, he died at the age of 45 in 1908 of scepticaemia (probably from his farming activities!) leaving behind a large family. His father and fathers father were all woodsmen.........so what I get up to is probably in the genes!! My son George works for the National Trust at the moment and lays hedges and works in the countryside, so allowing for my father who was not that serious about 'growing your own' I reckon thats a line ofat least 7 generations of smalllholders, veg growers, woodcutters etc!!

Well it was not the cruciate ligament but the cartiledge! Apparently after manipulating my leg and looking quizical, then asking me when I last injured my leg.....which to be honest I couldn't remember as being recent, the consultant informed me I have already ruptured the anterior cruciate in that leg and it was my cartiledge I had damaged this time! It would account for a lot, having ruptured the ACL in my right knee stupidly jumping some electric fencing 5 years ago I had completed the set not done the first one. Thinking about it I have had so many little accidents over the years such as falling off horses, whacking my knee on gate posts whilst riding horses, being kicked across the parlour by fractious cows etc that its not surprising to find out why my knees are so wobbly! The latest injury just added to the list! Am now on the fast track for key hole surgery to repair it, they say about 3 weeks wait! In the meantime I have become the proud posessor of a knee brace.......a damned uncomfortable device that has metal plates on eitherside of the knee with a hinge in the middle.....means I can hobble!
I have been getting cabin fever stuck indoors so today I made lemon curd and a large loaf of bread, and plotted my escape to the top of the field! Pete had taken all my hedgelaying gear to the hazel hedge that needed urgent attention as it was beginning to tangle in nextdoor smallholdings telephone lines and with the aid of 2 electric fence posts as walking sticks I made it down there. Spent an enjoyable afternoon laying the hedge, completing two thirds of the length, will finish the rest tomorrow if the weather permits. I was getting desperate to do this as the end of the hedgelaying season is nigh!
Took a photo with my phone to illustrate what I was doing....not good quality but I didn't have the energy to get up to the house to get the camera. Still got to tidy it up and put in a few pegs made of hazel to neaten it up and hold it in place.
Talking of hedges I posted several pics last year of the Blackdown Hills Hedgelaying competition which Pete competed in. Well this year he took part again....and won!! He now has a nice shield to polish for a year!........and I was not there to take a picture of the moment of triumph!

Pigs.....who would have em!!.......well we now have 3 and I am confined to the house on crutches.....connection? You bet!
I have had many pigs over the years starting with a Tamworth piglet called Mabel who was given to me by a farmer for whom I used to milk record his lovely Guernsey cows. She was a pedigree pig from the Roseleaf line and grew to be huge..........but very gentle and never tried to escape AND being 21 years ago we didn't have a battery electric fencer unit as they were only just becoming affordable (and reliable!) She could have destroyed the fencing but never bothered! She was mated to a local tamworth boar and had 10 piglets and was a realy good mum bless her. After being a pet for a while as she wouldn't breed again, she went to join a farm producing iron age pigs as we felt she was a bit lonely.

After that I had various pigs including lops, large white cross, large blacks, berkshires and many heinz 57s!! all for pork or bacon........none were a lot of trouble except a pot bellied pig I was given who was quickly passed on!

So when last year I was persuaded that on our wet ground KuneKunes would be ideal I bought 2.........who are very good on the whole although the gilt can jump and both are very noisy!
So I decided that I would get another and on Tuesday Treacle a 2 year old in pig sow arrived with a reputation for good behaviour.
It had beed terrible weather on Monday so I had been unable to get to sort the electric fencing so I riged up a suitable pen in the shed next to the sheeps current overnight quarters. This pen had contained 2 Berkshire gilts 2 winters ago with no trouble.
So when I found her walking around the sheep field the following morning I was astounded....she had jumped over a breeze block wall 5 blocks high topped with corrugated !! (the corrugated was a bit worse for wear!!)
Contained once more, this time in the sheep shed I set about the electric fencing job, moving Kermit and Miss Piggy, our current Kunes into the far pig paddock. Treacle was wailing her annoyance so to relieve my ears I let her out while I was completing the fence.....I thought she would go and talk to the other pigs through the fence or just snuffle around bearing in mind each pig paddock is quarter of an acre..........not a bit of it she put her snout under the stock wire and heaved it up as if it were made of string!!..........and shot off towards the woods. I grabbed a bucket of nuts and persuaded her back to the sheep shed where she was locked in again whilst I went back into the ankle deep mud, repaired the damage and finished the electrics! Pig was then let back out and immediatly knew the fence was 'on' but had to test it a few times!!
Well I then made the daft decision to stand on the low wall at the end of the yard to observe said pig....as I hauled myself up I felt a twang...in fact it was almost audible and I knew I had done some serious damage. I had left my mobile phone in the kitchen and at that moment the kitchen seemed a long way away. Somehow I managed to hobble, hop and crawl back to the house and after a visit to casualty am the proud posessor of a pair of crutches and an appointment in the post for the knee clinic!
This morning Pete had to feed and check the stock and the little darling had removed the metal field gate! This is currently being repaired as I type!
The pics are of a typical Tamworth sow and a Kune Kune sow which will show that contrary to popular belief that Kunes are large not small.........a Tamworth is about 25 inches high!

My willow 'fedge' (cross between a fence and a hedge) is finished!! With advice from Stuart Anderson willow guru extrodinaire who has more varieties of willow in his garden than you can shake a stick at, I set to and did it!! I used a green willow 'viminalis' and a red willow called just 'hybrid red' all from the Somerset levels local to us. The spare rods have been planted in the willow bed at the soakaway end of our septic tank sewage system where they will help with purifying the water, and drinking lots of it as willow is very thirsty!
Now I just have to hope all the rods 'take' and survive!! The pics are of my fedge in the garden and of the path looking down the garden past the fedge and my newly laid bit of ash hedge towards the ducks with fields and woods beyond.

Sheep.........bad week this week, but thats what keeping sheep can be like. Last Monday one of our French Ouessants lambed in the field a full term dead ram lamb.........at least it was dead when I eventually found it and I suspect it had been born dead. Mum had wandered off and was not at all bothered........mental note to watch her like a hawk next time as has not got a lot of mothering instinct about her. Then on Thursday the nicest of the French Ouessants lambed....a nice live ewe lamb. The next day all was apparently ok but not the next..........lamb was balling its head off and was very hungry, mum had mastitis which is hopeless in sheep....no milk, hard udder teats not working......So lamb was bundled off to the house to be bottle fed and ewe started on 5 day course of antibiotics.........lamb took to the bottle quite well but I felt there was something not quite right.
Gradually as time went on the lamb suffered a creeping paralysis and died. On investigation its mouth which I thought was noisy when feeding proved to have no soft palate and the roof of the mouth was all wrong, hence not being able to suckle the ewe properly......a congenital abnormality which I suspect also affected the central nervous system. Heho.........we lambed 50 ewes last year.......nearly 100 lambs! and lost one stillborn lamb that was one of triplets. Otherwise apart from those we lost to sheep worrying all survived........everyone said we were lucky and I knew we were .........seemingly not so lucky this year but thats farming!

Another amazing week! My good friend Brigit Strawbridge whom I have known for many years since we were neighbours in the same village came to stay overnight on Monday. She and her family have been at the forefront of getting folks to think about greening up their lives on the BBC2 series 'Its not easy being green' . An amazing spin off from that has been a forum where people can find out information about how to make their everyday lives more sustainable...........it now has over 4000 members!
S o many people are puzzled as to how they can make a difference and to address that The Big Green Idea came into being and was launched at last years Big Green Gathering, a festival that takes place on the Mendip hills in Somerset near Cheddar (where the cheese was invented!) The basic idea is to take a bus or a van packed with info out into the community....but don't just listen to me, check out the website above and even more exciting see the film about The first bus ...........its now in a hangar about to be 'converted'!!
We went off to an event run by Unltd yeterday to apply for funding for the bus and I am applying for funding for the felting.....sooooooooo exciting!
On Tuesday the BBC came down from Bristol.........armed with all their filming stuff and some lovely lavender shortbread....to film me and Brigit for the pilot of a possible new series of 'Its not easy being green' that might be due out in 2009, nothing fixed yet.........It took about 2 hours to film sheep and dyeing in my wool room for about 25 seconds worth of tv! We kept forgetting what we were going to say or falling into fits of giggles, but it was good fun!
I have just dyed some wool for a person known as Lakshmi on the INEBG forum and here it is.........very bright as for a baby blanket with a difference!!

Our wonderful helpers from Helpx moved on this week! Tom and Bec a lovely young couple from Melborne Oz who were travelling around the world came to help us for 3 weeks. In that time we have taken down and cut up most of 2 large trees, cleared an area of about a third of and acre which was full of brambles to plant a cider orchard, laid some hedges, collected a lot of free stock fencing (second hand) and sturdy fence posts from the National Trust who have removed several miles of it up along the A39 from Porlock to Lynmouth, and we now have a nice sturdy fence dividing up our home paddock with another under construction!.........pictures will follow soon! This was very lucky and saved us a fortune but as my eldest son is working for the NT in North Devon we knew about it going free! My son, George, is having a great time working for the NT.....its good to be able to enjoy your job!
I am also in the process of constructing a willow fence/hedge called a 'fedge'! I pic of that will follow too when its finished. I collected my apple trees yesterday and must put them in during the next few days, they are old west country varieties such as Payhembury, Browns, Duffin, Black Dabinett and Somerset Redstreak........wonderful names!
I have also come across this wonderful thing.....a greenhouse made of plastic bottles.....I am determined to make one and will need to find 550 plastic lemonade type bottles!!!
I have a couple of Ouessant ewes that look due to lamb any time now and we are soon taking delivery of an in pig Kune Kune sow to add to the sausage empire!
Other exciting good news is I have secured the funding for the felting machinery (hooray!!) Now waiting to see if funding has been secured for installation and rent.......will update as soon as I know!

............and here are my tagged blogs! Check them out in the links at the side

1. Permaculture in Normandy
2. A Shepherds Tale
3. She who digs
4. Auntie Plastic
5. Amazing Artists

Tree Surgery.........on a very big tree! We have opened up our view by taking down to 8ft and 12ft respectively a sycamore tree and a lime tree. They were also shading out the grass at the top of our field and we needed to get more light in there, so down they came. Of course pollarding, which is what leaving the trunk is called does not kill the tree and indeed helps to prolong its life so in a few years time we expect a nice head of regrowth on both of them.
Now we have a couple of years worth of logs to cut up and move, for which we are very grateful to have 2 helpers from Melborne Australia called Tom and Bec who are working with us and sharing our lives whilst working their way around the world.
They came to hear we needed help through Helpx which is similar to Wwoof
Pics are of the lime tree, at the start, being reduced in weight and just before the final felling cut.

I have also been tagged by Clarice of the yummy Eating Brittany blog!! I have to provide 5 facts about myself then tag 5 other sites who will all provide a link back to the person who tagged them!!!
So 5 facts....
1. I love beer....especially Pelforth Brune!
2. I am very untidy!
3. I drive a bright yellow car
4. I make my own bread
5. I also save small children from tooth decay by stealing sweets

Sites I am going to tag will follow tomorrow.......!!

Pictures of Ouessants
Here are some pictures I took yesterday to illustrate the range of colours I have in my ouessant sheep! The really black ones are the British ones and Derek my British ram (not pictured here) is pitch black with not a sun bleach mark on him! One of the brown ewes actually has grey tones in the fleece too so quite interesting!!. Note all the black/brown ones are actually 'black' when it comes to genotyping.....we think! The white one has orange/fawn face and legs but is a genotyped white ......as far as we know!! Once we have got a few more years into this and know who carries the genes for which colour we will know more!!
Pictured below is the first lamb from the French import! Born up in north Devon at the home of the delighted owners Kevin and Trevor! She is a real cutie by the look of it! Her mother is white obviously, and her father is Cyril....jet black but with the odd white/grey hairs....and I thought black was dominant in Ouessants???
The young ram pictured above is my son of Cyril called Nicolas Sarkozy!

And below are my new indian runner ducks with their spanking new house! They consist of a pair of chocolates and 3 fawn and white ducks.....and we are getting eggs!

Well here are the pics of my solar panel lit sheds! and they work!!!...........of course they do I here you say............well I must admit I had my doubts but yes they do and we have even had some sun to charge them! I am now going to sort out solar panels for the electric fence batteries which will save electricity in the summer although with our current lack of sun they will have to have extra charging in winter. I have also got yet another water butt and a water diverter for the down pipe from the lower roof.....we are now a 4 water butt family!
Also bought some scaffhold planks that were no longer suitable for their original purpose and here they are in my trailer.....they are 13 ft long and make super raised bed edges.

We are over 900ft up on the top of the hill and unlike the nice dry picture its a bit slippery at the moment. This is a tale of lost and found sheep!
Last week I was ill with a nasty cold and cough, it also rained all week adding to the misery, so when I climbed into my car in the pouring rain and foggy gloom to collect my youngest from school I was not best pleased to see a gate between the small paddock where my senior Ouessant ram and his friend reside wide open into the 15 acre field the other side. Well after having collected 5 yearold and placed him strategically in front of the tv to keep him from mischeif, 14 year old son, myself and 3 dogs set about searching for said sheep. They were nowhere to be found and as it was getting dark we returned wet and cross.
Next morning husband, 3 sons (21 year old, 14 yearold, 5 yearold), myself 3 mobile phones and 3 dogs set off in still pouring rain to have another look having informed the farming neighbours that we had 2 knee high rams on the loose.....they could see the funnyside!
Well a few hours and several miles later we returned in dribs and drabs reporting not a sign of the little bu###rs.
About 3 hours later Ken the farmer across the road watched in amazement as the calmly meandered out of the woods, across the big field and tucked themselves back in their paddock! Needless to say he secured all the gates very well before telling us! So all was well........
Today at 8.30am I receive a call......'there is a black sheep out down in the village....looks a bit bigger than yours but you'd better come and have a look'. So off I go and no its not one of mine but a large shaggy in lamb ewe of indeterminate age that looks to have come a long way judging by the amount of attached debris! So we capture her in friends stables and I phone local animal health office (hello all if you are reading) with her ear tag number. Apparently she had a tag originating near Tiverton Devon but possibly could have been sold since then of course and it would necessitate delving through all the movement forms of many years to find where she should be now! Advise was to ask if anyone had lost a sheep and ask police if anyone had reported one missing. Drew a blank so she is now residing with my wensleydale cross ewes and looking quite content......result a free sheep who looks in lamb.........will let you know if her owner turns up!

Well its raining yet again! And it is forcast not to stop soon!......great!
Makes you feel depressed just looking out thewindow. I have so much to do outside too. Am installing solar lighting to both of my sheds and rebuilding the raised beds with help from Pete who is much more woodworky than me with damaged scaffhold boards that are from a local scaffholding company!! pics will follow when and if it stops raining! While picking up the boards in my car & trailer in the pouring rain and feeling ill because of a bad cold I had an amazing thing happen......I was travelling slowly across the industrial estate gingerly negotiating the speed bumps with the 13ft planks hanging precariously from the rear of the trailer when I went by the bakers delivery van selling cakes and sandwiches. I stopped and enquired as to the price of a Danish pastry when one of the builders working on the site bought a maple and pecan danish (my favoutite) and gave it to me refusing all payment and just said enjoy it!!!! Well that got me thinking.....how many of us permaculture inspired people who have earth care, fair share, and people care at the heart of our way of thinking enact random acts of kindness like that..........It really cheered me up and so I am going to think hard about whether I cheer people up enough!!

FELT!!!
All things are turning towards wool at the moment and I am applying for lots of funding for the new project I am developing along with the Blackdown Hills Natural Fibre Group, namely feltmaking.....not the feltmaking where you card some wool and felt layers of carded wool by hand.....but acres of it! This is going to require some major work as we need to install a scouring machine to wash the wool and a drying machine to dry it. A machine to card it into huge sheets ready for processing either by wet felting where another machine presses and agitates it with the use of heat and water. Needle felting where the wool sheets are literally joined into each other dry with the aid of barbed needles and pressure felting which is self explanatory.....its squashed under great pressure!
We need lots of space to store wool, we have to work out how to dispose of our washing water in an environmentally friendly way and we have to do a lot of publicity.
And what will we be felting?.....well, sheeps wool mainly which is presently at the lowest price ever and is worthless.....except to those like us who know it is one of the most environmentally sound natural fibres on the planet. Also all sorts of other fibres such as alpaca for the fashion industry.
And what will we all be producing?.......well, at the start wet felt suitable for everything from jackets and bags to hanging basket liners! In the long term sheeps wool insulation similar to that produced by Second Nature, and sheets of felt for matresses, quilts, upholstery etc.
Are we mad? probably! Am I scared.....yes! Am I determined to see this succeed.....you bet! The project will be based locally in an eco business unit....one of the countries first environmentally sustainable, revamped, reused units complete with woodchip boiler burning locally sourced and produced wood chips and compost toilets! there may also be, in the future, a posibility of renewable energy being supplied!
Please get in touch if you want to get involved in this project. We also need investors and those who want to trial products for us. And if anyone can help put finishing touches to plans and projections I will possibly be applying to the Dragons Den.
The pictures are of 2 bags that I made recently out of wensleydale and shetland wool, hand dyed and hand made on the pegloom. Both now gone to good homes!

Getting obsessed by Ouessants! Here is a picture I have found by Gauguin the famous French artist who painted at Pont Aven in Brittany showing some of the little dears!
Yesterday was really busy and I didn't have time to take any photos! Having delivered 4 sheep to Kevin and Trevor in North Devon on Saturday, yesterday saw the other 3 Ouessant owners arrive to collect their sheep so it was a continual round of sorting and loading sheep and filling out paperwork for each batch. I am now left with 2 older small black ewes and a white lamb that I particularly like also a ram lamb with good horn placement. The other Ouessant ewes will now be moved to join them and Derek and Gilles will go along with the ram lamb to batchelor quarters! Need to think of a suitable French/Breton name for the new ram, so any suggestions welcome, I don't name the ewes. These sheep are remarkably friendly compared not only to most other sheep but to primitive sheep in particular who tend to be a bit 'flighty'!

Holidays and Ouessant/DEFRA stress over I must now concentrate on the matter of the felt processing plant and the idea of a reed bed based plant for wool washing waste water (this is the expensive bit about processing wool!) getting those little grey cells working also requires copious quantities of tea, chocolate and home made bread and jam!!!

NEWS FLASH!
Just got back from Brittany France to phone call from DEFRA vet....he came at 4pm and issued us with a letter and document revoking the previous orders (and he smiled and was very nice too).........the sheep are now officially healthy and can leave the isolation unit and go to their new homes....YES!!!
You cannot imagine the stress this has caused us all so please don't even attempt this unless you think you have the right documents and are SURE you have the right documents!
Pics and furthr news tomorrow! Meanwhile if you have not seen Stuarts blog about butchering their pig and their permaculture plot in Brittany take a look...its inspiring!

Happy New year to all our readers, hope you had a fantastic Christmas too.....we did! We are off to Berrien and will see you in the new year.....leaving the house, dogs, pigs, hens and sheepies in the hands of my eldest son.....yikes!

Ouessants part 4!!
The good news is that the tests for blue tongue have all come back negative! (which is what I would have expected!) The other tests for thediseases not present in France of GB are yet to come back.....if they were positive I think it would be rather strange!
DEFRA however now tell me they need to "do a risk assesment" to decide whether the sheep pose a risk to local farming and wildlife.....hmmm!(basically they need to know they are still healthy)
They also informed me they have not ruled out sending them back to France due to the errors in the paper work...........This is a little baffling as if one considers it carefully the word 'jobsworth' springs to mind! Conversation something along these lines....
OK so the sheep arrived with the wrong paperwork which was not for the want of trying to get it right! I am apparently personally to blame for that as it is the "importers responsibility to ensure the correct paperwork".......I retreat for a cup of tea and to summarise it I am responsible for DEFRA not being able to advise me what forms I needed, having all blood tested negative for blue tongue they could require me to export the sheep to Brittany, from where we start again, expose them to the possibility of blue tongue, get the paperwork right and re import them as French sheep, and re test them for all the things they were tested for last week.
I think I am beginning lose faith in common sense!!

Very cold here! The hens huddle around the polytunnel and look chilly, the sheep sport a fine crusting of frost and the pigs are not keen on leaving their beds except in the prescence of food! (I know just how they feel!)

I just had to share this picture found by a friend......! A good giggle does one good!
I am awaiting the results of a funding application for money to buy a felting machine and huge carding machine to be installed in an eco business unit a few miles away in order to start processing woolly waste! This will be processing local waste wool into felt for a variety of uses....more info soon

Ouessants in Somerset episode 3!

These ouessant sheep are very long suffering! They have to be as this morning bright and early not one but two DEFRA vets turned up to blood test them all. I had already taken 4 suffolk cross ewes to market in Taunton so a quick cup of tea and we were off. It took all of us plus the long suffering Pete (who had helped me catch the suffolks the night before when it was almost dark after I had trouble trying to persuade the sheep to leave their nice field and get in the trailer with a villagers dog sharling and barking the otherside of the lane from the gate!) to pen up the Ouessants who obviously have the same thoughts as me on officialdom!
Two had already lost both eartags they came from France with and so we retagged them with their new UK inmport tags which have the usual UK plus 6 numbers unique to me on one side and the sheeps unique number plus .F eg UK234567/202.F. Some of the sheep now have 3 tags in one very tiny ear!......we are apparently not allowed to remove the French tags even though they have a new identity.....hmm we will see!
Blood testing then commenced.............
Sheep were held at the correct angle and needle and phial inserted......nothing! Vet tries again with same result.....and this is how it continued untilall sheep looked like pin cusions and the vets had.....wait for it.......3 large phials of blood from each animal. It took 3 hours and the sheep and me were right cheesed off by the end, I think it is diabolical that as well as a phial to test for blue tongue they also took 2 further samples to test for brucellosis and contagious agalactia...... France and GB are apparently free of both these diseases so what the bl##dy h#ll are they taking such a lot of blood for!! mind boggles!
Well now we wait for the results....back next week..........and then wait until the 4th January when, if they haven't decided to throw the book at me some of the sheep can go to their new homes as only 4 are staying to join my flock of Ouessants