A Visit To Llanercheron

We've been to a lot of National trust Properties over the years and we've been members for the last two year - it makes for a cheap day out as a family. When we were away in Wales a few weeks ago we looked on the map and decided that a visit to Llanercheron was only about 8 miles away and us adults and kids would probably enjoy it, there's only so long you can spend on the beach... 

The place is fantastic, I was really impressed. I took so many pictures so the easiest way to show you would be lots of photos!

Always a sucker for a walled garden and I love cold frames - one day I'll build some! 

The walled garden had something really unusual I hadn't seen before - a concrete framed glasshouse

The reinforcing was rusting out and destroying it now but really interesting non the less, built after the war when there was a shortage of timber

The garden had a good amount of fruit and veg growing, some for sale in the entrance shop 

Doorway into the next section fo garden

Not used to not being able to pick all the tomatoes she wants!

No one wanted to use the toilet! 

Plenty of squashes 

A really impressive herb garden with hundreds of types. 

In the farm yard where the hay ricks would have been placed. 

Lots for the kids to do, they were given an activity wheel at the start with different things to do around the house, garden and farm yard. Here the girls dressed up scarecrows

Beautiful old barns with carts in them. 

One of the best saw pits I've seen

I bet some sweat has been spent in here

Getting the boy away from the sheep was tricky...

Great farm yard with all sorts of animals

Pink pigs - the girls were happy! 

Working out how much milk the big house needed

Fake cow to milk

cobbled courtyard- stones fetched from the seaside

I'm always more interested in "downstairs" than up. This is the old main kitchen and fireplace

An older fireplace, used for stews and slow cooking

The pantry was dressed how it would have been 

i know I don't believe in sell by dates but I might take a miss on these pickled onions which were done in 1935!

Making milk

Excuse the bowl but this is an amazing sink for milk and cheese making, made out of one piece of slate

Cheese presses filled with rocks

Cheese room 

Meat curing room

Brine bins

Salting table

The place even had it's own brewery! 

We picked up the children at the end of the day...
Only joking - no way this would keep our three in! 

Produce for sale in the shop

I've never been to a national trust place with so many animals before, everything from turkeys to horses were here and the kids loved that part. Also for there to be so much infrastructure for the manufacturer of products, basically they made everything they needed here, there was even a large changing room for all the staff who walked in from a near by village.  

One of the best National Trust properties we've walked round and we'll be going again next time we're down that way, 100% recommend it! 

Day Old Chicks - Meat Birds

I'd been thinking about rearing some meat birds for a while. I decided to do it when batch of eggs I'd tried to get a hen to hatch out failed earlier in the summer, we always hatch some chicks out every year as I think it's great for the kids so I was really disappointed. 

So I decided to buy some day old meat chicks and rear them in a brooder, this is far more work than just raising them with a broody chicken, as she takes care of all their heating needs, but I haven't got any broody hens so it was my only option - short of sitting on them myself. 

To do it I was going to need a pen and also a means of keeping the chicks warm. 

Heating plate

Doing some research online I came to the conclusion that heat lamps were quite energy hungry and an "electric hen" or heating plate might be the way to go. Here they get heat from above with the plate as they would with a mother hen and it's only 42 watts rather than a big heat lamp. Also the risk of fire is much lower (I used to hate when we had heat lamps in the sheep shed when I was growing up on the farm - all the straw and hay around them made it so dangerous).

Chicken coop not in use

I then set to work on finding a pen to house them in. I have a few coops not being used at the moment as my laying hens are in their pastured chicken tractors. I decided to move the better of the two coops up to my yard with the tractor and then make a few alterations to it. 

I adapted the pen, I made up a mesh screen and a mesh door above. This meant that I can leave it open in the day and the kids can see the chicks without them escaping. 

I also made a mesh screen for the nest box and hid the extension reel in there. 

No shortage of wood shavings for bedding around here at the moment - advantage of being a carpenter. I shall make an extension for the pen as the chicks grow and they'll go outside at five weeks old into a pasture pen. 

Day old chicks 

The kids were so excited when I turned up with them on Wednesday night! lots of jumping around! 

The chicks took to the heat plate straight away and know to go there to get warm, having the mesh door open gives them plenty of air flow and light as well as hopefully hardening them up a little faster. 

First drink! 

The kids are loving them and got to check on them many times in a day! But they also know that these birds are to eat and both have expressed an interested in helping me prepare them when the time comes, I won't force them but if they want to help then I'll let them, maybe with plucking to start with. 

So now I've just got to keep them alive, healthy and well fed for the next 10 - 12 weeks. 

It's another small step in the self sufficiency learning journey that we're taking here. 

Sunflowers

Where the chickens were kept over winter was pretty poached ground. 

When I moved the chickens I didn't want the docks and nettles to take over so I set about growing some crops to compost later on and move the fertility of that patch into the compost and then onto my garden. 

One of those crops was sunflowers, now to get the best from them I was supposed to harvested them semi mature and compost them. 

Well they grew so well down there I've just let them flower and they look amazing! These guys like chicken manure that's for sure! 

Even though it means less compost for next year, who wouldn't want to bring armfuls of these beautiful flowers back to the house! We've got hundreds of plants growing down there and each is wanting to flower. 

I think the house is going to be very pretty for the next few days! 

What's your favourite flower to grow to cut for the house?

Seed Swappers BBQ

As I'm the newest (and youngest) member of the Herefordshire Seed Swap I suggested a BBQ at mine for the summer meet up. I think they were all quite keen to see what we get up to here and where we were. 

Before we ate I took everyone on a whistle stop tour of the homestead, showing them the veg gardens, orchard, coppice, sheep and chickens, I'm just hopeful most could see past all the nettles and see the produce growing around it! The children provided much entertainment as well, stealing carrots and getting stung by the nettles! 

Such an amazing spread of food

Everyone brought some food with them and we had slow cooked a large joint of mutton and my wife baked bread rolls, it was a lovely spread of food. We all ate very well! With cakes and plums for pudding! 

These three did me proud and were very well behaved! 

It was a lovely evening, the weather was perfect and we sat out on the patio as it got dark. 

They're a lovely group of people and the seed swap is a great thing that I'm really keen to be a part of, I've got lots of crops for seed this year so I should be able to provide even more seed next year. It's also a group with a large bank of knowledge that I'm only too keen to tap into! 

Our next meet up is in October and it'll be interesting to see what seed we've managed to produce as a group! 

If there is a seed swap group near you why don't you try and get involved?