The Muddy Planning of Autumn
It’s raining. A lot. With the east Suffolk gale it’s a horizontal wet sheet. And it’s not that warm, summer rain either. It’s the soak you to the skin, peel off your clothes and give you goose pimples type of rain. The chickens are hiding indoors. The sheep have their heads in the hedges, bums to the wind. And the goats? Well, they’re giving me the evil eye from their caravan because, of course, I’m the weather god and control what happens. Myself and the ducks though? Well, we’re loving it.
2021’s weather has been all over the place this year. The amount of rainfall here has proved that yes, Suffolk is one of the driest areas of the country. And, yes, Halesworth certainly seems to be within it’s own weather bubble which remains arid even if there’s a torrential downpour five miles down the road. So with the forecast looking pretty wet for the next week, I’m happy. Wet will fill the waterbutts and attached IBC. Wet will re-fill the natural ponds. Wet will water the garden. And wet will stave off the frosts; hopefully so I can get the final flowers to the November farmers market (which is held on the second Saturday of the month) before winter kills off those annual, fragile plants.
The past week has largely been focussed on pregnant goats and infrastructure plans for the coming few months. With planting, sowing and growing on the back-foot, this time of year has an emphasis on sorting out all those important big landscaping and business projects ahead of the 2022 season. Getting utilities finally onto site is one of those vital things. I seem to have had some positive karma here. After seeing people complaining about power connections being in the tens of thousands, my quote came in at under £2,000. A blessing! I’m also going to be putting up an garden office that can contain storage, office and admin space, coolers, fridges, a toilet and somewhere to hide/relax/take a break in comfort. If you don’t know, I currently have NO indoor space on the farm which really limits what I can achieve. I’m excited about finally being able to run incubators and freezers and empty my house of all the business paraphernalia.
I’m also expecting goat kids, though I’m not sure when! Pye had her billy kid a couple of months ago but I’m still waiting on Pixie and Eve. I’ve been looking into pregnancy characteristics as I outlined in this article, and I’m fairly sure they are both pregnant but how far along? Who knows! Over the past couple of weeks Eve really has started to put on some belly growth but she still hasn’t really developed an udder. So babies could appear at any point! I’ve freed up some hurdles in preparation to make a bonding pen next to Peaches in the barn, but every day is currently a ‘are there kids?’ day.
I’m planning some changes to the driveaway area too. Next year I’m running some pick-your-own patches. Definitely an autumn one themed around pumpkins, but also some flower ones. I also want to carve out a good space to put my pop-up bouquet bar. The pigs have been doing a great job of rotating the land and I need to move them back as they’re currently where I want to run some stock fencing and plant the 1,000+ daffodil bulbs I have.
It’s been a fun week and now with the rain, it’s definitely the season for getting fencing up, popping bulbs in and entering the planning phase of the year.