We have thirteen wonderful lambs, although I must say it's been a very stressful lambing. Thank god for our friend Niegel, he has been wonderful with his excellent midwifery skills!

We have lambs stuck galore, for some reasons they all wanted to come out with a front leg backwards. We have premature lambs and huge lambs. But we are all done and dusted now, well apart from our original sheep Disney. We aren't sure if she is in lamb and if she is she is a way off. 

Esme the goat is now in the maternity pem, she has milk so fingers crossed her kid is on the way.

Maurice has been busy moving muck, we have a toy from his work to stay a lovely teleporta which reaches over 12 meters. We have mucked out the barn with it. I have never known anyone to be so excited about cow muck, but our friend Phil reckons it is the best you can get so he has had all the cow muck delivered to his field so he can rot it down for the future. Maurice has also been moving our muck heap, I think he has moved over 100 tonnes via the tractor and trailer to Phil and our neighbour Levi. It is just like compost! 

The pigs are now all out in the wood they are having a fantastic time, although it is very tiring. 

Tilly and Tulip the dexters are now out in the field. Tulip is growing so quick, I have could resist the photo of her sitting in a paddling pool. I thought it was a great way to contain her haulage, however she thought it made a better bed. We have purchased our next Dexter, he is a laugh red coloured steer. He will only be with us until the end of the year. We are sharing him with Nigel to thank him for all his help at lambing. 

The garden is changing daily. We are planting more and more out and I hope we will have the most productive garden ever.

Maurice and I have finished planting the potatoes and we have a little space left. So inspired by Country File we are going to plant some rainbow coloured carrots, parsnips, sweet corn and leeks. 

I find myself sitting at the kitchen table typing this post, Gareth has an early start today so I thought I would make use of blogging at 5am. 

I hope you are all enjoying spring.

Easter has arrived for me, today was the first day of my week off. I have had a wonderful day, i am now sitting in the garden under the most wonderful blossom from the pear trees drinking tea and typing this post. I don't think life gets much better than that! Or am i easily pleased? I don't care, i love our life.

Today has been very productive, i have mowed, weeded and planted several things in the garden mainly floral. Although i did get chance to plant the broad beans out that Mum has been nurturing. 

This afternoon i have been on lamb watch, all is quiet! The poor girls are so uncomfortable, and overdue now.

Margorie lambed yesterday morning, we had a nose and a foot. For those of you that watch lambing life i think you all know we need two feet, a head and the diving position. I got my lubrication out and went in, however i failed i couldnt find the other foot and could feel something over its back. Nigel to the rescue! It was twins and the second one was backwards. The backwards lamb is struggling a little, her legs are weak, however with a bit of tender loving care we hope they will come right.

The potatoes have stuck their heads through? So i have invested in a new sprinkler   today.

East Essex Smallholders meeting this evening an Easter Cake Competition! 

Lottie has lambed, a lovely little girl who i think we will call Peaches in memory of a young life lost. 

Tulip is a wild child now experimenting with strange hair styles!

And the place is alive. This is an area in the wood that is soon to be a haze of red campions.

Did you all see the wild seed give away on country file? I have ordered ours and can't wait for them to arrive.

I love this time of year!

Life is passing by so quickly at the moment I wish I could slow it down!

Yet another great week at Furzedown, however Travis Perkins seem to forget I have a busy life outside of work. We had to complete our bi annual stocktake. So late night Friday and Saturday. However I did manage to get home in time to watch lambing live. That is such a wonderful programme. I hope it returns next year. It has made us so excited about lambing starting here. 

I arrived home on Saturday at three o clock, I quickly changed and our friend Phil arrived. He was coming with me to collect our first meat birds of the year. A fellow smallholder in the next village had ordered 200 birds. They were now five weeks old and weaned off of the heat lamb. 

I love trips to other small holdings you get ideas of things to do. The Khans also have a very large herd of goats,  we were lucky to see some kids that were two days old. They were so cute, I can't wait for Esme to kid.

The potato patch is well under way with 8 rows now, Maurice's rotator, I forget which one it is he has so many! Digs a lovely furrow, I space the seed potatoes and Maurice banks them up. I am slightly worried about space, we have planted seven bags with another eleven left! We need more land. I have also tried to utilise the space around the edge by planting onions. This is our big experiment this year, it might not work because of the shading from the trees, but it's the only large area available. So watch this space!

The vegetable garden is coming along well, Mum has been busy planting seeds and I need to start planting things out.

The best news of the week was our first lambs being born, Annie our first home bred oxford down, gave birth to a lovely set of twins. Although very small, they are doing really well. A boy and a girl, we hope the female called Katie will go on to join our breeding flock (named after mums friend Louise's little girls who birthday was the day they were born)

The cow cam has now turned into the lamb cam, however Mums tv isn't as big as ours!

We enjoyed a lovely Sunday dinner, home grown lamb, with curly kale and celeriac out of the garden! 

I hope you all have a good week.