Winter at the Farm!

Farm news winter collage 1

Winter is here! Probably the hardest season for farmers but also a quieter time as the focus shifts to keeping the animals well-fed and healthy and literally ‘getting through’ these short days and long cold nights. We use low season as a time to get on top of lots of the farm work that can’t be done when we’re open to visitors everyday such as muck spreading, hedge laying, fencing, baling and bedding down the stock.

Equines

The donkeys are busy starring in our live Nativity scene of course! They will need a break from the limelight in the New Year. We are very grateful to our ‘donkey volunteers’ who get them out for walks in the park and training regularly to help keep them fit and happy. The horses have grown their hairy winter coats and take a lot of brushing to keep clean. They will winter out unless we get a prolonged period of rain or snow. We are lucky that our farm fields are fairly dry compared to some. We still haven’t had Tabby scanned to confirm her pregnancy but if she is in-foal she will be due end of April and we’ve got everything crossed…

Pigs

Bonnie and Luna have recently reared some lovely litters of piglets and are having a well-earned rest. Martha decided to keep her life easy by just farrowing two piglets at the end of November… they are huge chunky things with all her milk to themselves! The Saddlebacks, Susie and Skye, are as noisy and opinionated as ever, still loving their outings to the field together.

Sheep

After running with the rams in November the ewes are now all back together and have been let on the Pumpkin Patch to finish off all the leftover pumpkins. Pumpkins are a tasty and nutritious addition that will keep them going for a few weeks before we start haying them. The scanner will come early February to confirm which ones are pregnant and how many lambs they are having so we can mange them accordingly. We are already so excited for Lambing 2025 which is 5^th-13^th April.

Cows

This year’s calves have been weaned and sold on to another farm. Except for Mabel, our Guernsey calf, who will stay in the dairy herd to become one of our breeding females. The rest of the cows are out in the field and we are feeding them with big baled hay now the grass has gone. We had some success with the Red Poll herd at the Northern Herd Competition winning ‘reserve best junior homebred cow’ with Tatton Elderflower and a highly commended in the ‘best senior homebred cow’ with Tatton Zara and reserve in the ‘best crossbred suckling calf’.

Goats

We had a really upsetting time with the goat herd, losing two of this year’s kids to a mystery illness and the our beautiful Honey to a freak accident recently. It is so awful when you love your animals so much and don’t really always get the answers but that is most definitely farming and we have to just know that they were looked after so well by us. It has left us down to three Golden Guernseys – Amber, Emily and little Rose and of course Betty our Angora cross. Did you know that King Charles has bequeathed the title of ‘Royal’ onto all Golden Guernsey goats?

Poultry

After a full-on summer of ‘Meet the Chicks’, the hatchery is now closed for the winter season and we won’t be hatching any more chicks out until April next year. It gets far too cold at night now for chicks to thrive. All our poultry is free range and can be seen around the farm, often stealing people’s picnics!

This season saw the return of our most popular event – Father Christmas at The Farm. We have been so busy and festive with our amazing choirs and bands, cosy Aunt Mary’s Cottage, Reindeer Feed Making, Sleigh Selfies and of course visits to the main man! We will also be joining in with the annual Scarecrow Festival in February, our last event before High Season starts again at the end of March… See you all soon!

Newsletter compiled by the Farm Team.