We arrived home with three weaner pigs this afternoon. They are destined to be bacon, ham and salami in about six months. Names haven’t been decided on yet but they will be suitably food-related so we don’t get too attached.

Tonight they will stay in the stables (in their little straw house) and tomorrow they’ll go [...]

Well its about 24 hours since we posted the arrival of our newest addition to the farm.  Trust me when I say its been a very long 24 hours because we have seen pretty much every single one!
Babe is still without a name but we have made some progress on other fronts.  She was able to [...]

Got a bit of a surprise!
Simone decided that her baby was not going to be a Christmas baby after all and that we should get our present today.
She has given us a very lovely chestnut filly, with a nice star in the middle of her forehead.  I am hoping she will actually go grey, I [...]

Our 12 acre back paddock was getting out of control so thanks to neighbour Andrew, we have the services of 20 cows and 200 sheep for a couple of weeks to get the grass under control. The horses are all looking very well and the last thing we want is ponies exploding.

I lost my best friend yesterday but I kept the promise I made to him.

I said if he was ever in pain and needed me that I would make the right decision, I owed him to end any suffering.
Yesterday Jack slipped in the paddock and broke his shoulder.  It should have been the hardest decision [...]

We have finally ended our year long broodmare hunt with the purchase of Caprice.  She is a Holsteiner Westphalian cross and very well bred.  She has come up to us from Ashburton, it took a few days but she is finally here!

Her pedigree is available online here

She is 7 years old and has had one [...]

Bree, our house cow in waiting had her first lesson this morning - wearing the halter. It wasn’t too difficult to get on - you could do almost anything to her when she’s at the milk feeder and she wouldn’t care. Next step is to attach a lead rope and get her used to the [...]

These two cuties are the latest addition to the menagerie. On the left is Sir Beefington, an Angus cross who will be raised for beef. On the right is Bree, alluding to her future as the house milking cow for milk, cheese, butter etc. She’s a Fresian/Jersey cross but is 100% cute.

They don’t look like much now, but in 21 days these beauties will be chicks. One of our old hens, Victoria is an excellent mum and she’s getting a bit broody so we thought we’d put her ample, feathery posterior to good use.
We got a dozen fertile eggs from a local chicken breeder for the [...]

We have two more bouncy lambs in the flock. I came out this morning to find one of the ewes had birthed triplets in the early hours but sadly, only two had survived. The survival rate for triplets without intervention is quite a bit lower than twins or singles and the lamb that didn’t make [...]