June is the best month as far as our favourite ginger   is concerned as it means all her favourite things .. Cake , friends , presents and chocolate .

We always celebrate a birthday and it generally lasts more than a day, shame the cake didn’t last as long .

A surprise visit from our besties also went down a treat too.. we love you guys.

 

 

 

 

June 13th was  Nora’s due date , and we had planned for Andy to be home for the early days , we couldn’t have planned it better as he had only been home maybe  an hour when Nora went into labour !

We camped out in lambing shed to be rewarded in the early hours with the birth of

9 healthy happy piglets ..

 

As first timers we were quite nervous , there was so much that could go wrong however Nora was a true  textbook    pig and did everything according to what we had read .

Thanks Google

 Nora has turned out to be a fabulous mum looking after her litter .. we clearly brought her up well .

As a farm we feel its our duty to produce cute

so in the event of our recent duck loss we replenished our depleted poultry with some baby ducklings lovely to watch

( not so lovely to smell though so outside they went this time )

Ducklings are beautiful but not so great at producing eggs that quickly, so one Friday we had a delivery of some very beautiful Indian runners , perfect for bulking up our egg production , both for us and the road end.

Shame they keep hiding the blimmin things !

our farmed poultry are a tiny part of the birdlife we can see here, Nancy and mick are extremely knowledgeable bird watching friends and after  a few dawn surveys they reported back their findings .

Grobdale spring 2019

Early morning visits in early spring confirmed the suspicion that Grobdale of Girthon holds diverse birdlife, including many important declining species. Before dawn there are wonderful weird sounds – curlew, tawny owl, cuckoo, red and black grouse, drumming snipe and the gong-like song of a raven. The moorland burst with song at dawn as the skylarks lifted into flight displays. The stark heather moorland and rough grazing pasture often have waves of migrant pipits, stonechats and wheatears – but at Grobdale there is also a band of habitat called the ‘Grobdale Lane’ which holds the first arriving warblers – willow, sedge and grasshopper warblers, and whitethroats. The Grobdale Lane is in fact a watercourse that penetrates the wild mountainous country to the north, and represents an excellent pocket of habitat for a diversity of birds… along with otters and deer. An early morning in spring is exciting.

However, early morning is not the best time to see the birds the area is best known for – the birds of prey. Since their reintroduction red kites are a common site. The Gatehouse-Laurieston Road appears in Miles’s Best Birdwatching Guide to the Solway region, naming species that might be seen through the year – hen harriers, merlins, goshawks and particularly, golden eagles.

Masses of bird life we are still discovering and learning about ..thanks Nancy and Mick x

Keeping our livestock happy and healthy is high on our priority list and so keeping up with any preventative medications is a 6 weekly event and Junes diary included vaccinations, worming , flystrike pour on …

and the dreaded castration

for our new ram lambs …

Lauren is always keen to be involved in all the different jobs , check out her castration tool !

look out future boyfriends she’s a bit good with loading the banding gun !

 

June proved to have a fair few lovely sunny days perfect for cutting grass and

  with the help of local child labour

 

 

we managed a couple of hundred square bales , just  a bit of hay in for our ponies and sheep ..

Flippin hard work so thank you Wilson family for all your help that week ..

The farm is not all work , toil and staying up all night waiting for something to give birth, we have been enjoying our ponies and the riding up here in SW Scotland is awesome.

 

One of my rides out was over at the 3 Manes horse rescue centre , doing

 

their hill race course with my buddy Lorna . Me on Lotte and Lorna on Lucky also known as the pocket rocket ( for very good reason ) .. check out the sea views , shame it wasn’t a blue sky day . The 3 manes is a great place to visit and see Horse rescue at its best , Gordon , Susan and the team are amazing if you love horses this is the place to visit.

Back to Nora and her entourage,

The pigs needed some space ,  and after a week in Lambing shed the weather was hotting up so a pig needs some shade ( us gingers are a fair skinned delicate breed) and out into the pen they went .. as you can imagine the freedom was bliss.

 

Our favourite Gingers right now, are loving their Summer here at Grobdale,