Spring is in the air on the Farm
Spring is well and truly with us now, which is evident from the abundance of primroses and daffodils which add colour all around the farm. In addition to this, mother nature has provided us with a bountiful supply of garlic which we have experimented and tested our culinary skills with. We have added a recipie for Wild Garlic Pesto on the bottom of the newsletter which we highly recommend.
New Life on the Farm
New life on the farm started in February with our three nanny goats giving birth. Sadly, our first kid was too weak to survive, but this was then followed by our beautiful boy Gizmo being born, followed by a set of twins, one girl and one boy who we named Sandy and Midnight.
Our sheep have also done well this year. Considering we had such a young ram during the breeding season last Winter, we were not expecting many of our ewes to be pregnant. However, ‘Rambo’ the ram had evidently been busy, as in March we welcomed the arrival of six new lambs.
Easter Holidays
Easter time was a real success story on the farm, which saw all of our holiday guests enjoying the arrival of our new born’s. Gizmo proved to be the real favourite, receiving lots of attention from both the children and grown-ups alike. Bottle feeding him and giving him cuddles every morning definitely put a few smiles on everyone’s faces. The children’s speed and agility was also tested in the outside enclosure if they wanted to catch our twin goats Sandy and Midnight for further embraces!
Despite rehoming a lot of our guinea-pigs, we had a lot of Easter baby guinea -pigs born much to the delight of our guests. This seemed to be a win-win scenario for many of our visiting families, where the children would spend hours feeding and petting the guinea-pigs, while the adults would enjoy a relaxing glass of wine!
Our Easter feed-run started with the children collecting ‘real’ eggs from our chickens, ducks and even our goose had laid an enormous egg too!
No Easter is complete without some chocolate! Our children Millie, Sam and Sienna set to work organizing and running a brilliant Easter egg hunt after the feed run finished on Easter Sunday. It proved a challenging hunt with 8 clues to figure out, with the chocolate eggs under the bridge and in the daffodils being the most difficult ones to find. The children were then surprised again when the Easter bunny suddenly popped out from the barbecue hut too!!
Bird Flu Restrictions Lifted
Due to yet another outbreak of bird flu our poor Chickens, Runner ducks, and Guinea fowl have been locked away for six months in our indoor enclosures. Finally, the government announced a lift on these restrictions as from April 18th. We were so excited to be given this news and set to work clipping our feathered friends wings before we set them free again into our outdoor enclosure. Once more, our hens are now all laying a profusion of eggs for us and our guests again and we have flocks of very happy and contented birds.
The sun is shining and it’s time to think about booking a holiday. We still have a few dates available for the school summer holidays and availability in June and September. https://www.coombemill.com/availability-prices/
Wild Garlic Pesto Recipie (bbc good food)
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/wild-pesto
Ingredients
- 150g wild garlic leaves or young nettles, or a mixture (foraged – see tip)
- 50g parmesan or vegetarian alternative, finely grated
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
- ½ lemon, zested and a few squeezes of juice
- 50g pine nuts, toasted
- 150ml rapeseed oil
Method
- STEP 1Rinse and roughly chop the wild garlic leaves.
- STEP 2Blitz the wild garlic leaves, parmesan, garlic, lemon zest and pine nuts to a rough paste in a food processor. Season, and with the motor running slowly, add almost all the oil. Taste, season and add a few squeezes of lemon juice.