Kids Connect campaign blog

Felicity writes:

This week on the farm we have been getting ready for Christmas, and making signs!

Dolly, the donkey has had a sprained ankle and had to be put in the stable to rest with her daughter Mabel.

Martha writes:

We have all been very busy this week getting ready for the little pigs coming. They have come in two batches and we have 740 in total.

My cousin Harry came at the weekend to see them. He is three-years-old and has always called pigs ‘kibs’ but when he saw the small ones he called them ‘kibblets’.

He thought they were great because they are so inquisitive if you sit among them they will come up to you.

Continue reading "Piglets... or kibblets" »

Craig writes:

The weather in the past week has shown signs of winter being round the corner as it’s been cold with gales and the snow was right down to the lower hills on Friday.

The high winds resulted in the trees being bare as ever and causing huge piles of leaves to build up against walls – good for collecting them though.

One evening a friend and I were piping at the Inverness Town House for an awards ceremony and the wind was nearly taking me of my feet with it catching on the tall drones!

Recently I’ve started to feed the birds again and because it’s been so cold they are really appreciating the seeds and nuts and are constantly going back and forth to the bird table.

The book on wild birds is out, and I’m attempting to identify the ones I’m not familiar with.

Emily writes:

I've had my birthday - I had a party and my dad did a firework show for us all.

On Saturday one of the calves was found to have pneumonia and we had to inject it. To do this, we had to separate it from the rest of the herd.

This proved a difficult task and in the end a cow was brought in to calm him down (we would have brought his mum in but she was old and died last week).

This however didn’t work and the calf jumped the fence to get back with his friends. The second attempt succeeded and he ran into the field happily.

Craig writes:

The livestock side of the farm has been very busy.

We sold 27 of our fat lambs at the mart recently and as expected we didn’t get a great price for them.

The road outside my house has been getting tarred and all the machines have been parked in the steading yard. To our shock they had tarred a strip in the yard because they had some left over – a bonus!

We've also been through the ewes to see which ones will and will not be in good enough condition to be tupped and have lambs this year. We were checking for teeth, udders and strength.

Continue reading "Busy with livestock and bonfires" »

Felicity writes:

My mums' new puppies have celebrated their 12-week-old birthday. They are Welsh Springer Spaniels and are called Dotty and Ralph. We have also finished drilling the wheat.

Craig writes:

We bought three new Suffolk tups at the annual tup sale at Dingwall Auction Mart.

Including them, we now have seven tups, which we are feeding at the moment to keep them strong and healthy.

The day after that we were up early to drive down to Kendal in England to stay in a holiday cottage for the week.

The cottage was on a livestock farm with sheep and cattle. The landscape was totally different there compared to where I live as it was very hilly and the fields were surrounded by dykes rather than fences although there are a few dykes still standing on our farm and there are plenty of hills round about the area I live.

Continue reading "A week in a holiday cottage..." »

Emily writes:

Nothing much is happening so I thought I would tell you about someone close to my heart. My dearest dog Spooky (he would have written it himself but having no thumbs this was going to be a difficult task).

When he was a puppy he got abandoned with his brother and sisters in a graveyard and was found and taken to the RSPCA.

Continue reading "Why we love Spooky" »

Martha writes:

We have had to have some work done at the back of our house with a digger - unfortunately when they did this they chopped through our phone line so we have not had a phone for a few days so I didn’t think I would be able to send this week's blog.

It is not so bad now as we all have mobile phones but when this happened a few years ago it was worse as we don’t have any close neighbours and the nearest phone box is about 4 miles away.

Our farmhouse stands on its own surrounded by fields which is nice as we don’t have to worry about disturbing anyone, and when our dogs decide to have a barking competition they only annoy us.

Continue reading "Diggers and crab apples" »

Great! On Friday school closed for the October holidays – two weeks to do what I want!

All our grain has been shifted now and as well as that all the five-foot bales have been cleared from the steading yard.

At the weekend we weighed all the lambs. We marked with livestock paint any lambs that are heavy enough to be sold just now for slaughter if we decide to.

That afternoon Dad washed the tractor while I cut some kindlers for the fire in the house.

Continue reading "Holdiays... yippee!" »