Autumn 2021
As Summer slowly becomes Autumn, the radiant flowers are replaced with a confetti of Autumn leaves in various colours. The pantry fills with starchy, energy laden produce to sustain us through the cold. Still, chilly mornings and evenings are lit by cloudless skies. Mist begins to settle in the valley in the mornings, and finally the first frost appears, signalling the time to start slowing down.
This year the change of season was felt in many ways, both literally and figuratively.
Pasture Raised Chicken
With the equinox we experienced the annual turbulent weather with wind, storms, and loads of rain. There were plenty of very wet and muddy weeks on the farm.
The broilers out on pasture don't generally like being wet but we are grateful for the field pen design that keeps them warmer. The more consistent day and night temperatures serve them well in the early Autumn days. They grow steadily on pasture, moving daily. When one batch of broilers move out on pasture, we rest the brooder for a week to sanitise before starting another batch of 300 in the brooder that will move out on pasture at about 18 days old when they have adult feathers to keep warm. Our last batch of broilers was 400 to hopefully give us a bit of a buffer if we cannot do another batch during June/July because of the cold.
Check out the video of the process of moving broilers out on pasture: This happens every 4 weeks. Broilers Moving out https://fb.watch/5JLdj4SNTw/
The impact on Long Field of a season of broilers is astounding. The grass remains green, and nutrient rich. This field will now be rested and the broilers have moved to a new field that gets sun earlier in the morning, and later in the afternoon.
Forest Raised Pigs
We welcomed Peppa Pig's little piglets - a mix of Duroc Dad and Large White X Mom.
The next oldest lot of pigs had to be separated as they approach 6 months to avoid unwanted breeding. Separating the males and females is not a task for the faint hearted! We set up a new camp for the females over the ridge in a beautiful, peaceful setting (pic 1&2). They seem to be enjoying it and look so at home in their environment. A working holiday as they clear bramble and wattle. Black Betty (pic 3) is our next up and coming sow. While Peppa Pig is busy caring for her babies, Boss Pig is needing some company.
Pic 4 - Peppa Pig with her little babies
It always amazes us how small the piglets are and how quickly they grow. They provided much entertainment for Thomas!
As the weeks rolled on, the naughty piglets began to show that they were weaned and kept breaking out to go and munch acorns! Next week they will leave their nest and move down onto the farm for some fun and games with the older pigs, rooting up bramble and foraging in the forest.
Goats
The goats went mobile during Autumn. We moved them into a new mobile shelter during the days and back to their stable at night. As they became more familiar with the mobile shelter, they began sleeping there. The plan is to move them around the farm to graze in a more controlled way, to concentrate their manure where it is needed and use their browsing skills. They roam freely on the farm during the day and return to their shelter at night where they are safely tucked in behind an electro net. This helps with manure deposits in selected areas on the farm and keeps their bedroom clean and fresh, while also allowing them to self-select what they need.
In their usual destructiveness, the goats have already damaged their new shelter! Van the Ram decided his ladies would like a window at the back too so he gladly took on renovations.
We began building a new gate at our entrance to hopefully contain the wandering goats. Every morning they would make a bee-line for our neighbour’s dairy pasture. These guys are a headache but a laugh a minute! The plan is to begin milking them after their next kidding. We’ll see how far we get with that as it requires a lot of time and hands but fingers crossed!
The last pic shows the goats taking the opportunity to explore the trailer while it was parked outside the workshop. Ever curious!
We had two accidents - first a reversing incident at the packing station that cost us our canopy door, and second our neighbour’s cattle smashed down our newly built gates on the bridge - while moving the cattle, they were funnelled across the bridge and wedged themselves between our brand new gate posts sending the both pillars and gates tumbling into the stream! The goats sniffed the action and quickly learnt that they can cross onto the next door pastures again! So we began the daily chore of herding them back from our neighbour’s dairy pasture! Much of this season has been spent trying to keep the right animals in and the right animals out!
Odd snaps - Thomas enjoying watching the goats and chickens, a real farm boy!
We really take care of our hens, making sure they have 4 star accommodation ;)
Kaalnek rooster coming to call us out of the office for breakfast!
Celebrating Sandile’s 40th birthday
Pasture Raised Layers
The achievement of the season was getting Egg Mobile 2 across the river! In August last year we were given this Egg Mobile for free, provided we could move it. With the help of a loading truck, we were able to get it to Bramleigh but we could not get it across the river. Since then we have been planning and working on various schemes to get it across. Summer rainfall meant the river was wider and more difficult to cross but as the water level has dropped, our neighbour lent us his TLB for the day so that we could finish the crossing over the river. The next day we were able to finally get it across! All the layers are happy in their new home and we are very happy to have all of our chickens closer together now.
Watch the video here EM2 https://fb.watch/5JLg_OtfB7/
At the beginning of Autumn we welcomed 100 new laying hens to the flock. They settled in quickly and made the most of the warmer days, laying consistently.
Autumn is an ideal time to add new layers. In winter, egg laying will naturally drop as the days are shorter and colder. One would have to continue feeding laying hens through winter with low return. New laying hens are much the same. It takes a while to come into lay fully so if this coincides with a natural dip in winter, one only has to feed through one low production time. We will be adding another 100 at the end of Autumn once they are ready. In anticipation of these new laying hens, we began building new roost space in one of the egg mobiles, Egg Mobile 2. The egg mobile has space and nest boxes for 300 hens but we only have 180 in there due to roost space. Now we can fill it comfortably making each move of the egg mobile more efficient - more animals moved, greater impact, greater manure. The outdoor area is still plenty spacious for this number of hens too.
The layers move routinely twice a week so Andre has been busy mowing new areas for them. Until we have enough herbivores, we have to mow the grass.
The new hens soon began excitedly preparing for a new subscription of Adopt a Hen - adopt your own hen and get free eggs every week for 3 or 6 months! We ran a special this time round with a week's worth of eggs extra for free when adopting for 3 months, or the benefit of wholesale prices on 6 month adoptions.
EDUCATION
We have a strong emphasis on using our farm for teaching and learning opportunities. In keeping with this, we hosted a monthly farm tour through Autumn, with a picnic tea of our farm produce. Lots of interesting discussions, questions and learning.
We also hosted the Midlands Cell of Regenerative Agriculture Association South Africa. We had about 15 farmers at various points on their journey visiting the farm and learning about our practises. Peter Ardington, with years of experience, provided critique, advice, and made the day a learning opportunity for everyone. Find out more www.regensa.org.za
We welcomed a new volunteer to Bramleigh for 6 weeks. She helped us with packing eggs, baking, pulling out Summer crops and preparing beds for Winter vegetable planting, as well as learning about our sales methods, packing for deliveries, and attending REKO.
We attended the first Regenerative Agriculture meeting with farmers in the area interested in learning more, or sharing their experience. It was a great turn out and a very positive sign to see so many people on this journey.
VEGETABLES
With the help of our volunteer, we reset our veggie gardens and seeded winter crops.
We finally installed the new wash station at our veggie growing area to make for more efficient harvesting and washing. We also began dismantling our old wooden raised beds in our veggie patch to create a bigger garden with more variety for us, staff, tenants and guests here at Bramleigh. Hopefully some for market at some point too ;)
Thomas and I finished the tidy up of the greenhouse and reorganised for winter growing, reseeded beds with poor germination and seeded trays in the greenhouse for transplanting later in the year.
A highlight of mine this year was having a variety of squashes from the garden stored for winter!
We began delivering to Hillcrest and beyond more regularly.
Andre clocked some serious miles this season with trips to Hillcrest, Durban, plus our usual weekly deliveries, trips to Boston and back for pigs, and Camperdown for chickens.
During the Easter weekend we were full house for the first time in over a year! We were pretty rusty but all went well.
Our new range of pork sausages
The first frost made its appearance along the stream during the second to last week of May - right on cue! Winter is well on its way. Beautiful valley views as the mountains remove their bed covers from the chilly night, stretching out into the warm morning sun. From June, our days slow down. We start our days later, and finish earlier. We work on a few projects ahead of the next season but there is a natural slowing and resting after a hectic growing season.
With the change in season came another change for us, the Hedges who joined us at the beginning of Spring as part tenants, part working on the property, moved out to be closer to the village. We are very grateful to have had their very competent support during one of the most turbulent 6 months of our lives with finding our feet as we began our life as three, while also continuing with our post-lockdown business finding its own feet. With very few guests, we continue to rely heavily on the farm. For an emerging young business, this is a huge challenge but definitely a catapult in the direction we want to go in.
And that brings us to the end of Autumn… we have some exciting developments in store for winter….