the road to rhosllanerchrugog

Okay - this isn't really a post about Rhosllanerchrugog….

But we do drive past it on the way to visit Mr AP's mum in N Wales,

and this one of my favourite road signs.

It's huge to accomodate the length of the name.

The famous one with the long name gets shortened on signs to Llanfair PG,

(yes - I can say it).

I've always said I wanted a picture of this sign so Mr AP took one

and made it into a christmas card for me.

I'm now hoping for one of the sister sign on the other side of the roundabout.

Gotta love a diptych.

So you know I said I wanted a new challenge….. well the new job is certainly doing the trick.

I am in the process of getting to grips with:

• the finance system
• the room booking system
• how to put stuff on the website
• how to dress like an office girl at work
• how to be me in an office with a desk (never had one before)
• how to be focused on the moment and strategic at the same time
• all of the above through the medium of Welsh - it's the language olympics every day

I am very fortunate to have a supportive team (and husband), 

and a sweetly patient office buddy who is getting used to repeating herself!

This week's achievements included getting a bi-lingual blog on the museum website*

(note to self - include the museum name next time)

and the installation of lamb cam - my web streaming project for March.

More of that later - it's beyond exciting….

*our website is recently revamped, so me wanting to write blogs that look 'bloggy' is exposing a whole load of coding bugs. Big love to Sara in digital content for her patience and virtual hand holding as I wrestle with it.

plot to plate

High on the list of FAQs at the museum where I work must surely be ‘What do you do with all the vegetables from the cottage gardens?’ Ever since I have been there we have sold the produce on an ad hoc basis to visitors and staff, but the imbalance between quantity produced (small) and visitor numbers (high), means that we fail to address the public perception that we aren’t ‘doing anything with it’.  On a busy day in high summer 30 people might go home delighted with their bag of peas/punnet of gooseberries while the other 5,870 go home thinking it's a shame we don't sell the produce. Also I can categorically state that nobody has come for a family day out at the museum wanting to carry a 2 kilo cabbage around in the pushchair!

Earlier in the year a chance remark from the director of the museum, that the chef would like some herbs to use in the restaurant, set me thinking that maybe the time was right to try a Plot to Plate project where the produce gets used in the on-site restaurant. I realise this is not a fantastically original idea - lots of places do it already. But their visitor numbers are mostly small compared to ours, and a lot of them shut in the winter.  So after a bit of gentle pushing and shoving on my part, we're running it as a pilot scheme this year. 

I had a very productive walk around with the chef, good for both sides to think about the practicalities. The great news is that he's very interested in the things that have always been  impossible challenging to sell, like cabbages, turnips and prickly skinned cucumbers. Conversely, not so bothered about the peas and broad beans - too much prep so they buy frozen. He also made excited faces when I said things like 'quince', 'cooking pears' and 'kale', which was extremely gratifying.

It's been a gentle start, with a few kilos of rhubarb a week and some trays of mixed herbs

I've even got some new scales

and down on the farm our new chooky girls have started laying 

so it's time to get organised and start sending the eggs to the shop

the financial return on these items isn't huge

but it's part of a bigger story

and it feels like the right thing to do

and that feels good…

#museumselfie

I pride myself on taking a good photo - I used to be a focus puller in my pre-horticulture previous life. 

I know my way around a camera, and take care to get the images on this blog looking good.  

So how hard could it be to get some cute pictures of the two lambs I've been bottle feeding at work?

BLOODY IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!

dark shed/lambs won't keep still/not enough hands

Answer: Collage it up and stick an effect on it

12 new chooky girls too - yay!

the only ffactor with a tractor

It's the final of Fferm Ffactor* this week and we're all very excited in our house. Some of you may be unaware of this farming task based, reality show on S4C (Welsh language telly) - but take my word for it, it's the greatest show on TV. The contestants compete in various farm based challenges, to win a prize of a pick up truck, and the title of 'Best Farmer in Wales 2013'.

This year there's a woman in the final 3 - Go Gwenno!

So in honour of the occasion I thought I'd show you some pictures of our tractors at work! 

Woo-hoo!

Now my boss may not be very supportive of my idea for 'women's chainsaw group' - but as we are in the same dept as the farmers, we are encouraged to be competent with the animals and the tractors.

Mostly, that means pootling around after a few sheep or cattle on our little red 'story-book' tractor.

But sometimes I get to drive the big one...

.

Usually at haymaking time, when my ability to drive like your grandma in the supermarket carpark, is appreciated by those perched on top of a trailer full of hay bales. But this weekend I got an impromptu extra lesson in how to use the loader bucket at the front, and the PTO plus winch on the back. We have had some new fencing done, and the contractors had put in a gate that was blocked by some huge old, fallen oak trunks. Rather than chop them up to move them, we used the winch to drag them under the trees, where they will make great wildlife habitat as they decay gently.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pics - I was too busy pulling levers and being scared.

I'm not generally much of a petrol head,

but the chance to drag enormous bits of stuff round with a tractor and a winch was too good to miss. 

Grrrrr!!!!

*'Ff' in Welsh is pronouced the same as a single 'f' in English. 

(A single 'f' in Welsh makes the English 'v' sound)

bad hair day

I like to learn new skills. As well as long periods of regular employment for decent money - my portfolio career has included interludes of toilet cleaning in a psychiatric hospital, cauliflower picking and dental assisting in Western Australia, and occasional stints as a waitress, barmaid and checkout chick. I think I have mentioned previously that one of my mantras has always been 'You'll never be in the gutter if you're till trained.' I have a very dear friend in NYC who, as well as wishing all the usual 'health and happiness' stuff for her child, publicly states that she would like to equip her daughter with all the skills she might need to live under a bridge by the time she's nine. That's my kind of parenting!

Bearing all that in mind, I seized the opportunity to have a go at sheep shearing yesterday. My very patient colleague (who is a proper kick-ass farm girl), had the first bunch of ewes and yearlings in to shear, so I asked her to teach me.

Now I realise that at nearly six foot and pushing fifty I wouldn't be anybody's first choice as a shearing hand - but I was prepared to give it my best shot! I was brought up watching competitive shearing at the local A and P* shows in NZ (we knew what real entertainment was in those days!).

HOW HARD COULD IT BE...?

...turns out REALLY HARD!

A bit like wielding a cut-throat razor and trying to hold a really difficult yoga position...
.. while somebody tries repeatedly to push you over.

This was my first attempt...

The one in the middle is how they should look - the other two are mine.

I think the rest of the sheep are probably being mean to them about their hairdos now.

But I managed to get the fleeces off in one piece, without severing any ears (or other vital bits and bobs). Today, I feel slightly like I have been hit by a truck, but intend to have another go when the farmers bring the main flock in some time next week.

Don't know about you, but if the sheep need shearing after the Apocalypse - I'm gonna be ready....!!!

*Agricultural and Pastoral Shows

how many is too many? *

My lovely big niece is currently doing her final exams at university. We decided that regularly looking at pictures of cute baby animals/humans is a good way to manage your exam stress and nerves. So this one is for you sweetie - baby piggies born on the farm at work, less than 24 hrs old. Enjoy!

*the answer to the question in the title is 15 (if you've only got 14 teats!)

poopsie's progress

After a lot of false starts, jail breaks and general messing about - we have finally managed to get Poopsie the lamb to stay out in the field all day. She's happy to follow me for a bottle which cuts down on the amount of chasing around and rugby tackling that might otherwise be required.  We have a Llanwenog ewe, who lambed very late, in the field with her week old twins - so Poops has some company. (As you will see - there seems to have been some kind of misunderstanding with the choice of ram!).  So Poopsie is now busy spending her days learning to eat grass and playing 'I'm a sheep - you're a sheep' with her new mini-flock.

If you liked 'Poopsie's Breakfast', you're going to love 'Poopsie's  Day Out' ......

bottle babies

As well as the gardens at work, there is a small farming operation on the estate. We have sheep, pigs, cattle and a ragbag mix of poultry. Occasionally at lambing time we end up with a few bottle babies - usually a weaker twin that gets left behind when a ewe doesn't have enough milk. It's been a very tough year for sheep farmers in Wales - the late snow caused huge stock losses, and the grass has only just started growing.

Earlier in season I introduced my Twitter followers to Poopsie the lamb. Here is a very fuzzy pic of me warming Poopsie up under the hand dryer in the bathroom at work.

The name comes from the fact that they usually scour a bit (get a runny bottom), when they start to have bottles instead of their mum's milk. This lamb shat all over my leg the first time I fed it - hence Poopsie. The farmers think I'm mad to name them - they also won't let me knit them sweaters or dye them green for St Patrick's day!

Sadly Poopsie didn't make it (she was extremely poorly). But today I would like you to meet Poopsie II - doing well and nearly ready to go back out into the field and join the other lambs.

Thanks to Mr Asparagus Pea for the video editing tech support. He likes a good acronym, so has dubbed himself Senior Head of IT and Entertainment. We're thinking of getting an 'I'm SHITE'  T-shirt made for him!