My how big we are getting!

For those of you that may not know us, one of the main focuses of Livewell Farm is the raising of delicious free range organic pork.  We believe that each animal we rear and then consume on the table has had the best possible life.  We currently have two purebred Berkshire breeding sows and two young Large Black sows which we will put into pig late next year.  We choose not to run a boar with our girls, as they have a nice long rest between litters (and he would be very bored and frustrated). Instead, one of us will AI the girls.  We use Duroc seamen as our research has led us to believe that the hybrid vigour of the Duroc along with its tendency to lay down intra-muscular fat in combination with traditional cut of the Berkshire, means that our customers get the best possible tasting pork available.

Our girls have pretty much free run over 40 acres but choose mostly to have their own patch of territory that they can call home.  Currently Fauna (our other Bekshire girl is Flora) is in a two acre paddock of lush grass with a Mulberry tree for shade along with her 5 (teenage) piglets. These bundles of little trouble will be heading off to the butcher sometime around March 2011. Until then they will enjoy the company of their family group in the most pig friendly environment you could imagine.

Get back into bread

Fresh bread is one of those simple pleasures, whether it conjures up memories of childhood or simply its the anticipation of that first slice, it really can not be bettered.

Here is one of our favourite ways of making bread and believe it or not all the hard work is done by that bread maker that many of of us have tucked away in the back of the cupboard somewehere, so get it out.

Place the following ingredients together into the breadmaker

3 cups of strong (bread) flour

1 1/4 cups of water

1 tsp of salt

1 tsp of soft brown sugar (or caster sugar)

1 tsp of dried yeast

1 tbsp of butter or vegetable oil

1 tsp of bread improver (optional)

Set the bread maker onto dough setting, this usually takes between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 hours, when it has finished take the risen dough out and place it onto a flour dusted surface, punch it down and knead into the required shape.  I like to place the bread onto a pizza stone to rise you, move the stone into a cupboard (or somwhere away from flies to rise for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in size.

Place (bread and stone) into a pre heated oven (150) and turn up straight away to 200 degrees. Bake for 35 minutes, remove from the oven and leave to cool for as long as you can resist and then just enjoy either on its own or spread with you favourite topping.

Tip: sprinkle ground semolina onto the stone to stop it sticking, you can use flour but it may burn whereas the semolina won't

Enjoy!

Look who arrived last night!

Woke up this morning to find a new set of little tiny legs on the land.
Ivy - the Braford/Swiss Brown Cross had a little boy calf by our
Miniture Zebu Bull Martini.

Well done Ivy!!  He sure is a strippy little fellow!

Rudolph pays a visit!

Here is the latest addition to Livewell crafts. Someone has droped in, just in time for Christmas, yes it is Rudolph who has been joined here by some of his friends.

These delightful handcrafted toys are from a pattern by "melly and me" each one is made individually made to the highest of standards.

family weekend at the farm

This weekend was spent planting out sweet potato cuttings and rockmelon (cantelope) as you can see fun was had by the whole family.

so here is hoping that mother earth is kind to us and we have a bumper harvest in the next few months