Piglets at Last!
Farm News
At last Olive gave birth to her litter of piglets on sunday 27th April! Unfortunately it was a very small litter of only 5. She started farrowing about 5pm & finished around 8pm. Have a look at the pictures on our Flickr account. Both photo’s were taken at a couple of days old. Mother & piglets are all doing well. You forget how small they are when they are first born!
Wildlife News
I saw our first House Martin on saturday down by the Birsay pools beneath the house on saturday 3rd May when taking Selkie for a walk. It was a lovely warm, sunny day. Still no swallows arrived at our place yet?
Seen two male Hen Harriers last week hunting the fields opposite our house. One swooped over the garden dyke at an amazing speed!
Two Orca’s were seen off Hoxa, South Ronaldsay on the morning of the 5th May. So all eyes to the sea as the weather was perfect for Fins!
New! Fluke Diary
Hello and Welcome to our first article of our new diary section!
We are aiming to use this section on our website to keep you in touch with the latest happenings here at ‘Fluke’ & ‘Craiglands smallholding’. We receive many emails from you wondering how life is here on Orkney, so we thought it would be a great way to communicate to you all on a regular basis.
We are just gearing up to the season ahead & given our gallery a well needed spring clean! Roger has been busy preparing stock for the season ahead & is designing & making new pieces as we speak. Although it won’t always be possible to put these on the website, we can now post a photo of the new piece on our Flickr section with details and you will be able to phone through an order if you want to!
Farm news
‘Olive’ our sow is due her litter around the 21st April so we will keep you posted about how many she has. Last time she had 10 & the largest litter she has had was 15! We lost ‘Merlin’ unfortunately at the end of March but he had serviced our sows well & produced plenty of offspring!
Wildlife news
I (Jo) saw 2 otters from the gallery window at the end of March bounding after one another which was a very exciting moment!
We are seeing more Hares around & look forward to them chasing & boxing outside our kitchen window. Our days are accompanied with the constant bubbling of the Curlew & song of the Lark. It won’t be long before the Puffins arrive & many of you have seen them on the cliffs beneath our house. We are wondering whether our swallows will return as we had our first pair breed in a byre last year, so fingers crossed.
We hope for better ‘whale/dolphin’ sightings this year, so keep an eye on our sightings section. There is a real sense of anticipation of what is ahead for the coming season.
We hope to see some of you again this year so please come & say ‘hello’.
Until our next news… Keep well & happy
Roger & Jo