This Farming Life - December

Castlefarm is starting to get very festive looking. We decorated the farm shop last week and nearly all our organic turkeys have been sold. These come from the Colchesters’ organic farm in Kilkenny. I have also ordered Irish hams from O’Neill Foods, cranberry sauce from Gees Jams, candles from Derrynine candles, potatoes from John O’Brien, confectionery from Wicklow Fine Foods and lots more yummy festive Irish food.

On the farm, all of our animals are now indoors for the winter. This means that we spend a lot of time each day bedding the cattle with straw and feeding them silage. Soon we will dry off 30 cows ahead of spring calving. We will have about 70 cows calving from February and as they come within about 10 weeks of calving we stop milking them to allow them to prepare for calving down. Our hens and ducks are laying well, but egg production does drop back a bit in winter due to the lack of daylight and colder weather.

In the garden we have cleared away most of the old vegetable plants. Over the next few weeks we will mulch the polytunnel, rhubarb patch and fruit trees with well rotted farmyard manure. Our garden is slightly bare with only herbs, cabbage, parsnips, carrots and celeriac to harvest over the winter months.

Although it is only December beef orders are already coming in for January. A couple of people have bought beef box vouchers as Christmas presents. These will be extremely appreciated in January.

We tend to spend a lot of our Christmas holidays on the farm because there is always so much to do. Even on Christmas Day the cows need to be milked and the hens shut in that night. Last Christmas was very difficult due to the snow and freezing weather. So this year I am crossing my fingers for no snow!

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This December we are open 10am-6pm Friday 16th and Saturday 17th. On Saturday customers are welcome to join us for egg collecting at 2.30 (sharp). 11am-6pm Friday 23rd Dec; 10am-1pm Sat 24th Dec (Christmas Eve)

To receive our newsletter, news of new products & cooking tips by email please contact Castlefarm Shop, Narraghmore, Athy, Co Kildare, Telephone 087 678 5269, Email jenny@castlefarmshop.ie, log onto www.castlefarmshop.ie or telephone +353 (0)59 863 6948

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