Month: May 2011

I hope you all had a relaxing Bank Holiday Weekend, although the weather was pretty miserable wasn’t it!! The temperatures are not very good for the time of the year and as a result the vegetable garden is struggling, today I have ordered some proper wind break to try to create a microclimate in order to get them going. The runner beans should be half way up the poles by now and are still only a couple of inches high! The root crops are doing well though and I will need to sow a second lot of them to have a continuous crop. It seems to be a battle against everything at the moment, the rabbits, the pigeons, the wind, the lack of rain and sun, next it will be too much sun and then the caterpillars 😦

On the bright side we had a new arrival, the Light Sussex bantam has hatched a chick, she did have two but one died on the first night, I am not sure how long the other will last, when I fed her this morning she stood on the poor little thing.

I moved the other chicks during the week from their small run to a larger one, I put them all in a box, proceeded to carry them to their new home and the bottom fell out and so did all the chicks!! They were running around the yard amazed at the freedom they had just accidentally encountered, both cats were in the vicinity probably thinking how lucky they were that breakfast had come to them, one of the chicks found an old fag butt and proceeded to run around with it in its mouth while the others, thinking it had found a tasty morsel chased it round and round. Meanwhile, I am hissing at the cats and daring them to come any closer, Sam went to get a net and after about half an hour we managed to round them up and deposit them safely in the new run. The ducklings are due to be moved outside but again its a little too cold, they have not yet fully feathered up, which means I can’t risk them getting wet! Ducklings that are born with their mother are coated each day by her with a waterproofing substance from a gland, ducklings that are hatched in an incubator do not have this protection and therefore cannot get wet or they will catch a chill and die.

I have had to rescue the potato growing from Hubby, he is new to gardening and it seems that after decades of growing potatoes a certain way, he has decided to rewrite the rule book! After watching painfully for a few weeks now, I could no longer stand by and watch the crop amount to nothing,  his idea was to dig a trench and earth up as the plants grew, but without boring you of the details of sub soil etc, I told him exactly why it wouldn’t work! I hope I have managed to get to them in time for them to produce some tubers :p

The rhubarb champagne had its first tasting on Saturday, it definitely fizzes, it tastes nice, but I have not had enough of it yet to let you know how alcoholic it is, I was hoping to enjoy a glass or two out in the sunshine over the weekend but it will have to wait until the sun finally comes out to play.

I watched a programme about the wildlife and the real truth of it last night, we have quite a range of  wildlife but there is always more that can be done. We have plenty of native trees and hedgerow, but grass and wildflower are not as abundant as they could be, this is partly due to the fact that we keep grazing animals and it never has chance to go to seed. I had always thought that there was enough to sustain birds here and that feeding them would be silly but the common thought now is that feeding garden birds is more likely to help them flourish than leaving it to nature to provide. I already grow Sunflowers to provide seeds for the chickens and will be looking into other garden crops that will do a similar job after all without the birds the mass invasion of caterpillars wont be far behind!!

I have started today’s blog three times now, not satisfied with what I was writing on the first two attempts, after giving it some thought, I decided I am having one of ‘those’ days! I suppose everyone has them, the days when you question what it is you are doing, aiming for, trying to achieve, where to I fit in, in the grand scheme of life? Today seems to be a battle, against the wind in particular, I have been trying (and failing) to erect wind barriers to protect the veg that are out in the open, I also noticed that the rabbits, that usually live down at the bottom of the paddock, have decided that they will help themselves to the top of my carrots and beans, and the cats although they have 5 acres in which to do their business, think I have raked and sown a seedbed just for their convenience! I am feeding most of the rooks in a 5 mile radius because the chickens don’t eat their grain up fast enough, and some little sod thinks it’s very funny to nick my egg board every saturday night and deposit it half a mile down the lane!!!

I think I need chocolate 🙂

As for the farm, well everything survived while we were away, which is a bonus, well more of a surprise really as we usually don’t get very far before getting a phone call to inform us of the latest death! So well done to the girls for holding the fort :).

The smallholder show was great and although I enjoyed it, hubby would rather have been home watching the F1 qualifying, I managed to contain myself and only came away with a few hatching eggs for the incubator, two types of Orpington, Gold Laced and Blue Splash, which are difficult to source around these parts.

The little lamb that was poorly has now gone back out to the paddocks with her friends, the ducklings are growing fast and I need to find them a permanent home outside, the new hens are laying very well and the egg sales are going back up again. The other young goose has started nesting and I found two eggs in there this morning, the end of May is a little late for her to start sitting really but I wont stop her and you never know we might actually get goslings after all (note to self: don’t hold your breath). I have a light sussex bantam that has been sitting on her two eggs for a couple of weeks now so fingers crossed that they are fertile!

The outdoor veg plants are struggling a little, what with lack of rain, cold nighttime temperatures and now these strong winds, it will be a wonder if we get a harvest from them at all, the greenhouses are doing much better, with the sun trying to peep through each day, the temperature inside them is pretty good and the plants are well protected. We are still harvesting lettuce, radish, spinach and spring onions, there are plenty left before I need to make more sowings. We picked the first bowl of strawberries yesterday, which is quite early, they say it will be a bumper year for them, I have a few dozen jamjars on standby and when they are in full flow, will be making jam on a daily basis. I bought a Tefal jam maker which is a great little gadget as you can make as little as one jar at a time and it self cleans, always a bonus!

I,m off now to make the decision of the day, whether to go back out into the wind and be buffeted until my head aches or stay in, clean the house, make the dinner and hope the wind has gone by tomorrow, its at times like these I could do with a conservatory, then the choice would be neither, I will sit down with a magazine and a cup of tea :p

At the beginning of the week I had such a massive ‘to do’ list that I had to prioritize or nothing would have got done at all, thankfully with the help of the rest of the family we have nearly ploughed through all of them 🙂

The lambs have been high up on the list, we have had to get the vet out to one of them as she was not doing very well out in the field, the vet diagnosed Pasteurella which is a lung infection probably caused by it not getting enough colostrum when it was first born. She has been having antibiotic injections daily and at first we could not even force feed her a bottle but, I have just looked in on her and she has been having a nibble at the hard feed so hopefully although she is terribly thin she will pull through. The other lambs all had to have a bum wash with a diluted disinfectant, this keeps the flies away from their nether regions and hopefully prevents flystrike, which is very nasty and if it goes unnoticed would cause their death. A most unpleasant job to do as the lambs tend to wag their tails whilst you are doing it and you end up covered in splashes of poo! Worming was next on the list, and as the vet was paying a visit we decided to do a worm count, this is basically picking up sheep poo, testing it for worms and dosing depending on the result, we were very happy that the vet reported a negative count, which means that we don’t have to worm at all, this is good news for animal rearing in a natural way as we like to do, so that we do not give unnecessary medication.

The little Shetland ponies escaped from their paddock this weekend, I was in the kitchen and suddenly heard tiny hoofs clattering around, as bad luck would have it I had left the gate to the veg garden open and Jazz decided to charge all over the veg beds! As good luck would have it he managed to miss every single plant I had put in only the day before!

I have almost finished planting out the veg plants, just a few more brassicas to go, the beans have not appeared from beneath the surface so my guess is that they have been eaten by mice, luckily I had planted some in pots too and they are growing nicely although too small to go out just yet. Everything else is growing steadily, we even picked the first strawberry of the year last week! That is very early and I am not quite sure what is going on, someone else told me that their tomatoes are already setting trusses, I can only think that it was all that warm weather we had has confused them, lets hope that the return to seasonal temperatures does not interfere with the fruit too much or the harvest could be poor.

The Rhubarb champagne is well under way, I bottled it yesterday, it now needs to stand for two weeks until its ready, I did have a sneaky slurp and if it tastes as good at the end as it does half way through it is going to be delicious, the recipe did say to open carefully when it is ready so I have stood it in an outbuilding just in case it explodes! It made just over 5 litres of drink, and from a few cups of rhubarb some sugar, vinegar and water, is a great return, I have put it on the recipe page for anyone who wants to have a go, it’s very simple and does not need a lot if equipment. I saved the squash bottles to put it in but you could use milk cartons or lemonade bottles.

We have small garden birds nesting in the walls (yes, in the walls, the building is wooden with various holes ideal for nests!) A pair of Blue Tits are nesting in the front next to the window, I can hear them all cheeping as I type, one fell out of the nest the night before last and before we could rescue it the dog pounced on it and tossed it in the air like a ball, poor thing was a goner! We will keep a close eye on things as the develop, the fledglings will be flinging themselves out any day and we need to make sure the dogs are in so that no more of them perish!

I am going to the 2011 Smallholder show at the Royal Welsh Showground this weekend, we are looking forward to meeting up with like minded people and having a look at the livestock, who knows what we will come back with, but we are taking an empty trailer so watch this space 🙂 

Thank you to those that took part in the rain dance, we seemed to have achieved it!! We have had a good soaking which will spur on the paddocks, the veg beds and unfortunately the weeds, but you can’t have it all 🙂

We finally caught the marauding fox last night as well, we borrowed a trap and set it up, on the second night just before dark, the dog starting barking and lo and behold she was caught. We called in a neighbour to dispatch her humanely, but will have to set the trap again as no doubt there will be more than one.

We have had 4 ducklings hatch this week which is lovely, but the goose eggs turned out to be dud’s so that is disappointing, that is generally how things go. On the wildlife side we have a pair of wild ducks visiting at the moment and a pair of swifts that nested in the stables last year have returned again this year, so we look forward to them hatching out a brood and teaching them to fly, it was very entertaining watching the young firstly move out of the nest onto the ledge and then after some days take their first flight.

I mentioned the weeds and we have been working hard to clear the beds before planting, I sometimes wonder why we don’t eat more weeds, it would save us a lot of time and effort! Quite a few of them we feed to the chickens, like fat hen and chickweed so it’s not all a wasted effort, my sister gave me an early birthday present which is a book on foraging, you can make coffee from the goosegrass seeds, that the sprawling sticky weeds with the sticky balls on, might have a go at that, you never know it could be a rival for Nescafe but I seriously doubt it! I also saw a recipe for Rhubarb Champagne this week and it seems very easy so I thought I would have a go at making some, I don’t think it is very alcoholic but should be refreshing and as an added bonus it will be pink so a nice girly drink for the summer BBQ’s.

The sweet potato slips arrived at the weekend, a strange plant and it will be interesting to see how it grows, they are not grown like a normal potato, they come as a bit of greenery and you pot them up to begin with, then plant them out in June, I have never grown them before, although we have eaten them and love them mashed, they are also lovely baked, if you have never tried them, give them a go I don’t think you will be disappointed.

As I said thanks for the rain dance, now if you could all just gather same time again this week, a money dance would be appreciated :p

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend, especially the Royal Wedding, being a houseful of girls we watched in style with a Champagne brunch, oooooed and arrrhhhed at the dress, the hair, and melted when William commented that Kate looked beautiful, we commented on the awful choice of hat by Beatrice and waited with baited breath for the balcony kiss, we were not disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed the whole spectacle!

The downside came when we returned home to find the fox had been at it again! This time 5 chickens and he had actually dug into one of the pens, he must have known we were preoccupied as he came in the middle of the day! I have now had to put a notice on the gate apologising for the lack of eggs, sods law means that the point of lay have not started laying yet and so I just hope that customers return when we have a more plentiful supply. We have doubled up the defences but it will probably mean that we will have to shoot the fox as the business cannot sustain that kind of loss in a week!

Another ‘up’ is the second lot of lambs went out into the field today after living their first 6 weeks in a stable. We coaxed them up there this morning and tried to introduce them to the other older two, neither party was interested! The youngest lambs hung round the gate visibly shaking, this is all new to them after all, the first time they had seen grass, sky and other animals, I did try to move them away from the gate as I needed to let the geese out but they wouldn’t move, so out came the geese and I watched knowing what was going to happen. The lambs were curious and went straight over to them, the bravest had a sniff and whack, got a  peck on the nose for his trouble! Sheep are generally considered to be a bit stupid and these are no exception so in they went for another sniff and whack another peck on the nose! After that I left them to it so goodness knows how many more times that has happened today!

We still have had no rain and this is becoming a serious problem for farmers in general now, the knock on effect if we don’t get any soon will impact the wider public in the long run, although the crop will grow it will be far more sparse, this in turn will put up the price of the grain, it will also put up the price of straw and hay in the Autumn. You may think that it does not concern you but that will mean that meat  and dairy animals are going to cost more to feed and house during the winter thus pushing up the price of your shopping again. So my solution is simple, if we all do a rain dance at the same time we can save ourselves some money!! Wednesday at 3.30pm it is then :p