Month: June 2012

What a lovely day, I don’t think I have been able to write that for a while! I have no idea what has happened to our Spring or Summer seasons, they are unrecognisable this year and make for a challenging growing season.

Having said that we are beginning to get a bit of produce, a few courgettes, some mangetout and a handful of strawberries but I don’t think we will have a bountiful harvest this year and I have stopped worrying about it because there is not much more I can do. The heavy rainfall at the weekend totally saturated even the top paddocks so the aquifers must be full by now no matter what the waterboard says. We have managed to keep the weeds at bay with a couple of intensive sessions, now we just need a good few days of Sunshine to kick everything into gear.

The Quail have been moved into their new ‘des res’, I think they like it, there is certainly more room than in the brooder unit which is now occupied by the Legbar hatchlings,  I am just waiting for one more broody to naturally hatch a couple of eggs and then I think that will do for hatching this year.

Everything pretty much just rolls along at this time of year, we have topped a couple of the paddocks to encourage root strengthening in the grass, the corner paddock has got very long and Hubby wanted to cut it but I want to leave it to go to seed, besides it looks lovely and the wildlife is teeming in there, very ‘Little House on the Prairie’! I win 🙂 The muck piles are doing great with all the rain we have had, a dry heap means that the breakdown doesnt work very well and it usually only gets going in the Autumn, but at this rate the muck will be ready to use much earlier. We always have a plentiful supply if anyone wants some and give it away for free 🙂

I am going to make Mint Jelly today, I first tasted this a couple of years ago and I like it much better than Mint sauce, it has a lovely refreshing taste that goes well with Lamb and I prefer it to the vinegar based sauce, although it does not keep as long. I have made it before and used all natural ingredients but the colour was quite bland so this time I am going to use a touch of food colouring as well just for looks. The sheep (I have stopped calling them Lambs) are still here and will eventually go although I am getting quite fond of them, or I was until they managed to open the chicken hut door last night and spent the night in there with the hens, not too much of a problem except that they didn’t close the door behind them so it’s a good job Mr Fox was not about!

The next big job on our perpetual list is the new front fence,hopefully we can start that at the weekend, you may remember we took down the conifers right at the front of the drive and the fence was taken out at the same time. Having been erected in the 1970’s it was completely rotten and was falling down anyway, the new wood for the fence was delivered some time ago but we have not had time to do anything with it yet. I am hoping by next Spring the trees that are left will have recovered sufficiently from their drastic pruning and put on new growth and I intend to plant bulbs underneath this Autumn, the result should be quite pretty and it will lift the look of the entrance to the farm greatly.

I am glad the Sun is shinning today, it is 29 years ago that I got married in the Church down in the Village here, the Sun shone beautifully on that day too. I had a little chuckle to myself as I remember that I was about 20 minutes late because the car got stuck behind a tractor and they didn’t go very fast in those days, also the chap that drove the bridesmaids car had to stop and deliver some eggs on the way there!!! You can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl LOL

Right I am off to gather armfuls of Mint, see you next week 🙂

 

 

 

Were did that week go?? The Summer Solstice is almost upon us and still not much in the way of a Summer and certainly not flaming June! Still at least the hosepipe ban has been lifted, I should think so too :p

We have had some new arrivals on the farm this week, the first were 3 ducklings, not naturally hatched out here but at a local hotel. We were asked if we could re home them as their pond is not big enough to sustain their parents and them also the threat of them being eaten by a fox was high and they didn’t want them to come to that kind of end so they have come to live with us. They settled in very well and after the first few hours were eating and splashing about in the water, they can’t go out with our existing ducks yet as they are too young and not fully feathered plus they need to be isolated just in case they have any infection they could pass on. At the moment they are in the back stable but I am hoping to put them out in a run on the lawn later today weather permitting. It was quite heartbreaking when we took them away from Mum, we put them in a box and carried them to the van but Mum could hear them chirping and followed us out to the car park 😦 I am sure after a day or two she will have settled down back into life without them, probably lay some more eggs to hatch!

The other new arrivals are the chicks that were in the incubator, the Cream Legbars and Splash Orpingtons, so far, six have hatched not bad considering they were not due to hatch until today, fingers crossed for a few more. The Cream Legbars are the Blue egg layers and they are a pretty chicken with a little tufted crest on their head, I already have one hen that I hatched out last year so any cockerel in this batch will be a useful addition for breeding. I ordered two batches from different suppliers so that I could mix the bloodlines but at the moment not one of the second batch has hatched, such is life!

We had a busy weekend, my middle daughter was here on the Saturday to lend a hand, moving all the debris from the plum trees that I had pruned in the week. I left the branches on the floor for a few days for the chickens to pick over any grubs and pests, they also like to eat the leaves, I gave some of the branches to the Rabbits as they also like to eat the leaves and chew on the wood of fruit trees, it does their teeth good and gives them variety in their diet. The plum pruning was a bit drastic and I have probably sacrificed what little harvest we would have got but hopefully they will be rejuvenated for next year. I have seen a couple of news reports about the weather affecting the fruit crop this year, Apples especially seem to be down in numbers, and although our Strawberry plants were heaving with flowers earlier in the year, the fruits are small and with all this wet weather they are succumbing to fungal problems very quickly. I did manage to pick a handful yesterday and took them up to hubby who was turning the muck heap, we stood and had a little snack while admiring the view, those are the moments that make me feel very lucky 🙂

Fathers day here does not mean a day off  although we did take it a little easier, on the Saturday, Hubby started to build a multipurpose house and run which we will probably use for the Quail when it is finished, we also had a few bits of hedge to cut back, they had started blocking the entrances to various animal houses making it awkward to get in. In the evening we had a family get-together to celebrate Fathers day, that included the youngest via Skype, although it was 5.30 in the morning for her and she looked a little sleepy 🙂 The girls and one of the boyfriends stayed over and on the Sunday morning we got up and had bacon and egg sarnies and sat around chatting until lunchtime, which is a very rare event for us but one we thoroughly enjoyed 🙂

Last year I bought a food dehydrator and never got round to using it and so I was determined not to do the same this year. In the week I picked bunches of herbs and set about drying them, I was chuffed with the results and managed to make up five small jars of mixed herbs. It was very easy to do and so I am on a mission to do many more, the next batch is a combination of Red Basil and Oregano for an Italian flavour, I have ordered plenty of small jars and hope to do a few different mixes for fish sauces etc. If I end up with too many I may even put them out in the shed to sell. I am very glad I ordered the little shed as it can take many more boxes of eggs and also produce at the bottom as well, this months egg money was the most ever and Hubby calculated that we sold 85 dozen eggs last month!! Because the duck eggs are out there too I also seem to be selling more of them to the public than before, hopefully the Quail eggs will soon be on the board as well as Courgettes which have just started to grow and I usually put freshly picked Rhubarb in there a couple of times a week. I get great pleasure from being able to provide fresh good quality produce even if it is only a small amount, it is very satisfying and I try to charge just enough to cover the costs of seed and time spent. People often say, you should open a farm shop, but for me it is about being outside growing it and looking after it not in a shop selling it, so until the time that I could afford to pay someone to do that, it will be in the little shed at the top of the drive!

We are entering the season of plenty, or rather we should be but the weather is still holding everything back, very little growth on any of the legumes, and from what I have seen when I am out and about, it is common, the high winds we have suffered also cause a setback for any veg plants as they need to be healthy and strong in order to produce any decent harvest, instead they are looking distinctly battered. The winds have once again taken the roof panels off of my greenhouse and I need to find a way to stop it happening every time. I replaced the glass with poly carbonate after the last storms sent the whole roof crashing down, but the panels are light and are easily taken up by strong gusts I may need to resort to using silicon to keep them in place! Most trees and perennial plants are reveling in all the rain of course and we have a very green and pleasant land at the moment, the Elderflowers are bursting out all along the lanes and it is time to make cordial or champagne, it makes a lovely refreshing drink, perfect for these long sunny days in June :s The grass in our paddocks is growing exceptionally well and the bottom corner one that we have manured and seeded is now waist height in various grasses and common wildflowers, it is lovely to walk in, although I did spot a couple of Ragwort which will need to be dug up as it is fatal for horses to eat. One of the liveries has also spotted a Bee Orchid in the margins of her paddock, a delightful little flower and I hope it will colonise.

I find that some weeks tend to be dominated by one particular element of the farm and this week it was definitely the poultry, we have had the arrival of some naturally hatched chicks, 6 in total, of which 4 were promptly eaten on the day they came out of the hut! We suspect it was the cats as the next morning when we went to let the chickens out the cats were sat suspiciously in the paddock waiting, not really their fault, they are hunters after all and one small bird smells very much like another I expect, our fault for not protecting Mum and her offspring a little better 😦

The cockerels have finally been dispatched and in fact I have just finished dressing them for the freezer, not a pleasant job and one I am glad to have got out of the way, the only job left to do is give the kitchen a good clean and airing as the smell tends to linger long after the remains have gone out to the bin. We have also had a couple of deaths amongst the new hens, at the moment we are unsure as to why but the bio security measures are stepped up and as we have had a new delivery this morning we spent yesterday preparing a new area for them to keep them separate and stall any spread of possible infection.

The quail are doing well now after losing a few in the beginning, this is usual after hatching out, you will find there are those  that fail to make it to full growth, those that are unable to hatch on their own and then those that do hatch and die soon after, it’s all part of natures plan ‘survival of the fittest’. The temptation is to help the poor little ones out of the shell when they are unable to do it by themselves but over the years I have learnt that these very often die soon after anyway so best to leave it to nature.

The ducks have all been moved in together to make way for the new hens, at the moment they are a bit like the Capulets and Montague’s, each group busying themselves around the pen avoiding each other as far as possible and then an altercation or two when they bump into each other. One of the female ducks has been limping for a few days, I did take her out asses her and try to rest her for a while but she was fretting so I have put her back, I would think that the damage has been done by the over amorous drake as there are no signs of actual injury, hopefully she will recover soon.

I had a lovely surprise when I opened the back door one evening last week, a Roe Deer was browsing for supper along the hedgeline of the paddock directly in front of me, I resisted the temptation to go and get the camera, I did that before and by the time I got back they had gone, so this time I just stood and watched while it carried on munching away, a lovely moment on a quiet evening.

Not such a quiet event here were the Jubilee celebrations, we had intended to picnic in the paddocks but after looking at the long-range forecast we decided to go with the wet weather plan! We decorated the back stable the day before, put up a large gazebo, plenty of bunting and flags and decided to go with a street party theme instead, it’s a good job we did as the rain came by the bucketful on the day. It didn’t stop up having an excellent time though, we came in fancy dress with anything English being the order of the day, we played plenty of nostalgic tunes, ate a mountain of food and although it wasn’t hot we still had a thirst that sank a good few bottles of refreshments 🙂 A thoroughly good time was had by all and indeed by the rest of the country as well  by all accounts.

Up to this point in this blog I have (almost) avoided the obvious topic of conversation, the weather! My theory is that all travel brochures for the UK will now include the paragraph ‘ avoid the monsoon season’  by my reckoning that will be from September through to August!!! There isn’t much we can do about it but it doesn’t stop us moaning, the fruit that was looking promising are now looking a bit small due to lack of any Sunshine, the beans and the peas are struggling to get going and to be honest I don’t think the harvest from them will amount to much at all unless we get a break. Add to that the wind damage and it is all in a pretty sorry state, apart from the poly tunnel of course which is  brilliant, no wonder they are a taking over areas of our countryside, it is the only way to beat our great British weather!

I had better go and get on with cleaning the kitchen and also check on the new arrivals, they probably looked like drowned rats by now and are stood wondering what the heck happened as this morning they would have been in a huge dry shed, next stop Shilton, outside in a run and in the pouring rain, they do have huts they can go into but chickens are not that clever! I will leave you with some photos of the Jubilee knees up and the thought that the rain will have to stop eventually, wont it?