Month: July 2012

I am a day late writing my blog this week, that’s because it was my birthday yesterday and I gave myself the day off 🙂

We finally made a decision about the sheep this week and we are going to keep them, hopefully we will be able to borrow or hire a ram at the end of October and have our very first lambs in April. This meant that we had to shear them, the weather was very hot last week and they were in danger of suffering from heat exhaustion, Mum came over to help me and the final look was not too pretty but was much more comfortable for them! I only nicked them once a tiny bit so I was quite impressed with myself, they probably weren’t, then we doused them with Jeyes Fluid so that the flies stay away and they don’t end up with fly strike and they are happily back out in the field to spend their days munching on grass. It is quite a leap of faith to take as we have never done any lambing before but I have been reading up about it and hopefully it will be a success. If not we will have gained some valuable experience in the process.

We also decided this week to get a new puppy! She does not arrive until the end of August and we can’t wait. I have been longing for a Blue Merle Border Collie for a couple of years and the time is right. Our other collie, Milly is 10 this year and I want to get it before she is too old to cope, she is such a good dog that I want her to be able to teach the new puppy the ropes. We puppy sat at the weekend and it was fine so that prompted our move. I found a litter about an hour away, we went over to have a look, both parents were there and of lovely temperament so the deal was done. We are going to call her Mia and that will probably get changed to Mimi, we have a habit of calling our pets by a different name to the one they were originally given. Take Jazz, my Shetland, it went from Jazz to The Jazz Man to Jazz man Dewy to just just Dewy!

I have been picking quite a bit of veg this week, the courgettes have gone into overdrive with all that sun and the runner beans have started producing although I have to be careful picking them as the flowers keep falling off which will diminish the crop. I think that is happening due to the strange weather patterns we have had. I also noticed this week that the leaves were beginning to fall off the trees, yikes it’s only mid Summer, what is happening?

I am not sure if one of the ducks is sitting on eggs, I keep counting six then later another appears and is then gone again. They have a pallet in their house and she comes out from under it, either she is getting stuck or she is sitting, I will keep you posted on that one.

Today’s blog is being written on my new IPad so I am not sure how it will turn out! Everything looks different and I will need to work a few things out such as uploading photos etc, I am sure I will get the hang of it fairly soon. Strangely, although I am a country girl at heart, I do love technology and the fascinating world it opens up to everyone.

Hip, hip, hip hooray, finally Summer has arrived 🙂 not sure how long it will last so make the most of it. We have had to wait such a long time for this very welcome ball of fire to peep out from behind the rainclouds, but we haven’t forgotten what to do, we went on our daughters, boyfriends, boat on Sunday and nearly the whole of Oxfordshire was by the river I swear! It was a wonderful way to while away a few hours, a welcome break from working on the farm.

We have been busy though even if we had a few hours off, during the early part of the week when the weather was on the turn I decided that I needed to do something other than making jam with the raspberries so I set about looking for recipes. Firstly I made raspberry jellies then went on to make raspberry ripple ice cream, both were delicious and I am always surprised when I make something new and it turns out how it is supposed to, both of them were made from scratch and it is very satisfying to know that I don’t have to buy the processed versions. I also made raspberry vinegar which can be used in salad dressings, I have ordered some pretty little bottles for these and will probably use them for presents during that great mid Winter festival that I am not going to mention while the Sun is out 😉

All it needed was a tiny bit of Sun for the veg to get going and they have not let me down, although progress is slow, I have been picking, peas, runner beans, even a cauliflower. The new potatoes have all been dug up and are drying out in the dark of the back stable, they wont store so we will be using them up but they go green if left in the light so for now they are hidden away. I am still pulling fresh carrots and beetroot, the Blueberries are beginning to ripen although I have had to cover them with mesh to stop the birds pinching them before I get to them. There are a couple of Thrushes and a Blackbird that have found a way into the fruit cage and are there most mornings pinching anything low enough for them to reach from the ground, I don’t mind the raspberries as there are plenty but they are not having the Blueberries :p

Hubby has been busy as always, this time it was laying a pipe and concreting it over, remember the water we had coming in the back last week, well now we have a small gully that leads any overflow into a pipe and away from the buildings. We had to concrete over it as it is next to the hardstanding where the horses get washed down in Winter and it would get broken otherwise, the first thing that happened after we had finished was the dog walking straight through it! Actually more than one dog and so we now have permanent reminders of them, bless them, not what we said at the time I can assure you 🙂 We were also lucky enough to be given a lorry load of pavers that someone was taking up and so have been putting them to good use by edging the lawn with them, it looks so much better than the half round rails that were laid higgledy piggledy along there.

The polytunnel produce is doing well, the tomatoes are beginning to form fruits and the cucumber are growing well as are the peppers and aubergines. I did some weeding in there during the week and discovered that grasshoppers have set up home in there, at first I thought just one had got trapped, but then discovered quite a few more so I am guessing they like having a new des res to inhabit. While I was weeding a disturbed a spider in the soil, she spent a couple of minutes frantically looking for something, then she found her egg sac, collected it up onto her back and set off away from my dangerous fork! She wasn’t the only one I disturbed, another whose eggs had already hatched had her back covered in teeny tiny little spiderlings, amazing!

When I said last week that I couldn’t think of one positive thing to say I had completely forgotten the Nuts! Both the Walnut tree and the Hazelnut bushes are loaded with good size nuts, I was under the impression you needed a good hot summer for nuts but it seems that nature has defied our theories, I just hope there is something inside each kernel when they are harvested in September. This year I am definitely going to sell the hazelnuts from the little shed, they will be ‘green’ which is how many greengrocers sell them so if you want any to store for later in the year give me a shout or look out for them in the little shed.

The number of chicken eggs that we are collecting on a daily basis is going up and so are the sales, unfortunately the ducks have all but stopped laying at the minute, they all need a time during the year when they have to recuperate, they will be fed a poultry spice along with their grain to help their bodies get back to full health. The Quail are also laying well, I am getting eight eggs a day from eight hens so no complaints there, they will only lay for a season usually from March to September, but they lay well during that time so we should have a few more dozen to come yet.

One of the dogs has been in disgrace this week, the Collie, Milly, she spends most of her time outside, usually staring into the poultry pens waiting to round-up any escapees, this week however she was a little too forceful with one of the little chicks that had wandered outside the wire, all I can say is that it was a quick, painless death for the chick and a slow, painful afternoon for the dog as we scowled at her every time she looked up at us, she doesnt like being in the bad books so lets hope she learnt her lesson and doesnt do it again!

Enjoy the Sun everyone, I hope it continues, at least through the Summer Holidays 🙂

I am getting as bored of talking about the weather as you are reading and experiencing it I expect, but the sad fact is that it affects everything we do here, apart from watching the TV and even then if it is a downpour the noise on the tin roof means that you have to turn the sound up :p This week I have picked raspberries in the rain, has a catchy ring to it doesn’t it but it was not much fun! I have made two more batches of raspberry jam, both of which have set properly I am glad to say, I did put a couple of punnets out for sale which were snapped up but they have to be quick as they begin to spoil quite quickly because of the high water content. We took drastic measures on the strawberry patch last week, cutting back all the foliage, we were losing so many fruits to botrytis, cutting back means that the air flow can resume and the plants themselves will stand a better chance of recovery and lessen the risk of disease. The new potatoes have also had to be dug up, the ground is saturated and the chances are if we left them the tubers would just rot away which would be an awful shame after all the hard work we have put in. On a better note I have picked the first cucumber of the year, and there lots more forming on the plant, we ate it in a sandwich with cheese as it is not particularly salad weather!

Hubby has been busy this weekend putting up the front fence, we now have a lovely little area that we can plant up and I have ordered the apple tree to plant there to. I decided on plenty of daffodil bulbs and some pretty little blush pink primroses, originally I had decided on yellow primroses for a splash of colour but in the end fell in love with these others and went with my heart 🙂 Hubby has also had to spend a couple of days digging out some drainage, on the Thursday night after 6 and a half hours of nonstop rain, we had a very large puddle out the back which was beginning to run into the dry area in the back stable. Earlier in the day I had moved the chicks from the brooder unit into a cage on the floor, I had to transfer them back to the unit and lift it up off the floor so that they didn’t get wet and cold. The problem is now solved and the water is running away nicely although are left with a big pile of mud that had to be dug out, I am assured that it will be moved as soon as possible, I wont hold my breath though as jobs have a habit of being left for weeks on end here sometimes.

I had a wander round the fields yesterday to see what was happening with the wildlife, there were a few butterflies and bees about but not as many as you would expect to see at this time of year, last year we had small Blue butterflies but I have not seen any sign of them this year at all. The front corner paddock still has a small lake sat there, it is where all the run off water collects, I could hear it gushing down into the land drain quite fast so there is still a lot of water to be got rid of yet. I have at last identified the bird call that we keep hearing at dusk, they are Little Owls, last night I watched them flying around although I could only make out the silhouettes, they live in the tree in the next field to ours and I have wondered what they were for a long time, last night I came in and found a website that has recordings of British bird calls and now the mystery is solved!

The poultry have been an entertaining as ever this last week, the newbies have been roosting in the trees just before dusk which means going out as getting them down and showing them where they are supposed to sleep. Mostly it has been raining when we have had to do this and also very muddy, we went out for a nice meal Friday night came back had to put on wellies and rain coats and work in the dark to get them all in safely. Last night as we were putting them away we clipped their wings one by one, 60 birds later we had finished, I just hope they stay down after that. I have sold a fair few Quail over the last couple of weeks which has left me with a high number of males, they have started fighting and are quite vicious, pecking each others eyes out! I decided to give five males freedom and let them go, but they are back this morning obviously not keen to make it on their own in the big wide world. This will be their downfall as the only other option is to eat them, apparently they taste delicious and are well worth the effort it will take to pluck such a tiny body.

 The farming situation is getting desperate now, I have spoken to a couple of arable farmers who say that they cant get the machinery onto the fields to cut any of the crops, they would need at least two weeks of dry weather, one week to dry the ground and hay producers need another week to dry the hay before baling it. I think the options are take the machinery onto the ground and get the crop in but this will render the field useless next year, or not cut the crop at all and pray for some dry days, either way I think the consumer will find that the cost of flour will go up, if not this year then next. As I have said, the ground is waterlogged which means any root crops are also at risk of rotting, together with the lack of sunshine to bring anything on probably means a shortage of English fruit and veg in the coming months, I know a few people have already decided to stock up on frozen veg while it is available.

I am so glad we decided on the poly tunnel this year and just in the nick of time too, it has been so useful I am seriously contemplating buying another. The climate in there is slightly more controllable, although I can’t conjour up sunshine, but the crops are not getting battered by the wind and the rain and it is definitely warmer in there than outside! I have just received the seed potatoes that I will be planting in there, these should give us a crop from around December through to January possibly even February, which will be fantastic. It means we don’t have the problem of trying to store crops throughout the Winter months which can be problematic, trying to get the conditions just right, not too damp, wet, cold etc etc.

I am trying to think of a brighter note to end on and failing miserably! Nope, cant think of anything except Hubby has a fortnight off in August, I think I will plan a few day trips as we are not having a holiday this year, with a bit of luck the Jet Stream will have shifted and we will see more Blue sky but as with the jobs around here, don’t hold your breath 😉

It’s not too bad a day today still not July weather but at least it’s not raining at the moment. The heavy downpours we had last week have turned the chicken runs into a mud bath again and the paddocks are sodden, the aquifers must be full by now! I have been waiting for the sun to appear so that I can take off the sofa covers and get them washed and dried, I have resorted to drying them in the tumble dryer, no alternative really. The house smells of wet dog most of the time and the muddy footprints were creating an interesting pattern of their own, that’s why I am a little late blogging today, I decided a thorough clean was in order. I say decided but actually my hand was forced this morning when I discovered the contents of our eldest dogs stomach all over the floor in the utility room, if I am cleaning that up I may as well go the whole hog and do the rest. Oddly enough, I wasn’t the first person to enter that room this morning and only a man could walk in there, let the dogs out and not notice a thing!!

The ducks are in their element of course, the pen is a total mud bath, with what can only be described as a layer of sludge over the entire area! It is disgusting to walk through and I keep expecting to slip and fall in it at any moment, I would like to think that I would laugh but in all honesty I would probably swear and be in a foul mood for the rest of the day, lets hope it doesn’t happen but if it does, you have been warned 😉

On the day that we did have some sunshine, and yes it was just one day, we had to work twice as hard to get as many jobs done as possible. The grass down the driveway was getting a bit long as was the lawn and I knew that if it didn’t get cut that day we would miss our window which would make it difficult to cut on the next dry day. One of the large chicken huts needed cleaning out ready for the arrival of the next batch of hens which are due in this week, its best to try to do that on a dry day otherwise you make twice as much mess defeating the object entirely.

We sold a few Quail this week and on the day the family came to choose and collect them, I opened the back doorway to reach one that had been chosen, as I was on my hands and knees picking it up another shot past me and made a bid for freedom into the nearby hedge! Seeing how fast it was I thought there was no way we were going to able to get it back and so left it to its own destiny. The next day someone had left the nearby field gate open and the dog had escaped into the field beyond the hedge, we took the other two dogs and set off to look for him, the grass is well above waist height in there and it was impossible to see where the dog had gone. After fifteen minutes or so we found the escapee and made our way back towards the front of the field, one of the dogs startled something which took flight across the grass, it was the Quail that had escaped the day before, it landed back in the grass and the camouflage must be excellent because we spent another ten minutes or so looking for it to no avail. Just as we were leaving one of the dogs indicated that she had found something and there was the Quail, we picked it up but the shock of being disturbed and then found by the dog was too much for it and it died in a very short time. The others are still happily living in their new quarters and have now started laying, I am getting three to four eggs a day so far so it wont be long before I can put Quail eggs for sale in the little shed as well as duck and chicken 🙂

The last broody hen has finally decided to get off her eggs today after failing to hatch anything out, it is such a shame for her as she has sat patiently for over three weeks, I had made a mental note of when they should hatch and would have tried to break her brooding this week if nothing had happened but she is obviously a clever little hen and realised it for herself. That will be the end of hatching this year, anything hatching out after July does not stand a very good chance usually because of the weather, the broody hens have only managed to hatch out seven chicks this year and four of those disappeared overnight, the incubator has hatched eight chickens and the batch of Quail, not a great hatch rate this year at all 😦

I am, along with everyone else, hoping for an Indian Summer, otherwise we will be back into winter before we know it which is a depressing thought. I am grateful that we have not flooded as they have in other parts of the country or had vast fires like Colorado but I do yearn for some dry, warm weather so that it at least feels like we have had a Summer, just a couple of weeks would be fine pleeeeeeeeeaaaaassssee. The news is already reporting that the yields of fruit and veg are down, this means that the costs will be higher than normal, luckily we still have a fair amount in the freezer from last year and so my plan is to use what little crop there is while it is fresh and come the  Winter use the frozen produce to see us through to next Spring which will hopefully be better than this year.

I have managed to pick a small amount of soft fruit although I have nearly given up on the strawberries now, I have probably lost about 80% of the crop that was there due to continuous rain and the fact that they are not getting a chance to dry out at all. The raspberries promised a better crop and I did pick enough to make a batch of jam at the weekend, but it has failed to set, probably due to the high water content, we now have 5 jars of raspberry syrup! I could try to re boil it but I think it would just burn and spoil so its raspberry syrup with everything for the next few weeks, I will have to get creative with it and use it any way that I can think of. The courgettes have just started to produce good-sized fruits and I am cropping those every couple of days, chickens love courgettes so any that don’t get sold are a treat for them, normally at this time of year they would be getting all sorts of lovely tit bits such as runner beans and peas, maybe the odd cabbage, but there is no sign of any of these producing their fruits anytime soon so the chooks will have to keep waiting  just like the rest of us.

The polytunnel is our best chance at produce this year and I am glad we made the timely decision to buy one, the Tomato plants have a few trusses on them, the Cucumbers look like they will be the most succesful crop this year and I can’t wait for them to get big enough to start harvesting them. I planted some dwarf runner bean plants in there last week in the hopes that we will at least get a few runner beans this year and I have ordered some Winter veg to plant in there once the Summer crops have gone over. I will be able to grow cauliflower, broccoli and Winter salad crops such as Pak Choi, I will also experiment with carrots, onions and potatoes to see how far into the Winter I can keep things growing, you never know, we may be eating fresh veg at Christmas if I get it right. 🙂

 

Good Morning, what can I say, what I would like to say is, it is another fine day here in paradise! In truth, it’s raining again, the thing about the rain when you work outside is it affects everything you do, and normally throughout the Autumn and Winter you expect it but not in the middle of Summer, well not every single day anyway. It is difficult to convey how constantly getting a  soaking lowers your morale, in the Winter you would come in and be able to get dry and dry your coat on the radiator, in the Summer you can’t do that and so everything remains damp 😦 We had a good workload planned for Saturday, digging out the duck pond and sinking a rigid pond liner in, we had been given it last year and thought this would be a good time to do it. It all started off well, the sun was shinning early in the morning so we set about strimming the long grass and tidying the area up, then we started to dig out the ground, a shower sprang up and rain stopped play, the sun came back out so we started again, after about half and hour, another shower, eventually we got the liner in the ground, then torrential downpour and I mean torrential, we went outside to see the newly put in pond liner floating around in a pond of its own! Is someone trying to tell us something, that is a question I often ask myself 😦

The rain affects you in so many smaller ways too, picture this, you go out to do the feed routine in the morning, its raining, you get to the last chicken run in the paddock, by this time rain is dripping off of every available surface including your hands, you reach down to turn off the electric fence (still not quite having woken up) you grab hold of the wrong switch, WHACK, now you are fully awake! A touch of the electric pulse with dry hands is bad enough but with wet hands, you bloody feel it, yes you can get up off the floor and stop laughing now 😉

On a better note, last night we had the return of my favourite meal, one that is entirely home grown, home reared pork with new potatoes and freshly pulled carrots, followed by strawberries, yum yum. I love it when everything on my plate is as a result of our persistence and hard work it makes it all worthwhile. I must confess that I had cream and balsamic vinegar with my strawberries and I did not make either of those but they enhanced the taste greatly, I don’t know why the balsamic vinegar works but it does and if you have never tried it give it a go, just a splash mind, don’t drown the cream.

The strawberry yield has not been as great as it promised to be earlier in the year, the constant damp has caused botrytis which is basically mould, partly the fault of the weather and partly my fault because the plants are too close together, this is something we are working on to rectify next year. The fruits need to be up off the ground, even the traditional method of putting straw underneath would not have helped this year because it would just hold the water. I have decided to order some everbearers and have them hanging in the polytunnel, these plants will give a longer harvest but I am not sure if it is at the cost of taste, but I will only find out by trying. The outdoor plants will be planted in narrow channels with wood either side, the theory is that the fruit bearing stems will be lifted 4 inches from the ground and hopefully not get spoiled so easily. If I get to them in time I can pick a good bowl full and I tend to pick them when they are blush especially in this weather, they still taste as good and they don’t rot too quickly. Once you pick a strawberry it stops ripening unlike a raspberry which will carry on ripening in the bowl. The raspberries have just started to ripen, an altogether easier fruit to manage as the fruits are at the top of the 3ft high stems, there is an abundance of fruit on them and the jam making will probably consist of more raspberry than strawberry this year. The gooseberries, blackcurrant and blueberry bushes are all full of fruit waiting for that elusive sunshine to ripen them off, they should all be fine provided we actually get some sun. In the fruit cage I also have a kiwi fruit which I planted last year, it wont fruit this year but is putting on some good growth and I am really looking forward to tasting those, I have also have an apricot tree, it has been in for a couple of years and had blossom on it but to date has not produced a single fruit, even though I hand pollinated it this year to give it a better chance. Hand pollination is just a case of using a small paintbrush to transfer pollen from one blossom to another, it is only a small tree so not too time consuming, disappointing that it still didn’t deliver.

The home reared pork that I talked about earlier were the piggies that we kept over at a friends farm, we went over to see them last weekend before they went on their final journey, they were returned in the week all bagged up into joints and chops, it sounds harsh but if you are a meat eater that is the reality of it and we live closer to the reality than most people. Along with the meat we also had a bag of ‘bones’ mostly consisting of pig heads (yuk) they were cut in half and I decided to give the outside dogs half each, they are used to eating raw meat as we fed them on a totally raw meat and bones diet for a few years. They spent the first day dragging them around and guarding them with their lives, they then went on to bury them in the yard and finally eat them, they eat everything except the teeth so nothing is wasted. I have considered using the other heads to make something like brawn or bath chaps, I feel I ought to give it a go but am not sure if I am brave enough to have it boiling in the pan in the kitchen, I will keep you posted on that one!