Month: February 2014

It is quite cathartic writing a weekly blog, not that I ever go back and read what I have written previously, I suppose one day I will, when I am retired if that ever happens! Even though not much than the usual routine happens during the Winter month and the blog is sometime like a retrospective weekly weather report, to me it is important to write it down, if anyone reads it or not is another matter entirely 🙂

As I have said in previous blogs, I sit down to write this and think, what have I done this week, it’s hard to remember unless it’s written down as I go, the weekend stuff is easy because it’s fresh in my memory but the rest is very often a blur. Routine is important and becomes the norm and the norm is not very exciting to write about, but without the routine the animals would probably rise up and revolt. Somehow, without a clock of any kind, they know exactly what time feeding is, the chickens are usually gathered all along the fence, the dogs start whining, the horses become agitated and the ducks waddle back from the paddocks before I even step outside the door, of course they can’t feed themselves and they rely on me to be punctual.

We have spent a couple of the better days this week, tidying up more of the front areas, I say we as Mum has been down to help on one of the days and Hubby has helped to cut the front hedge on another day, we now have a big pile of cuttings heaped up ready to burn as they deteriorate, it is surprising how much debris is created. The front is now ready for Spring and it won’t be long before the buds begin to burst open and the whole area will be green and full of life again, the daffodils and primroses are also budding almost ready to give us bursts of colour which will be much appreciated.

One of the jobs we achieved this weekend was to move the chickens from their very muddy, smelly paddock to a fresh paddock next door with grass. There is a bit of logistics to this job as it’s best to do it first thing before letting them all out that way they can be contained inside the electric fencing, well that’s the theory. It didn’t quite go according to plan this time however, the ground is still quite soft and towing the big coop was a little difficult, the smaller ones can just be lifted into place but somehow some of the Hens got free and so I decided to let them all have a bit of freedom to roam. This was fine until they decided that the lane was a great place to roam which led to a phone all from our neighbour to tell us that they were all over the road, trying to round them up was like a scene from a comedy sketch. They clearly enjoyed this new life of exploration and were not in any hurry to go back behind the fence, one of them was like a road runner, every time we thought we had got her cornered she would shoot out and run off down the paddock, after about half an hour of chasing and trying to entice them in with various tit bits we finally managed to get the last one in. They are obviously happy in the new paddock as the egg numbers increased almost immediately and it is lovely to see them in a much better grassy environment than the mud pool they were in before.

This week I also received the eggs for the incubator that I have been waiting for, Norfolk Greys and some Light Sussex bantams, although we sell point of lay hens people often ask if I have any bantams so this year I will be able to say yes providing the hatch goes well. The Quail I hatched out are now four weeks old and it will only be another two weeks before they become fully mature and ready to lay eggs, they are quick to develop and I have been busy getting an outside cage ready for them to move into probably sometime in the next week. The objective this week will be to wean them off of the lamp they are under, they are still having it turned on at night but during the day it is turned off, and I just have to keep my fingers crossed that once they go out the weather is kind and does not suddenly drop in temperature.

American Button Quail of various colours

I sometimes wonder at what point I should just give up, after being on top of everything, or so I thought, it seems that I am to be tested or challenged to see if I am indeed worthy of calling myself a gardener.

After getting ahead with the greenhouse preparations and snugly bubble wrapping it, the winds came along and took out the back glass panels, some of those I had only just refitted, which in turn lifted the polycarbonate roof panels, and it goes on because that let the rain in and now I have discovered that ALL of the seeds I had ordered have got soaked, some beginning to sprout on their own and some just rotting away.

Then there is the weed barrier I put down on the bean bed to make life easier, well the dogs decided to get in there and play chase, result, holes in the weed barrier, not the best thing that could happen to it.

All of that with the chicken massacre makes me think f**k it! Shall I go back to suburbia and retire?

Three steps forward, two steps back, always, arrggghhh

The only topic of conversation across the whole country this week has been the weather, you could not avoid it or the coverage of it. We have had just about everything except snow thrown at us this Winter. Wild and wet is the description I have used this week, at one point I did wonder if we would still have a building standing and I know many people were kept awake one night just because of the noise of the wind. Having said that we are still a lot better off than large parts of the world, there are fires and droughts, mudslides, hurricanes and flooding for hundreds of miles, yes people have been flooded and lively hoods are affected and there have been a few fatalities but all in all, although major to us, it minor in comparison. On Sunday, after all that, we were rewarded with the most glorious sunny day, I don’t think I have ever seen such a perfect Winters day, or maybe I was just delighted that it was not raining or windy! Wherever you went people’s demeanour was upbeat, whistling, humming, smiling and walking with heads up, it was a real tonic.

During the worst of the windy weather, the night we could not sleep, the gate on my pure breed pen blew off, I image the latch blew off first leaving it swinging in the wind then the hinges gave up and off came the gate. At first, the morning after the storm I was walking around feeding thinking, well that’s good, there are no trees down and no apparent damage, then I got the chicken pen, the sight before me could only be described as a massacre 😦 every single chicken dead and scattered all over the place. Presumably foxy didn’t mind the windy weather and decided that this was a great opportunity for a bit of fun. I was, of course, gutted, but it is one of the things you learn to get over quickly, you can’t let it bring you down, we have lost so many birds to the fox and even the dogs that I would be locked away by now if I had dwelt on it too much.

We had shot a fox on the Sunday night and as I always say another takes its place very quickly. During the week I was chucking up muck onto the pile when I caught a whiff of fox, picture this, I am stood on the top with a pitchfork in my hand saying out loud, ‘I can smell you’ lol I think I must have looked and sounded like the kiddy catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The Quail are growing well and unusually as yet I have not lost any, normally you get a couple that die for no apparent reason but these are doing very well, I am having to clean them out everyday now though as the brooder unit is small and they mess it up quickly. If they are not cleaned they gather the muck on the end of their toes and that in turn goes hard forming little balls which can cause infection or toenails to come off, so a clean environment is very important, not to mention that if you don’t do it they stink to high heaven.

As yesterday was so lovely and I had to be outside to burn a few chicken bodies, I took the rake out the front with me and started to give the front yard a tidy up, raking up soggy leaves and snapped off twigs, it was lovely to be able to get going and I was probably lulled into a false sense of security thinking that the rest of the week will be the same. As it turns out we have a drizzle again this morning but it’s very mild with it, and yesterday’s boost is still with me this morning so I am only hampered by the weather not my mood.

Oops forgot to publish yesterday, went out to re-felt the shed roof and totally forgot! I have been carrying on outside and cut but the willow whips in the driveway and any other overhanging branches from various shrubs and trees. My new hedge trimmer arrived today so I will be trimming everything in sight over the next few weeks lol, we have a petrol one but I find it’s too heavy for me and so I ordered an electric one, at least when Hubby is busy with other things I can get on with preparing for the arrival of Spring 🙂

Quick one today as I have been away this weekend and got lots to catch up on plus it’s a lovely day so get busy while I can!

I think we had one day of sunshine last week, I used that day to get out on the veg patch and do some work, I put the wood ash from the fire around the strawberries to encourage flowering then used the weed barrier to cover the soil around them so that the weeds don’t get out of hand and also to stop the fruit spoiling on the dirt. I also put a whole section of barrier right down the bed that will be for runner beans, they don’t go in until quite late and usually the weeds are rampant by then. I am hoping to save myself a lot of time from weeding by doing this with most beds this year and planting into cuts I make for the plants to go in.

On the same sunny morning I looked out of the side window to see a herd of fallow deer which is unusual, they were grazing the hedgeline and it was a lovely sight to see, things like that can really perk up the day.

The rest of the week was wet, very wet and so not much got done outside, to be honest I was just killing time until the Friday when the girls all went away for our middle daughters Hen Weekend. I left Hubby in charge and on my return all animals were still alive and doing well so he did a good job 🙂

This morning is a rare and lovely sunny day and so I am eager to get on and do plenty of jobs that have had to wait clean out the dog kennels, the duck pen and the chickens. I need to get this done before the next band of rain comes along which will be shortly I am sure. I gave the horses a bit of a treat as well today, the paddock they have been wintering in is in a bit of a state now, the mud is wet and calf deep, this morning I decided to put them in one of the untouched paddocks. It is the chicken paddock really but we have not been able to get on the field with the tractor to move them, the reason being the the tractor would make such a mess in the soft earth it’s not really worth doing it. The horses were clearly delighted as this paddock actually has grass, they did a few high kicks before they set about munching it off. It is one of the best feelings to be able to put your animals somewhere that is not muddy at this time of year, and they are just having it as a one day treat otherwise it will look like the other paddocks if I leave them on there too long.

Make the most of the lovely weather today whatever you are doing, I certainly will be 🙂

Well it’s February folks, thank goodness time is not standing still and we are moving towards better weather. The discussions on the farm revolve around the weather forecast and how much more rain we can take, the fields are waterlogged and it is soft under foot, the paddock that the horses are in looks like a ploughed field this morning. They always come back good in the Spring but I often wonder at what point they will just stay a churned up mess.

There is very little happening on the farm at the minute in the way of animals, the chickens are just paddling around in mud, still laying quite well though. I have started keeping an egg count everyday to see how the numbers fluctuate, they are fairly consistent with the ducks laying five or six a day and the hens laying around twenty six. I was cleaning the birds out every week but it has got to the point where my walking around the huts is making it a whole lot worse so I have just been topping up the bedding and will wait until the ground dries up a little. This time of year is when everything gets the better of you, you can’t get on to do things but the more you leave it, the worse it gets and there will be a great deal to do once I am able to. The same can be said for the veg garden, you can’t get on it to do much as it’s wet and sticky but the weeds are beginning to grow, at least this means the ground is warming up! I did manage to sow some carrots in the poly tunnel and some more broad beans and peas in the greenhouse but that’s it so far. After watching country file last night, I know we are a lot better off than most especially around Gloucester way, this prolonged bout of wet weather is probably going to ruin a lot of farmers, one lost £160,000 last year and is still under water, I don’t know what the answer is but something needs to be done otherwise farming as this country knows it will be gone.

I have spotted a range of wild birds this week, the usual little brown ones such as sparrow etc and also chaffinch, bullfinch, pied wagtails, wren, and the Little Owl which I have seen twice sitting on our fence out the back, the smaller birds have begun checking out suitable nesting sites, I hope they don’t start nesting too soon because if we then have a cold snap any offspring are likely to perish.

The Quail that began to hatch out last week are now fifteen in number, not a brilliant hatch but to be honest better than I thought it would be. We had to put a hot water underneath the brooder box for the first five days as they were so tiny and unable to generate much heat between them. They are now doing really well and running around the box keeping themselves warm. I can’t get a decent picture of them as the bulb in the brooder is red and it does not make for very clear pictures which is shame as they are very cute. These are American Button Quail and should be various different colours, at the moment there are grey, black and striped chicks, one of the black ones has two yellow wings so it will be interesting to see how that one feathers up.

As I have been unable to do much outside I did a bit of baking this week, welsh cakes on the Rayburn hot plate, a fruit cake and a lime and coconut cake, which have nearly all gone already! We also had our first roast pork joint from the pigs that went to slaughter a couple of weeks ago. It is so tasty, these were fed a great diet of windfall apples, acorns, nuts, and veg from the garden no wonder they taste so good 🙂 we have enough left over form the roast yesterday for bubble and squeak today, one of Hubby’s favourite mid week meals, it always smells good but I am not so keen on eating it myself. One of the other stories on country file last night was about the ‘pig idea’ this is about processing the huge piles of food waste and feeding it back to the pig industry. To be honest my first thought is that we should not have that kind of waste in the first place, I was quite shocked at the huge pile of chocolate not to mention the bread and cracker pile. We don’t have a lot of food waste here, I try to buy only what we will use up and if there is any left it goes to the animals. The dogs will eat left over dinner if there is any, the ducks eat bread crusts, the chickens eat any veg or salad or fruit that is going soft, the only thing that does not go to them would be left over pudding and that does not happen very often! Any veg peelings go onto the compost heap now that the pigs have gone, I also put the toilet roll middles in there and egg shells, I have been known to put socks and any old cotton clothing in there too.

I have cleaning and washing to do today after the family have been home all weekend, I am going to spend my day dreaming of drier, sunnier times and hope they are not too far away!