Month: April 2014

Two of our daughters had a fun afternoon making GuS Gus which is what they have named him, he is a scarecrow designed to keep the crows away from the chicken feed in the paddock, and it’s working. The crow numbers descending upon the food I was putting out, were growing by the day and once again we were spending our day clapping loudly every few minutes to get rid of them, along came Gus Gus and not a single crow has landed since then, brilliant, now I need one for the duck pen as well.

Easter weekend is a distant memory now and the weather really ought to be warming up but I hear we have a cold snap on the horizon and so the fleece I was going to remove from the fruit bushes and trees will remain in place for a little while longer. The rain we have had seems to becoming a typical Spring, although the air temperature is quite mild the rain once it sets in does not want to leave and it is soggy for days. The two together mean that the grass is growing nicely but it does not dry off in time to be able to cut it before the rain starts again, this is fine in the paddocks for the horses but for the lawn and the front drive it begins to look scruffy.

We have had some dry days inbetween and on one of those I managed to plant the potatoes, in fact it was quite sunny at times and so I had to wait for it to cloud over and dig the channels while the sun was in, then when it came out go sit in the shade, that’s just because I did not have the right clothing on nor did I put my suntan lotion on and I just wanted to get the job finished. I have four different types of potato this year, King Edward, Maris Bard, Casablanca, and Maris Piper, I still have room for some more if I can find any seed potatoes left in the stores.
The pear tree and the blueberry bushes are full of blossom so I am hoping for a good harvest from them this year, the pear tree is only a couple of years old and last year produced it’s first and only pear, this year hopefully there will be a few more. As I weeded the strawberry bed I noticed the flowers were beginning to form on those too, I need to get the timing right when netting them, too soon and the bees won’t be able to pollinate them, too late and the birds will eat the forming fruits. We also had our first picking of Asparagus for the year, which was delicious, it’s very nice raw and even better boiled and buttered! At the moment in the little shed I am able to offer, Rhubarb, Asparagus, Quail, Hen and Duck eggs, all of which get snapped up almost immediately. It won’t be long before the peas and broad beans are ready to go out there as well, I love it when I have plenty to sell and the comments are always positive which is a real feel good factor.

The ducklings are growing quickly and the decibels are getting louder when they see you and are ready for food or water, it’s almost deafening. The idea of getting the ducklings was to start replacing my existing flock as they are getting on for five years old, I am glad we decided to do this as one of the ducks died last week and so I think I have got the timing just right. The Norfolk Grey chicks are growing nicely and will soon need to be moved to a bigger area which I need to get ready for them this week. I have Quail in the incubator about to hatch any time today or tomorrow and I already have a waiting list for those so I hope it’s a successful hatch. Business has been brisk with the sale of the point of lay hens that came in a couple of weeks ago, I have more due in the middle of May along with goslings which I am looking forward to seeing. We have decided to increase our laying flock by 20 more birds to keep up with the demand for eggs, we are selling them as fast as the hens can lay them and with the weather warming up demand will get greater and so rather than having to put out the ‘sold out’ sign, we will just provide more eggs for sale, it might even mean that we get to eat some occasionally, as with most people who sell eggs at the gate you tend to put the customers first and yourselves second.

Photos of the rows of potatoes, some Lily of the Valley, and Gus Gus 🙂

It’s been an interesting week, I have been out and about with my neighbour who was looking for a particular hen. First we went to Evesham only to find that the person we were going to meet had got their times mixed up which meant we had to meet him at the poultry auction later in the week. Now I always get a bit excited about going to the auction, you never know what you will find, as it is the school holidays it was very busy, which always pushes up the prices, however we did manage to come home with the hen that was being sought as well as a duck and some baby Cayuga ducklings. The hen and the duck are my neighbours and the ducklings we are sharing although she is looking after them at hers, the reason being that she wants her ducks to be friendly. If you get ducks when they are older they have a tendency to think you are some kind of alien and run away flapping and quacking from you, the younger you get them the tamer you can make them. If you hatch out ducklings and they are the first thing you see, they will imprint on you and you become Mum, this has it’s ups and downs though as they tend to follow you everywhere and if you go out of sight they make a complete racket!

I am hoping that my poultry order will arrive tomorrow, this includes more ducklings lol we will have so many ducks we won’t know what to do with them. A third of the order of hens will be going straight out to a new home and judging by the enquiries I have had the rest won’t be far behind, a quick turnover this month I think.

Our laying flock is in the front paddock and the horses have been in the field next door trimming the grass for me, I decided to let them through and help trim the edges in the paddock the hens are in……..big mistake. The first thing they did despite having plenty of grass to nibble on, was to jump the electric fencing and start eating the chicken food, I then spent a good half an hour trying to coax them out whilst trying to keep the hens in. This was also a bit of a disaster and approx 9 hens spent the day roaming the farm, consequently the egg count was down and no matter how hard I looked I never found any that might have been laid outside the enclosure, I won’t be doing that again.

Hubby managed to get the rotavator started yesterday after two evenings of trying, he has now churned over the patch that the potatoes are going in, he is going to dig in some manure and then it will be ready to plant into, just in time for Good Friday which is traditionally the day that it is done. Meanwhile, the beans, peas and garlic in the tunnel are still growing strongly and hopefully it won’t be long before we start getting a crop from them. The onions and garlic outside are doing just as well and I seem to have gone a bit overboard on the ordering of onion sets as more arrived in the post this week, so plenty to sell at the end of the season hopefully. I have started putting out rhubarb for sale which sells very quickly, I thought most people had a bit of rhubarb growing in their garden and that I would not be able to sell it but that does not seem to be the case.

We have plenty of seedlings growing away in the greenhouse and soon it will be time to get busy planting them, as we are well ahead we seem to have had a bit of a lull lately which is good because family life has been very busy of late, with the wedding and birthdays and family visiting from Australia, everything seems well under control for the time being!

I hatched out another batch of bantam chicks this week, one of them was small and weak and so we spent the day trying to rally it round, unfortunately it was all in vain and it died later on in the evening, it is always worth trying as I have had success before but not this time. The Norfolk Greys I hatched out five weeks ago are doing well and have now been moved outside, mainly because I needed the room for the next lot. Norfolk Greys are on the rare breed list and I was chuffed to hatch seven out of twelve eggs, although I think I have got four cockerels and three hens. I had a stroke of luck during a conversation on Facebook though and someone with an unrelated cockerel is moving just half an hour down the road in the summer so we will be able to exchange birds and get some different bloodlines underway which is great news for the breed. When I lost my other birds to the fox during the storm I wanted a change and it was a good opportunity to do something with rare breeds which is what I have always wanted to do.

We have a full moon this week on the 15th, and a Blood Moon at that, not only that but a Lunar eclipse as well, we have four Lunar Eclipses coming up over the next year, a phenomenon if ever there was one. The rise of a full moon definitely has a affect on the animals and they say on plants too but I have never given the planting to moon phases a go, I can see how it would probably work though, the same as the ebb and flow of the rivers and seas, as plants are nearly all water it makes sense.

Have a good week and watch for that Moon

I keep thinking I will give up writing my blog but to be honest it has become part of my routine and I find it quite therapeutic so for the time being I will carry on.

Unless there is a specific job that has to be done inside a time frame, my days are generally my own to decide what and when or even if I do it, a privileged position to be in I know. I usually get asked in the morning by one family member or another, what are you doing today, I haven’t decided yet is the general answer, most decisions are made around the weather which is pretty unstable at the minute. When the weather is dry we always make the most of it and get on with as much outside as we can, I can tell you that this time last year it was lovely and sunny and we were sorting out the paddocks but this year we have only part done them as the corners are still very wet and we are unable to get into them with the roller without getting stuck. It does not look like it is going to dry up any time soon either, although the air temp is quite mild, the ground is still taking a beating from the rain, so that rules out cleaning out the chickens this week, I don’t want to mess the grass up any more than necessary.

The arrival of 60 point of lay hens next week means I need to get cracking and sort the pens out ready for them. I have managed to creosote a couple of huts so we are not far off, I also take delivery of 12 day old ducklings which will need a bit more organising. They will need to be under a heat lamp for a few weeks until they feather up, at the minute I have the Norfolk Grey hatchlings still under a lamp at night although it is turned off in the daytime. With the imminent hatching of more chicks we are running a conveyer belt system, incubator, brooder box, then onto the bigger cage with lamp, then outside during warmer parts of the day until finally out all day and night, with each new lot following the last. The next batch of eggs in will be Quail as I have customers waiting to buy them, it all takes a bit of organisation and a lot of cleaning!

I was a little concerned about one of the cats in the week, we had not seen Felix for a couple of days, but he finally turned up one morning strolling across the yard as if he had never been gone. The two cats are proper farm cats, not ferrel, but they live all year outside and I supplement their feed if necessary. At this time of year there is an abundance of food around for them to catch, usually baby rabbits, they eat everything but the fluffy tail which they kindly leave as a present for us, sometimes they catch things you rather wish they wouldn’t such as garden birds, and they are pretty good at waiting outside a nest site for fledgling chicks which is horrible and if I catch them I generally shoo them away but as far as they are concerned they are just doing their job and they keep the rodent population down so I can’t tell them off too much.

We managed to get in a whole day of gardening last week mostly weeding and potting on, I still have not planted the root veg seeds or the potatoes but there is still plenty of time. This year to save time and effort I have ordered tomato, melon, cucumber and aubergines plants which should arrive any time now, they are grafted plants and will be nice and strong when they get here. We have got the poly tunnel ready with old feed bags full of compost and hope they will do well in there. I did get hubby to connect up the watering system a couple of weeks ago bit it happened to be the day before the coldest night we have had this winter and the pipes froze which forced them to come apart and leak all over the garden when it thawed so we disconnected them again for the time being. As soon as those plants are in situ however we will need to try connecting it up again, every little helps and when we first started I would spend most of the day watering which was very time consuming. When I look back I can see how much progress we have made and the mistakes we have learnt from although there are probably still plenty more to make I am sure.

By some miracle the nails I had put on for the wedding are still going strong! I was not sure about having them in the first place and to begin with things were a bit of a task but it is surprising what you can get used to and now I will miss them when the first one breaks or comes off, that does not mean I will be replacing them though, it’s just nice while it has lasted. Looking at the list I have made for the week ahead I wonder how much more they can take, but up to now I have creosoted, weeded, hitched up the heavy roller, mucked out and washed up in them, brilliant!