Swarm

Wednesday 30th May 2012
Not much to say about this sunrise.

Anyone seen a swarm of bees?
I got home from work today and had a late afternoon catnap. So, about 5 o'clock, I wandered out into the veg patch and saw Don, who had just been pulling ragwort from his field. I was most surprised when he asked me if I had lost some of my bees!

He then gave me a vivid account of a swirling cloud of bees moving through his orchard.

Damn! My bees had swarmed. Despite everything we did to try to discourage them, they were clearly determined to do so. So that's it. Half my bees just gone. We did go looking for them, but no sign. What will we find when we open up the hives? Probably not a lot.

And double damn! I have never seen a swarm of bees before and would love to have at least had the chance to wave goodbye to them!

A new arrrival
Normally, when I write of new arrivals, I'm talking hatched eggs or multiple piglet births. Or it may be my birding obsession taking over, getting all excited about some unusual migrant or other.
But today's new arrival was most unexpected. There it was, shyly pecking away at the weedy base of the fence inside the veg patch. It allowed me a close approach, then walked towards me.

Yes, a homing pigeon seems to have got lost and chosen to move in with us.
He (or she) is clearly unable to fly for some reason. Last year we had a moribund Collared Dove do the same thing. I guess they're attracted by the other birds, or the bird feed.




Talking of the other birds, Chick of Elvis is still sitting. I have now put 7 eggs under her, though when she went for a wander today there were 8.

Spare Veg patch taking shape.

Last year I struggled to grow any crops down near the pigs as the rabbits periodically nibbled them. So 20 sweetcorn plants would be 18 in the morning and 15 the next and so on. Gerry has done an excellent job preventing the rabbits from multiplying this year but I still wanted to protect the area with fencing. Also, I witnessed a chicken just strut past a young squash plant and peck off a leaf. It won't take much of that, along with their determined scraping at the ground looking for seeds and insects, before my vegetables are losing the fight again. So this evening, up went the orange fence. If I need to, I can connect this up to the end of the electric fence, but at the moment I am hoping that the physical deterrent will suffice.





Tomorrow we open upen up the hives and inspect the damage.







Western Orphean Warbler, Hartlepool Headland

Tuesday 29th May 2012

A non-descript sunrise today, and even a hint that it might be a more autumnal day. With an easterly airflow and fine weather, there is no doubt that rare birds will be passing over the UK, lost on migration. But that's what most of them do, pass straight over without landing. But, throw in overcast conditions or preferably mist, fog or rain in the morning, and chances are that a few decent rarities will be found along the coast.

What I did not expect was for the pager to start wailing out a ***MEGA*** at half past 8 in the morning. Even less did I expect it to be news of an Orphean Warbler on Hartlepool Headland. There have only been 5 previous records in Britain and none at all since 1991. Only the oldest twitchers had this bird on their lists, the most recent twitchable bird being on the Scillies in 1981.

I hastily re-arranged my morning and made sure everything was in order on the farm. I offered a lift on the pager and less than an hour later I was picking up Gervaise from the outskirts of Spalding before heading off for Hartlepool. This was a replay of early June last year, when the twitching world had descended on exactly the same place to witness the presence of a White-throated Robin, another clawback from the past.

Now, life on the farm is busy but sedate. Driving to a mega is not sedate, though passengers may occasionally request sedatives!! We made the journey in under three hours. All along, the pager brought us news of the continued presence of the bird in a bush in the corner of the bowling green.

As we pulled the car up, unbelievably my old birding pal Mick pulled up behind us. Me from South Lincolnshire, him from Fife, and we arrived at the bird within half a minute of each other! We joined the hundred or so people already there lined up along one edge of the bowling green. The bird was ensconced in the middle of a bush and had not budged for about four hours. Almost impossible to see in the bush, a friend let me peer down his 'scope, where I saw the pale grey breast of a very bulky warbler. I was lucky enough to see it move its head, confirming that it was still alive (a prerequisite to putting a bird on one's list). I just glimpsed the huge bill (for a warbler) and charcoal grey head.

Lifer!!!

I then found myself a space at the other end of the bowling green and endeavoured to get my own view of the bird. Amazingly, I aimed my 'scope, looked through the viewfinder and there was the bird, very obscured but definitely there. I put the people around me onto it and then quietly invited Gervaise to view through my 'scope before there was a rush to our end of the green. For the next 10 minutes a procession of people looked through my telescope to get their first view of the bird.

Eventually the bird proved that it was not moribund and began moving through the bushes, occasionally giving very good views out in the open. Between times it moved clumsily though the privet and rosa rugosa bushes, occasionally resting out of view for minutes at a time.

This bird had not even been on my radar and was a very welcome addition to the list. It was good to catch up with many birding colleagues too. It's an amazing hobby where a single bird dictates where and when you next meet your mates.

The return home was much more relaxed and I learned a lot about the birding sites of Southern Lincolnshire from Gervaise. I was back home in time to give the animals their evening feed before sitting down to relax after a most eventful and unexpected day.

Three Sisters

Monday 28th May 2012
A misty start to the day

 

A long, hot day today. So I pottered, taking the chance to do a little weeding here and there and peruse the garden. When we moved in we inherited a strawberry patch, which pretty much gets on with things by itself. Plenty of flowers this year, so I'm looking forward to a bumper crop of strawberries.

Cuckoo, Cuckoo
A cuckoo hung around the farm all day, affording excellent views, first singing from one of the old ash trees, then perching on a fencepost alongside the orchard.I don't know whether it's the same cuckoo that visits every year. I heard the other day that the five satellite-tagged birds which survived the winter in Africa have not fared so well on their return journey, with three perishing before they could get back here to breed. Anyway, back to 'our' cuckoo. I wonder which species it parasitises. Every morning I am serenaded by a reed warbler by the pig pen and a sedge warbler in a bush across Don's field. I think they compete with each other for the title of most persistent songster. Of the two, I prefer the reed warbler's song. Not so scratchy. As for the cuckoo, apparently they're evolved to choose one particular species.

Thriving herbs

The herb garden is really thriving too. Plants I've struggled with in the past have developed into healthy, strong specimens. The patch next to the stables is very stony, the remnants of old buildings I think, and the herbs absolutely love the poor soil and good drainage. 

Thyme, Oregano, Mace, Angelica,
Mace, Rosemary, Sage and Mint.

A splash of chive flowers. I am growing more of these from seed to spread around the potager.

A towering angelica plant.
A biennial which self-seeds easily.

Destructive chickens

Meanwhile, the chickens have been busy demolishing the mulch of grass cuttings that I had so carefully placed around the young willow cuttings and the edible hedgerow. I think they can stay confined to their luxurious pen for a while now. Besides, they need to keep the grass down in there.

The Globe Artichoke bed.

The globe artichoke bed should be a lot more impressive in a month or so.

As the air cooled in the evening, I set myself to planting out the six globe artichoke seedlings which I have so lovingly raised in the greenhouse. They have been in the coldframe for a couple of weeks waiting for warm soil and gentle weather.

I've already planted a mixture of allium bulbs around the bed, and I will add chives when the seedlings come on. In the main part of the bed, as an understorey, I've sown Nigella (Love-In-A-Mist) Moody Blues, as well as four carefully placed giant sunflowers, a variety which towers and produces multiple blooms over a long period. The globe artichokes are protected in their milk carton greenhouses, but they'll need to be kept well watered, especially in this period of fierce sunshine.  

Three Sisters

The young sweetcorn plants had a brilliant germination rate this year and are now outgrowing their paper pots and modules. Sweetcorn is usually planted in blocks, as it is wind pollinated, usually 15 to 18 inches apart.

But this year I'm trying a different system, Three Sisters, which I've alluded to previously. It is certainly gardening chique, but has received mixed reviews. The central principle is one of three vegetables (corn, beans and squashes) sharing space and benefiting each other. But get it wrong and one gets outcompeted or the whole thing becomes a mess. So I searched widely on the internet and decided to follow this system...

http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

My sweetcorn is a supersweet variety, Sweetcorn Lark, from vegetableseeds.net. Four plants in a tight square, with climbing Pea Bean (for dried beans) sown alongside. I collected seeds of this bean last year, so I've sown generously as germination was patchy last year. I can always thin out if I achieve surprising success.

In between these groups of plants, I've transplanted seedlings of a variety of squashes and courgettes, protected with SlugKill (clay granules, no nasty poisons) and milk carton cloches.

Potentially a very exciting bed, I'll let you know how things go.

27th May - It had to happen sometime!

Well, it had to happen one day.

I turned off the 4.30 alarm

and woke up at 5.30!!!

Sunrise missed.

I could use this as an excuse to stop getting up so early, but it's about more than that. I do sometimes go back to bed after letting the chickens out and taking the sunrise photo, and when the sky is just plain grey I do wonder about the merits of dragging myself out of bed so early. I even considered not taking a photo every day, but looking out of the window and going back to bed if it was overcast. But that would just end up being an excuse.
But there are many days, be it gloriously clear, crisp, windy or rainy, when I stay outside and achieve a lot before breakfast. And when the light is crisp or dramatic those first couple of hours of the day are a very special time.
So I will continue. I won't promise never to miss another one this year and, if I do, it won't seem quite so important now. But I've only got less than four weeks to go before it starts getting easier.
As the alarm moves back a few minutes every day, a 4.30 rise will seem like a luxury!

As for the rest of the day, more mowing and a fast developing tan (not the healthy trend these days). Then a very welcome visit from an old friend from London.

Some of the greenhouse seedlings needed an emergency water this morning. I can't believe how quickly they can dry up. I think that most will be OK, though I may have lost a couple of trays.

As it is, many of the seedlings are flourishing now, and they need to be out in the soil, not crammed and confined in shallow seedtrays. The veg are all in hand, but the flower borders have had to keep slipping to the bottom of the list. So this evening I decided to begin deturfing one flower border, where all the young plants can go for now, until I have time to develop this side of the garden later in the summer.

I was surprised to find yet another different type of soil under the lawn - almost black soil, no significant clay content. How I wish all the land were like this.

Basket Cases

Today Sue and I went on a basket making course organised through the FGSC (Fenland Goatkeepers and Smallholders Club).

I must say, I had a really great day. Thanks to Theresa for organising it and Sue (another Sue) for being an excellent, and very patient, teacher.

We did lots of pairing and whaling (or was it paring and wailing???). We had to concentrate for long periods too! I even saw a Spotted Flycatcher while we ate our lunch by a babbling brook on the village green. Very idyllic.

My basket is now sitting on the sideboard and is home to my glasses, car keys, wallet, phone, pager...

Now that's useful. Should save me many hours searching every week.

Get Off My Land!

Saturday 26th May 2012
Set for another hot one.

Today I got to use the traditional farmer's refrain "GET OFF MY LAND" .

I didn't say it to this goose, which had wandered into the veg patch.



Nor to this beautiful Asparagus Beetle.

No, I said "GET OFF MY LAND!" to my neighbours. Not Don, off course. The other side. The ones I don't mention. Unlike them, I like to concentrate on the positives in life, so we'll move on...

Back to that Asparagus Beetle. A beautifully marked beast, but the minute I spotted a couple of them on the tips of my asparagus plants, I remembered reading about them and instinctively knew that these little beasts were the subject of my reading. Reading up, though, they don't seem too difficult to manage (famous last words). Squashing adults and larvae seems to be the best way to keep them at bay, plus burning the stems at the end of the year, and with them the overwintering larvae.

I found out about them here...

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=504 

Granny Elvis??

Chick of Elvis finally got what she wanted today, a couple of eggs to sit on. When I opened her hatch, she raised her bum feathers as is her wont, even though she's been sat for several days on no eggs at all. When I put two eggs under her (only the large ones, so that the offspring hopefully lay large eggs too) she made the most contented clucking sound. She can have any we can spare for the next couple of days. I really hope she stays on them and hatches them successfully. The sight of a mother hen leading her chicks around is something we have not yet had on the farm (Except when Elvis had Chick of Elvis, but that was only one chick.) Funny to think, Elvis will be a doubly surrogate grandmother.

One, Two, Three....Seven



Friday 25th May 2012
Hot, Hot, Hot.



Someone obviously got out of the wrong side of the perch this morning! Two of the teenagers suddenly started to behave all grown up, squaring off against each other and even jumping up in the air, claws stretched ahead.

Onto important matters. I left you all on tenterhooks about the piglets. This was a deliberate ploy to increase my viewing figures, learned from the likes of Big Cat Diary and Planet Earth Live.

To tell the truth, I wasn't really all that worried. The great escape was probably accidental, borne through inquisitiveness and an inability to find the way back in. Mind you, I still hear tales of the piglet lost by the previous owners which was finally shot after wandering the countryside for nine months!

All still present and correct, mum and piglets very happy to be together. Today was a real scorcher, which was great news. It meant that the pig family spent almost the entire day in the shade of their ark, leaving me free to turn off the leccy fence and do what needed to be done.

The bottom wire of the fence needed to be dropped one notch to piglet height, but this made even more necessary the job of trimming the grass under the wire.

In theory, the battery to start the strimmer had been charged and it should be all systems go, so when I just got a slight whirr instead of a chugging engine and a whizzing strimmer, my heart sank.  

More machine problems. Just then though, a cough and a splutter (the strimmer, not me) and it stuttered into action after its winter break.

We quickly made friends and a couple of hours later it was job done.

The Great Escape.

Thursday 24th May 2012
The sun tries to break through on a misty May morning.

No wonder some of the eggs are getting cracked - why do they all have to try to get in the same nest box?

Meanwhile, just look how big the teenagers have got!

The animals get through a lot more water in this weather and for the first time this year I had to use the hosepipe (it is allowed for this!) as most of the collected water has been used up. Trouble with a hosepipe is that piglets just can not resist playing with it!


As the temperature climbed into the 70's and the sun beat down, the piglets made their first ever wallow.

The return of Mr Mow-tivator
At 11:30 today this arrived back...Mr Mow-tivator.

By 8:30 this evening, I'd achieved this...

Perfect pathways in the potager

One hundred trees mulched with the accumulated clippings of the day - a convenient way to dispose of a mountain of grass cuttings, and a friendly way of protecting the saplings from weed competition without using nasty chemicals.

The Great Escape.

One more job before I could put my feet up and relax. The nightly round up of G'nea G'nea. Sue was at her community choir tonight, so the job was infinitely more tricky.

But not as big a problem as what was still to come, for I heard the familiar click-squeal sequence of a piglet encountering an electric fence. Problem was, all my piglets were kept in with wooden fence and stock fence. Only Daisy was hemmed in by an invisible force field ... until now.

Two of the piglets were in with her, and three more were outside all the fencing!! Thank goodness all that was on their minds was getting back in with their brothers and sisters or their mum. Two braved pushing under the electric fence to reach the safety of mum, but not before they got a bit of a shock! The last one, I showed through the secret gate at the back of the pig pen. I had been thinking about reuniting the piglets with Daisy, but not before I'd strimmed the grass and lowered the electric fence. Oh well. In the fading light I took down the partition and allowed the last two piglets through. Daisy was very excited to see them all, though I think she's forgotten that she had ten before. Let's hope they're all still there in the morning.

Slimeballs

Wednesday 23rd May 2012
Another warm, muggy day.

This is the second year of our asparagus bed and I'm being ever so good and resisting temptation, letting the plants establish for another year before we start harvesting. If only someone would tell that to the slugs!
So much for mulching the asparagus with hay. The garden's entire slug population has moved into this deliciously dark, damp microclimate, with a choice of asparagus restaurants just a short slug slide away. So I've un-mulched it.

I did take a nice close-up shot, but it was out of focus, even with my glasses on. Still getting used to using the DSLR again - the compact has to be sent back to Hong Kong for repair, so goodness knows when we'll see that again - one disadvantage of international internet purchases.

ed...

Beans 'n' Peas

Tuesday 22nd May 2012

Another dull start to the day, but eventually it warmed up and the sun shone all afternoon.

Today's task was to finish the beans 'n' peas quarter of the veg patch.











Peas
First, another sowing of peas to continue the succession. I've already got Early Onward and Kelvedon Wonder in, but I found some old collected peas from Twinkle, so I've tried these.
I'm not convinced by the virtues of growing peas. Yes, they're great fresh, but it takes so many plants to get a decent amount and the frozen ones in the supermarket aren't actually at all bad. Anyway, I'll trial these varieties and see which is best. It may be that I need them all to give a succession through the season. Again, I poked clippings of red dogwood into the ground to give the plants a framework to clamber over. But just look at the first lot of dogwood twigs - they're sprouting. By the end of the year I should have a decent crop of saplings.

Now Sugarsnap peas and Mangetout are a different story. Bountiful, delicious straight from the plant and at supermarket prices a valuable crop. I'm growing two varieties of Sugarsnap - Sugar Ann and Sugar Snap. The former I grew last year without much success, and so far this year it seems that the latter is growing with much more vigour. We'll see what the harvest is like before we make any snap decisions (see what I did there?) about next year.
As for mangetout, I grow a purple podded variety with an impossible name. It tastes as clean and fresh as the green, but adds a touch of interest and colour.

All my climbing peas are grown in with sweet peas and nasturtiums.

Beans
The runner plants are already transplanted outside and some have started to wrap themselves around their wigwam poles. Today was the turn of the more exotic beans. French beans, dwarf beans, climbing beans, Borlottis, Haricots (for baked beans), Butter Beans, Purple Teepee, Blue Lake, Canadian Wonder (for kidney beans).

The soil felt warm for the first time today. The water collected in old baths from the gutters was tepid as it trickled from the watering can over my fingers. I love it when beans push and shove their way through the soil and continue skywards at a staggering pace. If this weather continues they'll love it.

Now, if Gerry's daily catch is anything to go by, then there are certainly plenty of mice and voles around, enough to threaten young peas and beans. So I have elected this year to soak the seeds in paraffin briefly as a deterrent. But one of my bees took exception to the smell I think and buzzed me with annoying determination to the point where I had to scarper till it gave up.

Milk Carton Graveyard
If you'd looked in my veg patch mid afternoon, you'd have wondered what on earth was going on, with piles of dismembered milk cartons in piles on the grass. I've discovered that milk cartons are well designed to fit a cane tightly through the handle and to protect the young plants from the ravages of pests and the weather.

Some of my wigwams have wellies.

Bees
Since I mentioned the bees above, a quick update on the two hives. Hive A (the original, from which we removed the queen but left a few of the best queen cells) is buzzing well. In the warm weather the hive entrance and the surrounding air have been full of bees, many returning laden with pollen. Hive B (the new one into which we moved the queen along with frames of brood, honey, pollen and bees) is much slower, with just the occasional bee emerging or returning. But I still hope to find, when we can look in a couple of weeks time, that we have two colonies of bees.


Hive A - busy








Hive B - quiet

Asparagus Peas
I've grown this unusual vegetable for the last three years. Each plant forms a low growing clump and they carry the most richly coloured, delicate little flowers, much loved by bees. You eat the whole pod, plucked from the plant when it is only an inch of so long. I find the taste a little nutty, though it's supposed to taste like a cross between...you've guessed!...peas and asparagus.