Showing posts with label hay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hay. Show all posts

Wednesday 17 August 2022

The Drought Is Over

138.8mm of rain for Holbeach - that's us!

Last night it rained. Proper rain. More rain than we've accumulated in the last 4 months.

It's the first we've had for a long, long time. In fact I think it's only rained a few times since the beginning of April. and only once this summer.

[ed. I knew it rained a lot and the fields were full of standing water, but it turns out that on a wet day countrywide, Holbeach was the wettest with a staggering 138.8mm of rain!!!] 

Unfortunately there is an obvious pattern in recent years of all our rain saving itself up for the occasional deluge which surrounds uncomfortably long periods of aridity.

It's made for a difficult growing season (to put it mildly) and we've had to think about how much feed we need to bring in for sheep to overwinter.

In the veg plot, crop after crop has failed. Beans, sweetcorn, potatoes, onions, cabbage.... the list goes on. Those planted earlier in the year have mostly come to nothing and it hasn't even been possible to plant out any young plants sown in late April and May. For the most part the rain has come too late for another attempt at things. At least it's a good opportunity to empty the freezers and in reality we never go short of food.




The barley crop next door has been baled. Just look how dry everything is.

If temperatures of 40C and prolonged dry periods are to be a feature of our lives then I can only guess that plums are going to take over the world! Every single plum tree is literally dripping with fruit. Thank goodness we have several varieties which don't all ripen at once.















The forest garden has fared better as that is designed to be a sustainable system which can deal with weather extremes, though I've lost a few young perennials which were tricky to source in the first place.

The controlled climate of the polytunnel will give us some crops this year and I've a couple of new greenhouses too. We'll be living on squashes, peppers, aubergines and tomatoes.




I mentioned winter feed for the sheep. That's because we've already had to start dipping into it.

We are careful with our stocking levels and try to leave some paddocks long to prevent the worst excesses of drying out. But months of dry weather and a couple of intense heatwaves have left the paddocks looking a touch bare and scorched. We bought in our winter hay from a fellow smallholder a few weeks back - the first hay harvest was incredibly early this year, but we've already had to start topping up the sheep's diet, in particular the rams.

So it was fortunate that one of our local smallholders was having a clear-out and we were able to purchase a whole load of old hay and straw. Shetland sheep are not bothered about the quality of their hay so it doesn't matter that it's not this year's.

I've got more straw than I need for animal bedding so I decided to lay some of it onto all the veg beds which I've abandoned for the year. Sometimes it's best to cut your losses and start preparing for next year. The straw will protect the surface, keep in moisture and gradually rot down and be incorporated into the soil by the worms. Over the winter the ducks will sort out any slugs which try to use it as cover and will further fertilise the beds.

I might have a go at some straw bale gardening too, then let the straw bales rot down into the beds. I'm thinking especially about some of the potatoes.


Saturday 8 July 2017

Animal Escapades

Getting a bit behind, so here's a week's worth.
Another week's worth tomorrow.

18th June - Collect hay while the sun shines

A couple of early morning trips to a local field to collect hay for the winter. Such a wonderful smell!
The afternoon was the monthly Fenland Smallholders Club at the wonderfully named Hooters Hall, where we met friends and learned about the butchery room and the wool room. Sue had a go at spinning, not very successfully.


20th June - Baking hot
The day of the dead swallows. I've already posted about this.

21st June
I'm gradually getting more into moths. The hot weather and an open window at night mean that the landing wall becomes a bit of a moth trap.




One family of swallows has managed to escape its death trap clay oven nest. The chicks are very exposed to predators on the floor but better that than being baked alive. One has already fledged and the others look very close.

25th June 2017 - A Summer Outing
The Grow Your Own group summer trip out today. Hindringham Hall over in Norfolk.
The hall itself was beautiful, surrounded by a moat complete with family of Black Swans. The gardens were nice, but not stunning. A nice place to spend a couple of hours, but not quite as grand as the entry price might suggest!

We returned home early evening to find the four sheep missing from the top paddock. The gate was open and there was no sign of the sheep. A bit of a panic as thoughts went through my head of sheep rustlers or our sheep munching their way through the local fields. I systematically covered as much ground as possible but still no sign, not until I reached the sheep field proper where there were now thirteen sheep instead of nine!

It was quite an escape act, but more remarkable was how they had found their way there. They must have travelled along the dyke and cut through the electric fence!
At least they were all present and correct.

26th June 2017 - Lucky to make it to the end of the day alive
Well, today I got stung by a bee, head-butted by a sheep and zapped by the electric fence. Smallholding can be a hazardous occupation.
A very swollen ear
The bee sting came from nowhere. I was observing Sue's hides from a distance when one of the blighters dive-bombed kamikaze style straight at my left ear. No warnings, no buzzing around the head, just an instant sting. And it hurt.

Next up was the discovery of lamb poo in the orchard. These are the lambs which have only recently escaped the top paddock. Then, twice in the space of fifteen minutes, actual brown lambs in the orchard doing their best to strip the bark off my fruit trees.
Sue wasn't around to help, but I needed to round up the sheep and send the two brown lambs back to the top paddock. It crossed my mind to use this opportunity to wean them off mum, but it is a little early so I caught her too. This is when, as I lifted her over a sheep hurdle, she flung her head back into mine. Sheep skulls are very hard.

Finally back up at the top paddock, I turned the electric fence back on only to receive a thumping great shock from the metal hurdle I was leaning over. Unbeknown to me, the sheep had moved it into contact with the electric wires. These are the worst shocks, for the metal hurdle ensures you get a good full blast of electricity.

I decided to take it easy for the rest of the day and do something more gentle, so I put the small chicks out into a cage on the lawn. Their first fresh air, their first view of the big wide world, their first taste of real grass.
Lady Penelope quickly came to investigate and then settled down in attendance for the afternoon.


27th June - Why Did The Cow Cross The Road?
After yesterday, I stayed late in bed which seemed the safest option.
I was woken by the dogs barking. This is usually caused by the phantom intruder, but this time their was actually a reason for their warning. At the farm gate there stood a woman in full golf attire. It would be quite a shot if she had lost her ball over here, for we are a good couple of miles as the crow flies from the local golf course.

Turns out there was a cow in the road and she thought it might be mine. Many of the fields round here are rented out and I knew that the owner of the cattle lived over near Market Deeping. A cow in the road is not unheard of, but is obviously fairly hazardous. As I threw on some more appropriate clothing the phone rang - the local police trying to find the owner of the cow. Then a Facebook message from a friend who had driven past earlier and noticed... you've guessed... a cow in the road. Word certainly gets around quickly.
To cut a longish story short, I eventually tracked down a number for the owner and left the cow and traffic control in the capable (?) hands of the local PCSOs.
For what it's worth, the cow had simply been curious about the hawthorn bushes on the other side of its fence and was now happily munching its way through them, totally unconcerned by the passing traffic or the attentions of the police.

Sunday 17 July 2016

Frozen Frog Spawn

12th July
Elvis did not come out with her ducklings this morning. As I suspected, she is stepping back and letting them get on with growing up... which they are dong very fast indeed. They are a pretty bunch and it will be a shame to eat them later in the year.


Today's main job was a dangerous one, summer pruning and harvesting gooseberries. We've not got a bumper harvest this year, but I'm not complaining. Every year is different. The red gooseberries all needed picking. They are small but very sweet. The standard green Invicta gooseberries were well swollen. Some were ripe enough to eat raw, the rest I left on the bushes.

The whitecurrants were easier to deal with. Their summer prune just involves cutting back the sideshoots. In previous years the ducks had enjoyed more of the currants than us, but this year they showed no interest. To look at the bushes from outside you would think there was hardly any fruit to be had, but the currants hang on short stems hidden by the leaves.Delve a little deeper and there they are.

In fact I managed to harvest about 3kg of whitecurrants. I just need to decide what to do with them now.
Picking the whitecurrants took an age as I patiently worked along each branch. But there was still time to prune the redcurrants. These are just starting to colour up and there are absolutely mountains of them hanging on the bushes. It won't be long before a redcurrant bonanza. I might try using the steam juicer to make a cordial this year.
The birds find redcurrants easier to spot than their white cousins and last year we lost them all just about the night before I was intending to pick them. So today they were netted, using the net which has just come off one of the cherry trees which Sue picked.

23 eggs have been in the incubator for 18 days now at a temperature of precisely 37.5 degrees Celsius. We tried to keep the humidity at 45% but with the ambient air at over 60% most of the time this proved impossible. (Hence 23 eggs. We started with 24 but one was replaced with a sock full of rice in an attempt to reduce the humidity. It worked a little, for a while!) Humidity is important since it dictates how much liquid evaporates through the shell of the egg and therefore how big the air sac is for the chick to breath when it comes to hatching time.
So today was Day 19. Time for the eggs to come off the roller and to increase the humidity further.
If all goes well they will start hatching in a couple of days.

13th July
I open froze the currants and berries in trays. Today I scraped them off the trays to go into freezer bags. The whitecurrants, to my evil eye at least, look like frozen frog spawn. There could be a marketing idea here for a healthy Halloween treat. I also discovered by accident that it may be an awful lot easier to remove the stems when the currants are frozen. I'll bear this in mind next time.


A surprising proportion of the rest of the day was spent picking blackcurrants and raspberries, especially given that I was supposed to be at work for the afternoon.
But for the second week in a row my car refused to start. After replacing the starter motor last week, it looks as if it was the battery after all. I won't ever be going back to Whizzywheels in Wisbech again. It's the second time they've taken the proverbial in the last few weeks.
On the bright side, it did spur me into finding a more local mechanic.

So engrossing myself in the fiddly task of picking and de-stemming blackcurrants was a welcome distraction from my thoughts. The raspberries have enjoyed the wet weather too and are starting to produce a bumper crop. I've finally worked out that I've pretty much got all summer-fruiting canes and that all the healthy canes which came up and didn't fruit last year were in fact what would bear this year's fruit. I hadn't expected them to come up so early and so made the mistake of thinking they were autumn-fruiting canes which failed to crop. Doh!  I know now.

14th July
Car fixed. New battery installed.
While the mechanic was here, this arrived. Care to guess what it is?

It's a chicken plucker. You scold the chicken, attach this contraption to a drill and the spinning rubber fingers take (most of) the feathers off the bird. I imagine these end up literally everywhere. Anyway, if it works even half as well as I hope then it will save a lot of time when it comes to processing a dozen chickens at a time.

I did actually make it to work today, though I owe them quite a bit of time now and will try to make most of it up next week before the summer holidays start.
After work I hitched up the trailer and drove to a field in the middle of nowhere where a smallholder acquaintance (who just happens to be one and the same mechanic as fixed my car this morning) was baling his hay field. What a lovely activity on a fine day under the endless fenland skies.




I slalomed between the bales on the field before pulling up and loading fifteen bales into my trailer. Back to the farm to unload, then back again for another fifteen.

This winter was so mild that the Shetland sheep got by without any hay whatsoever. Buying thirty bales now is probably a good way to guarantee another mild winter.

As I was stacking the hay in the turkey stable I discovered yet another secret hoard of eggs furtively tucked away. I'm reorganising the stables in a couple of days, but I'll try to move the nest so that hopefully the hen keeps laying in it. That way I know where they are when I want to steal the eggs. I'll mark a couple which I'll leave so she keeps coming back.
One final job for the day.
I abandoned the coriander crop in the polytunnel - it just hasn't grown leafy enough this year - and sowed another few rows of carrots which so far have been doing very well under cover. Hopefully the carrot flies won't discover that the polytunnel has doors.

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