A luxurious new sheep shelter

Our Shetland sheep have had a rest from breeding this year. We missed lambing, but it made for a much less stressful Easter period.

We thought we would lose Rambo, our ram, as he lost a lot of weight over winter. We've changed his wormer and our shearer gave him a vitamin and mineral drench. This seems to have halted the weight loss, though he's not really putting it back on either.

Shetland sheep are remarkably hardy. Rain, wind and snow are nothing to them. In fact they look their most uncomfortable during the summer when the sun beats down. There's not really any shade for them as we can't put them in under the trees - the trees wouldn't last very long at all.

This small paddock near the house provides perfect shade
but only enough grass for about three days.
The sheep appreciate being sheared in late May so they don't overheat.

I've been turning ideas for shelters around in my head. Last year I got hold of some large corrugated roofing sheets. They're second hand but they don't need to be perfect. I don't want to spend a fortune as the sheep pasture is divided into six small paddocks and I'd like some shelter in at least half of them. It will need to stand up to strong winds, sheep scratching and maybe the occasional bout of being rammed by the rams.

I came up with a good design when we constructed the new fenced paddock last year and I did start on adapting this for a more open situation but the ground was rock hard and the job became consigned to the ever expanding to do list.

The corrugated metal sheets became temporary ground cover around the cabin. Until yesterday that is, when a marathon clearing session with the scythe reminded me they were there. On the spur of the moment I decided it was time to sort out a design for the sheep shelters. 

I usually start with an idea in my head and adapt the design as I go along to fit the materials available.

After a couple of hours, using just four wooden posts, four wooden pallets, a couple of lengths of wood and two corrugated sheets, the shelter was complete. When they've munched their current paddock I'll move the sheep in to test the design.

If all goes well I'll start on more shelters. They will be easier with the design now worked out.

A new sheep shelter.
Easy to build, £12 for posts, £6 for corrugated roof, £4 for wood, pallets free + nails and screws.
The key to the design is the wood both below and above the corrugated sheets so the wind can't take them (hopefully!) The one I built last year easily survived 60mph wins.

It was a beautiful day for working outside. There's  not much better than working in the fresh air under our uninterrupted fenland skies.

You'll know how into nature I am. I am happy to just admire, but I've resolved to try to learn a few more identifications. So if I see something which is new to me or which I can't put a name to, I am taking the time to look it up and learn a little more about the fauna an flora around me.

Today's find was a cluster of these delightfully cute beetles on one of the pallets I was using to construct the sheep shelter. A few scuttle off before i could get a picture.
They are in fact 16 spot ladybirds. They are just a few mm long. The feed on pollen, fungi and nectar.

May Daze

Come back Rain, all is forgiven

Hot sunny days and lockdown have meant that I don't particularly have to work around the weather or other commitments. I can relax a little more and still keep on top of things on the smallholding.

Having said that, our boom and bust weather patterns do make things more difficult. 7% of our usual May rainfall has necessitated watering in new plantings and watering where I sowed the carrots, one of only two crops which I now sow direct. The parsnips failed to come through this year, so did their replacements. Worse still, the water butts have run dry so I now have to use metered and treated water. At least hoeing has been easy.

The body and soul of the soil

I have steadily been moving last year's compost onto beds. The huge pile is now all gone, but the encouraging news is that I had enough to cover the majority of the 80 or so beds I have. 

It's amazing how much material we produce to feed the compost heaps. Hopefully I can persuade some to break down enough for a mid summer mulch. 

Bee-keeping Update

We have only had five swarms of bees this year so far. Three of them have been huge swarms. One we gave away, the other four we collected and created new hives. One of these disappeared again, so Sue is now left with NINE hives. Her ideal number is three!!!

It looks like a good honey year. Sue has already taken 60 jars of early honey. She is not one to rob the bees of too much and always leaves plenty for the girls. 

A welcome hair cut

The hot weather is hard on the sheep too, so it was a relief for them when the shearer came a few days back. Jason and his wife Chloe are really friendly and fantastic with the sheep. Not only do the sheep get rid of their uncomfortably hot fleeces, but they get their feet trimmed and a dose of Clik to protect against fly strike. It's also a chance for a health check by people who know much more than us and for us to ask any questions we have.

One of our ewes looks suspiciously fat. If she is pregnant, it will be a virgin birth as the three rams have been kept well away. I have my suspicions how it may have happened. We'll see if she really is pregnant and what the lamb looks like if there is one.

Rambo, our breeding ram, has lost a lot of weight and his stools are not solid. We have tried worm and fluke treatment but it has not made a lot of difference. Jason gave him a mineral drench (this is not as it sounds, but simply means given orally) and says that often cures unknown problems. Let's hope.

Respect your Elders

Another feature of this time of year is that the elders come into flower. This is the cue for Sue to make elderflower champagne. The process is very simple. Just dissolve sugar in water, est and juice lemons, add elderflowers.

Stir daily until it starts to bubble from the natural fermentation. Then bottle and burp.

Sue has also frozen about 50 heads. Don't worry, there are absolutely loads left for the birds and insects.

Birdlife on the Farm

These two swallows ended up inside the house.

One found the exit and I caught 

and released the other.

Swallows are now swooping in and out of the stables, robins, blackbirds and starlings are already feeding young. Blue tits and great tits are busy collecting food for young families. A pair of pied wagtails loiter around the stables and often fly out of there as I approach. A couple of years back they nested under some pallets by the polytunnel. Woodpigeons, chaffinches and goldfinches breed in good numbers here and we have a thriving colony of house sparrows. Further down the land there are meadow pipits nesting in the rough grass and skylarks rise high to blast out their song. Wrens sing loudly and are dotted all about the smallholding. We have thrushes breeding on the smallholding too, both mistle thrushes and song thrush. But they are outcompeted in the song stakes by our blackcap which hasn't shut up for weeks now. I saw the male carrying food into a bush in the front garden yesterday.

Above: The rewilded front garden

Below: Native hedgerows as they should look, planted by me 7 years ago.

The Little Owls are incredibly secretive at this time of year. I rarely even hear them. Excitingly though, tawny owls have moved in and I hear them almost nightly. They may have driven the barn owls out though.

Finally we have summer migrant warblers back. Our first singing sedge warbler and whitethroat appeared earlier this week. We had a reed warbler singing from the hedge for a couple of weeks, but it needs to move on and find the right habitat. 

I've probably forgotten a few of our breeding species, but every year we seem to get more and more which is a fantastic result of all the work I've put into creating a nature friendly smallholding.

It's a Rat Trap

One species not so welcome on the farm is rats. The traps are working well and at the moment I am catching young ones. The traps are not live traps but are very secure in terms of not catching non-target species. I leave the dead rats on a post and something takes them.

A few weeks back I was just checking and resetting the traps when one of our geese got trapped inside the brassica netting. In my rush to free it, I misplaced the rat trap (not set to spring) and have been searching for it ever since. Well yesterday I found it as it go mangled by the mower blades. It fought hard though, so I now need to get the blade mechanism fixed.

Poultry News

On the subject of the geese, they are still laying and we are still trying to steal their eggs. However, one is now permanently settled on the nest so we'll leave it to fate whether or not we get goslings this year. 

The glut of goose eggs means Sue keeps busy making cakes. We freeze these and they are an extremely good way of storing a surplus of eggs. Goose eggs make the best sponge.

In other poultry news, one of our turkey hens managed to hatch out three healthy poults. We put them in the poultry cage as protection against crows and they are all doing well. The other hen is desperate to sit on eggs but the crows keep finding her eggs. Hopefully she'll find a good spot somewhere in the veg plot or soft fruit patch before it's too late. We are happy to leave this up to fate again.

We have two Silkie hens sitting on Muscovy duck eggs and now one of the Muscovy ducks herself has made a nest in the corner of the chicken house and is sitting. Hopefully we'll end up with a few ducklings. Two of our Muscovy girls are now missing in action. We don;t know if they've been taken by something, moved away or are secretly rearing clutches in some forgotten part of the smallholding.

Clearing the seedling log jam.

Planting out beans. The climbing structures are made from coppiced willow rods

which the sheep strip for me.

With the last frost gone (a really late one would be a bit disastrous) I have been busy clearing the logjam of young plants in the polytunnel. I have moved most of them to benches outside as temperatures have stayed in double figures day and night for quite a while now. 

Corn, beans, tomatoes, courgettes and squashes have all gone into the ground outside. We had a couple of very windy days which was a challenge for the newly planted beans, but on the whole I've never had young plants settle in so well. They usually suffer a setback for a week or so but not this year.

The Rewards

At the other end of this process, we are already starting to get some decent harvests, particularly from the polytunnel which is yielding delicious new potatoes, carrots and mangetout. Once these are harvested their space will be required for tomatoes, peppers, melons and cucumbers. In fact, they are already underplanted. Outdoors we have now stopped harvesting the rhubarb but we have a couple more weeks of asparagus left. The gooseberry bushes are bursting to overflowing and we'll very soon be thinning out the early picking for the sharp gooseberries. The rest are left on to sweeten. 

We have salad leaves coming out of our ears. We have so many different types of salad leaf and can always spice them up even more with edible flowers or herbs such as fennel or oregano.

So, that's about all for now. As you can see, we're always busy on the smallholding. 

Stay safe.

Sowing, Hoeing, Mowing, Growing

I got the grass mowed this week for the first time this year. It's always a relief when the mower starts up. Until now the geese have been doing the job for me, but the warm weather and a bit of rainfall have spurred the grass into action.
On the whole grass is a pain. I have no want for a green carpet so welcome moles and weeds. But since I've got it I might as well make the most of it, turning it into meat and eggs via the sheep and poultry. And when there's so much that I have to mow it then it makes a good addition to the compost heaps or direct as a mulch, so it all ends up indirectly in my tummy!

I leave some of my grass to grow long. This irritates Sue but is a joy to me.













The thermometer in the polytunnel has soared this week, creeping up into the high 40s. The early sown turnips bolted but the mangetout is doing wonderfully. I have now planted all my tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash in there too. I am trying a variety of squash called Butterbush in the hope that it won't take over the whole polytunnel!


It has been perfect weather for hoeing. Within a couple of hours any weeds that have been chopped off at the base lie withered and dead. I'm gradually working my way round all the veg beds. The ones that have been previously mulched are much easier to do.

A forecast of frost for the next few mornings has been holding me back in the veg patch. As soon as this next cold spell passes the garden will fill with young bean plants, sweetcorn, squash and tomatoes which I have been raising for outdoors. Until then I am trying to hold them back in the polytunnel.

Self-seeded Poached egg plants,

wonderful for bees and a great

companion plant for broad beans.

The vegetable patch is starting to look gorgeous at the moment. I have left a lot of self-sown and naturalised plants to flower and the willow arches are coming on great. These seem to be a magnet for bee swarms and so it was that the third swarm of the year, almost definitely not from our hives, appeared on our last hot day. The swarm was huge.

And the reward for 

longest swarm

goes to...

Having already successfully housed two swarms and moved back up to 8 hives, any we collect from now will be given to fellow beekeepers. This swarm has gone off to Thorney, about ten miles down the road.

Our turkey hen who has been sat on eggs under a patch of borage and flowering rocket started clucking three days ago. I suspected that either chicks had been born or the eggs were pipping.
Sure enough, the next day a little head was poking out from under her feathers.

Our first view of our turkey hen's offspring

She sat tight for two days but was thinking of moving off the nest this morning. With the local crows loitering, we decided to catch her and any chicks and transfer them to a vacant poultry pen. There were just three chicks and three unhatched eggs. Sue retrieved the chicks while the hen slipped my grasp and proceeded to defend her family quite resolutely!
All are now settled into their new home.

Meanwhile, after three Silkie chickens only succeeded in constantly swapping the four ducks eggs they were sharing, we have put one of the Silkie hens on her own with four new eggs. Hopefully we'll have some success. Two of our Muscovy duck girls have now vanished. The optimistic side of me says that they may appear at some point with ducklings, but it is surprising that we have not seen them at all.

Finally there have been more night time capers. It seems tawny owls have moved into the neighbourhood. I regularly hear them when sat outside at night. This may be at the expense of our barn owls as I rarely see or hear them now.
A couple of nights ago as I sat outside under a wonderful full moon I could hear a female tawny nearby. I speculatively imitated a male hooting and within a minute the unmistakable silhouette of an owl flew up into one of the trees in the roadside paddock. Then it flew right over my head and into one of the large ash trees in the garden. It may have been one in the morning, but the full moon meant that it was easily visible against the moonlit sky as it passed over. Then another!
The pair started duetting really close by. Amazing stuff.

And final finally, a couple of lockdown images. One of my new lockdown hair and one my Google timeline for the month of April which tells its own story.

Willows, Meteors and Strange Lights in the Sky

I'd like to begin by apologising for the strange indent here on the left. Formatting in Blogger can be a nightmare, particularly placing pictures. When I move them, they often leave this odd little remnant which seems virtually impossible to delete!

As I write this we have finally had some April showers, just in time before May arrives. It has been the sunniest April on record. Whilst we all undoubtedly enjoy the sunshine and it has been a godsend in these difficult times, I don't regard this as a good sign in the long term. We seem these days to get extended periods of weather extremes. Don't forget that before the sunniest April on record we were bemoaning months of wet weather which went as far back as preventing the farmers getting in their winter wheat and left fields flooded over winter.

It's been a tricky time in the garden as it's been too dry to transplant seedlings.

Once the whole plot is covered in compost this will help, but I don't want to cover dry earth with compost mulch as it will just keep the moisture out.

I did manage to get some red cabbage seedlings in but they have required more aftercare than usual.

Instead, I have turned my attention to my various willow structures and coppice. Ideally this is a job for the winter, but I think there's enough time left in the year for them to regrow. They grow at an astonishing rate. The fedge I planted about three years ago around the back of the pond has about 12 foot of new growth. The poles I cut from this will make ideal material for constructing bean supports.









I select the poles I want to use and throw them in with the sheep who make short work of the leaves and side shoots and quickly begin stripping the bark which stops the willow regrowing when it is pushed into the ground.










Any excess willow gets shredded for the compost, although at the moment I am using it as a mulch for the raspberries.

I also pulled a whole load of old teasel stems from a wildlife patch. It stands majestic in the winter, a goldfinch restaurant, but is starting to look a bit messy now.
There was a surprisingly big pile when I had finished. We harvested some of the seed heads for a friend who does flower arranging and then the rest went through the shredder. It dispatches these in no time.






When I'm not at work, I always drift towards being a bit of a night owl. Nocmig (birdwatching in the dark!) has gone quiet so I have taken up astronomy - well, not exactly, it's as much as I can manage to find the North star. But Elon Musk's space junk, eventually to be thousands of satellites, for the moment at least provides the novel sight of strings of satellites passing overhead.
Combine this with the Lyrid meteor shower and you have instant and free entertainment to replace the soaps on TV.

One feature of April 2020's fine weather has been a remarkable series of night skies. Venus has shone brilliant and a crescent moon has made the stars shine even brighter.

In my time I have been fortunate enough to experience some amazing night skies on my travels to far flung and remote places. Most memorable was a night in the open in Egypt's White Desert during a particularly active Perseid meteor shower.

The Lyrid meteors weren't quite so spectacular, but still worth the effort as these experiences in life are few and far between. I got lucky and the first meteor I saw was incredible, a true fireball across the sky. 

There's been something else to look for in the night sky too. A few weeks back social media suddenly started mentioning strange strings of lights travelling across the sky. Fortunately this was not aliens taking advantage of humankind's current difficulties. They were instead trains of satellites launched by Elon Musk.

The geese doing a fairly rubbish impression of  the SpaceX satellite train

I don't particularly welcome this, as it seems like humankind has just found another place to litter and their use seems slightly sinister. There are going to be thousands of them orbiting our planet.

But for now they make quite a unique sight as strings of pearls travel across the sky. Fortunately their initial brightness is short-lived as they move into higher orbit and separate.

The most spectacular thing I saw was one of the SpaceX rockets passing over just 20 minutes after its launch from Cape Canaveral. Though I espouse a relatively simple life, you have to wonder.

Today's swarm of bees, in the same place as the last one

Back down to Earth now and May is upon us. The first day of May has given us another swarm of bees on the smallholding but more spectacular, maybe even than the stars, is the mayflower blossom.

Let's see what this coming month brings us. Right now it seems like absolutely anything could happen.