Giant Eggs and PSB on the menu

Sunday 19th March 2017

Perky Turkeys
A few days ago I found a turkey egg sitting out in the open all on its own. We placed it into one of the houses in the hope that whichever hen had laid it would get the idea and lay any future eggs in the same place.
Since then three eggs a day have appeared buried in the straw. This morning I found two of the girls in the house laying. We want the older hen to incubate the eggs and we don't have plans to keep all three hens. But at this rate there will be a mountain of eggs before anybody decides to sit, so turkey eggs will be on the menu for a while. Once we reach the Easter holidays, one of the turkey hens will probably be on the menu too!




A Pruning Lesson
It was an early start today for we were off to Three Holes for the Fenland Smallholders meeting on pruning fruit trees. A bit late really, as I had already done all mine, but I thought I might learn something and it would be good to meet up with some of the club members.
Fortunately I found out that I did all my pruning correctly. 😁

A Pre-lambing Health Check
The good thing about an early start was that it left a decent portion of the day to get other things done. I wanted to check up on the adult Shetland sheep as the ewes are only a few weeks off lambing now. Main job was to give them a pre-lambing dose of wormer. Each ewe looks about the same size as last year, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get triplets, twins, a single and a zero again.

Rambo and his ladies, tightly penned for worming and inspection.

PSB!
We have a new crop to harvest. My attempts to grow brassicas yield slight improvements year on year. I never quite understood how long Purple Sprouting Broccoli took to give a harvest. It is almost a year since this beauty was sown, yet only now am I harvesting delicious purple sprouts. I missed some of the harvest but this year I shall be growing my PSB plants in a less hidden away location. I plan to plant them out into the broad bean bed once those plants have come out.

Monday 20th March 2017
Giant Eggs Galore!
As if a pile of turkey eggs is not enough, we are getting between one and four goose eggs a day too! That is a lot of egg.
We do our best to keep up, but one goose egg makes a large omelette for lunch.

Planting Potatoes in the Rain
I needed a hearty lunch today for I worked like a trooper in the morning, battling to get as much done as possible before the forecast heavy rain arrived. I didn't fancy another soaking, but more importantly the soil would become unworkable very quickly. I just about managed to get the early potatoes in, but I was drawing the earth up over them in a downpour.
I have planted Arran Pilot, which is my bulk standard early potato. I do find it stands well in the ground though. There's also Red Duke of York, my favourite early as it makes great chips. I've also gone for Duke of York, another variety which can be left to turn into a Main.
The advantage of the Earlies is that if blight comes early again then there should at least be a crop to be had.
No pictures I'm afraid as I had to make a run for the polytunnel and stay there, for the rest of the day was a day for the geese to enjoy.



A Splash of Yellow(hammer)
The afternoon was however brightened up by the sight of eight male yellowhammers feeding on the ground in next door's horse paddock. These birds are becoming scarce in our countryside now but they seem to like the horse paddocks. Their bright yellow plumage is enough to bring a little sunshine to even the rainiest of days.

21st March 2017
Conquering the Grass with Mr Mowtivator
Yesterday's wetness was forgotten today. The sun came out enough to feel on the back of the neck. The grass has been growing at an alarming rate this last week. I have learned from the past to take full advantage of any dry day to tackle the first mow. Miss the chance and a week of rain can leave you with an impenetrable jungle of grass which struggles to ever be dry enough to mow.
It is important to establish who is boss early in the season!
Starting up the lawn mower is always a dread. I do not pretend to be mechanical and if the mower doesn't work there will be no chance of getting it fixed in a hurry. I always do the first couple of mows with the hand mower. It is a more reliable and trustworthy machine than the ride-on. So out came Mr Mowtivator. Mr Mowtivator suffers from the opposite affliction to Mr Rotavator. The latter's engine always starts first time but has been racing apace. The former never wants to start after a winter of rest in the shed. I have to pull and yank the starter cord endlessly, experimenting with choke in, choke out, leaving it for five minutes, trying again... But eventually it splutters and burps into life and all is fine.
I had to wait until late morning for the dew to be driven out of the grass, but by mid afternoon, after four hours pushing the lawnmower, I had tackled the veg plot, the front lawn, the back lawn and the path through the orchard and young woodland. What a relief!
This year I want to treat my grass as a resource for mulching, though I am making the best of a bad job for I consider grass to be a curse. If there was a cheaper way of covering the ground I would. I wouldn't even have a problem with plastic turf, though the voles and moles might not enjoy it quite so much.

Into The Kitchen
That was enough of the great outdoors for the day. Time to hit the kitchen. This afternoon's delights were Portuguese Corn Bread (which did its rising while I was mowing), Spicy Vegetable Pasties, Walnut Cookies and Jerk Chicken - it was going to be Jerky Turkey, but we have run out of turkey breasts for the moment.

So there ends another three days of our smallholding adventure. No day the same. Always learning.

Where's Dave?

28th January 2017
A little twitching, a committee meeting and a bit more of the sharp end of smallholding

Even living in The Fens, it's not every day I open the curtains and find myself face to face with a barn owl. In one way or another, birds were certainly the theme of the day.

It started with a trip further up into Lincolnshire where a White-billed Diver had taken up temporary residence on the River Witham near Woodhall Spa. By rights it should be plying its trade in the Arctic seas, so how it had quite got itself here is a mystery. But it was a huge and uncanny coincidence, for the most famous previous inland record was on the very same stretch of river 21 years ago.
The diver had been commuting up and down a 5 mile stretch of river with just a few access points, so it was just a case of picking a starting point and walking. I thought that if I waited till the weekend I would get more up to date news and save my legs a little. I also had a plan to drag Sue and the dogs along for a nice long walk in a new place. And so we parked up at the old Stixwould Station, where the bird had drifted past earlier in the morning, and started walking south... and south... and south until eventually we caught up with the bird and the crowd of birders just a couple of hundred yards north of Kirkstead bridge, where we could have parked! If only one of the fifty or so birders there had bothered to broadcast its whereabouts.
Never mind. We enjoyed great views of a rarely seen bird and I bumped into some old birding friends along the way. I was slightly disappointed that Boris and Arthur seemed to take little interest in the bird, though better that than they jump in the water after it!
But they had a most exciting walk, with new smells everywhere and quite a few doggy encounters. They were slightly confused by the metal sheep they met along the way though.

This was the longest walk Arthur's little legs had ever been on and he slept all the way home.

Sue and I on the other hand headed off to Upwell for the Fenland Smallholders Club AGM. I have to admit, this is hardly the highlight of my year. Unfortunately, although club membership is doing pretty well, getting people involved is becoming increasingly difficult. Anyway, there were just enough people to coerce into filling the spare spaces on the committee. I myself have come off the committee as I find committees exceedingly frustrating and the FSC is certainly no exception. Democracy seems to favour talkers and not doers. I do however continue to do plenty to help out as the club is well worth supporting.

When we got home the barn owl was still in the tree though slightly more alert. It soon headed off to hunt along the dyke and over the veg patch.

It may be getting dark now, but a long and eventful day was certainly not finished. There were two sheep to be loaded into the trailer... don't ask where they were going!
Loading up went very smoothly. These were the two commercial sheep which we had brought in to fatten up. Their departure would be quite welcome as they had stayed a little longer than expected and sheep food does not grow free in the winter months.

With that operation successfully completed, it was into the kitchen to gut and prep the birds which we had dispatched the other day - a turkey, a goose and a cockerel which had been hanging (colloquially and then literally!) in the stables.
No pictures, you'll be glad to hear.

And that was that. An end to a very eventful and varied day.

29th January 2017
Where's Dave?
A very early start to drop the sheep off at the abattoir. We like to get there early - it saves waiting in a queue and means we can be back on the farm by 8.
We usually have to wait for Dave and his son to arrive in the Land Rover, but today the gates were already open. We were greeted by two new faces, though I recognised one of them as the butcher who had helped me load Daisy into the back of the car a couple of years back (for those new to the blog, Daisy used to be our breeding sow.)
I presumed that Dave was on holiday, but then received the shocking news that he had moved on - not in a bad way, but to new ventures. I liked Dave. He was straightforward. He would stand back and let you struggle to get your animals out of the trailer (particularly pigs) but would step in if really needed and proceed to make it look ridiculously easy. He had a way of just tickling the pigs or sheep off the trailer, down the ramp and into their new temporary pen.
It'll probably be another forty or so years before I can call myself an established fen-dweller, but I don't like change as much as I used to, so I am on my way!!!
I just hope al the abattoir arrangements stay the same, as we have become rather efficient at it now.

Now I don't like to moan (no, really, I don't), but I coughed and spluttered my way through most of last night and really am not on top form at the moment so I decided to spend the rest of the day indoors. A day in a warm kitchen would surely help matters, so I set about baking and cooking.
Even kneading the bread felt like hard work, but I knocked up a good dough for my multigrain bread.

While I left it to rise, I started on a Lardy Cake. This is one of my favourite recipes, full of fruit and the lard is a permissible sin.
More kneading and rolling, more waiting to rise, so a quick Leek and Potato soup was on the cards. Leeks are a brilliant crop, for they come good when not much else is around and they stand outside whatever the weather. And while that was boiling up, I put the old cockerel in to a large stock pot to boil up for a few hours.

Come the evening I had to try to keep myself lively as we had been invited over to the new neighbours for dinner. It was fascinating to find out more about them and their plans for their cottage and land. The food went down well too. Beef. One of the few meats we don't produce on the smallholding.
I managed not to fall to sleep (not the company, the man flu).







30th January 2017
I needed to take care of myself today so I didn't get up till nearly 11! After that I took it easy.
I picked the meat off the bones of the old cockerel and turned him into a most nutritious chicken broth with potato and pearl barley.
And then something more adventurous. Jerusalem artichokes are a bit of a novelty crop and I grow them as much for a windbreak and for an attractive patch of dense greenery as for the harvest of their roots. But during the winter the roots are always there in the ground should I fancy something slightly more unusual in my diet.
I had found a recipe for Zesty Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke Salad which used blood oranges which just happen to be available at the moment. It wasn't my usual sort of recipe but would make a change from Artichoke Soup. As it turned out, artichokes roasted and glazed with blood oranges, then mixed with watercress and topped with crunchy breadcrumbs and goats cheese, well it turned out to be rather tasty. Sue loved it. I made just one change to the recipe, incorporating thin slices of raw artichoke root, for this adds a fresh crunchy texture similar to water chestnuts.

31st January 2017
13 magpies!
Yes. That's right. I stared bleary-eyed out of the kitchen window to see THIRTEEN magpies in a bush. Now that can't be lucky.
Still struggling against man flu, I decided that a blast of South Lincolnshire's icy wind might do the trick today, so I took Boris and Arthur to see a Great Grey Shrike and a Great White Egret nearby but they didn't even look. They did introduce themselves to a few local twitchers though.

This was along the banks of the River Welland which flows through Spalding and out to The Wash. I discovered today that I can follow the country lanes from my house and they lead me to what is known as Deeping High Bank, the East side of the river.

Back at home and the postie brought me a delivery of seeds for this year's crops. The growing season really is almost upon us. Exciting times.

Back to Smallholding

So here we are. The blog I was going to post over three weeks ago!

Charlie, complete with new trendy hair style.

Sue's best friend, another Sue, brought Charlie, Boris's best friend, up to the farm for the weekend. It was the weekend of the Smallholders Annual Produce Show, so on Sunday morning we were out in the garden choosing the biggest Mangel Wurzel. We had a prize to defend.
I stayed on the farm for there was much work to catch up with, so it was a text message which informed me that we had beaten off the nearest competition by about a kilo. VICTORY!!!

Not only that, but Sue had scooped the prize for Best Recycled Object with her turkey feather lampshade.
That evening we had been invited over to a barbecue at our new neighbours. It was a lovely evening. Iain and Carol Ann were too busy for us to get to know them much better but it was a good chance to have a nose at what they've done to the place as well as to chat to our other neighbours.

25th September 2016
A rare sighting of a Muntjac deer today. It nonchalantly crossed the next field along.

I spent the morning fixing up the sheep electric fence. One of the posts had rotted at the base and needed replacing and I needed to put in a proper link to the circuit round Rambo's enclosure, as just tying the electric wire was causing it to arc and burning through the wire.
It was a good opportunity to spend some time in close proximity to the sheep. Some of them are having eye problems at the moment. I've consulted with the interweb and decided for the moment to just wait and see what happens. The two fawn ewes both have crusty, closed over eyes, but it seems to come and go. More worryingly, one of the hogget lambs has both its eyes very cloudy. This is the one which had crossed the fence into the next paddock. When I put it back with the others, they were giving it a fair bit of stick.

(ed. When I returned from Shetland, the sheep's eyes had improved greatly. Now, another week on, they are all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again).

There was still time to put the roof on the chicken house I've been renovating and to move it down to the chicken pen. The Ixworth chicks have outgrown their accommodation up here so it was great to be able to move them to a pen within the larger chicken enclosure.



As it was chicken moving day, I let the broody and her two chicks out of the stable to explore.

26th September 2016
For the second year in a row, blight has eventually reached the tomatoes in the polytunnel. We have had a very good crop, so I took all the plants out today.

The unseasonal warm southerly wind continues and all day House Martins were heading south. We don't get them breeding on the farm and I only see them rarely on migration.

27th September 2016

The warm wind strengthened today. Four Swallows battled south and there was a late Hobby, presumably following the swallows and martins. I guess they will provide it with occasional tasty snacks all the way back to Africa.

I had a very rare trip to a shopping centre. I hate the places. I was surprised by the proliferation in mobility scooters.

The purpose of the trip was to stock up on warm clothes for Shetland.
I got it over and done with as quickly as possible.

And that's where we're up to. I've since been to the Outer Hebs, Shetland and back, Shetland and back again.

June goes out with a splash

26th June
Bonus beans
I'd put it off for a couple of days but decided to spend the morning trying to fix the electric fence. That was until I found that yesterday's storm had left an inch of water standing in the corner stable, the one where the fence energiser is sited.
So instead I finished planting the beans I'd raised in the polytunnel. I decided to plant out the Cobra beans as they seem to have outgrown their early deformities. And the Pea Beans too! After sowing a couple of hundred beans, I've finally got about a dozen to germinate. They'd better not get munched by slugs!

Forgetting about Brexit
The afternoon was the Smallholders Club meeting being held at a friend's smallholding. It was nice to get away from the problems of the world for a while.
Quinoa Query
Back from the meeting, I decided to plant out my quinoa plants. I grew some spares in modules just in case the direct sown ones didn't make it. As it is, I have no idea whether they made it or not as they are totally indistinguishable from the fat hen which is probably the commonest weed on my land. So I've left that bed to grow - it should be possible to tell them when they come into flower - and planted a new patch elsewhere.
53 Red Hot Pokers
As I was doing this the swallows started to kick up a real commotion. The cause soon became apparent as a barn owl swooped through the garden being chased by swallows. It appeared to come from the hollow ash tree, so with a bit of luck it's decided to roost there during the day.
Finally the rain set in again. It's certainly been a wet June. I retired to the polytunnel and potted up my Red Hot Poker plants - I got 53 from one small tray.
The polytunnel is filling quickly so I harvested a few turnips which were looking really good. In these muggy conditions it's important to thin out plants to enable the air to circulate at ground level, otherwise everything starts to rot.

27th June
Keeping the sheep in
A lovely day spent down in the sheep field. I love it down here under the huge fenland sky. I can just absorb myself in the moment and leave all the worries of the world behind.
Today's task was to work out where the problem was with the electric fence and to section off the field into smaller areas so I can rotate the sheep.
I replaced some of the wire which had turned rusty, I cleaned up some of the connections and I spent quite some time cutting the grass down under the fence. Finally I took the mower down and cut the grass short under the fence. All of this managed to raise the voltage at the end of the fence from about 800 to just over 4000. This should be enough to teach the Shetland lambs not to keep going through it. They can still get through if they put their head down and make most of the contact with their woolly back, but it won't take long before they get a shock and learn to stay where they are supposed to be.
There's still room for improvement. The far end of the fence still goes through swards of long grass and I've reluctantly decided that when the weather is good enough I will have to use weedkiller to keep the grass down. Keeping a few hundred metres of fence clear of grass is just not practical with shears or a strimmer (for starters, there are too many accidents when the lower wire gets severed) and the ground is too rough for the mower.

Dragonflies and a Hawk Moth
I was surprised to find standing water in one area, but very pleased to see dragonflies over it.

Another surprising find was this amazing Privet Hawk Moth on a fence post.

Finally it was time to move the young lambs down to their new home. I spent several hours shepherding the flock. They seemed very happy with the new food choices and there were no major arguments with the old timers. It's fascinating to watch the Shetland sheep eat. At times they munch the lush grass at ground level, other times they nibble away at the seed heads a foot or more off the ground. I guess it gives their neck a rest.

Swallow trials
A swallow colony attracts its fair share of undesirables. We never used to have magpies here, but for the last couple of years they've become more regular. With this has come an increase in violent muggings, for they make occasional visits to the nests to plunder eggs and  young birds. Still, enough of the swallows survive this ordeal and this past week some of the young have been on the wing. This makes the adults more defensive than usual and several times a day they rise into the air as one chattering loudly. It often draws my attention to a raptor of some description. Today the swallow saw off a sparrowhawk in the morning and a barn owl and a kestrel in the afternoon. But there is one falcon which is a much bigger threat, for the day the first swallows nest is the day the first hobby appears. A dapper and slender falcon which summers in this country, it consumes dragonflies in the early part of the year, catching them mid-air. But this swift and agile falcon is quite capable of catching a swallow, especially a young inexperienced one. And so it was this evening that I saw this for the first time. I missed the actual moment, but alerted to a raptor I looked up to see the hobby shooting low through the garden with a swallow dangling from its talons.
Fortunately the swallows will have more than one brood and not all the young will be predated. There are always more on the way.


28th June
I spent the morning with the sheep again, time well spent doing not very much!
Howcome my legs have come up in a terrible rash just from brushing against our deadly fenland nettles yet the Shetland can munch away on them quite happily?



Into the polytunnel. Again.
Early afternoon and the rain came again. Again I retired to the polytunnel and set about potting up the flowers I've ben raising in trays and modules. At this time of year I move them out of the polytunnel as they can quickly dry up on a hot day and I find that conditions outside are less extreme. They often get just enough water from the sky but I occasionally give them a drink. But this year they have been drowning! Quite literally. I cannot keep emptying the trays they stand in fast enough. If I don't put them in trays they can all too easily dry up.

And so I began the task of picking them out, prising apart their root systems and giving each its own pot in which to grow big enough to be planted out into the beds. My previous efforts to grow foxgloves from seed have come to nothing, so this year I sowed a good pinch of seed into each module. Well, I now have about three hundred tiny foxglove plants crammed together. Potting up this many plants takes ages. I got about a hundred done and have left the rest. They probably won't be needed, though I could try and sell them if  get time. I potted up lupins, hollyhocks and liatris too so the flower beds should hopefully be looking good this time next year, if the rabbits and slugs don't get them all.

Where are the pollinators?
The sun came out again in the evening which hailed a bright double rainbow. The bees came out too, for their feeding time has been short of late. In fact I'm having trouble with the general lack of pollinators this year, hardly a hoverfly or butterfly to be seen.

29th June
A day of relentless rain. Rest day declared!

30th June
Cow poo!
We took the whole school on their now annual trip to the Norfolk Show today. Main interest for the class I was with were the cow sheds. To be more precise, they displayed a slightly concerning preoccupation with cow poo! That and which cow had the most Kim Kardashian bottom!

Putting that aside, it's a great show, though I can't believe how much it is for Joe Public to get in. It would have cost Sue and I £60 if we didn't get free teachers tickets. Someone's raking in an awful lot of money. It's a shame they can't find a little space for a few non-profit making organisations like the smallholders clubs.
The disadvantage of going with the school is that I had to go where the children wanted to go. I glimpsed some amazing blacksmithery and willow weaving and would have liked to spend time looking at the ride-on mowers, but I just couldn't get the children interested to the same extent as the cow poo.
On the plus side, I did rather fall in love with the mini Dexter cows. And there were some great sheep in the Rare Breeds area, Hungarian Screw-horned sheep, also known as Rackas. Then there were the donkeys with dreadlocks and I was pretty impressed with the heavy horses and the old farm machinery they pulled.




Worried about my nuts
Back home and there was a squirrel on the feed feeders. Only the second time I've ever seen one on our land. I'm afraid its not really welcome. I don't want my bird feeders destroyed and I certainly hope it doesn't find the cobnut trees.
A fox heard calling late at night was a reminder to keep careful guard on the poultry. On a positive note, the barn owl seems to have settled in the area as I saw it swoop in and perch on the chicken fence at dusk.

Tomorrow it's July. Hard to believe.

The birds and the bees... and the sheep

The first honey of the year

complete with new labels.

Sometimes I don't mind getting wet, for once you're really wet through you stop noticing it and just carry on. But today I feel like staying dry, so I'm staying indoors. Besides, in the past week of warm, dry weather I've totally failed to mow the lawns so the soaking would come from the bottom up.
Why have I not mown the lawns? Priorities.
March and April are all about getting seeds sown and young plants raised. But come the second week of May, when the soil is warmed up and the danger of frost is passed, it's all about getting all those little plants into the soil so their roots can delve and explore and nourish. Stuck in seed trays or modules the plants just stop growing or, even worse, wither up and die if you accidentally miss watering their tray on a hot day.

Fortunately we have a rather well-timed week off school in which I can hopefully catch up with everything I've fallen behind with (mainly because I've been scooting all over the country chasing rare birds).

It's not all been about the vegetables though. There's been action on the sheep front and plenty of news from the poultry pen, most of it a bit calamitous, but not all.
So here's a run down of what's been going on.

Rambo shorn - a shadow of his former self.

24th May
The ewes and Rambo came down to the paddock near the house, briefly meeting the lambs on the other side of some sheep hurdles before the lambs went down to the big sheep field all on their own. The lambs were delighted to see their mums again and started bleating loudly. Their mums pretty much blanked them, fearing for their udders which are beginning to dry up now.
The reason for the swap was that Carl the shearer was due in the morning.

25th May
I managed to get all bar one (sorry for the pun, if you noticed it) of the sheep penned in with relative ease. They still come to investigate a bucket, but I wasn't quite quick enough to sneak round and close off the hurdles. One of the ewes made a dash for it. Never mind. It wasn't long before I had her penned in too. The secret with sheep is just to move them into smaller and smaller areas, remembering to bar (sorry!) their way back to the previous place. And never try to move a loan ewe. Easier to take the whole flock, separate the one and then take the rest back.
Carl arrived from his previous job and I was quite proud that I had the sheep so well penned and ready for shearing. Shetland sheep are sort of self-shedding, but they look a right mess while this is going on and some are too late for the warm weather. Two of my girls, the ones who had multiple lambs, were pretty much self-shorn already.


Shearing went well. Carl is amazing with the sheep. Strong but gentle. Even Rambo didn't put up too much of a fight this time. I got Carl to check and trim their feet too. For an extra £1 per sheep it's worth getting it done. As it was he didn't charge me for this and was not even going to charge for the two ewes which just needed a little tidying up. I paid him the whole amount though as he deserves it.



Last year we sold the wool to some spinners. They were very, very happy with it and we recovered the cost of shearing. This year we are planning to learn how to do peg looming so will keep as much wool as we need for ourselves. More on peg looming in a few weeks.

26th May
The exertions of the weekend were still telling on my body. I used to be able to do overnight drives seemingly with no effect but as I get older my body demands considerably more time to recover. So today after work it was a rest day, a lazy evening pottering around enjoying the smallholding, just taking stock of everything.
I did get the car serviced and MOT'ed today. It's a dangerous time of year to be without car (rare birds don't hang around waiting for the car to be fixed) so I was glad to get it done.

27th May
Only 3 eggs today! That's a pretty poor return. But it happens sometimes. The spring egg glut has happened and several of the hens have chicks or are sitting on eggs. Some of the hens are getting older so are less productive. The others have just gone on strike and we have a very sudden drop in egg production. This is not unusual, but inexplicably the timing seems to vary year on year. But I seem to remember this happening last year.
I should keep records, but I've never been good at that sort of thing. I like to be more inefficient! Organic. Creative.
Anyway, I sort of suspect the crows which now nest in the old ash trees. There's only one pair but they hang around the chicken pens a lot. I know they sometimes go down for the wheat and I've seen them take duck eggs when the ducks have decided to lay on the ground outside. What I'm not sure about is whether or not they have the audacity to enter one of the chicken houses and take the eggs. I can't believe that we could lose this many eggs and never catch them red-handed though, so  suspect it's more about the chickens than the crows.

Meanwhile, in the big chicken house where our Muscovy duck has inconveniently made her nest and been sat for the last five weeks, today we had the first cheep cheeps of a little duckling. Hopefully by tomorrow they'll all be hatched and I can think about where to move the young family for safety.

IT'S THE HOLIDAYS! I have eleven days off work.

28th May
A somewhat challenging day today.
Sue took the first honey of the year off the bees. Despite the proximity of a giant rape field, the bees actually seem to use a variety of sources of food. However, the presence of even some rape means that the honey is likely to set hard as a rock. Left in the frames in the hive, it quickly becomes irretrievable, so timing is crucial. It needs to be taken off the bees when it is just capped. For non beekeepers, the bees store the honey until it reaches the correct consistency and then cap it off with wax to prevent it drying out any more.
Sue's bee-keeping skills are developing fast now (thanks to the excellent West Norfolk Beekeeping Group).
Today she managed to mark one of the queens. Finding the queen is tricky so it is useful when you do find her to trap her in a queen cage and dab her with a bright colour. But it's a bit daunting handling the queen when the whole hive centres around her. This was the first time Sue had performed this delicate operation.
She also removed drone comb. This is the brood cells which will produce male bees and is where the varroa mite can really get a hold in a hive. Since the drones are pretty useless it is best to remove. Sue feeds it to the chickens who very much enjoy pecking out the juicy drone larvae.

I said today was challenging. That's because I was trying my best to work in the veg plot despite the unwanted attentions of Sue's angry bees, who were even more grumpy than usual as somebody had stolen their honey and interfered with their queen!

I resorted to wearing a hat with a veil over. I'm pretty good at ignoring the attentions of inquisitive bees and can even tolerate them landing in my hair. Usually they find their way out again. I find I just have to freeze still for about a minute. Then they go away but I remain frozen, for after a few seconds they always come back, just to check.
However, once in a while you get a complete nutter hell-bent on destruction. You can tell by the buzz. They go for the face or land in your hair and start burrowing and buzzing fiercely. If they're in your face the best thing is to run for it, but they pursue with vigour. In your hair I reckon you've got a 50/50 chance of getting them out before the sting goes in!
One of Sue's hives is way too aggressive. They have been since the back end of last autumn and things haven't improved. Unfortunately the queen will have to be replaced. A new one, specially bred to be peaceful, will be brought in and should then produce calmer offspring. The bees which remain should calm down too.
This is why there are no photos of the bees. I used to be able to stand right next to the hive while Sue had them open.

Anyway, in the face of such challenge I still got quite a lot done outside. Most of the outdoor tomatoes are now planted. The main varieties are Roma and San Marzano (both Italian plum tomatoes for sauces), Gardener's Delight and Outdoor Girl, a new variety I'm trying which is supposed to do well even if the weather is not ideal.
What sort of harvest we get from the outdoor toms is unpredictable. If they come good we will have tons. If blight strikes we could get none. And if the summer is dull we could have lots and lots of green tomatoes.

The other job for today was to sow the kidney beans, variety Canada Wonder. I've sown these direct, but if they don't come there's still time to resow them in modules. They are interplanted with Perpetual Spinach, a new crop for me.

29th May
Sad news. No sign of the Muscovy duckling this morning. Mum has moved the nest and the remaining eggs are all over the place. Maybe it was a mistake letting the chickens back in to roost last night.
I've closed the house off now and the girl is back on her eggs. The chickens will get a shock when they try to go to bed tonight, but I have laid on alternative accommodation for them if they find it.

Today was a perfect day for working outside but all I could get done was picking out and planting French Marigolds (tagetes). These act as a wonderful insect deterrent. I've planted a load of them in amongst my turnip and swede sowings to try to deter the flea beetles which destroyed the first sowing. I plant them between tomato plants too. They keep off whitefly. Then I just dot them around the place as a general defence against insect attack.
The other type of marigold is Pot Marigold (calendula). This is a pretty good companion plant too, though tagetes is a stronger deterrent. Calendulas are more hardy though and self-seed everywhere, appearing every spring almost in weed proportions. Fortunately they are easily pulled or transplanted to where I want them.
My work was interrupted though as today was the Smallholders meeting. I so wish they would consider evening meetings but I've made my point and it's not been taken. It was tempting to carry on working on the veg patch but fortunately with holidays coming up there's not too much pressure. Besides, today there was a visit to a smallholding I'd not visited before. It's always good to visit other places, though invariably I come back full of new ideas and jobs to do. There was a very informative talk on building a pole barn as well as the chance to catch up with my smallholding friends.
I also managed to pick up a copy of The Polytunnel Book for £1. This is my polytunnel bible. If I had to recommend one book, this would be the one.

There was just time after the meeting to take a small diversion on the way home to Paxton Pits where a Great Reed Warbler had been singing for about a week. These are like one of our regular reed warblers (small boring brown birds which sing from reedbeds) but a mammoth version and they don't sing, they holler! As it was, our Great Reed Warbler was having a very shy day. We heard a few loud calls but it wasn't in the mood for climbing to the top of the reeds and belting out its song. We left with a 'heard only' record.
Today was a good chance to try the car out too. The braking had been a bit shaky before the service and the garage had replaced something on the anti-roll bar. However, the problem seems to have got worse! Over 60mph it feels like the car has a wobbly wheel and breaking requires a firm hand on the shaky steering wheel. It'll have to go back in. Let's hope a rare bird doesn't turn up while I'm carless. Over in Denmark a Sulphur-bellied Warbler has turned up. It's so rare I can't even begin to explain. If one of those turned up here while my car was in the garage I think I'd just start walking.

30th May
Today I released the turkey family. They've been incarcerated in a very luxurious stable since their birth for their own safety. Mum led them all around the smallholding. Terry the Turkey would have been so proud if he were still around.

Early evening I decided to try and put them away for the night. After a couple of failed attempts, I managed to get them into one of the new sheds which has been kitted out in readiness. It's pretty nice in there.

The rest of the day was spent planting out my brassicas. I've abandoned the idea of using carpet underlay to stop root fly laying its eggs in the soil. Firstly each collar provided a cosy home for a slug with a handy local food source (my cauliflower seedlings). I sorted this out, slugs chopped in half, slug pellets scattered (I use the organic ferric phosphate ones, though I still try to minimise their use) but today I found half of the surviving plants dried up. The underlay obviously hadn't let through enough water. So that was it. Collars abandoned. Luckily I only really needed about a third of my caulis to make it through and the ones which have survived are looking very strong. There are more on the way as I sow them in succession. This means I can fill the gaps and that they will not all harvest at once.

Today, along with the cauliflowers, I've planted Romanesco, Calabrese, Cavolo Nero, Scarlet Kale, Red Cabbage, Purple Sprouting Broccoli and Cabbage January King.
They're all under netting and I've interplanted with marigolds and hyssop as companion plants.

This is a concerted effort at finally growing and harvesting brassicas successfully. If it fails I might just give up.

31st May
And so to the last day of May. A welcome rainy day, for I was starting to get worried about the young plants and seedlings outside. The water butts are filling up nicely.
Two surprises when I let the birds out this morning. The first was a robin inexplicably encaged in one of the broody hen runs. Quite how it got in goodness knows. I released it. That was good act number one.
The second was to find a very small gosling stuck in the feed trough near one of our Toulouse goose nests. Fortunately the grey geese are not quite so aggressive in their defence and I was able to gently pick up the little gosling, which felt cold, and place it next to mum on the edge of the nest. When I looked later it was gone, so I presume safely tucked in underneath mum again.
Not such good news from our other sitting mums-to-be. No sign of any ducklings under the Muscovy, despite the first one hatching three days ago. And no sign of any Ixworth eggs hatching under the other broody hen either.
To compensate for the various failures of our broody hens and ducks, we have placed 18 Ixworth hen eggs into our new (second-hand) incubator. It'll be more work for us to raise the chicks but we should have a greater success rate.

Every time we use an incubator we have a power cut. I don't think it's the fault of the incubators! It's just the poor rural infrastructure which means that every time it rains or is windy the power cuts out. Today we had two and the second lasted three hours. Hopefully it won't affect the development of the eggs.

So that's it. May has flown by and tomorrow it's the official start of meteorological summer. Bring on the rain!

Herby Crackers

Fresh turnips and beetroot from the polytunnel
and a selection of herbs plucked from the herb patch

Sunday was Veg Group day.
On the menu was a propagation masterclass by Steve, including the dark art of grafting, as well as a barbecue lunch. Top of the crops this month was strawberries. The sun hadn't shone enough yet on my own strawberry patch to rustle up something strawberryish to take along, so instead I concentrated on the discussion topic for the gathering which was herbs.
I started the veg group at the same time as the blokes baking group, under the general umbrella of the Fenland Smallholders Club. Over a year later and both groups are still going strong, which pleases me. The idea of the veg group is that we gather once a month at someone's place and discuss growing. We usually end up going off topic and discussing all sorts of other things, but one aspect which I am keen we hold on to is how we use our food once we've grown it. We all bring something along for the table and I encourage people to incorporate the Top of the Crops.
But with no strawberries, I was damned if I was going to go out and buy some, especially knowing that within a couple of weeks we will be facing a glut of the things. Not that I didn't thoroughly enjoy the pavlova which somebody brought along.
But I opted to go down the herb route. I knew that somebody would bring along a herb bread. The cheesy herby scones that I made for the last blokes baking would work, but for some reason I got into my head the idea of making herb biscuits, each with a different sort of herb to try.
I eventually settled on a recipe for herb crackers, which I started making at 8.30pm on Saturday evening. If they didn't turn out well, I would be up late thinking of something else to make!

I adapted the recipe I found quite a lot, so here's what I came up with.

To make 1 small ball of dough, enough for about 20 small crackers:

75g flour
1/4 tsp salt
about 3 teaspoons of your chosen fresh herb, finely chopped

Mix the above ingredients together in a bowl.

Add 1 tbsp. oil and 35 - 40 ml water.
Quickly mix up with a wooden spoon until it forms a ball of dough. Knead very briefly to bring it into a ball, adding more flour or water as necessary to make it the right consistency for rolling.

4 different versions ready to be rolled and cooked

Roll the dough as thinly as you can on a sheet of silicone or parchment. Dip a knife into flour and score the dough to make individual crackers. You can go right through to the silicone.
Finally prick each cracker several times with a fork to stop them puffing up. Sprinkle with coarse salt if you wish. This gives the crackers a pretzelly taste, but the salt does mask the herby taste a little.


Rolled and scored, ready for the oven.

Place the silicone / parchment onto a baking try and bake at 180C (fan oven) or 200C (non fan) for about 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Et voila!
The end result was so tasty that, by the time it occurred to me to take a photo, there was just this one cracker left!

My favourites were the rosemary crackers, but the others were popular too. This time I made mint, sage, lemon balm, sweet yarrow (English Mace) and oregano.
How much herb you add to your recipe is completely up to you. It's a ridiculously cheap, easy and quick recipe, so feel free to experiment.

Welsh Eggs and Olde English Cyder Cake

If you got a dazzling display of Christmas lights outside your house, then it might be an idea if you didn't read any further!!

For everybody else...

Last night was the Fenland Smallholders Christmas bash. Sue was not only providing her school hall, but was also providing half of the night's entertainment singing in the smallholder's music group, The Sugar Beats.
I meanwhile was doing my usual grumpy Christmas thing. I really don't like Christmas. It's not just an act. I actually don't like it.
My pet hate at the moment is ridiculous, garish displays of flashing lights festooning people's gardens, walls, roofs, garages, sheds, trees... What's it all for?

Anyway, that's enough of my grumpiness (for now). I was faced with the difficult decision of what food to take along to contribute to the Christmas feast. As much as I could happily live on mince pies, sausage rolls and trifle, I really didn't feel like preparing anything so festive. Besides, there would be plenty of that food available.
I scoured recipe books without inspiration. My general level of Christmas grumpiness was rising off the scale. I searched the interweb. Still nothing gave me that spark. Back to the books and some of the older ones which I rarely go to these days. And voila!

Old English Cyder Cake. It fitted the bill perfectly. Traditional yet different. Simple yet interesting. Using up cupboard staples and a few ingredients such as eggs and cider which we always have available.
Then, like buses, along came another recipe which fired my imagination.
Welsh Eggs. A vegetarian version of Scotch eggs which used herbs and leeks in it's stuffing mix. Again, ingredients which I could just go pick straight from the garden.

A rare Saturday morning trip to Morrisons ensued, for there were a few ingredients I needed to get. I expected the worse. After all, a supermarket on Saturday in December was sure to be my personal Room 101. I could already hear the Christmas music wafting joyfully through the aisles. I could envisage the masses of shoppers stocking up as if a nuclear war were imminent. Yes! My Christmas spirit was really coming to the fore.
I raced my trolley around the aisles in an effort to minimise the whole experience. To my pleasant surprise, it was actually fairly quiet and when I got to the tills I had a choice of three empty ones.

So I returned to the farm relatively unscathed by my venture out into the world of Christmas consumerism and set about preparing my two dishes.

I tackled the sponge first. It involved a technique I'd never used before, beating the eggs in a bowl over hot water. I was later informed by Sue that I'd made my first 'whisked sponge'. Everything went well and after just over an hour in total the finished product emerged from the oven.

It was light and it smelled and tasted of cider! I know it's called Cider Cake, but I really wasn't expecting the cidery taste to come through quite so strongly. But it was actually very pleasant to eat indeed. Well, I had to try a slice first before inflicting it on the general public. I also had the cumbersome task of finishing the bottle of cider, which I did while embarking on the second recipe.

While the eggs boiled I popped into the veg garden and pulled a couple of smallish leeks from the ground. I trimmed the roots and outer leaves straight into the compost bin, then proceeded back past the herb bed where I gathered a large bunch of parsley and a little thyme, which is not at its best in the winter.
In no time I had mixed up the stuffing (can you call it that when it goes on the outside?). I entombed the eggs inside and rolled each ball in beaten egg before coating it in dried breadcrumbs.
Into the fryer for 3 minutes and ready!
I used to be a vegetarian and when I tasted these Welsh eggs it reminded me why I enjoyed cooking so much during this phase of my life. The leeks, herbs and a generous dash of lemon combined brilliantly to give a surprising, fresh and zingy twist to the traditional Scotch egg

And so at 7 o'clock I snuck my creations onto the table amongst the mince pies, cakes, sausage rolls, trifles, sandwiches and more. And do you know what? I didn't even get a slice of Welsh egg. They were snapped up in no time and everybody was pleasantly surprised. I had to compensate by eating a mountain of mince pies instead!

I sat back and listened to Christmas carols. They sound a lot better when Sue is singing them than they do in the supermarket. Not that I was too tempted to join in. Highlight of the evening (though the company and entertainment were, of course, excellent), was our table trouncing everybody else in the quiz...oh, and winning a couple of ducks in the raffle.

Just in case you're still reading, here are the recipes:

Old English Cider Cake (It's an old recipe, so measurements in imperial!)
4oz butter or marg
4oz caster sugar
2 eggs (I know it's a struggle at the moment, so thank you hens)
8oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 nutmeg, grated
1/4 pt cider (this always tastes better if you picked the apples and pressed them yourself)
Icing sugar for dusting

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Beat the eggs in a bowl standing in a pan of hot water, until thick.
Stir the eggs into the mixture.

Sieve the flour, baking powder and nutmeg together.
Sir half the flour into the mixture.

Beat the cider until frothy, then stir into the cake mixture.
Add the remaining flour.

Mix everything together well.

Spoon the mixture into a lined and greased shallow cake tin.
Bake for 45 minutes at 180C (I can't do a degrees sign while typing in blogger!!) until golden brown  -mine took 50 minutes. But check before the 45 minutes is up.

Allow to cool and dust with icing sugar.

Slice and eat.



Welsh Eggs
5 eggs, hard boiled (thanks again, chickens!)
flour, seasoned with salt and paprika (enough to coat the eggs0
1 leek, chopped finely
2 tsp oil
120g fresh white breadcrumbs
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon (preferably unwaxed)
50g vegetarian shredded suet
4+ tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp fresh thyme (or use dried, herbs of your choice)
salt'n'pepper to season
1 egg, beaten
75g dried breadcrumbs (I used golden)

Peel the hard-boiled eggs and toss in seasoned flour

Fry the leeks in the oil for 3 minutes.
Cool, then mix with the fresh breadcrumbs, suet, herbs, seasoning, lemon rind and juice
(If mixture is too dry, add a little water)

Shape the mixture around the eggs, then coat with beaten egg followed by dried breadcrumbs.
Cool for half an hour in the fridge

Deep fry at 190C (hot! :0) for about 3 minutes (do this one or two at a time).

Leave to cool and enjoy!

Naans, Parathas, Santa logs and Pumpkin Soup

Flatbreads ready!
Courtesy of Blokes Baking group.

I belong to the Fenland Smallholders Club which provides me with an excellent excuse to spend time with fellow smallholding friends.

As a part of this, a while ago I set up a Blokes Baking Group and last night we were attempting to make naan breads and parathas from scratch. I had the idea of buying in a takeaway curry (minus the flatbreads) to accompany our efforts.
At the last minute we decided to break with tradition and invite the Widows of Blokes Baking along too.

In fact, everything was a bit last minute. I didn't even look up recipes for Indian flatbreads until the evening before, by which time it was too late to buy authentic ingredients such as chapatti flour and ghee. Ask for these in Holbeach Tesco and you'll invariably be met with a very puzzled look! Not to worry, I could make the ghee and the flour could be substituted. On the plus side, they did have Indian lager on special, so multiculturalism is alive and well in these here parts.
The only other ingredient I was short of was garam masala, a mix of spices commonly used in Indian cookery.
I was lucky enough to find some of this on the shelves, but baulked at the price - £1.75 for a little jar. You've got to be kidding! So instead I took a photo of the ingredients and ground my own when I got home, all from whole spices. The result was a fragrant and spicy powder which did an excellent impression of garam masala. So that's another product I won't be buying in the future.

So, back to the Blokes Baking. One of the naan recipes used yeast and a double rise. If we started this process at the usual time, we would need to eat at about 10pm. So I did all the prep work before the others arrived.

Bring on the feast!

I found the recipes on Youtube - search for Titli's Busy Kitchen for some excellent recipes. They are even accompanied by some very clear videos and Titli is definitely a character. Alternatively, you can just click here.

The Blokes now work well as a team, so we divvied up the bread-making duties. Dave took responsibility for the Aloo Parathas and was most impressed when they puffed up on the hotplate. Phil took the plain Parathas, which involved a little origami to create layers in the bread. I took on the Naan breads. A keema naan stuffed with minced Shetland lamb from our very own fields and another naan recipe topped variously with nigella seeds, chilli and coriander.
We had the oven, the grill, the griddle and a couple of heavy frying pans on the go. In all we produced nineteen breads! And just as the last naan was going into the oven the takeaway delivery arrived. Perfect timing.

What followed was a feast of monumental proportions enjoyed in very good company.

Then it was up bright and early (well, Sue anyway) to make a giant pot of pumpkin soup for the monthly Smallholders Meeting. This wasn't quite in our plan, but we were asked at ridiculously short notice. No harm done anyway.
The Smallholders meeting was to be a series of demonstrations of Christmas crafts by fellow smallholders. Decorative glass painting and Christmas wreaths were not really my thing, but were still much appreciated. But what did impress me were these:

Simple to make from logs cut at an angle, some of these will certainly be guarding our door this Christmas. They may be my one concession to Noel festivities this year!

And on the plus side, when Santa comes down the chimney this year, he can stay on the fire!!

Sue and some of the other smallholders start their Christmassy creations.