Easter Monday

A sad start to Easter Monday as it was time to dispatch the Muscovy duck that we reared last year. He had grown into a big boy but, to the displeasure of the boss male, he had also taken a liking to the females.
For quite a while now this had made putting the ducks away at night a bit of a nightmare. Every night the chickens and geese put themselves away, the turkeys and guinea fowl go up on the fence, but the ducks loiter outside until I appear to put them away. The female and the boss male then go into the house as a group, bobbing their heads at each other and hissing in a friendly fashion. It's not unusual for two to get wedged in the door as their efforts to go one at a time go awry.
Once in, the old male turns around and guards the door.

Boss male with his girls

The problem comes when the young male, who has been hanging around hiding, then needs to be put away.  For he is scared of the dominant male and every time he attempts to enter the house he comes running back out again. Leaving him outside is not an option as he doesn't go up on the fence and would otherwise end up as fox food. However much we have tried, he won't do the sensible thing and go into alternative overnight accommodation.
So the only answer is to chase him round and round the pen until it is the easier option for him to brave going into the house.

This has been an inconvenience, but in the last few days he has started being pecked in the house. He was always destined for the plate anyway, but this made the matter more pressing.

So this morning I caught him straight from his overnight accommodation (a risky operation as he was a big, strong boy and Muscovy ducks have sharp claws) and did the deed.

While I was doing this (and well before, while I was still in bed), Sue had been a busy bee in the kitchen.

I went down to the kitchen to find a Rhubarb and Orange Crumble made with our own hazelnuts in the topping. Yummy!
Sue had been at the bottle again too. She had bottle up her plum brandy and sloe vodka and put some rhubarb and ginger vodka to start as well as sloe port.

That should help us through lockdown!

It was a much chillier day today so I chose an indoor task, pricking out the celeriac seedlings and planting them individually into modules. This is a fiddly task and the seedlings need to be treated very delicately. I selected the strongest 40 seedlings from the small tray of maybe twice that number. They can now go to the polytunnel to grow on before they are planted outside. It will be a long while before they are ready to harvest.

40 celeriac seedlings in the polytunnel

next to sugar snap peas and red onions

I spent the early afternoon planting another couple of beds of potatoes before we turned our attention back to the Muscovy duck, now hanging out in the stable.

Muscovy ducks have three layers of feathers and plucking them dry is a Herculean task, so instead we dunk them in boiling water for 3 1/2 minutes which makes plucking far easier.
We do the plucking in the stable which makes for easily sweeping up the feathers to go on the compost heap. We did have to keep the geese away though so they wouldn't see what was happening.

One was sitting on the nest so we left her there, a much safer option for us. We have the same problem with the geese as we had with the Muscovys. Last year's sole offspring is a young male and is get harassed. Fortunately he has the sense to spend the nights in the separate stable we have allotted to him.









While we were clearing up I decided to sort out last year's onions. We didn't manage to use them all before their inbuilt senses kicked in and they sprouted fresh growth. So I sorted them out and moved those which were still ok to the fridge.
Unfortunately no animals or birds will eat onions so any excess grown cannot be used for them.

Final job of the day was to mend the roof of the chicken house. The overnight winds had whipped off the felt. To be fair, I had been looking at it for a while thinking that it needed replacing.

Chocolate Duck Makes Bid For Freedom

A while back one of our Muscovy ducks mysteriously disappeared. It was about the same time as we lost our drake Cayuga duck. Whether it was a natural predator or they fell victim to wandering too far and didn't realise that not everybody's dogs are duck-friendly I do not know.
Anyway, there is no happy ending. There is no surprise reappearance a few weeks later.

A new chocolate Muscovy duck

This left us with our drake Muscovy and two females. As well as their eggs, the Muscovies give us birds for the table as each year we hatch some out under broody hens. Their meat is just about the tastiest of any animal, bird or mammal, that we keep.

So when a friend said they were thinning down their Muscovy flock I decided to replace the chocolate brown girl we had lost. Sue picked her up late one Saturday afternoon and when we got her home we put her straight into her own house in the chicken pen overnight. The hope was that in the morning she would emerge, meet the other Muscovies and hang about with them.
But no!
She flew straight over the fence, into the field and then across the road. The first I knew of this was Sue waking me up to come and retrieve her.

I seriously thought we had no chance. Muscovy ducks are very strong fliers and one more flight would take her too far away. If she got on the pond at the end of the track opposite we would have no chance of getting her.

Fortunately the ground was solid so we could skirt right around the field and approach her from the other side. She flew straight back over the road.
More careful approach and she started heading back toward the farm. I kept just far enough away to encourage her to keep moving without spooking her into flight. The smallholding she came from did not offer her the opportunity to fly freely so her wings were now tired from the novel experience of her long flights. But it was going to be a long waddle across the field, over the dyke and back onto the smallholding.

We eventually got there and I managed to persuade her to go into the cage with the Silkie hens.

Next stage of the plan was to move a couple of the other Muscovies in there with her so she could make friends with them and hopefully learn the ways of our smallholding.


After several nights refusing to go into a house, she has finally learned from the others and follows one of them in at night. She has also learned not to panic when we go into the cage. We'll leave it another couple of weeks before she gets another taste of unfenced freedom.

No more digging?

Life has been very complicated lately, but here's a little effort to start catching up.

Saturday 3rd November 2018
4 Muscovies and 2 Pekins gone!
The male Muscovy ducks which were born earlier in the year had reached a good size and were eating me out of house and home. Time for a little trip to the freezer! Bad news for two of the Pekin ducks, as I decided to keep five of them for breeding and eggs rather than seven.
I'll spare you any photos from today.

Sunday 4th November 2018
A fine autumn day outside in the veg plot, preparing some of the beds for next year. I am having a very big rethink, going back to smaller beds but without the network of grass paths which were impossible to keep on top of and gave too many edges for the slugs to hide under.



I don't think any of the no-dig systems I have come across are perfect or practical, so I plan to combine a number of methods, using cardboard, green manure, grass clippings, straw and compost to mulch and top up the soil structure every year.
Preparing the beds for the big change to no-dig has involved a surprising amount of digging! However, it should be a one off exercise.
There'll be much more on this new way of gardening in future posts.

I caught a rat in one of my snap traps today. I am trying to stop using poison bait so am really hoping that the idea of placing snap traps into a bait box (with normal wheat inside as an attractant) will work well enough to stop rats moving into the poultry pens.

Activites for winter nights.

Sue tries to make a carpet but Gerry 

has already decided to sit on it 

before it's even finished!

Tuesday 6th November 2018
I spent the morning fixing chicken houses. Goodness knows why they make the doors so close-fitting. A little bit of damp weather and the doors no longer close. Pulling them hard to open them in the morning inevitably loosens the screws which hold the bolts. So I have put handles onto the doors and shaved the tops so they don't catch. A little air circulation in the chicken house is a good thing.
Sue has been working hard on her peg-looming as she has the winter to produce enough carpets to line the floor of our tipi. Did I mention we have bought a tipi?!

With the nights drawing in there is a balance to be struck between outdoor pursuits and indoor evening pursuits. Winter gives me much more time for baking so today I made a gooseberry custard tart. Gooseberry recipes are hard to find beyond the predictable sponge, pie and fool. I made bread too, the first time using some nice Dove's Farm flour. I don't know whether it was the quality of the flour or the new dried yeast I am using, but the finished loaf was one of the nicest I have ever made.

It's a short life for a meat chicken

This seems a long time ago now

Six months does not seem a long time for a table bird to live before it makes the journey into the freezer. Before I became a smallholder I definitely would have questioned why a bird couldn't enjoy a longer life before that life was taken for our culinary pleasure.
That was until I finally plucked up the courage to dispatch some of our older cockerels. They were tough as boot leather!
Add to that the fact that cockerels if let grow too long will become aggressive to each other and ungentlemanly to the hens.

Suddenly a touch of reality strikes home. These birds are not pets. They will live for six months and that's it. So the best I can do is give them a good life.

Three Ixworths and a Muscovy duck

Until this year our meat birds have been Ixworth chickens, a traditional breed, and Muscovy ducks. We didn't feed them any different to the other birds, for they all lived together. The Muscovies grew to a good size but the Ixworths were mostly leg with slithers for breasts.

The Ixworth trio when we had them.

Smart birds, but not a lot of breast.

But it gets more complicated. Six month old birds would be considered slow-grown. Commercial hens will be ready in 6 weeks. Over the years this age has come down dramatically. At the same time slaughter weight has risen equally dramatically. Since the 1940s, slaughter weight has doubled while slaughter age has halved.

Graph taken from Compassion in World Farming document

Now there is so much that I find abhorrent about intensive poultry farming. But the age of the birds is, as I have discovered, not quite so straightforward. The birds probably have no expectations of how long they will live, but would certainly prefer to have space and freedom while they are alive.

We recently reared some chicks taken out of a highly intensive system. Their rate of growth was astonishing, as was their ability to eat and drink vast quantities. But at least these birds were able to live the life of a truly free range chicken until they reached slaughter weight. I would genuinely say that it wasn't overly cruel, though they were abnormally big-breasted and by ten weeks old some were quite waddly. None went off their legs, though they would have if left to grow even heavier. A couple spent some time apparently gasping as they got older. Maybe this was indicative of heart problems or being just too big and misshapen.

Anyway, my conclusion was that provided they were slaughtered before they got too heavy, although their life would be short we could offer them a reasonable life. But I did feel that genetic 'improvement' had gone a little too far.

Our next meat birds, the ones we have just slaughtered, came to us as one day old commercial broiler chicks. They come through a friend and don't even have a breed name. In fact they are a bit of a mish-mash. Most pure white with thick yellow legs and bright red combs, but some clearly mixed with traditional brown hens and a couple specked with rogue black feathers.
They grew much quicker than I had anticipated and took me unawares as they suddenly reached a good weight. I had to hurriedly take them off growers pellets and put them onto finishers (for growers pellets contain medication so require a withdrawal period). They were ready for slaughter at 12 weeks or 84 days. I was very happy with these birds. They did not seem out of proportion. They were healthy birds, it's just that they grew much more quickly than the traditional breeds we had previously tried to rear for meat.

And so I feel we have found our meat chickens. Their short life is nevertheless a good one, far removed from most of their cousins in intensive systems (and I include minimum standard so-called free-range in that).
There are some big benefits to them having a short life too. Feed costs are lower, there is less demand on housing and the ground can be rested more. But there are limits.
The European organic standard gives a minimum slaughter age of 81 days, which I would say is about right for today's fast growing birds. Anything which reaches table weight considerably before that is probably too genetically manipulated to have a comfortable life, not to mention the conditions it is kept in to maximise profit and the expense of welfare and taste.

Taking Stock on Midsummer's Day

Thursday 21st June 2018
Midsummer

It's midsummer. Most of the sowing is done. Most of the baby animals and birds are born. A few crops are starting to yield, but by and large this is a period of growing and rearing in readiness for harvest.

The Year's Weather So Far
Winter bites late then hangs around like a bad smell
The weather has been testing this year. Winter was not too bad until it turned round and bit us with The Beast From The East which was followed by a good few weeks of winter stubbornly putting its foot in the door and barring any entrance by Spring.
The cold snap was really challenging, especially for the pregnant ewes. We almost lost one, but in the end three ewes gave birth to seven lambs. We lost one and two ended up being bottle fed.
The runt third triplet, who we named Flash, continues to be very runtish. In contrast the other bottle fed lamb, Rambutan, is huge. All six lambs have just moved down into the further paddocks where the grass is now taller than they are.
The ewes are recovering well now too. We may give one or two of them a break from breeding next year.

The fruit and vegetables were left floundering too, maybe as much as a month behind usual. This was reflected in nature, with many migrant birds, including our swallows, arriving back very late. In fact many don't seem to have bothered at all.

A Warm and Wet Spring Finally Arrives
When Spring did arrive, it was pretty warm but came with plenty of rain. The water table sat just below the surface of the land so every time it rained we had puddles. The muddy conditions didn't last too long though and we have had much stickier in the past.

Early Summer And The Rain Dries Up
And so on into May and early summer. It has actually been very warm allowing many of the crops to catch up to close to where they should be by now. But it has been dry. Ridiculously dry. The water butts are all empty and I have had to water very selectively. We have only had five minutes of rain in the past month and the ground has gone from waterlogged to gaping cracks opening up. There is still water enough under the surface for most of the outdoor crops, but the carrots have completely failed. This happened two years ago too when we had similar conditions - a cold damp early start to the season followed by dry conditions and a hard crust on the soil.
At least I can still get a good crop in the polytunnel where they are more easily nurtured.
I am not sure how much the early potatoes will swell up. They should just about be ready for harvest soon, so I gave them a good drink last night. This should help them along.

And I am a little worried about the sheep paddocks. At the moment they are still ok, but if we don't get rain soon there will not be enough lush grass to fatten our lambs well.
People have already cut their hay and are baling it at the moment. I like to collect it straight off the field, but my first line of supply was short this year as the grass yield is down. Hopefully the second will come good.

On the positive side though, the sweetcorn, pumpkins and tomatoes are loving the Mediterranean climate.
It seems to be a good year for most of the fruit too. Apples and pears look like they will give us our first really decent harvest now that the orchard is maturing nicely. The blackthorns are absolutely smothered in sloes.

The strawberries are doing very well, free of strawberry seed beetle which devastated the crop last year, though a little rain might help them to swell up a bit more. The sunshine is making them taste like little buttons of sweet deliciousness.
The raspberries are just beginning to ripen and should produce bucket loads and the gooseberries are almost ready. Last year was disappointing for these but this year looks like a good crop of large berries.
The currants are not faring so well this year. It may be time to replace some of the bushes. They seem to prefer cooler, wetter years.
Finally, the cherries are ripening so hopefully we can get at least some of them before the birds do.

Poultry
The turkeys have enjoyed the dry weather too. In fact it was the day the poults hatched that it stopped raining. The nine poults we have kept for fattening up are doing extremely well, so well indeed that the two hens have left them and are both now sitting on new clutches of eggs.

If these hatch it will be a big bonus for us as the sale of the young turkeys will more than pay for the food to rise them and to support the adult birds through the year.

The meat chickens which we purchased as day old chicks about ten weeks ago have put on a sudden spurt of growth, so much so that they are pretty much ready to go in the freezer. It is a short life for them but they have had it infinitely better than any commercially produced birds, even the so-called free-range ones. I wasn't expecting them to make weight quite so soon, so need a couple of weeks to change their diet to finish them properly. But their early departure will free up accommodation and give the chance to rest the ground a bit.
It is actually quite good to be able to buy in, raise and dispatch in a relatively short period. Having lots of birds in different pens with different feed requirements can be quite demanding and quite a tie.

We decided not to breed any geese this year, but to sell the eggs instead. But one of the geese had different ideas as we found her sat on five eggs in a tyre outside. Sadly, the day after we found her the next was abandoned and the eggs gone. At least the goose was still alive.

And lastly, the Muscovy ducklings are growing well. They are still living in with the three silkie hens but will move out when they are old enough for they need  lot of space.



So that's it for the year so far.
Where it goes from here very much depends on the weather. If we return to normal levels of rain as we head into the second part of the year then it could turn out to be a very good year. If not... well.

Ducknapped by Priscilla

Monday 11th June 2018
The Cutest Hatchlings
Right on cue six little ducklings appeared under our Partridge Silkie today.
We put nine eggs under her exactly 35 days ago, not sure if she would manage such a difficult brood.
For chicken eggs only take 18 to 21 days to hatch. It takes a dedicated broody to stay put for an extra two weeks.
But Partridge Silkie only appeared outside her house once a day to do her ablutions. Other than that she stayed stubbornly tight on the eggs. Today is her reward. She won't mind that they have funny beaks and like to go paddling. A broody hen's maternal instinct is quite enchanting.

The other three eggs were left in the nest. I removed them and any empty shell so they don't attract flies or predators. Unfortunately they all contained fully grown ducklings which did not make it out of the shell. This is sad but nature has a way of weeding out the weakest.



I spent quite a while rearranging the pen for the new ducklings. They needed a tray for their food, a special duck crumb, and enough water to drink and paddle in without drowning. For this I use a strong plastic tray. I just needed to make sure they would be able to jump back out once they were in. This of course necessitated just sitting and watching them for an hour or so.
They might eventually be bound for the table but they are still very cute right now.



Happy that they were safe, I moved onto the sheep. The grass is growing well this year, though I have fears that we are in a mini-drought situation having had virtually no rain for almost a month now. I wanted to put the adult sheep into the lushest section of pasture a couple of weeks ago but realised this may not help the ewes to dry up, for I had just separated them from their lambs. Instead they had to eke it out on short grass for a while until their udders subsided.
I have been giving them treats too, throwing the branches from pruning the stone fruits, as well as some willow and hawthorn from trimming overhanging hedges. They devour unbelievable amounts of leaves and strip the bark too. For a Shetland sheep this is all much more preferable to lush grass.

But today they finally were allowed onto the other side of the fence where they quickly set about tidying the paddock up for me.
I want them to grow quickly now as last year's ram lambs need to go off in late July before their testosterone starts to rise too much.

Wednesday 13th June 2018
Ducknapped!
One extra Muscovy duckling today. One of our hens moved up into the stables over a year ago and she has lived there ever since. She has been joined by Priscilla, Elvis's daughter and the Cream Legbar hens often make their way up from the chicken pen to the stables for the day, but they return to roost with the rest of the flock.
Anyway, our stable hen decided to construct a nest behind the goose stable door so we gave her two of the Muscovy eggs to sit on. Today I entered the stables to find a tiny little duckling wandering around under the close stewardship of... Priscilla! Yes. Prescilla has avoided all the hassle of sitting for 35 days and just somehow misappropriated the duckling when it has hatched. It is firmly imprinted on her so we have moved the pair to their own accommodation in the chicken pen. The other egg was another failed hatch so poor stable hen has done all the work and ended up with nothing.

Meanwhile I have started letting the meat chickens out of their pen during the day They don't wander too far but appreciate the opportunity to peck at greenery and to stretch their legs a little more. They have already been put in their place by one of the guinea fowl as evidenced by a smattering of white feathers all over the place!

Valentine's Day Massacre

Wednesday 14th February 2018
Valentine's Day
What more romantic activity for Valentine's Day can there be than killing and plucking five Muscovy Ducks!

Dispatch complete, now just hanging around waiting to be plucked.

These were this year's birds which survived the last cull as they had a bit more growing to do. I wasn't looking forward to the job, as ducks are the most difficult to dispatch. They have strong necks and a strong will to live!

The weather was pretty foul again. A strong southerly wind at this time of year does not bring warm winds. We caught the ducks one at a time while they were still in their houses and the dispatch went very smoothly indeed, which was a relief.

We took a break while the birds hung around for a bit. This lets the blood drain into the neck cavity. Then it was time for plucking. Sue heated up a large cauldron of hot water and dipped each bird for 220 seconds at 163 degrees F. This proved perfect for loosening the feathers without damaging the skin. Ducks need a lot more soaking time to penetrate the three layers of feathers. They are after all designed to keep out water!

We managed to get five ducks plucked remarkable quickly, in half the time we usually take. We must be getting good at this now. It only took just over an hour for five.

Plucked in record time. As we will be jointed them rather than roasting whole,

some bits can be left unplucked.

Boris gets a shock
With no change in the weather, we huddled up in the warm house. Late afternoon I went to feed the chickens and collect eggs. Seven eggs today which is an upturn.
Then a quick yomp around the perimeter walk with the dogs. It was on the way back that Boris and Arthur raced ahead and not long after this I heard a yelp and saw Boris heading off toward the house. The strong winds had blown some dead weed stems across the path and Boris had come into contact with the electric fence as he skirted round them. Arthur had a very close call too.
Boris spent the next couple of hours literally in shock, his back legs shaking and panting. We were worried for him, but he eventually calmed down after receiving huge doses of attention.
Our dogs are lovely, but they are not the bravest.

A New Year Clear Out

Saturday 30th December 2017
Poultry thinning
The Muscovy ducks are so big now that, despite recently waving goodbye to four of them, there is barely room in the poultry houses at night. They are eating me out of house and home too. They are now 20 weeks old, they have had a good life, but it is time for them to go.
The final batch of Ixworth chickens which we breed and raise for meat are going too. Ideally they would have grown a little more, but we really need to thin down our stock levels for winter.

So today was operation catch. We tried to take them out of their houses in the morning, but several escaped past us. Most were successfully transferred up to the stables though and the last few we caught when they went to bed in the evening.

Tomorrow we are demonstrating how to dispatch and process the chickens and Muscovy ducks (and probably a turkey too). When we began smallholding we really didn't know how to do these things and there is only so much you can learn from YouTube. None of the smallholders in Fenland Smallholders Club (FSC) seemed confident enough to demonstrate, though they should all know how to humanely dispatch a chicken as you never know when you will need to do this.

In the end it was Mick from Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group (CSSG) who showed us 'the broomstick method'. (Don't worry, it does not involve chasing a bird around and clobbering it with a broom handle!)
Anyway, we were very grateful to Mick for sharing his experience. It turns out he used to be active in FSC before a rift and that it was he who had previously shown many of our club members how to do the deed. What a shame they weren't so willing to share their knowledge with the newest batch of novices.

So this is precisely why I offered the opportunity for people to come along and join in on our poultry dispatch day. We plan to teach them humane dispatch, wet and dry plucking, gutting, skinning and jointing. How much we have learned since those days when we knew nothing!

In preparation for the day we needed to have some 'here's one I prepared earlier' birds, so four chooks and four ducks got their marching orders today. It was good to run through how we will demonstrate and explain tomorrow.
Plucking the ducks was, as ever, the task which took the longest. They have endless feathers in endless layers.

We finished plucking the ducks just as darkness began to shroud the stables. Then it was inside to make a couple of loaves of bread for our guests to dip in their soup tomorrow.





Sunday 31st December 2017
What better way to end the year than a good communal activity. We had four people come along to our poultry processing day, which was a good number. Everybody got to have a go but nobody had to wait too long.
Hopefully they all learned loads and will be more confident chicken keepers because of it.

Sue explains dunking for wet plucking

A bit messy this one.

We are drying the chicken and duck feet. Apparently the dogs will love them. Waste not, want not.

And that, as far as 2017 is concerned, is that.

I have big plans for 2018.
We at Swallow Farm wish you a Happy and Fulfilling New Year.