From Sombreros to Pigeon and Potatoes

I've just got back from Mexico! It was a birdwatching trip with friends, well timed to avoid all the storms. The smallholding was left in the capable hands of my wonderful wife.

The only sombreros I actually saw in Mexico were the cheap ones in the airport. I did however take a great interest in the plants of the volcanic highlands. Many were familiar to me, either as garden flowers or forest garden plants. There were tree lupins, Mexican tagetes, salvias and lobelias.

This gave me a new idea for livestock
on the smallholding!

Esculenta, Taro, Dasheen, Eddoe, whatever you want to call it,
growing wild along a stream

Of even more interest were what appeared to be yacon plants growing wild - I never got round to digging up the roots to check. There were small-scale farmers growing very much in the style of a forest garden, melons draped over flowering bushes visited by the hummingbirds I was really there to see.

I even got to watch a farmer harvesting his oca, which was obviously unaffected by early morning light frosts in the highlands.

A farmer harvesting his oca

Back to Icy Blighty

Now I'm back I need to get back into the swing of things PDQ as blossoms are starting to appear, bulbs are shooting up and seeds need to be sown, among many other jobs.

Waste Not Want Not
Today we headed off to a friend to pick up 50 pigeons shot by a farmer in the morning. We'll prep some for ourselves and the dogs will enjoy them too. Waste not want not.

Spudulicious plans for 2022
I also went to pick up this year's seed potatoes. 1kg each of ten varieties. I was going to try one new variety this year, Homeguard, but it was not available, so I am sticking with familiar old favourites. These pretty much select themselves. Primarily they need to cope reasonably well with blight (though the resistant varietis I find disappointing in taste). Next, they need to be relatively unattractive to slugs.

Some do better in wet years, others can cope with drier conditions. That's unpredictable and one reason why I grow so many varieties.

Going back to blight, this year I plan to grow my spuds in smaller patches as I have sort of abandoned the strict rotation system. Hopefully this might help to control the spread, Secondly, I intend to use a milk-based spray. Even if you wanted to use them, there are no sprays available to the small-scale grower now, so hopefully this harmless solution will help. (Large-scale potato farmers spray up to 30 times during the lifetime of a potato plant. I'm not sure I'd want to eat that! I know they can't risk blight destroying the nation's crop and people don't want scabby potatoes full of bugs and tunnels, but there must be another way.)

For now I'll be planting a few early potatoes straight into the polytunnel and rest rest will be set to chit on a windowsill, the process whereby you encourage them to form strong young shoots without exposing them to potential frosts and cold, wet soil outside.

To finish, here's the list of potatoes I'm growing this year.

FIRST EARLY: 

Casablanca, Duke of York, Home Guard, Red Duke of York. 

SECOND EARLY: 

Charlotte, Kestrel, Blue Kestrel

MAIN CROP: 

Cara, Desiree, Kerrs Pink, King Edward, Pink Fir Apple and Valor.

Actually, that's 12!

Potato day 2019

While heavy snow hit almost all the rest of the country, here in our little piece of fenland we managed to all but avoid it. But with the ground frozen for a couple of weeks it has slowed my progress in the veg plot.



That is though what the seasons are all about. As a smallholder you work with the weather patterns. We don't get snow all winter, but a week or two of freezing temperatures and the odd covering of the white stuff is what we should expect.
Anyway, I am glad we didn't get a lot of snow for it somehow has the capacity to make the ground even sludgier than a downfall of rain.

Saturday 2nd February was Potato Day, an annual event held by Cambridgeshire Self-Sufficiency Group.
For the last few years I have helped set up, getting lots and lots of potato varieties out of a van and laid out in neat order on tables. The event is held in Huntingdon but the venue has changed several times. For now it has settled into a fantastic old church in the very centre of town.
It surely has to be one of the most glamorous venues for a potato day.

As is usual I like to arrive early, get set up, purchase my year's supply of seed potatoes and get out before the place is full of Joe (and Jane) public.

There are over 40 varieties of potato to choose from. We used to have even more, but some of the more unusual types don't sell well enough to be worth buying in. They are just £1/kilo for members of the group, £1.30 for non members.
It is a great opportunity to experiment with new varieties. One year somebody bought one of each just so they could compare yields, taste and uses.

With so many types of potato on sale it can be a bit bewildering. It pays to do a bit of research and find out the qualities of each one. There is of course information available at Potato Day, but over the years I have now settled on eight varieties.
Primarily they absolutely have to be slug resistant. For some reason slugs like to munch some types of potato but not others. The other big pest is a fungal one. Blight. That's the same potato blight which caused famine in Ireland all those years ago.
We didn't get it at all last year but that was because it was such a dry year. It thrives in warm, humid conditions, exactly the conditions we are getting more and more in summer as the climate breaks down.
There are some varieties which have been bred to be very resistant to this scourge. I have grown them and their leaves did stay wonderfully green compared to the collapsed foliage of the potatoes all around them. Unfortunately though they have very little taste.
So instead I look for varieties with 'some resistance'. This usually means that they do get killed off by blight, but that for some reason it seems slower to infect the tubers meaning that more can be saved.

It is this prevalence of blight nowadays which necessitates purchasing new seed potatoes every year. If we didn't get it I would probably just use last years potatoes to start off the crop each year. This is the reason why 'volunteer' potatoes, those which you missed harvesting the previous year and appear in last year's bed, need to be removed straight away.

So, my eight varieties:
Earlies - Arran Pilot and Red Duke of York.
Second Earlies - Kestrel and Charlotte (Kestrel is the variety chosen by the Grow Your Own group for everybody to grow this year so we can compare results. Fortunately it is one which I grow every year as it grows very well here. I did used to grow Blue Kestrel successfully too but it is no longer available at potato day)
Maincrops - Desiree, Valor (a new one I tried last year, very firm flesh which stores well and has a lovely taste), Cara (a good all round white potato. I would prefer the organic growers' favourite Orla but that one is not available).
Speciality - Pink Fir Apple - very late to form tubers so be prepared to get none if blight comes early. But in a good year I get sacks full. It is a distinctive potato which is great boiled or whole in winter stews. It lasts well through the winter and we are often still eating it when the first of the early potatoes is ready in spring.

I have planted some of the Arran Pilot potatoes in the polytunnel where I can protect the emerging leaves from frosts. They will give an early harvest of new potatoes.

Arran Pilot and Kestrel potatoes being chitted

The rest are in the conservatory (aka plant nursery come potting shed at this time of year) chitting. This is the process where you lay them out in egg boxes and encourage them to start sprouting. In theory this gives them a head start once they are outside in the ground.
They can' just go straight into the ground outside as any frosts will likely kill them.
I think the effect of chitting is marginal but it's just something you do, almost a custom which marks the beginning of the potato growing year.

Plague and pestilence - a thoroughly disheartening affair

How dare we have a holiday!
We were only gone for just less than a week during which time a plague of pestilence and disease was wrought upon the smallholding. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration but this is a post to show that smallholding is not always a bed of roses.

On the positive side the animals were ok. But it was a different story in the veg plot.

Blight
For the umpteenth year in a row blight has swept through my potatoes and moved onto my tomatoes. And because I wasn't here to spot it early it had a chance to kill off all the foliage on the Earlies and Second Earlies before starting on the Maincrops. There were no signs of it when we left for Scotland and by the time we returned it had ravaged the crop. The timing could not have been worse. I took the tops off all the potatoes and have left them in the ground so they don't come into  contact with any spores on the soil surface, but harvesting has been a thoroughly depressing activity, with perhaps just a quarter of the Early potatoes surviving. I haven't yet dared check the other potatoes, but am clinging onto the hope that Charlottes have been pretty blight resistant in previous years.
The blight has then moved onto the tomatoes. It enters the plants through the leaves so I have removed most of the leaves and check daily, removing all affected leaves and fruit. But once it gets into the stem you are fighting a losing battle. For some reason the plum varieties, Roma and San Marzano, seem to fare the worst. A fairly decent crop can still be salvaged from the others.

Spanish Slugs
Next on the list is slugs. More precisely the big fat orange ones which some people call Spanish slugs. The problem is they are too big and slimy for natural enemies to predate. I think the key to controlling them is to leave them no cover, but this means keeping the veg beds perfectly edged. The most effective killer of these orange slime-monsters is my edging shears - messy but effective!
Unfortunately they also seem to like living under a dense canopy of nasturtium leaves and whenever I have let these companion plants ramble it has resulted in an army of slugs attacking the crops.
So habitat destruction is proving the key to control here, as well as direct hunting out of the enemy followed by quick dispatch.

I have also released the ducks into the spare veg patch where my brassica leaves are more hole than leaf. This is in the part of the smallholding which used to be arable with the result that there is very little topsoil. The clay surface opens into wide cracks during the summer, a perfect daytime hideout for the slugs.
During my research of Spanish slugs I have come across an awful lot of poor advice on various forums, but one comment I read has reminded me of a technique which could possibly work. Apparently slugs are suckers for porridge oats, which then swell up inside them with disastrous consequences (for the slug).
I can buy sacks of porridge oats for just a few pounds and have some in stock, for the sheep love them soaked and mixed in with a few sugar beet pellets.  I would imagine the ground needs to be dry for this to work well and the oats to achieve maximum swell inside the slug, so now would be a perfect time to try.

Red Spider Mite
Third on the most unwanted list is Red Spider Mite. I nuked the polytunnel this winter but they have crept back in, though much later than in previous years. I am managing to keep them under control with weekly sprays of pyrethrum on to the most affected plants and sprays of rosemary oil mixed with eucalyptus oil and a little soap every other day in between. The trouble is you can never quite totally eradicate them.
While we were away they multiplied rapidly in the polytunnel, moving from the aubergines (always the first to be hit) onto the cucumbers (always the second). However, I have been working hard and they are back under control for the moment.



Well, that was a depressing post wasn't it. But we came back from our holiday refreshed and full of optimism. The disappointments have been shrugged off and we have been forging ahead with new projects. Hence the lack of posts recently. We really have been working very, very hard till late every evening.
More on these exciting new projects very soon.

A Hutton Alert!

Wednesday's forecast - cats and dogs

Last week we finally got some rain. Well, not just some rain but a WHOLE BUCKETLOAD. Quite possibly more in one day than we'd had in the previous two or three months.

As a result, the grass has started growing like mad (good for sheep, bad for maintenance - especially with the ride-on needing to go in for service but not likely to be even looked at for a few weeks), the weeds have gone berserk and there are slugs everywhere.
But I'm not moaning. The soil is beautiful to work, weeds practically jump out at the slightest tug and all the vegetables and flower beds are making rapid progress.

Add to that being past the last frost date (just watch what happens now!) and we really have entered a new season.







And with this came my first ever Hutton Alert on my phone. I didn't even know what a Hutton Alert was, but it came from the Potato Council so I guessed it was something like a Smith Alert, though these never come before mid-June.
There has been a problem with Smith alerts for the past two years. A Smith Period is supposed to be a period when conditions are ideal for blight to strike potatoes and tomatoes. It is, in theory, possible to take precautionary action by spraying. However, for the past two years blight has struck my potatoes way in advance of any Smith Period being notified.

So it was no surprise to learn that the rules have changed. A Smith Period is two days where the temperature stays above 10C and humidity is at least 90% for 11 hours or more on each day. The Hutton Criteria radically reduce the humidity element to 90% for 6 hours each day.

The problem is that my Maincrop potatoes have only just poked their heads through the ridges I carefully mounded up for them and already they are facing the risk of blight. I think that maybe I'd just rather not know. I don't spray anyway, as drenching the upper and underside of every leaf is totally impossible. Instead, when the weather is warm and muggy (in effect a Smith Period) I watch my potato leaves very carefully and take the tops off if blight strikes.
I guess this year I will keep an eye out when the weather is warm and slightly muggy (A Hutton Period).

Never good - the first signs of blight on potato leaves

I grow enough potatoes that even if blight strikes early, as it did last year, I still get enough spuds to last us through the year. Key to this are Second Earlies (Charlottes, Kestrels) which should still produce a decent crop before blight strikes and which store well enough through the winter.
If we get a good year then the geese and sheep do very well for potatoes too.

In addition, I grow a few First Earlies in the polytunnel, direct in the soil. In fact, just last week I harvested the first of these. I could have harvested a little earlier but I wanted a good crop so they go through till the first of the outdoor grown spuds are ready.

Potatoes - The Results Are In.

6th August 2016

The view over the farm buildings and veg plot from up the ladder

I woke up inexplicably early today so decided to take advantage of the forecast sunny day to creosote the cladding on the house.

The fine was ideal for harvesting the potatoes too, as they need to bake in the sun for a while to improve their storage time. In truth it is a little early in the year to be harvesting the spuds, but blight has dictated proceedings this year.

And so we step back three weeks to when the tell-tale signs of blight swept through the potato crop. Within a couple of days a few brown blotches on the leaves can turn into rows of withered plants. If it gets into the stems it rapidly spreads down to the tubers.
The only course of action is to chop off all growth above ground and hope that it has not spread underground. Of course, this puts a halt to any further growth of the tubers, so the earlier blight comes the smaller the potato harvest.

This year the blight came early.

As if this is not depressing enough, there are plenty of other things that can go wrong with a potato, especially in a cool, wet year. The only benefit of so much rain earlier in the year was that the tubers would hopefully have been swelling quickly.

Once the tops have been removed, you need to leave the potatoes in the ground for two to three weeks so that they do not come into contact with live blight spores on the soil surface when you harvest them. Otherwise they will rot in storage. The fishy smell of a blighted potato tuber is unforgettable.
The longer they are left in the ground though, the more susceptible they are to slug damage, so it is a balancing act which also depends on waiting for a fine, sunny day.

A fine crop of Markies

So today was D-Day, the moment of truth. It took me several hours of hard digging to unearth all the spuds. Some varieties were a joy to dig as the fork lifted to reveal clusters of large, healthy tubers. Others were disheartening with very few usable potatoes. That's one of the reasons why I grow nine varieties, as they all have different qualities and different resistance to disease and pests.



So, here's what can go wrong!

Look carefully and you see the slimy,

melting cheese gunk that is a blighted potato.

Any blighted material needs to be dealt with.

Ideally it is burned, but this is not so easily done!

I put it all into a couple of closed unit plastic compost bins,

never to see the light of day again!

Splitting. Only the Picassos did this.

Still edible, but it did give a route in

for pests and diseases.

(See the slug?)

Slugs

Some varieties seem much more susceptible.

Can cause serious damage in a wet year.

These neat holes often open up into a network of tunnels on the inside.

They don't go to waste though as the geese and the sheep hoover them up gratefully..

A few always get caught by the fork.

Though not many, it always seems to be the best specimens!

And now for the performance by variety. Remember that yields reflect a bad blight year when the tops were taken off in mid July, which would be expected to hit the maincrop varieties worst.
Also, every year is different and performance varies greatly between varieties and in different soils.

Markies potatoes laid out

on the grass to dry.

Markies - Main Crop
A trial crop based on other people's strong recommendations. This variety is supposed to make for tasty chips - always good! Despite the early topping off there was a good yield of medium to large potatoes. Blight had only got into a couple of the tubers. There was some slug damage, but overall very little.
Picasso - Main Crop
I only grew these because I had a few kg left over from the bulk order I do for smallholders. Personally I wouldn't grow a variety that is favoured by farmers. It usually means that it thrives under a regime of chemicals, not necessarily the best for an organic grower. Unfortunately most of the smallholders are very conservative in their potato choices.
The Picassos had split much more than any other variety, caused by rapid growth in wet weather. This had allowed access to pests. Few tubers were blighted, but maybe 20% had slug damage. The yield was fair but nothing exceptional.

Blue Kestrels set out to dry on the soil surface.

In the foreground,

my entire usable harvest of Bonnies!

Bonnies - Second Early
Probably my favourite potato as a baker. Produces a good yield of large, round, attractive tubers. Unfortunately, not for the first time, the usable yield was disastrous. Blight had got into maybe 30% of the tubers and about 90% of what was left had become slug food. The slugs seem to love this variety. The end result was no more than a dozen very nice tubers from as many plants. Bonnie has had its last chance!
Blue Kestrel - Second Early
Having experimented with Kestrel last year and been impressed with the taste and the firm texture of the potatoes which lasted well in storage, I decided to try Blue Kestrel this year. I only grew ten plants, but this year at least it has turned out as one of the two absolute stars. The tubers are very attractive and many were large enough to make excellent baking potatoes. Being a Second Early is always going to help n a blight year. Blight had only got into three individual tubers and, unlike the Bonnies which they grew next to, there were virtually no slug holes. If the taste and storage are anything like last year's Kestrels then this will be on the list every year. Mind you, I said that about Bonnies once, when we had a dry year.

Charlotte - Second Early
I cannot believe how much this variety costs in the shops. It is one of the cheapest seed potatoes to buy from the wholesaler and has performed brilliantly every year. Yield was excellent and the quality of the tubers outstanding. There was virtually no blight in the tubers and virtually no slug damage. This makes Charlotte a brilliant insurance policy for a poor year, though it would more than earn its place in the veg plot in any year.
Dunluce - First Early
I tend to alternate between this variety and Arran Pilot for my bulk standard early potato. Being a First Early it has done all its growing before blight ever hits. However, earlies don't store so there are always quite a few left in the ground when the other potatoes are ready. This is where I like Dunluce and Arran Pilot, for they simply grow larger but retain their great flavour. This year's Dunluce have stayed relatively blight and slug free in the ground too. As would be expected with plenty of rain, the yield and tuber size has been good.
Red Duke of York - Early
A favourite of mine. An early red potato which is excellent for chipping and roasting. Doesn't produce massive tubers, but they are brightly coloured and good quality. This year there were more tiny tubers than usual but the yield was still fair. It has not stood in the ground as well as the Dunluces and blight has got into some of the tubers. So not the best year for this variety but it still performs well enough to firmly hold its place.
Pink Fir Apple - Late
This was the absolute star of the show last year, producing sacks of large tubers. The tubers seem to be pretty blight resistant and incur little slug damage. However, this can be an all or nothing potato, and this year it was nothing! I couldn't risk not cutting the tops off, but being a late developer it was inevitable that the tubers would not have had time to develop. As it was I got about a plate full of mini Pink Firs!
This potato still remains a firm favourite of mine and I am happy to run the risk every year as it is more than worth it when it pays off and this is the first time that I've had no crop to speak of.
Desiree - Main Crop
Despite it being a fairly bulk standard variety, I love Desiree potatoes. They are versatile and produce a good yield of attractive tubers, with a fair percentage of whoppers for baking.
In the shops it has been largely replaced by its descendant, Romano, but I find that Desiree preforms better for me.
The blight reached the leaves of the Desirees last so it didn't really have time to get into the tubers. The tubers had not quite had time to swell to full size, but I still got a fair crop and there was relatively little slug damage. Not the best year, but I've still got enough to keep me going.

So, overall it was a pretty challenging year potato-wise but I still ended up with about five sacks of potatoes which will be plenty to get us through till the first First Earlies come out of the polytunnel next spring.
A couple of varieties bombed and a couple were outstanding. Slugs seem to increase year on year in my veg plot, though nothing like as bad as the plague year we had in 2012. In a wet year though, they probably cause more crop loss than does blight.
When I choose next year's varieties, slug-resistance will remain a high priority.

Definitely on the list will be Charlotte, Blue Kestrel, Desiree, Dunluce/Arran Pilot, Pink For, Red Duke of York and a new entrant, Markies.
Definitely off the list are Bonnie.
As for Picasso, I basically got them free but if I had to pay I'd look for another variety.

Boris and Arthur could have helped with the digging,

but decided instead to go digging for moles in amongst the climbing beans.

We should be safe from vampires this year

1st August
Happy Cotton Anniversary To Us!
Today is mine and Sue's second anniversary. It has been a low key affair getting on with the business of smallholding.

While I harvested the onions and a few broad beans and peas, Sue inspected her bees. It's been a testing year for Sue and her bees. On her last inspection she was pleased to finally find some eggs in the first hive, though it appears she has lost the queen from the second hive. The third hive continues to do well. But today's inspection brought more disheartening news as the brood pattern in the first hive didn't look correct. It seems most likely that the young queen was not properly mated and is laying drone eggs. Either that or there is a laying worker.


Meanwhile Boris has learned to jump through the open window to get in and out of the garden. Unfortunately, he has not yet learned that the window is not always open!!! I've heard of birds colliding with windows, but a labradoodle!

We should be safe from vampires this year
Sue then continued celebrating our anniversary by plaiting garlic and trying her hand at pickled garlic.



2nd August
The polytunnel tomatoes are doing well this year. I have squeezed in fewer plants but it makes managing and harvesting  them much easier. I still have 18 plants which should give us plenty, even if we don't get any from the outdoor plants.
I sacrificed the two courgette plants which were running rampant in their tunnel bed. Unfortunately they seemed more intent on producing a jungle of leaves than on producing viable fruits. I only really grew them as insurance in case the outdoor plants failed (as they did last year).

At lunch time I tried my raspberry and redcurrant juice for the first time. It was delicious but it didn't last long! I'll make more next year.



Here is the last photo of all the geese together (along with the turkeys). For tomorrow the two young white geese move to a new home. I was intending to stable them up this evening and then risk my life catching the two young ones. Fortunately this afternoon the opportunity suddenly came up to achieve the separation. As the geese headed down the central path, I noticed the two youngsters in the lead. I quickly jumped in, aided (not!) by Boris and Arthur and hurried them along with the plan to close the gate before all the adults could get through. It felt like some surreal dreamtime version of One Man And His Dog where they are tasked with separating off two specific sheep.
I managed to narrow the group down to three and the final adult was easily separated from the others in the stables.

3rd August

Arthur has caught a mole! He is very proud of himself. It must be the Daschund in him. Daschunds were bred for hunting badgers, but Arthur certainly won't be doing that. The Jack Russell in him has started chasing after rabbits, bouncing down the land to try to surprise them, but he lacks technique at the moment.
I don't really mind him catching a mole. Unlike most other people, I think moles are absolutely amazing creatures and that we should be very proud to have such a special creature native to this country. Sadly most people are more precious about their monoculture flat lawns. However, there are plenty of moles here on the farm. Unusually Arthur didn't eat the mole, despite the fact that he devours the voles and rabbits that our cat Gerry brings back as presents for him. Apparently moles don't taste very nice at all. I won't be testing out that particular theory.

Carrot success
The sun has been shining lately and the vegetables have responded. Today I harvested my first mini sweetcorn cobs from outside and the courgettes have started to crop in reasonable numbers too.
Main job for the day was to sort out the carrot patch. I lifted the mesh netting, in place to keep carrotfly at bay, and tackled the weeds. There weren't too many as the carrots have done so well they have crowded out any weeds. My carrot crops have been pretty disastrous in the past, so I was pleased to find rows of carrots doing very well indeed.
It was a little overdue, but I did one last sowing today which should give us plenty of carrots to harvest before winter arrives.

The two young white geese have gone now, to a new home just down the road where I hope they will be very happy. Already, without young to protect, the rest of the geese have calmed down and are being a lot less macho.

The day ended with a stunning sunset across the road.

4th August
Flatpacked Frustration
The day started with an attempt to construct a flatpack garden table. It came with what were probably the worst set of instructions I have ever seen. Some of the bolts came in and out six times as I basically had to work everything out as I went along. I got there in the end.

Roma defeated!
I'm not talking football, but tomatoes. I have been endeavouring to protect my row of Roma tomatoes from blight but it has been a losing battle. I've been picking off any leaves at the first signs of infection and have been spraying them with a bicarbonate spray - this is supposed to create an alkaline environment where the fungus cannot thrive. But it was inevitable following the ravaging of the potatoes that the blight would reach the tomatoes. Today I took the decision to uproot the row of Romas as the blight had clearly got into the stems. Hopefully some of the other tomatoes outside will be far enough away to escape the scourge.

On a brighter note, I harvested the first of the sweetcorn proper (as opposed to the Minipop which I grow for baby cobs) from the polytunnel today. When I pulled back the husk it was a real gem and went very nicely with the pork ribs and stir fry which I made for dinner - almost totally our own produce. The stir fry had fourteen ingredients from the garden!

Following on from sowing carrots yesterday, I did one last sowing of Boltardy beetroot today. It should stand in the ground over winter. I've sown plenty as any spare will be gobbled up by the sheep or the geese.
I also sowed a trial crop, Spanish Black Round Radish. This is unlike other radishes as it is a winter veg which is cooked. I'm expecting it to be more like a turnip. We'll see. Some of my trial crops earn a place in the veg patch, many fall by the wayside.

5th August


Not put off by the flatpack garden furniture experience yesterday, I decided to get the woodwork tools out today and do a complete overhaul of one of the chicken houses. Here it is having been completely disassembled and half rebuilt. This is as far as I've got as it took quite a lot longer than anticipated.

Same Old, Same Old Gulls
The morning was interrupted by a flock of gulls in the neighbouring field. The rape straw has been baled and collected up and today they were harrowing the field which was pulling in the gulls. I scanned through the flock with my telescope and, as every year, it was composed mainly of Black-headed gulls with lesser numbers of Common Gulls and a few Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls. One year I'll find something different in amongst them.
At one point the whole flock rose suddenly, along with the starlings, lapwings and a small group of Stock Doves. The reason for the panic soon became obvious as a Peregrine Falcon torpedoed through the flock, the first of the winter.
Bizarrely a roe deer appeared in the field as well today, right out in the open.

The day was flying by. Sue is away again with friends visiting Venice, Florence and Piza. Looking after all the animals, myself and the crops is a lot of work and I have been putting in very long days.
The young chicks needed cleaning out as well today. They are growing up fast and it won't be long before they get to go outside during the day.

For the second evening there was a stunning fire in the sky. Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.

The summer time of my life

20th July 2016
50! How did that happen? I am 50 years old!
I used to say I still felt 20 in my mind and about 70 in my body but I think that's changed a little now. I think I think a little more old these days, so maybe 30 in my mind, though some would say more like 6! And that's partially true too, which is why I am such a brilliant teacher. I am also starting to benefit from the confidence of age.
As for the 70 in body, to be fair there are days when I feel I can do anything and days when every single inch of my body seems to ache and groan.
I have done a lot in my 50 years on this planet (not that I spent any time before that on another planet, though again some would disagree). I don't intend to do quite so much in the next 50 years, but I do intend to savour and enjoy most of it.
I don't really do birthdays, or any celebrations for that matter, but especially not birthdays. My preference would have been that it pass by largely unnoticed. I got as close to this as was probably possible and celebrated with a quiet meal out with Sue in the evening. I splashed out and went for almost the most expensive thing on the menu but there was no way I was paying an extra £2 for a sauce to go with my fillet steak! That would be too wild a celebration!

There was a better reason for celebration today, for I finished work at midday and I'm not due back in till 1st September.

21st July 2016
Back to normal today.
One of the young chicks in the broody box was clearly not well today. I tried gently holding its beak to the water trough, I placed it under the electric hen to warm up, but as usual when a bird is ill it did not respond. After a couple of hours I decided to end it quickly. Better for the chick and better to remove it from the others too. Five years ago I would have struggled to do this and put it off, but I have hardened up now. I still quietly say sorry and I still have a sad feeling in my heart. Compassion sometimes means being decisive.

The turkey family picking through the cut grass

With the protracted spell of summer proper, I took advantage and started mowing the lawns. They've got out of control again and the mower needs a new blade so it was slow work. I just mowed paths through the sward to allow the air in and the grass to dry a little.

This year's lambs in the foreground

Next job on such a fine day was another chemical attack on those nasty nettles and thistles. I've left a few patches for the wildlife, but any others that spring up need to be dealt with harshly, particularly since I seem to have become very reactive to nettle stings, an almost daily occurrence which needs nipping in the bud. I resprayed the electric fence line too. This tactic seems to be working well. I'd rather not use any spray but needs must. Physically controlling the weeds and the growth under the fence are not possible on this scale. I use minimum sprays and just about everything else I do on the smallholding is pretty much for the benefit of wildlife.

That's shallot of shallots!
Last year's stored onions have come to an end now and this year's are not quite ready. It's not looking like a great crop coming so thank goodness for the shallots, which were ready to harvest today after a few sunny days to dry them out.

Lady Penelope, Single Parent
There was still time to lop some of the trees along the boundary. The branches go to the sheep who love stripping off the leaves and the bark. Nothing goes to waste here. It was while I was doing this that I spotted Lady Penelope Peacock and she was accompanied by a single poult, now large enough to be showing a clear crest. I had not seen her for a couple of weeks and was fearing for her.

The days are long now so I can get stacks done when I'm off work. But darkness still comes in the end and todays dusk brought with it a calling Little Owl in the old ash trees and a calling Barn Owl, a nice combo.

22nd July 2016
Chicken in a basket box
Every day now I move the Ixworth chicks outside into a large dog cage on the lawn and every night they go back into the garage under the heat lamp. The accommodation en route is cosy!

Bad service
I finally managed to get through to someone to order a spare rotavator belt and mower blade. It's taken three phone calls and two ignored emails to finally get someone who didn't pass the problem on to an empty phone extension. It took 18 minutes on the phone and I'm not confident I've moved much further forwards despite the promises. It's a shame as Abbey Garden Sales have provided me with good service in the past but I am now starting to see the reasons for other people's bad reviews.

Harvest news
The first tomatoes are ready in the polytunnel and they are looking good! These are Black Cherry, Gardener's Delight, Golden Sunrise and Honybee.

There were more raspberries to be had today too. It really is a good crop this year. Delving a little deeper in the polytunnel, I came across a couple of yellow courgettes I'd missed. Here they are dwarfing the first cucumber of the year!



Some crops are already over though. Sue went out to do one final pick of the yellow mangetout plants but they were going over so the geese got a few. We've got  loads in the freezer already along with the green ones from the tunnel. Fortunately I managed to stop Sue in time to leave a few plants still standing. These are a heritage variety and I want to save the seed.

You know those jobs you keep putting off because you just know something's going to go wrong and you wish you'd never started? Well today I plugged the ride-on mower into the charger. If the battery charges up then I've just got to persuade it to start for the first time this year and to keep going. Reliability has never been my Mountfield mower's strongest point. If it had a name it would be called Flimsy!

And finally my nature note for today.
There have been strange calls coming from the ash trees for the last couple of days. In the past these calls have had me stumped, but now I recognise them as the calls of young Green Woodpeckers. Today I was lucky enough to see one of them perched out in the open on a branch next to its parent. They have timed it incredibly well, for today was also the day the ants came out. Every year they find their way into the house and swarm all over the windows. The delights of countryside living.

23rd July 2016
Harvest speeds up
Minipops
Some of the sweetcorn in the polytunnel is going absolutely bananas. In fact it actually resembles a banana plantation in there. The outdoor crop isn't far behind either.
Surprisingly the biggest plants belong to the variety Minipop. This is a corn grown for its baby cobs. You don't get a huge harvest but it adds variety and is a high value crop.
It is ready to pick as soon as the tassles appear. No need to wait for them to be pollinated. In the polytunnel I am also growing normal sweetcorn, so I actually removed the male flowers from the top of the minipop plants today so they wouldn't cross-pollinate the other variety. Hopefully this won't stem the flow of min cobs.
A word of caution here. Parts of the plant would appear to be razor sharp! A couple of slashes across my fingers are testament to this.



Anyway, after much dehusking (great material for the compost heap) I ended up with 26 baby corns to go in the freezer. There are a lot more to come too.
Gooseberry gazumped!
I moved on to harvesting the last of the gooseberries ... except they were all gone! Something had got to them first. Oh well. Not to worry. Next year I'll pick them all when they are harder and sharper. That's the best quality about gooseberries anyway.
Champion.
I moved on again, this time to the peas. I've not grown conventional peas for a few years now because of the pea moth which has a nasty habit of depositing maggots inside the pods. But this year I am trialling an old-fashioned tall pea, Champion of England. I sowed it late, at the end of April, in an attempt to avoid the period when the moth lays its eggs. Today the first plump pods were ready for picking. As ever with fresh peas they tasted amazing, little globes of summer sweetness. As this is a climbing variety they should crop over a longer period which means I can graze them rather than harvesting the whole lot at once.

Saving the Tomatoes
Another of the outdoor crops is under serious threat though. For it was only a matter of time before the potato blight spread to the tomatoes. A couple of the leaves were showing the first signs of attack today. It was time for another major prune of the toms anyway, so I removed all of the lower leaves and any sideshoots. I weeded thoroughly around the plants and tied them to their supports. The whole idea is to reduce the amount of foliage through which the blight spores can attack the plant while at the same time maximising air flow around the plants. I then mixed up a bicarbonate spray and thoroughly soaked every plant. I will repeat this once weekly for a while and with a bit of luck I might just save my outdoor tomato crop.
Outdoor tomatoes are always a huge risk and more often than not they fail. It doesn't matter too much as there are plenty coming from the greenhouse, but a bumper crop once in a while is good for stocking up the freezers with tomato sauce.

With daylight still left I started painting the garage, beginning with a first applicaton of creosote to the wood. Proper creosote is wonderful. I love the smell. It is not as nasty as people make out. In fact, one of the main reasons it's use was severely limited by the EU was to do with a very low cancer risk under specific circumstances. I get the feeling this is more about protecting large corporations rather than for any environmental reasons.

Today's nature notes
The swallow's nest in the chicken feed shed is wonderful, for it is at head level. I can raise the phone above my head and get a great view of the inside. It has been empy for a while now, but today I noticed two eggs inside. It seems they are going for another brood. Wonderful news! I counted another four active nests inside the stables today too.






Dark Daggers
Down in the chicken pen I found a small group of rather splendid caterpillars on a plum tree today. I took photos and then scoured the internet to identify them. I eventually identified them as belonging to the Dark Dagger moth. It has a great name but is actually very drab, unlike its glamorous larvae.