Going Cheep

April's Showers Arrive Late

I wouldn't be English if I didn't open with the weather.

We've finally has some of this...

Rather a lot. In fact I've had a butt full of it. Water butts of course! I've managed to fill two IBC containers, that's 2000l of water collected. 

Frost-free?
Not only that, but following an overnight frost on the morning of 7th May, we now have a frost-free forecast through until 20th.

I've finally started moving some of the plants out of the conservatory. Chances of anything apart form a light frost are now very low.

Chicks, Ducklings and Poults

The week has been all about baby birds though, We suddenly have 53 extra little mouths to look after!

We bought in a score of ay old chicks. These are hubbards which grow at a medium pace and are well suited to free range life. They are meat birds but we don't place a huge priority on bringing them to weight as fast as possible. The fastest growing birds, as used in the poultry industry (and by unthinking smallholders), just grow too fast for my liking. They are genetic monsters which can easily become too heavy for their legs or hearts to carry them. On the other hand, some of the more traditional breeds really aren't economically viable, producing scrawny birds which take ages to get to weight. This is fine if you are in the privileged position to pay considerably more for your meat, but it is not a viable route.

So we strive for a happy medium, birds bred to grow faster than normal and to put on more breast meat, but which can still lead a happy and healthy (if short) life. The shortness of a meat bird's life always comes as a shock to those not in the know. A commercial meat chicken will have no more than  couple of months of life. 

Gut instinct is that we want our chickens to have a much longer life than that, but this is where reality kicks in. For no chicken bred for meat would go much past 6 months. For starters, it would be very expensive, but more than that any chicken older than that turns to rubber. Imagine eating one of those chicken dog toys!

There is obviously the option to go vegan, and I wouldn't criticise that choice at all. In fact I was a vegan for part of my life. For me the important factor is the quality of life an animal has while it is still alive and keeping our own livestock gives me complete control over that. 

Hot on the heels of the chicks came the ducklings. Indeed it was a lot hotter on the heels than I had anticipated and it had me scrabbling around for somewhere to keep them. Again the ducklings are destined for the plate and will grow quickly. I searched around the smallholding for a suitable container in which to keep them. Finally I found the perfect solution, a large and strong plastic post office sorting box which we had been gifted and were using to store logs.

I fashioned a lid from strong metal mesh and suspended a heat lamp from the rafters in the garage. The poor little things were very sleepy and would just collapse asleep. A week on and they are almost unrecognisable. I am really pleased with how strong they are. If they feather up and the weather warms it won't be too long before they can enjoy free-ranging around the smallholding. For the moment they wouldn't survive the cold and wet, not to mention crows and rats!

Back to the chicks. Just a day old, they went straight into an old gerbil cage we scrounged off a friend. Here they had warmth, food and drink and safety. But their rate of growth is phenomenal and it doesn't take long before the smell  becomes somewhat noxious.

So already, after just a week, their accommodation has been considerably upgraded. We managed to scrounge another post office sorting box so they have moved into the garage alongside the ducklings.

As if that weren't enough to keep us busy, the turkey hen who was siting on eggs under a pile of sticks by the roadside paddock has hatched out al her eggs. I returned home from work to see her leading nine poults (baby turkeys) through he long grass.

I quickly sprang into action scooping the fluffy little balls into my coat pockets while mum did her best to fend me off, flying up at my face with claws outstretched. This is a dangerous lifestyle! 

We had prepared a stable in anticipation so I led mum towards it as she followed the calls of her babies. Again it is much safer for them to be reared indoors until they can fly up onto a perch.

There's more! A week later the other hen who was sitting on the straw bales hatched out her own clutch. Interestingly these chicks look completely different. One mum is a Norfolk Black, one a Bronze, but dad is a mix. However, the poults seem to have taken on the genes of their mums. We had no idea how many eggs she was on so I was pleasantly pleased to fin myself scooping up a dozen baby birds. Just one didn't make it out of its egg. Mum will be a very good parent. I can tell by the tenacity with which she sat for four weeks and by the tenacity she showed in jumping onto my back several times to defend her young.

Pegleg's Veg

Meanwhile in the veg plot some plants have finally started to be transplanted outside. Broad beans, onions, turnips and radishes are the first out. None of thee mind the cold too much, but I've been waiting ages for rain to wet the soil.

In the polytunnel, Florence fennel I sowed last July is just now coming good. Its the first time I've had success with this crop.

I've also been busy creating a new area to attract and feed wild finches and buntings. In general they won't come too near the house but we have really good numbers of Yellowhammers on the holding this year. To attract them I've sown some of the mixed seed we feed the birds into an area bordering the sheep paddocks and orchard. It's already working as there are regularly several birds feeding there, though they are showing a remarkable ignorance of farming. Each seed they eat could potentially have produced many hundreds later in the year!

One For Sorrow

Now for some sad news on the nature front. Having watched the pair of long-tailed tits busily constructing their delightful nest, I went outside to see a pile of feathers on the floor. Something, I suspect  magpie, had found the nest and pecked a hole in the top. The long-tailed tits have abandoned, leaving their tiny eggs in the nest. Nature can be so harsh.

Nature's Undertakers

One of my favourite jobs is turning the compost. It is a thriving city of minibeasts beavering away. Last week I unearthed a large beetle, maybe an inch long, with notable orange blobs o its antennae. A minute later there was another. They scuttled a bit too quickly to get any decent pics.

I looked them up and they are black sexton beetles, nature's undertakers. They sniff out small dead animals then dig underneath them until the corpse is buried. These two had sniffed out a dead rat! Smallholding's not always as glamorous as it seems.

Smelly Chicks

Thursday 5th April 2018
Smelly Chicks

With Sue due back today, a general tidy up was in order. After wrestling with the hoover for a while I headed outside.
Today was a rare one for 2018, a fine sunny day. I resisted the temptation to work the land though, hoping that today's sunshine and warm breeze would dry the soil enough to be rotavated tomorrow.
Even the polytunnel has been struggling to get warm so far this year, but today the temperature in there rose to over 90 in old money. That should kick all the seedlings into action.

The twenty chicks I brought home last week have been doing their utmost to mess out their cage and stink out the front hallway where they live. We usually keep them here for the first four weeks before moving them to larger and more airy accommodation in the garage, but I decided to speed up the process of getting them outside.
I needed to set something up where I could place the chicks while I cleaned out their cage. It needed a good scrub and a strong hose jet. So I set up the broody ring in the garage - I would need to do this anyway in a couple of weeks.
The chicks were quite happy in there. So happy in fact that I decided they can stay in there. To be on the safe side, they have an overhead heat lamp and the electric hen heat plate. That way they can choose which is most comfortable for them and if one fails the other will keep them warm enough.

It's beginning to feel a bit like Chr...

Wednesday 6th December 2017
Poultry Explorers
The monster chicks are faring well. They seem to have massive crops, which allows them to stuff in even more food at once than I am capable of! A tragic and unforeseeable accident meant that sadly we lost two but it could have been worse as I found them in time to save two others.

At this time of year I let the chickens into the veg plot and the soft fruit patch. I like to see them scratching around or huddling together under blackcurrant bushes or asparagus fronds. They can't do too much damage as there are few crops showing above the ground. If I can I like to turn the soil so they can clear it of larvae and eggs.
The geese don't get to go into the veg plot yet, as they are adept at finding root vegetables and have a liking for parsnips in particular. Instead though they get the run of the orchard while there is no fruit to stretch up and pull off. They can be surprisingly intelligent in this regard. I have seen them yanking on branches to dislodge apples clinging on for their lives.

Nice to see the three new Silkies exploring

The older hens stick closely together with Cocky

The young Muscovies are getting big now.

They give the run around every night and often just won't go into their houses.

The bigger males will be 'going' in the near future.

Thursday 7th December 2017

A Christmas gathering with good people

I wish the Cambridgeshire Self Sufficiency Group were based a little closer to us, for they are a lovely group of friendly people. Sue and I get along to as many events as we can.

I don't do many Christmassy things, but we were keen to get along to their Christmas Get-Together. It is always worth making time to spend it with good people. There are not enough of them in the world.

Friday 8th December 2017
By the time I get back from work it's pretty much getting dark at this time of year. So I took the time to admire the sunrise this morning.

Saturday 9th December 2017

More Christmassy stuff
I don't know what's wrong with me, but Saturday saw Sue and I at another Christmas event, the Green Back Yard Christmas Fayre. I must be going soft in my old age

Maybe it's the early morning frosts and the icy, clear air going to my brain.

Before we went out, Sue put some lamb neck in the slow cooker along with a selection of our own dried beans and some of our vegetables. This type of food is just perfect for warming the soul on a cold, dark winter's evening.

I don't often do 'what we had for dinner' piccies, but here you go.

We got to The Green Back Yard in Peterborough just past midday. The air in town was somewhat warmer than on the smallholding out in the rural fens.

I certainly don't do Christmas consumerism but I did enjoy seeing some of the crafts. I got a few ideas to steal too.

A simple basketwork angel and a willow Yuletide tree decorated with greenery

You CAN have your cake and eat it.

Friday 24th November 2017

Black Friday.

I don't often get political on this blog, but I am actually a person with very strong beliefs.

Here's my tweet about Black Friday.

Black Friday is so depressing. Is the whole world now indoctrinated to consume endlessly until the earth is completely screwed? Exponential 'growth' is not sustainable.

As I write this, I'm still getting promotional emails informing me Black Friday isn't over yet. It's Wednesday now!!! As if the concept wasn't bad enough in the first place.

Saturday 25th November

A Sliding Carrot Cake
Finally got round to making my solstice cake today. I don't do Christmas. Solstice is pretty much where it all came from anyway and seems a much more relevant celebration given my lifestyle.
The cake is a spiced orange rich fruit cake.
While in baking mode I made a carrot cake with some carrots freshly harvested from the veg plot.
For tomorrow is the Grow Your Own group get-together and I need something to take along for bring and share food.

During the day news came through of an interesting bird at Staines Reservoirs in West London. I decided to go for it first thing in the morning 'on the way to Lakenheath' where I was due at the get-together at noon.
So in freezing temperatures and a cold northerly wind I gingerly carried the carrot cake to the car, hoping it would survive the extended journey. It didn't even survive the walk to the car as the top layer insisted on sliding off the lower one.
There was only one solution to this. Just take one layer and keep the other for myself!
Seems you can have your cake and eat it.

Sunday 26th November

Lakenheath, via Staines!
Grow Your Own Group at midday in Lakenheath.

Just time to nip to London first to see a Horned Lark at the oh so salubrious Staines Reservoirs

and then Santon Downham in Breckland to see a flock of Parrot Crossbills.
At Staines we had to peer through the railings as the Horned Lark grovelled around quite distantly on the concrete bank of the reservoir. In the UK these are known as Shorelarks, a bird which appears in small flocks on our sandy shores every winter. They are a delightful bird worth a special trip to see every winter. But this individual was one of the North American races, a solitary bird on an inland reservoir. It is a potential tick in the future in the rapidly developing world of DNA and species assignment. But for now it was just a very nice bird to see. Apologies for the photo quality. It never came very close.



Then it was on towards Lakenheath for the Grow Your Own group get-together. I just had time for a short diversion into Breckland to Santon Downham where a flock of Parrot Crossbills had been seen a couple of times. I only had half an hour to spare so was lucky when, just a couple minutes after arriving, the whole flock flew noisily over my head. It was several hours since they had been reported.

They just carried on going over a clearing and disappearing over the trees, but fortunately three birds had split from the group and were perched at the top of some pines. They are like a cross between a Crossbill and a Parrot, hence the name. They snip whole cones off the trees to extract the seed with their secateurs like bills.

Then it was on to the get together and a very pleasant afternoon with friends. I started the group four years ago and it has proved most successful, but today I handed over the reins. I will still be part of the group but I have a couple of new ventures in development. More later.

Monday 27th November 2017

I can do cold.

I'm not a great fan of wet.

I've learned to quite like the wind - I think putting on a few stone in weight has helped with this one as it makes me more stable.

But I don't do cold, wet and windy.

So today I mostly stayed in and caught up with stuff on the computer, like my blog posts!

The chicks we got are still going strong. They have survived a few frosty nights now, so fingers crossed for them. They eat ravenously and make a lot of mess, so I think at the weekend I will let them out of their pen to wander more widely.

Tales of the turkey clan and more

After a straight drive of almost 12 hours I arrived home from North Ronaldsay very late at night, so there was no time to pop in and look at the four new turkey chicks (known as poults).

In the end three female turkeys ended up sitting together on three loosely organised clutches of eggs. We weren't sure how this would turn out. The geese engage in this same sort of communal nesting and they are pretty useless at it! Last year we just had the one turkey hen who sat tight on her clutch and successfully hatched all 18 of her eggs.

So nothing could have pleased me more than to find one of the turkey mums roaming around with ten fluffy little chicks in the morning. More than that, there were five more under one of the other hens.
However, the mums were struggling to keep control of their inquisitive chicks, who were getting trodden on by an overly attentive stag. It wasn't really his fault, as they were buzzing about everywhere.
A couple of hours later and all the new poults were up and about, with two hens trying desperately to keep an eye on them all. Sadly a couple had not quite made it cleanly out of their eggs, but still there were thirteen chicks, each and every one a bonus for us.



My intention was always to bring them down to the warmth and security of a stable, but I didn't want to intervene before all viable eggs had hatched out. In the end though my mind was made up for me when the Muscovy ducks started picking the poor chicks up by the leg and shaking them around, perhaps confusing them for frogs.
I hastily collected them all into a bucket, captured one of the hens and carted them all off into the stables. I transferred the Muscovies to the chicken pen too, all except the duck who is sitting tight on  her own clutch of eggs.


The rest of the smallholding is flourishing too, with the lambs going from strength to strength and the mangetout in the polytunnel yielding a sizeable harvest.



I put some of the turkey poults up for sale and had sold eight of them within a couple of hours. This would leave us five for meat later in the year and the sale would make a contribution toward the upkeep of the turkeys.

Two days later three more fluffy little bees were trying to follow mother turkey around down in the turkey pen. But the last hen had come off her nest which still contained another dozen or so eggs. I think these were quite possibly laid after the turkeys started sitting, so whether or not any more will hatch is doubtful.
Anyway, I scooped up the three chicks and introduced them to the rest in the stable. The hens were quick to take them under their wing. The other hen went straight back onto the nest, but as I write several days after this event there have been no further hatchings.


Back in the house, the first clutch of meat chickens have been growing rapidly. They really do get very messy and smelly and soon stop being cute. It was time for them to go into an outdoor building under a heat lamp. During the day, in dry weather, they go into a giant cage on the lawn.
The geese are sitting tight on their nests too. They should hatch any time soon - it's difficult to know exactly when they started sitting. The two Embden ganders stand guard and make entry to the stables a little precarious, but they know I am the boss! Very occasionally one of the geese comes off the nest to stretch her legs and take a dip.

The laying hens seem happy now they are outside. I have been letting them into the orchard (still a fenced area and part of their controlled range, as restrictions are still in place for a little while longer) and it is lovely to watch them able to behave so naturally.

Further down the land the ram lambs have been causing me headaches. One of them learned to put its head down and sweep aside the electric fence with its horns. It didn't take long for it to teach another the same trick. So I would find them on the wrong side of the fence, happily munching away at my trees. A short chase and straightening up the electric fence would sort it out, but then one morning they were back on the wrong side of the fence within minutes. Time for them to go in the old pig pen, now well on its way to becoming a fully grown nettle bed. The Shetland sheep don't eat the nettles while they are growing, but I ventured in with the weed thwacker and they were more than happy to munch at the wilting stems.

Self-shearing can make you look

a bit silly for a while!

Their Houdini instincts mean that they will be going on their final journey a little earlier than originally planned, along with the third ram lamb who seems to have escaped the attentions of his castration ring. This of course makes things complicated when it comes to grouping the sheep.

They will probably go off in midsummer, once they have fattened up on early summer's fresh grass (assuming we ever get some rain and it starts to grow a bit faster). I have decided not to buy in extra sheep for fattening this year. The grass is slow to grow and I want to give the pasture paddocks a  chance to grow a bit lusher this year and to give longer breaks from grazing.

Wool Day inspired Sue to get back to the peg loom.