The first goose egg of 2018

Monday 5th March 2018
An authentic Lincolnshire myrobalan hedge
When they still had proper orchards in Lincolnshire, myrobalan hedges were very much a local feature. Myrobalan is another word for Cherry Plums which produce small red or yellow plums, perfect for jams and country wine. The hedges would act as a windshield for the orchard and provide an alternative crop.
The cuttings which I took last year have done very well indeed, but now needed moving. I had about two dozen flowering currants to find a home for. I also needed to move the bird cherry hedge which I put in last year, due to a lack of foresight on my part and a change of plans.

My cuttings bed last week in the snow.

This area will be making way for a small new paddock soon.

So I had the idea of a mixed Myrobalan, flowering currant and bird cherry hedge. It will provide wind protection, food for us, food for the birds and it should look pretty for at least  part of the year. To add even more colour, I dotted in a few red dogwoods, again from cuttings.
The only missing feature is the Cherry Plums, on order from the interweb. They should arrive just in time, for bare root plants need to go in before Spring really kicks in.

Mid-job

I was relieved to finally sort out the blackberry support frame too. The weight of the plants and the effects of the wind snapped off one of the posts last year. It was all too heavy to lift back up, but today I managed to cut out all of last year's fruiting canes and to disentangle this year's from the cross wires. The new structure is much more substantial so hopefully it will stand for a lot more than a year. It won't take long for the blackberry harvest to repay the cost.

Tuesday 6th March 2018
Time for seedlings to look after themselves.
A big day for some of the seedlings. Broad beans, leeks, tomatoes, peppers, all have got off to an early start in the conservatory. But they prefer the polytunnel, where there is even more light and better air circulation. Now that the temperatures have lifted and Spring may finally be here, with a little overnight protection they should survive and harden off nicely.

Broad beans coming up strong.

Leeks and coriander looking

a bit straggly but should grow on

stronger in the polytunnel.

As soon as the soil is workable, 

the broad beans will go out.

If the weather holds good,

they should quickly harden off.

Tender young tomato plants and peppers.

The mini greenhouse within the polytunnel

should give them enough protection.

The polytunnel mangetout seedlings.

These should give one of the first harvests of the year.

More cuttings
Today it was the turn of the dogwood cuttings to be planted out. A few went into the new hedge yesterday, but I had about thirty to place. The first batch went beside the new pond and I took some time out to start naturalising the edges. It is starting to look really good.

With the cuttings bed cleared and rotavated, I trimmed back the buddleias and took fresh cuttings. Again I got distracted and ended up digging out a sizeable patch of nettles.

Spring was really in the air today. Skylarks sang high in the sky and Sue's honeybees were out in force. The geese and the turkeys were mating - actually the first time I have ever seen the stag turkey 'on the job'.

A quaint place for a meeting
I had to stop slightly early since Sue and I were off to the Smallholders Club committee meeting. Gerry did his best to ruin our plans by disappearing under the killing bush with his first rabbit of the year. It's about time, as the rabbits are already causing a lot of damage in the garden this year.
We had a new venue for the meeting. The committee room the club used to use was being refurbished, which did us a big favour. For it forced us to look elsewhere and we came to The Bridge Coffee Shop in a place called Three Holes (wonderfully descriptive). The owner was happy to open especially for us. We only expected a room and tables, but she was happy to serve us the menu. I must say, a meeting with pizza and herbal tea was much more civilised and comfortable than a stale meeting room. At the end there was a decisive vote to hold our next meeting back at the coffee shop.

Wednesday 7th March 2018
The first goose egg of the year!
I did a bit of general tidying up today, trimming back bushes and tidying beds in readiness for new growth. I started collecting up all the bits of ash tree which have fallen over the winter. The lawn is littered with sticks and twigs right up to small branches. They don't take long to dry out and make excellent wood for getting the fire going.
Sue appeared with a big smile on her face, clutching the first goose egg of the year. Not quite the latest date for this annual event, but last year the first one plopped out on 16th February. That was the last I saw of the egg as it was quickly poached and gobbled up!

The First Seedling of 2017

3rd February 2017
The First Seedling
Storm Doris was so offended by the name she was given that she veered off toward France. I was expecting a howler but instead we got a whimper.
Meanwhile, the first seedlings are up! A momentous day each year. Glory went to the third aubergine in row two, narrowly beating the lemon drop chillis which were sown on the same day last week.
I start these seeds off so early as they require a long growing season to grow and ripen. The downside is that they will need gentle tending until the polytunnel warms up properly.

The start of the 2017 growing season

4th February 2017
While the cat's away...
Well, more precisely, while Sue's away we all sleep on the bed and have a lay in.

Slightly 'soft focus' but it's not easy taking a selfie with four animals on the bed.

My battle with the rat(s) in the polytunnel is still ongoing. It took ten bags of Eradibait - the 'friendly bait' that doesn't harm other wildlife, they just forget to tell you that the rats don't bother to eat it either!
I thought it must be taking the bait until I found more rat holes with Eradibait pellets strewn everywhere. They have simply been dispersed. So I have set the proper poison up and they have started taking it.
I am itching to clear out and clean the polytunnel so I can get growing in there.

This afternoon I moved the sheep around a bit, along with hay feeders, the Xmas tree for them to keep munching on, water...

The Shetland lambs in their new home.

The lambs were moving back up to the main paddocks to give the paddock near the house time to rest for when this year's lambs move into it. But before they moved, the adults had to be moved further down the land.
This operation was all going very smoothly until a very unfortunate incident when three dogs briefly ran amok through them. Unfortunately it happened in the short period when I had the electric fence off to move the sheep. But it shouldn't have happened and I just hope no harm has come to the ewes or their unborn lambs. The dogs were not vicious but I was powerless to stop them chasing the sheep.
As it had happened while I was moving the sheep, we had all been taken by surprise. Otherwise I don't think the sheep would have turned tail and ran. The trouble is that it only takes one sheep to lose its nerve. If Rambo head butted a dog I have no doubt he would do some very serious damage. I don't think the sheep realised this would happen, as Boris and Arthur are the only dogs they know and these have always kept a respectful distance.
It took me a long time to persuade the sheep to follow me back up to their new paddock again.

The adult sheep finally where I wanted them, lured with Christmas tree, hay and mangels.

After this incident I left the sheep to recover in peace while I took cuttings from my buddleias, willows and elders. These three species are the keenest to take root and it is very hard to fail with them. And if you take enough cuttings it doesn't matter if a few don't take.

While I was cutting the buddleia, I came across the first snowdrops of the year. It's beginning to feel like Spring is just around the corner (cue gales, rain and snow!)

5th Feb 2017
Plants for free
I spent the morning poking yesterday's cuttings into the ground, over two hundred of them. I have put them into a special cuttings area and will move them to  their final growing sites early next winter, once they have had a season to grow some roots and gone dormant again.
The unexpected early arrival of Sue back from London cheered me up and I quickly had her helping me erect a temporary stretch of fence alongside the bottom sheep paddock. We had to improvise with what few materials we had on hand but it was more important to get something up quickly than to make it look good.

6th & 7th Feb 2017

A Hullaballoo in the Polytunnel
Main job for the two days was to create as much hullaballoo as possible in the polytunnel. For I had finally lost patience. Rat activity seemed to have died down so I guessed the poison was finally taking effect.

The polytunnel is a lovely place. Warm, dry, full of food at the right time of year. It was brilliant for the first few years, but it has been harder going the last couple of years. It is an ideal place for rearing seedlings, but later in the year the red spider mites undertake a silent invasion, sucking the life out of many of the crops. Voles and field mice enjoy the warm and dry, along with the supply of carrots, though many end up in the traps. Then this winter the rats have found it to their liking too.

I felt I needed a fresh start, so Monday morning I started clearing all old plants and dead material out. I followed this up by taking Mr Rotavator in and churning up and down the beds, taking extra care near the thin plastic walls. The idea was to turn the soil but also to cause maximum underground disruption, collapsing all the tunnels and generally scaring anything taking shelter. Rats do not like disturbance.
Next up came chemical warfare. I am pragmatic organic, which means that I am totally organic unless there is absolutely no other way to save a crop or to eradicate a weed. It is rare that I have to resort to other methods, but today I blasted the polytunnel with a spray of Jeyes Fluid, paying special attention  to all the nooks and crannies between the metal framework and the polythene.

Then came a thorough power blast with the hose pipe. It is very difficult to stay dry during this operation!
All this took the best part of a whole day, but there was still more to come.
Tuesday brought out the soft broom and the washing up liquid, for the polytunnel imperceptibly turns green during the year. It doesn't really notice, but a thin film of algae builds up, along with grime on the outside. All of this blocks out the light, not so important in midsummer but crucial when the sun is low and the days are only just starting to draw out.
The outside is relatively easy to clean, although there is a strip about a foot wide on top which I can never reach. Inside is a different story as most of the water ends up coming back down on me!
Anyway, after two hard days of cleaning the polytunnel is looking like brand new. This weekend I shall plant my super early potatoes in there and sow my first carrots, turnips and lettuces.

If any pests return I am going to hit them very hard indeed.

8th February 2017

A Bird Flu update from The Ministry.
Full details in the next couple of days. This merits its own post.

2017 starts tricky.

I always had a sense that 2017 could turn into a very challenging year, but I thought this would mostly be caused by politics.
Well, it hasn't started off too well and Sue and I have had a difficult few days on the smallholding. You've heard of warts'n'all. Well this is the warts part. I don't want to linger over it, but a couple of the smaller lambs have run into trouble and it has taken all our care to get them past the worst of it. Hopefully we've turned the corner now, but things are still fairly critical for one of them.

So instead, here's how 2016 went out.

Monday 26th December 2017
Mr Rotavator hits the road again
At the back end of last season I had to order a couple of new belts for the rotavator. It took ages to get hold of them and today I finally got round to fitting them. I am not a very technical person, but the operation seemed to go smoothly.
It has just about been dry enough lately for me to be able to turn some of the soil, though when you hit a sticky patch the rotavator tines become clogged up very quickly and the job becomes untenably slow. Early morning frost helps the situation, but it's cold on the hands.
I managed to work over the area where the mangels grew last year (or rather didn't grow, as something ate them before they ever got going!). I'm using the area as a nursery bed for cuttings and young plants this year.
The Cutting Edge
Winter is the time to take hardwood cuttings. This process is amazingly straightforward and with a little patience can yield hundreds of free plants. I started with the privet hedge, which has now been in  a couple of years and is actually starting to look something like a proper hedge. I snipped off about 500 (yes, 500!) of the strongest shoots and set about turning each of them into a young plant.
All you do is snip the very tip off, just above a leaf node, and then cut just below a node at the bottom, leaving a cutting about 6"-8" long. The lower leaves are stripped off. It's not complicated and takes literally a few seconds for each one.
I haven't gone into every detail, but there's not much more to it. There are more detailed instructions available all over the interweb.
You then just poke them in the ground. Not every one will survive and you have to wait a year before they have established into small plants. But like I said, with a little patience and a little spare space I should have enough plants to create quite a lot of hedging in a couple of years time.

I was pushing for time to get all the cuttings in before dark. Not only that, but the ground was already frosting back over, which made for numb fingers. So this was not a great time for a rare bird to turn up in Gloucestershire, especially one which I had never seen in the UK before. But that's what happened. Fortunately news came through just too late for me to contemplate jumping straight in the car and getting there before dark. Instead, I tried to get all the cuttings planted so they would be safely in the ground. I was beaten by darkness so wheeled the rest into the polytunnel, where their freshly cut ends would be protected from the frost but it is not too hot to dry them out.

The rest of the evening was spent trying to find out more details about the Blue Rock Thrush which had turned up in gardens in The Cotswolds.

Tuesday 27th December 2017
Blue Rock Thrush Day
At 7.30am it was just getting light as I stood at the end of a cul-de-sac peering through the gloom at a tall hedge and a shed roof. It wasn't long before a whisper went round that the bird was in the garden, though it wasn't visible to us. The local residents had been warned of a possible large turn out, but behaviour was very good. Nobody went where they shouldn't, everybody was quiet and everybody parked away from the site and walked in.
After about 15 minutes the Blue Rock Thrush hopped up and sat in the low branches of a tree, just about on view to everybody. In this light it didn't look much, but as the sun rose more and more details could be made out. The bird periodically flew back to the ground, where it was apparently being fed pork pies! By the time it was fully light, there were well in excess of 100 people admiring this bird. The last twitchable one was back in 2000.
By now the slightly bemused residents were out and about. They took the whole thing well and, rightly so, were quick to appear with collection buckets for a local charity.

ed: At the time of writing, they have raised well in excess of £1000!

As the morning sun started to defrost the roof tops, the Blue Rock Thrush headed for the chimney stacks, possibly more akin to its natural habitat (the clue's in the name, though I don't think the rocks have to be blue)

It was a fun morning, bumping into loads of friends, but details of an eatery in the village tempted us away for a hearty cooked breakfast before we headed back home along the frosty roads of south central England.

Neil had the bright idea of popping into Deeping Lakes Nature Reserve to look at the Long-eared Owls which roost on an island. Great idea Neil. The fens were foggy!





I was back on the farm just before dark.



Wednesday 28th December
Disappointment for the dogs
Boris and Arthur have learned to associate a car ride with a trip to the beach, but today they were in for a big let down as the final destination was the vets. The cats came too. Nothing bad, just routine check-ups and collection of flea and worm treatment - always important on a farm

I finished putting the cuttings in the ground. They survived well in the polytunnel and hadn't even wilted.

Lots of privet cuttings!

After an unseasonably warm Christmas, the weather has turned distinctly chilly. Sometimes this is wonderful, when it is clear and still and crisp. But December ended cold, wet, grey and foggy. No surprises really, but weather for huddling up indoors and making plans for the coming year.

I've started using a to do list on my phone to plan out the year. I get daily reminders so I don't forget stuff. The only problem is that if a job doesn't get done it then shows up every day until it's done!

When I was going through my gardening plans, I realised that I am already late for sowing the mangetout seeds which will give me an early spring crop in the polytunnel. But the polytunnel is currently occupied by three ducks, with nothing on the horizon to indicate the Prevention Order will be lifted. I'll have to move them to the stables soon to share with the chickens and turkeys, as I want to give the polytunnel a thorough clean and disinfection. The late sowing of the mangetout is not a problem. It was at this time of year that I sowed them for this year's early bumper crop.

Lady Penelope and chick have moved back onto the farm.

A foggy walk along the Main Drain

Saturday 31st December 2016
A Trip Down Nostalgia Street
What better way to end the year than a birding trip out on my old hunting ground, Dungeness in Kent. The reason for our visit was a small bird known as a Stonechat. More precisely, a Stejneger's Stonechat (I spelled it, you can decide how to pronounce it). This bird has proven to be something of an oddity as it doesn't look anything like what people expected it to, but DNA testing yielded an unexpected identification. Either a mistake has been made or we still have a lot to learn.

There was an icy chill in the air on the exposed shingle landscape that is Dungeness. The bird showed okay, though it rarely came close. It was there for it's 55th day (it disappeared before DNA results suggested its identity, only to be refound a few days ago) so there was never really too much stress about whether or not we would see it.
I enjoyed my trip out in Kent today, seeing a few old friends from the area. I used to travel down here regularly when I lived in London. It is one of my favourite places. There were some classier though not so rare birds on the nearby RSPB reserve. A fine drake Ring-necked Duck (an American species) was the first I had seen for a few years and a Long-eared Owl at its daytime roost was drawing a steady stream of admirers. It certainly showed better than the ones at Deeping Lakes a few days ago!
Apologies for the shocking quality of the photos!




And so with trepidation into 2017. Who knows what it will bring.

Fedge (or is it a wedge?)

High drama today. Late afternoon as I was watching the fieldfares, redwings and blackbirds hopping around in the flooded sheep paddocks, now frozen, suddenly they scattered in all directions. The distinctive shape of a huge female sparrowhawk cut through them, zigzagging in search of a weak one. It cut back and chased one to the ground, but flew up into the hedge without prey. Three raucous crows as ever were on hand to see off this audacious attacker. Minutes later it passed back through the garden, passing close to me about 3 foot off the ground, before it headed out over the fields and disappeared into the distance.

Anyway, as I stood ankle deep in icy water watching this event unfold, it put me in mind of one very, very cold winter's day back when I was a student. I was part of a conservation group and we were cutting back willow. Instead of just burning or piling up the wood we'd cut, we were cutting it into lengths and poking them into the ground to stabilise a river bank.

Little did I realise it at the time, but this was my first experience of taking hardwood cuttings. Willow is amazing in that every part of it seems genetically determined to throw out roots when in contact with damp ground. You literally poke it into the ground or leave it in a bucket of water and you'd do well to stop it rooting.
Other plants are more tricky and I'm gradually learning that there are many different techniques for propagating plants by cuttings, some better suited to certain plants than others. But still, I've spent a large part of the past week taking cuttings of willows, dogwoods, buddleia, privet, wild roses and more. Some I've just poked in the ground and hoped for the best, some are better protected in pots, currently in the polytunnel.



My fedge doesn't photograph well at the moment.
But just wait till summer
when it's hopefully in full leaf.

For today, I'm not going into the detail of which wood to take, where to cut, how to use rooting hormone. Instead, I'm concentrating on the cut and poke in the ground method. You can only really be this haphazard with plants such as willow which are determined to take root.


These days there is a trend for planting neatly geometric screens of purchased willow withies. The idea is that they root and grow into a living hedge/fence... a fedge.
I decided to take this idea, but to rusticise it, so my fedge (I think it would more appropriately be named a wedge, a willow fedge) is more rough and ready. It consists of stems thick and thin, long and short, straight, branched and crooked. I've created three wedges altogether, two of which will hopefully one day form a corridor. I also created a woom - that's my word for a wedge in a circle with a gap for the door. A willow room. Hopefully as it grows it will become a den for me. I intend to prune in the future to cultivate windows to overlook a pond and one to look out over the fenland landscape.


If it all works, it could be amazing. If it doesn't then it's only cost me a few hours work, which I enjoyed anyway.

The Cutting Edge of Gardening





Red dogwood
Just sticks poked into a pot, or a future forest?

The gardening industry must be rubbing their hands in glee. With just a bit of expert knowledge, the sort that every decent gardener of yesteryear would have, just a few plants can be reproduced many times over. Imagine if you put £1000 in a bank with the knowledge that in a couple of year's time it would repay you tenfold at least.
Well, in gardening terms, you just cut a little bit off one of your plants - in fact you do this anyway every time you prune or cut a hedge - but instead of throwing all the cuttings away, you plonk them into a pot or directly into the soil and wait. With a little patience, hey presto! You have many new plants. (OK, it's a bit more technical than that, but not a lot).
Most people, myself included, have missed out on this trick. They either lack the knowledge or lack the patience to wait a couple of years. Or both. They prefer to spend out now and have the instant gratification of a plant they can take home and place straight into their garden scheme.

However, all my gardening and land management here on the farm is on a somewhat bigger scale than I have been used to. If I purchased every plant fully grown, I'd have a choice between an empty garden or an empty bank balance!
The demonstration of soft fruit propagation which Steve gave at the last Veg Growers group has, however, sparked me into action. I don't really know what I'm doing. I try to teach myself on the internet to the point when I'm feeling a little confused, then I just have a go.

I know from doing conservation work in the past that if you cut a willow and poke it in the ground, chances are it'll grow. This has been used as a method for stabilising river banks. I know that there's a difference between hardwood cuttings and softwood cuttings. I know that different techniques are better for different plants, and that different techniques need to be applied at different times of the year to match in with the plant's growing habits. And that's about it...except that a rainy afternoon spent preparing cuttings in the polytunnel costs nothing, keeps me out of harm's way and, with a bit of luck, may yield many, many new plants for the future.



Laurels by the lorryload
and a little Wild Privet too

So, here is the product of last Sunday's pottering.


Budding buddleias

Rosa Rugosa - VERY spiky!

Flaming willow

The polytunnel was indeed a wise workplace to choose, as we had a belter of a storm circling around for much of the time, thunderclaps, lightning forks and hail by the bucketload. It certainly sounded loud in the polytunnel.
Anyway, all I need to do now is sit back until late autumn and hope that some of them have rooted. They will go outside in the spring and I'll dig the pots in a little so they don't dry up.

I reckon there's something to be said for the ways of the old gardeners. Looking back could well be the way forward.

Meanwhile, here's a peek at the soft fruit cuttings I took the weekend before. They've gone straight into the ground outside, though not without a little luxury. They have the only carpeted beds for miles around!