The Bean Forest

Monday 29th May
With a bout of summery weather on the cards, main job for the day was to get all the beans and peas planted outside. I rear most of them in modules to protect them from the attentions of slugs and voles. They quickly fill the little pockets of soil with roots and are soon ready to go out. I sink branches into the ground to grow them up. These branches come from winter's tree pruning and are helpfully and enthusiastically debarked by the Shetland sheep.
The young bean plants still need protection from slugs, so each gets its own cut down milk bottle or lemonade bottle as a mini cloche. This helps shelter them from the wind too and helps to harden them off.
This year I am growing Gigantes beans along with Runner Beans (I forget the variety), Borlottis and Pea Beans. All of these I use for drying. Then there are Cobra beans, my favourite for French green beans.

I do like the bean and pea patch. It adds height and interest to the garden.

In the gaps I grow sweetcorn, courgettes and dwarf beans.

Tuesday 30th May
The sheep have been crossing the electric fence with impunity, even the two little brown lambs. I began to suspect that it wasn't working properly, so today I dug out the voltage tester only to discover that there was actually no electricity running through half of the fence!

And so began the long process of tracking down the problem. First job is to walk the fence and check for any obvious breaks. With this eliminated, it gets trickier. The voltage can drop if there is too much connection with long, wet vegetation, so that by the end of the line the fence is very weak. So I walked the line, clearing vegetation and moving the fence clear. This increased the voltage slightly, but clearly wasn't the main problem.

I eventually worked out where the problem lay - in the sections of tape which link one side of the paddock to the other. What followed was several attempts to get the connection working properly. Each check necessitated a long walk back to turn the fence off at source. Thank goodness Sue was there to help.
Eventually I managed to get a current flowing all the way around the paddock where the sheep are feeding. Doubtless the lambs will charge through it a couple more times until they actually get a shock. After that they will be a bit more wary.

Wednesday 31st May
Look what started today. More in future posts.

June goes out with a splash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

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

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

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

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

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




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

Tomorrow it's July. Hard to believe.

One hell of a hail storm

21st June
Six chicks have now hatched and are fluffed up nicely in the incubator. There's no sign of anything happening to the other twelve eggs though, which is disappointing. We are only collecting them from two Ixworth hens though, so it took a couple of weeks to collect a clutch to go in the incubator.

I set up a broody box for them which included our new (second hand) electric hen. I am much happier using this than the anglepoise lamp we used to use. I was never quite sure I wouldn't come home to a molten plastic box or worse still.

The weather was good today so mowing was very much on the agenda. This is a job which feels very much like repainting the Forth Bridge, never ending! I don't mind doing it but it takes time away from other jobs.
In between mowing I took full advantage of the new neighbours' invitation to harvest their strawberries, which always appear to be ready before ours. Sue has dried a fair few and the rest are in the freezer waiting to be turned into jam, ice cream and yogurt.

22nd June
I am a bit surprised to report that we are up to 11 chicks. They are all safely in the broody box. The next batch of eggs will be in the incubator as soon as I have time to clean it out.

23rd June
The electric fence in the top paddock has been set on full bluff for a while now as the battery has no power in it. But the Shetland lambs have figured this out and hop through it with impunity. Within the confines of the paddock this is not really a problem since there is enough flimsy fence to still keep them where I want them. The problem is though that the lambs now have horns and I came home from work today to find one pathetically entangled. It was no great effort to set it free, but I decided that now would be a good time to move the lambs up with the adult Shetlands. The ewes' udders would have completely dried up by now and the adults need a little help keeping the grass down this year.

Before the move I did a little maintenance work on the electric fence which runs all round the bottom field. This one is mains powered and it's not a good idea to touch it! A couple of wooden posts needed replacing and I wanted to set up the strip grazing system again.

This was a couple of hours work, so at about 8pm I led the lambs down to be reunited with their mums and dad, Rambo. The two new lambs we bought from Church Farm went too. Introducing seven at once would share out the stress if there was to be any argie-bargie. As it was, the sheep mixed together very well...

... until the Shetland lambs started going straight through the electric fence and into the orchard.

This was more serious, as from there they could go absolutely anywhere if they so chose. They could also do a lot of damage to the trees, as Shetlands' favourite food is tree bark. I tested the fence and it was very weak.
A few older parts of wire had started to rust a little and in places the fence was running through very long grass indeed. It was possible that too much electricity was being lost along the fence. However, my poor understanding of the subject led me to believe that at least at the beginning of the fence the charge should still be strong. I tested it and it wasn't.
By now, the sheep were back out into the orchard again and it was raining heavily. I turned the fence off and decided to reconnect it where the lead-in wire comes in. It was while I was doing this that I received a rather sharp shock! My finger was tingling for several minutes afterwards. There was obviously power somewhere.
Still the power was low. I went right back to the energiser in the stable and reconnected the lead-in wire at that end. Still no difference.
There was no choice but to go all round the perimeter of the fence moving the posts inwards to shorter grass and pushing the long and very wet grass away from the base. By the time I got all the way round time was getting on and I was absolutely drenched. Not only was the rain coming down heavily but the water was travelling up my trousers from the sodden long grass. From there gravity took it back down into my boots which were squelching nicely.

I got back to the beginning and tested the power again. Still no difference. :-(

This was clearly going to need further investigation, but darkness was approaching so I took the decision to move the lambs back to the top paddock.
The whole evening had gone, I was drenched, the sheep were back in the same place and I now had two electric fences not working.
On the plus side... any suggestions?

24th June
The morning after the night before.
I always stay up ridiculously late on election nights. I'm addicted to the coverage. I'll keep away from the politics. Suffice to say that I'm glad I grow all my own food - it just might shield me from some of the worst effects of what's to come.

Good news today. At the fifth attempt I've finally managed to germinate some Pea Beans. I literally chucked loads of them into a seed tray and covered them in compost as a final last ditch attempt.

More good news. Sue has been away for a couple of days and now she is back. She came back to another swarm of bees. At a guess from the same hive as the last one. Sometimes they just keep swarming.
The swarm I caught a couple of days ago didn't stay in the end. By the morning the spare hive was completely empty. Hopefully we'll have more luck with this lot.

Final job for the day was to nip out the tomato side shoots. As well as those in the polytunnel I'm growing lots outside this year. This is always a risk and often comes to nothing, but if everything comes together we will have mountains of tomatoes at the end of the year. The first ones should be ready in the polytunnel in the not too distant future.

25th June

The videos, if they've worked, say it all.
I was working on the bean patch today, weeding, edging and planting out module grown plants where there were gaps. Only a couple of the kidney beans had come through so replacing these was the main job.
After that I set about erecting supports for the broad bean plants which are on the verge of collapsing under their own weight. Half way through this the heavens opened and I had to make a run for it into the polytunnel. This was to be no normal storm though. Hailstones absolutely pelted down for half an hour. Fortunately for you, in the name of the blog, I made a run back to the house to get my phone and record the event. I was literally running through about an inch of water and hailstones. My second drenching in three days.

When it finally eased off there was water everywhere and piles of hailstones.

I hadn't twigged that the brassica netting might be in trouble too. When I went back out to check all the birds and animals were okay I noticed that the aluminium poles were dangerously bent and the netting was weighed down with hailstones, which I had to scoop out by hand. It is late June and my hands are stinging from scooping up hailstones. Something is wrong here.



Fortunately the netting was strong enough not to tear and the poles sprung back into shape. Otherwise a fairly harmless but spectacular weather event could have been a bit of a disaster.

An island of isolation in the fog.

I spent most of Tuesday on electric fence maintenance. One of the wooden posts had snapped at the base and I wanted to move the fence in a little from the edge of the dyke to give it some clearance from the overgrown grass.
During the summer I split the sheep field into 6 sections and rotate the sheep through them. But for the winter I remove some of the electric fence so they have two or three sections.

Now you may think that if an electric fence is going to kill you, it would do so with a short, sharp shock. But no. The sole purpose in life of electric fence wire is to tangle itself into a completely unfathomable knot so you are far more likely to die by long. slow torture trying to disentanlge it.

Of course my decision to spend most of the day down in the sheep field had nothing to do with yesterday's sighting of a Corn Bunting down there! Unfortunately today was even murkier than yesterday. I couldn't even see the house from down in the field, not for the whole day. I enjoy days like this, just working away at my own pace in solitude. I did hear the corn bunting in flight once, and I occasionally heard yellowhammer and reed bunting too, but spotting anything today was always going to be tricky.

I did however see this very welcome visitor, probably my favourite bird to visit the farm in the winter.

I didn't see it fly in. It was just there, perched on the tractor machinery which Don has parked at the back corner of my land. It looked massive perched there in the gloom, but just as I raised my phone to my telescope it flew off, bouyant on its long wings. I managed to find it again on the far side of Don's field, perched all fluffed up, but it really was sitting on the edge of the fog. Anyway, that explains the quality of the photo.

There's been a big influx of Short-eared Owls into the east coast over the last couple of weeks. I was lucky enough to see one come in off the sea a couple of weeks ago on the Norfolk coast. I was hopeful that this winter we would again have them on the farm and hopefully this one will stay for a while and maybe be joined by one or two more.

And back to that piece of tractor machinery sitting at the bottom of my field and a tale I forget to tell you. A couple of weeks back I saw a red landrover driving along the back dyke. This is not too unusual. The farmer at the back lets the shooters onto his land. I normally make lots of noise when I see them, just to annoy them. I start hammering something or clanging my shovel loudly. But this landrover seemed to be on our side of the dyke and when it continued across the bottom of my land and then pulled to a halt, I quickly headed down the land to investigate and challenge them.
As I headed down through the long grass and the young trees, I saw two blokes with shotguns and lurchers walking through the crop field next to my land. They called to me to alert me that they were shooting. Well, you can imagine my reply!!! I most certainly can't repeat it here. I started running towards the landrover, impolitely and loudly 'requesting' that they leave my land. Three guys were presumably waiting to shoot anything flushed up by the others. It was fortunate I was there, as I flushed up a small covey of grey partridges and a couple of pheasants from the long grass which I leave deliberately for wildlife.  I'm fairly sure that had I not been there these would have been subjected to a volley of bullets, right over my land and with the sheep there too.These people think they can do whatever they want wherever they please. I wonder too whether their intention was hare coursing, to drive the hares over my land and into the short grass of Don's field next door.
Anyway, these idiots obviously knew they were in the wrong, for once they realised I wasn't friendly they rapidly jumped into the landrover and scootled off back across the field, picking the other two up as they went. What a shame I couldn't get close enough to get their number.
I ran back to the house, hoping that they would come back past along the road, but alas they headed the other way.
So that's why the tractor machinery now blocks the gap at the bottom. Not that I think the same people are likely to try that again.

A Prickly Problem...This'll Sort It Out!

Come on! Face The Camera!

Tuesday 21st August 2012

Oh dear, we broke the farmer's tractor!

Yesterday the farmer was in the ex-rape field next door cutting the vegetation along the dyke with his tractor. We thought nothing of it until he appeared asking us if we had a knife and scissors. The huge sheet of polythene which once covered our old stack of haybales had blown into the dyke at some point and was now entangled in the farmer's machinery! We did sort it out, everything was amicable and no lasting damage was caused. But the reason I tell you this is that the conversation brought to the fore another job which needed doing...

A Prickly Subject

Remember back in early spring, after Squiggle and Curl had recreated a scene from The Battle Of The Somme along one edge of the pig enclosure, I had a brilliant idea. Bring in the electric fence and plant the area with Jerusalem artichokes, then in the autumn I could just move the electric fence back again revealing a tasty harvest upon which the new piglets could feast.



Here you can see the old fence line
and the forest of thistles in the background.

Well, it almost worked, but instead of Jerusalem artichokes I got prickly thistles! Now, much as I  and the birds and the insects like the thistles, I need to keep on the right side of all those around me and the fluffy seed heads have started drifting through the air in the summer breeze.
I can't really see it being an issue, as the fields get pounded with herbicides, fungicides, pesticides...you name it... I even found out that they get a liberal sprinkling of slug pellets. No wonder the wildlife struggles. 

Anyway, clearing the thistles was a job which needed doing. So this morning, at first light, I switched off the electric fence and began the painstaking job of moving it the other side of the thistles. Fortunately pigs have a very good memory for where their boundaries used to run and take quite some time to realise that the fence is not still there. Nevertheless, I worked as quickly as I could until I could switch everything back on.





I then set to work flattening the thistles. I wasn't really appropriately dressed, with shorts and no socks, but my big feet made relatively short work of rendering the forest flat.

Next job was to send in the pigs to complete the trampling and dig out the roots. Pigs are remarkably tough and seem completely unaffected by prickles and thorns.

But first there was the invisible line to cross! Even the temptation of lush grass and tall vegetation was not enough, but a sprinkling of pig nuts soon proved too much temptation as the first brave soul ventured his snout into previously forbidden territory.

It wasn't long before all seven were burying themselves beneath the thistles, shoving each other out the way and tossing piles of thistles aside to get at the pignuts beneath.

So there you have it. Happy farmer. Happy pigs. Happy me.

And the goldfinches, butterflies, hoverflies and bees? Well, I make sure there's plenty enough food and habitat for them spread around the farm.



One, Two, Three....Seven



Friday 25th May 2012
Hot, Hot, Hot.



Someone obviously got out of the wrong side of the perch this morning! Two of the teenagers suddenly started to behave all grown up, squaring off against each other and even jumping up in the air, claws stretched ahead.

Onto important matters. I left you all on tenterhooks about the piglets. This was a deliberate ploy to increase my viewing figures, learned from the likes of Big Cat Diary and Planet Earth Live.

To tell the truth, I wasn't really all that worried. The great escape was probably accidental, borne through inquisitiveness and an inability to find the way back in. Mind you, I still hear tales of the piglet lost by the previous owners which was finally shot after wandering the countryside for nine months!

All still present and correct, mum and piglets very happy to be together. Today was a real scorcher, which was great news. It meant that the pig family spent almost the entire day in the shade of their ark, leaving me free to turn off the leccy fence and do what needed to be done.

The bottom wire of the fence needed to be dropped one notch to piglet height, but this made even more necessary the job of trimming the grass under the wire.

In theory, the battery to start the strimmer had been charged and it should be all systems go, so when I just got a slight whirr instead of a chugging engine and a whizzing strimmer, my heart sank.  

More machine problems. Just then though, a cough and a splutter (the strimmer, not me) and it stuttered into action after its winter break.

We quickly made friends and a couple of hours later it was job done.

Weaning Day

Saturday 5th May 2012

Yesterday was a wearing day. Nothing to do with the smallholding, but I had work in the morning and another appointment at the hospital in the afternoon. Everything was OK, but it was an emotionally draining day.

So it was that I blearily woke up, still in my smarter work clothes, on the sofa at 4:20am! Apart from a few showers, the weather was pleasant enough to work outside today - and that's what I did, from half past 4 in the morning until weariness beat me at 7 in the evening. 

Weaning piglets

Main job for the day was to wean the piglets from Daisy, their loyal but worn out mum.

Last time I weaned the piglets off their mum was the first time I had done it and I didn't really know what to expect. I had an ingenious plan to erect an electic fence to create a new enclosure next to the wooden fenced pen. A gate could be unscrewed and Daisy tempted into the new area, then I could screw the gate back on and mother and litter would be separated. The plan actually worked like a dream!

Having never erected an electric fence before, I researched as much as I could and found a very friendly company in Scotland who answered all my questions. Out of interest, an electric fence does not need to run in a loop to make a circuit. It works by completing a circuit through anything that touches it, through the ground and into a metal rod driven into the ground at the business end of the circuit.

But still I was unsure of myself and so I put it off until it really had to be done. I started by connecting it up around the inside of the wooden fenced enclosure, so that the pigs could learn about this new boundary without being able to panic and pass straight through it. This resulted in a few shocked squeals until they learned, which did not take too long.

However, by the time everything was ready, the piglets were gone nine weeks old and Daisy was thoroughly fed up with them. Her teats were scarred (piglets have needle-like teeth) and she needed a rest. It is almost impossible to keep the sow's weight up when she is feeding a full litter, but it wasn't long before she came back into very good condition.

We had read all about providing the piglets with 'creep feed' to ease them onto a solid diet, but our enquiries suggested this was not necessary. In fact, from the age of about two weeks the piglets had been attempting to eat solid food, and by weaning they were all tucking in and competing enthusiastically, even with mum!

So we had learned from our first litter. Commercially piglets are weaned off the sows much earlier, but it is much better to leave them with her till 8 weeks. But we knew that we needed to be ready to separate them at this age and not beyond.

Daisy has stayed in relatively good condition with this second litter and I suspect that they almost weaned themselves anyway.



On the other side of the fence
I've sown the seeds
of a late autumn feast for the pigs.
Daisy has enough grass to be going on with
... for now.

Before tempting Daisy away from her offspring, I had a plan to make some adjustments to the route of the electric fence. This was a process which involved much walking up and down the fence, lifting and shifting the plastic posts which hold the wire.

The idea is to create an area where I can plant all the spare Jerusalem artichokes left from last year, as well as a few seed potatoes and maybe some other fodder crops. When the time comes later in the year, I will move the electric fence again so that these become accessible to the pigs. They will love being able to snout around and find food naturally. Besides, Jerusalem artichoke is a great food for pigs. Unlike potatoes, its nutrients are just as available to pigs when uncooked.

The Grass Really Is Greener On The Other Side

Daisy followed the feed bucket straight throught the gap before the piglets even realised what was going on. Once through, Daisy set about the task of munching every blade of grass she could get into her mouth, while the piglets could only look on from the other side of the fence!

And so it was that the piglets spent their first night in the ark on their own.