Strawberry Moon Solstice or The Honey Moon Buzz

It's been a long day, 16 hours 51 minutes 30 seconds to be precise.

An awful lot has happened so the day deserves a blog post all to itself.

Allegedly the first day of summer too, though nobody told the weather gods.

Sunrise was 4.36am today. I didn't get up to see it, though I was up about an hour later. However, it wasn't till the afternoon that the sun finally put in an appearance after a thoroughly damp morning.

There's a full moon tonight too, a June full moon being known as a Strawberry moon. It's a nice name for a moon which is supposed to coincide with the start of strawberry picking season... if you are an Algonquin Indian in North America, which is where the name comes from.
Here my strawberries aren't quite ready yet, though I've been offered the chance to pick all that I want from next door this year.

One newspaper article described a June full moon coinciding with summer solstice as a "once in a life time" occurrence. They clearly don't understand statistics. As full moons come round every 28 days, surely you'd be unlucky if there was only one in your life time!

When I checked, the last time this occurred was 22 June 1967 - when I was almost one year of age. If I live to nearly 96 I'll see it again on June 21st 2062.

First Red Duke of Yorks
So with the strawberries stubbornly refusing to ripen I went for the next best thing and dug up my first outdoor grown new potatoes of the year. I could have waited longer and got bigger tubers, but there will be enough and the first potatoes of the year always feel special. I love the deep red colour of Red Duke of York and I love the fact that this early variety is so floury and makes excellent chips. For the classic new potato taste, though, I've grown Dunluce outside this year and Arran Pilot in the polytunnel, the last of which we have just consumed.

Two new lambs
First smallholding business of the day was to drop by in Upwell to pick up a bone saw and a few other bits and pieces. I don't do much butchery but it was going second hand and always handy to have.
Then on to Church Farm Rare Breeds Centre in Stow Bardolph to pick up two lambs. These are just  for fattening up - the farm buys in orphan lambs as this is their main attraction and income during the spring. Luckily for me, it means they have a supply of ready weaned, tame sheep all ready to go just as the grass is getting long. They'll join the Shetlands for five months before going off to slaughter, so I won't be giving them names or getting too attached to them.

Arthur and the turkeys
The turkey poults stayed in this morning. With the weather being cold and damp I thought it best to play safe. One of them jumped the stable wall with mum though and spent the day having some quality one to one time with her. The weather brightened up for the afternoon and the rest of the poults came out. Arthur joined them, He gets on well with the turkey family.

There's a but of a buzz round here
I'd been up for about eight hours and still there was half the day to go. Now another name for the Strawberry Moon is the Honey Moon, which turned out to be a far more appropriate name for today.
After a little early afternoon nap (it was, after all, a very, very long day), I took the dogs out to check on the sheep and turkeys. But something was amiss. There was a buzz in the air. And I mean a BUZZ.
Thousands and thousands of bees were swarming around hive number one. The cloud of bees stretched over toward the veg patch. There must be a swarm somewhere but I just couldn't get close enough to see. I gingerly skirted round, taking a very wide berth, until I eventually came across this.

Incoming!

The bees always swarm when Sue is not at home, so muggins here gets to don the bee suit and collect them up. While I was getting ready, the bees settled onto a wooden fence post. Not the ideal swarm location. There would be no shaking them into a box or simply cutting off the end of a branch. Swarm bees are not supposed to be aggressive and they did in fact allow very close approach. But there are limits to their patience and when you scoop them into a box by the glove full, there are some who suspect you of trying to hurt their queen who is somewhere at the centre of things )or hopefully by now in the box).

A solstice chick
Remember I said it was a long day. Well there was more. For when I came in from recapturing the bees one of the Ixworth chicks had hatched and several more were pipping. By tomorrow there could be eighteen of them to look after!



And so I sit here watching the first episode of the new Top Gear I've managed to catch up with before I turn over for the start of the England Match. It's now a beautiful evening to be watching the beautiful game.
When the sun sets at 21.28 I'll go and put the chickens away and hopefully get to admire the Strawberry Honey Moon.

In between Unst and Uist

Finally back from Unst, Shetland, two days after seeing the Green Warbler

I missed basket weaving at the weekend but

Sue made this lovely fish to hang over the veg patch pond.

You can see too the reflection of one of the

willow dragonflies she made.

17th May
Mangetout picked again. Growing it in the polytunnel has been brilliant. We get a basket full every other day. I've underplanted it with sweetcorn and squash now, so once those get bigger it'll be whipped out just in time to continue harvesting from the outdoor plants.

I separated the last two lambs from their mums this morning. Weaning the lambs is a big step for them but they all seem to be doing ok on their own, there's just quite a lot of loud bleating at the moment! The one looking up at the camera is Rameses. He's given up asking us for his bottle feed now.

Finally we have a third gosling. I don't get goose nest sitting strategy. Unlike other birds, they seem to lay in each others' nests, all sit on each others' eggs, sometimes two on one nest and the eggs seem to hatch one at a time and very unpredictably. I did find one egg rolled away from the nest which had a full grown chick inside. There always seems to be a major issue for goslings cracking their way out.

18th May
I don't often moan, but today was a really crappy day. Work things. Best forgotten about. Maybe if the government set an example and valued teachers (not to mention doctors, nurses...) then parents might too. At least I've got things like this to come home to.

and this...

19th May
Lawns mowed, flower mixes sown.
The hen we put on ten chicken eggs a while back has done a hopeless job of sitting. Today I found her with yolk on her feathers and when I looked in the broody coop there are now only five eggs! What's more, they seem to have rolled all over the place so I'll be surprised if we get any hatch at all.
We'll start collecting the Ixworth eggs and try out the new incubator we bought a while back. It's more intensive for us but should give a bit better result.
20th May
I really struggle to grow sunflowers. Occasionally they spring up randomly round the garden, which I like, but when I sow them straight in the ground they either don't germinate or get eaten before they get a chance to get going. So instead I plant them in modules and plant them out when they're about a foot tall. I planted some at the back end of last week in amongst the mangel wurzels, where I also planted my sweetcorn today. But something ate most of them! To be honest, I suspect the peacock, as I know last year I had to protect my sweetcorn plants from the girl.
Anyway, it's a slower process but I've put tree protectors round the sunflowers and then netted the whole bed until everything gets growing really well.

On a different note, I'm pretty sure we have Ash dieback on the farm. It'll hopefully take a long time to impact on the old trees but some of the young saplings have completely died. Others though, are shooting healthy branches from the base again, so we'll see what happens with that one. I'm currently planting lots of quick growing trees and shrubs such as elder and willow as well as allowing hawthorns to self seed.

21st May
Sue was busy with her bees most of the day. She had to check if the rape honey they've collected had begun to set, as if you leave it too long it turns concrete. In the afternoon she attended another of the West Norfolk group's excellent training courses.
I meantime had a big day in the veg garden, only interrupted several times by the odd one of Sue's angry bees. Mostly I just got pestered but I did endure one sting to the head. I knew this one was going to sting by the buzzing which was more than just inquisitive. Hopefully next month Sue will be able to change the queens and passify the buy little Amazonians!

Back to the veg. I sowed all my climbing beans in pots - Borlotti, Armstrong, Gigantes, Kentucky Wonder Wax, Cobra and Pea Bean. I prefer climbing beans as they use vertical space and give form to the garden. They are also easier to pick, don't hang on the ground getting dirty and chewed by slugs, and crop over a longer period. They also dry better at the end of the season.

My carrot bed had completely disappeared beneath emerging marigold seedlings! But once I did some careful hoeing, there was actually a visible line of carrots and one of spring onions. Carrots seem to be extremely unpredictable so ay crop will be deemed a success. I've got them growing in a fleece frame this year so hopefully I'll get to enjoy my crop rather than simple feeding carrot fly larvae. The unpredictability of carrots is summed up by the fact that the line of Atomic Red I planted outside seem to have failed yet in the polytunnel the same seeds have all come through. It can't be that conditions outside are terrible as the other variety has come well. I just don't understand it.
Anyway, I have optimistically sowed more line of carrots and more lettuces to keep the succession going.

While I had the hoe out I uncovered the turnip and kohl rabi bed. It is apparent that all the seedling have been munched by flea beetles. The two plants which had got past them I decided to hoe up so I could start over. Maybe sowing later will have better luck, but just in case I'm sowing I modules tto so I can transplant when the plants are large enough to outgrow the chewing little insects.
I've also interplanted the rows with tagetes seedlings (French marigolds) as this has worked in the past. These pretty flowers smell strongly and are avoided by most creepy crawlies. Unfortunately they are tender, so I raise trays of them in the polytunnel to plant out about now when we should be frost free. This does mean that they can't protect early sowings though.

And lastly, I've taken my first harvest of new potatoes from the polytunnel. Here is the product of just one plant in the basket I made last week. They're not as small as they look - it's a big basket!

We literally stopped using the stored potatoes last week - they have started to soften and to sprout a lot. This means that our potatoes now last us right through the year.

Coming next: Going Completely Cuckoo on North Uist

The first (and only) chicks of the year

The Crested Cream Legbar cockerel went to cockerel heaven a few weeks back now. This means that we are no longer able to produce pure Cream Legbar chicks, which is a shame as they are a lovely looking bird and lay the most wonderful blue eggs.
However, the young cockerels are just too 'rampant' at a very early age and do their very best to maraud about the chicken pen upsetting all the other inhabitants. Typical loutish teenagers really.
Not only that, but they don't make a particularly meaty meal at the end of it. Here the comparison with teenagers has to stop.

Our Cream Legbar cockerel has, however left us with the legacy of several blue egg laying hens (blue eggs, not blue hens), which together with the other eggs makes for an attractive half dozen eggs.

Now, if there are any egg colour genetic experts out there, your input would be most welcome. For the question is, will the mixed offspring of the Cream Legbar hens, whether first or second generation, still lay blue eggs? Or will the cockerel's genes dominate? Or will the eggs come out a different colour altogether?

We don't need any more chickens at the moment, since we are getting up to 16 eggs a day already (plus duck, goose and guinea fowl eggs) and it's still only March.
But some friends of ours wanted some hens to lay blue eggs, so a month ago Sue placed 12 blue eggs in the incubator. The day before I headed to Latvia, they started hatching and we ended up with 6 healthy chicks.
The picture above shows them all packed up in a little box ready to head off in the car to their new home. It would appear that 5 of them come from our barred cockerel and 1 from the white cockerel. Let's hope that most of them turn into hens and that some of them eventually lay blue eggs.

Trying for Goslings

Just a quick update on the goose situation. We have snuck 6 eggs away from the Giant Dewlap geese and placed them in the incubator. It's only a small incubator, so half a dozen goose eggs is a bit of a squeeze. I'm not holding out much hope, but you never know.

But two nights ago we had a potential disaster.
Sue woke up at 6.30am to find that the electricity had tripped off. I had come up to bed at 12.30, which means that for up to 6 hours the eggs had no heat.
I asked for advice on a Facebook group (Goose, Goose, Gander) and the unanimous opinion was that they should still be okay. Two reasons. One, the centre of the egg should retain warmth for that long. Two, unlike chicken eggs, some people even advise cooling goose eggs for a short period every day.
We'll see.

We've also been stealing the eggs from the Embdens' nest for our own consumption and replacing them with Giant Dewlap eggs.

The nest is now large enough for two to sit

I don't know whether geese can count, but they seem to sit once they get up to about 18 eggs. Since the girl Embdens were coming under a bit too much mating pressure, we've now stopped taking eggs from their nest and in the last few days they have started sitting. Last year their efforts came to nothing, so we're not building our hopes up this year either. It's just that right now we have quite enough goose eggs to be going on with and it's better to let the girls sit.

Don't come any closer!

Elvis a mum again!!

This is becoming a bit of a recurrent theme on this blog.

Just over three weeks ago Elvis started to sit on her eggs and peck any hand that came near, so we placed ten blue eggs under her, in the hope that this time we might get a few more female Crested Cream Legbars.

They were due to hatch on Saturday evening, a special birthday present for Sue, or Sunday morning. Late Saturday afternoon the guinea fowl were inquisitively hanging around Elvis's coop. Goodness knows how or why, but they always seem to know when a hatching is imminent. I guess they could hear the pipping of the chicks inside the eggs.
When I went to lock up the hens on Saturday evening, I too was fairly certain I could hear a chick and on Sunday morning the first fluffy heads were poking out from under Elvis's feathers.
But Elvis was still sitting tight, so presumably there were more eggs waiting to hatch.

Fast forward to today and I was finally able to count seven chirpy chicks. Elvis had added one of her own eggs to the blue ones we had placed under her.


Elvis has hatched a right motley crew.

Only one, though, is a female Cream Legbar. The good thing about Cream Legbars is that they are autosexing - that means that, unusually in the chicken world, male and female chicks actually look different and can be told apart. As for the rest, well I guess the lady Cream Legbars have been mixing it up a bit with the other young cockerels, for none of them looks pure. We're not too bothered - if we were, we would have isolated the Legbar trio before collecting eggs from them. Goodness knows how one of them seems to have come out pure white!

Elvis moves out (again)

Elvis watches over her growing chicks

Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Elvis. But for those who don't know her (yes, her!), Elvis is a small black hen who has been with us since we moved into the farm. She is a Silkie, a breed of chicken which oddly has black skin.
For us, the important thing about Silkies is that they make wonderful broody hens. We have hatched many eggs under Elvis and she makes a brilliant mum. She has raised chickens, guinea fowl and even a brood of ducks. We haven't yet tried to put a goose egg under her!

Back in the first days of November

So it was back in October that Sue placed eggs under Elvis and in the last days of that month she hatched out four healthy chicks. Elvis has been a devoted mother to them ever since and they have grown into four healthy and very feisty chicks.
Maybe because it is winter, Elvis has stayed with this clutch longer than usual, but yesterday morning when I opened up the houses she came strolling out with the other hens.
The four chicks had spent their first night alone.
And today Elvis spent most of her time on her own, occasionally flirting with the younger cockerels. It probably won't be too long before she decides she wants to sit again.
Maybe time for that goose egg!

New Chicks on The Block

Friday 28th September 2012

I present you with more unashamedly cute pics of Elvis and her young family. If I remember correctly, I don't actually think we put any of her own eggs under her, but she doesn't know that.

Strangely, though, when we tried to introduce a couple of incubator hatched chicks to her, even though they were exactly the same age, she was having none of it and we had to step in quickly to remove them again. (Remember those blue eggs that took so long to replace after 100% infertility the first time round - well we've got two out of six this time.)



Chicks have a habit of poking their heads out from anywhere.

Chicks available in a right assortment of colours.
They are already getting their wing feathers.
I wonder what they'll look like when they grow up.

Meanwhile, we still have eleven keets (guineafowl chicks), which is absolutely amazing given that we've left them pretty much to be reared naturally. They are now capable of quite sustained flight with controlled landing, even onto the top rail of the fence. This is fortunate as they're now all too big to squeeze through the chicken wire. They are quite independent at times and already have some flank spotting and feather barring.

It may sound very cruel, but by early next year we should be able to pick off some of the males for eating. That is, after all, our main reason for keeping them. That and clearing insects from the veg plots and orchard.

An Edible Hedge, A Carrot and some Cross Eggs

Friday 21st September 2012

The first really wet day for a while, so just a few odds and sods events to catch up on.

Cross Eggs
I was re-reading one of my books on keeping chickens the other night when I came across a really simple idea to solve a problem I've been having.  For Priscilla, as you know, is sitting on a clutch of eggs which will hopefully all hatch into fine hens for me. But there has been a problem - other chickens laying eggs next to her which she then carefully rolls across the straw and under her feathers. Trouble is, they'll never hatch as they'll be adandoned once the main clutch have hatched. Meanwhile, she is leaving me with too few eggs to sell. But this problem stops today. For each egg under Priscilla now has a large pencil cross on it. I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. From now on, all newly laid eggs will be easy to identify.



The edible hedgerow,
fenced off from marauding sheep.

The Edible Hedgerow
Last winter I planted an edible hedgerow, composed of hazels, elders, sloes, blackberries, crab apples, dog rose, wild pear, cherry plum and hawthorn. In a few year's time I'll hopefully be able to potter around in the garden and return with baskets full of wild hedgerow fruits to turn into jams and wines.
However, Number Ten and Number Eighteen (The Lambs) have completely misinterpreted the term edible hedgerow and, since they have been moved to a new area of grazing, have been trying to eat the whole hedge! Nothing that a bit of temporary fencing couldn't sort out though.









And finally, remember those rows and rows of carrots that I sowed earlier in the year to no avail? Well, I'd pretty much forgotten about them and left the beds to the flowering annuals I'd planted to confuse the carrot fly. But just look what I came across the other day! No prizes for beauty, but it may find its way onto the bench at the smallholders' produce show next weekend.

Chicken Diary Part III

This little fella (or lass) looks very grumpy.
Hatched last night.

Polands
When our last batch of a dozen blue eggs all failed to hatch, we took six white eggs as part replacement. And just look what emerged overnight!

This is a Poland and will grow up to have the most ridiculous hairstyle. I'm not really into fancy chickens, but these are ultra friendly, small (so low feed costs) and lay white eggs. Another two eggs are peeping, but I'll be a bit disappointed if I only get three.

These Indian Games have me a bit confused.

When is a hen not a hen?
Down in the chicken pen, our oldest two Indian Games don't look quite right for their breed. Obviously related in some way, but not the real deal. The hen has started crowing. Although this can happen, it is entirely possible that she will be a he! I was going on feather colouration, but if they're not quite what they're supposed to be...
Meanwhile the cock has not crowed once! Matters should become clearer in the next couple of weeks, but a realignment of loyalties may be needed as it is unlikely we will keep the cockerel (which may actually be the ultra friendly ex-hen).

Egg diary

Things are looking a little better on the egg production front now. We are getting three a day and sometimes four. I am still keeping my chicken diary and have worked out that Speckledy lays medium, speckled eggs, Honey lays large, pale eggs and Chestnut lays slightly dark eggs with pale speckles. Elvis lays very distinctive, small pale eggs.

Intermittently other eggs appear too, so I've implemented a system of isolating a couple of chickens at a time to see who is laying what. This morning I think Mrs Brown laid an egg. If not her, then it was Hazel.

The five Welsummers and one of the younger Indian Games
at the entrance to their self-made den.

How to catch 26 chickens
Yesterday morning Sue and I had great fun and games. I wanted to dust all the chickens for lice now that they have finished their course of worm treatment (see, it's not all cute, cuddly rural idyll). This meant catching each one and holding upside down by the legs (this is not cruel) while Sue administered generous amounts of powder.
I remembered not to let them all out at sunrise, and at 7 o'clock we began. The tactic was to open the door to a henhouse and grab the first chicken to exit. This worked very smoothly for the old hens, even the cockerel who has some quite sizeable spurs to avoid.

But the youngsters fairly quickly cottoned on to what was happening and retreated to the parts of their house too distant for my reach. We managed to do about half of them, but the only way to catch the rest was to grab them as they shot through the door.
But these chickens are more intelligent than the average chicken!

Two managed to bolt past us and evade our grip. They then took refuge in the den they've constructed for themselves, where they are totally uncatchable. However, eventually a combination of pestering, poking, cadjoling and chasing came together and the job was done.

They may have lost a bit of dignity, but all are now spick-and-span and none the worse for wear.

Next time we catch a chicken it may well be one for the pot!

And finally...
When did these two grow so big?

Eggs-asperation

Wednesday 13th June 2012

Before my tales of woe, this is my first significant harvest of the year.
They were lovely with sausages.

Eggs-asperation
Well, the chickens are down to one measly egg a day between the lot of them and I really don't know what's going on. Since they were laying at full capacity on the shortest day of the year, I suspect they've just gone off lay as it approaches the longest day of the year...ummmm...something wrong there, isn't it supposed to be the other way round?

Not only that. Remember that dozen beautiful blue eggs I collected about three and a half weeks ago. They're now three days late hatching...in other words, scrambled and fried! Not a single hatchling out of twelve. Something must have gone seriously wrong, either at the chicken end of things or at our incubator end.

As the for chicks which we have managed to hatch over the last few attempts. The vast majority seem to be cockerels! Only four new hens to lay eggs out of fifteen chicks that we did actually manage to hatch.

Let's hope that Chick of Elvis, who has somehow managed to acquire NINE eggs to sit on, has a bit more luck. They'll be hybrids, not the beautiful mixed flock of rare breed hens which I am aiming for, but at least they might lay some eggs!

So overall not going too well on the egg front.

Slugging it to the slugs!
If only they were like slugs. It seems that for every one I chop in half with the trowel another two spawn. Tonight, in one hour, I got over SEVEN HUNDRED of the blighters. Multiply that by one nibble each and it's a lot of damage. So my plan is to have a concentrated attack on them every evening, which usually means means me getting a drenching. They've certainly enjoyed the wet conditions this year. And to think, last year I only saw about a dozen all year. They must have been lying dormant in the soil.

Look what they've done to my lovely Globe Artichoke seedlings.
They got past the milk carton.
I've now applied a liberal sprinkling of slug deterrent - just in time.

Workin' five till nine!

Saturday 12th May 2012
Three minutes of light rain late afternoon prevented this from being the first completely dry day since the hosepipe ban.

Last night I went to bed with 6 new chicks and two peeping eggs. Both eggs had small holes in, but I wasn't sure if it was getting a bit late for the chicks to force their way out.
But not to worry. At 5 o'clock this morning, there were two broken egg shells and two more chicks. They actually continue to gain nourishment from the yolk sac for the first 24 hours after they hatch, so I'll leave them in the incubator for most of the day until their feathers have dried out. Then they can join the other six.
One of the other eggs got smashed by the chicks stumbling around. There was a young embryo in there, but for some reason it had not grown. The other 3 eggs are showing no signs of life.
So I have four Cornish Indian Game chicks and four Welsummer chicks.
I will be able to breed the Indian Games with the two teenagers of this type. A project for the future. For the moment, the plan is to breed the hens with our cockerel to produce the next generation of meat birds. The Welsummers (well, at least the females) can look forward to a long life of laying nice dark brown eggs for me.
Overall then a 66% hatching rate, which is considerably better than we were doing with eggs delivered through the post.
Now to find somewhere to buy some more Cream Crested Legbars (blue eggs!)

Five till Nine
A dry day. And a Saturday. Better make the most of it.
That I certainly did, having been pretty much stuck inside, or at least unable to work the soil, for quite a few weeks now.

First job was to empty the wheelbarrow of the weeds pulled from the sorrel and horseradish bed. This is where the pigs come into their own. Perennial weeds are not good on the compost heap, but the pigs love them, especially clover and dandelion roots. Anything they don't eat gets trodden down to nothing.

The geese, on the other hand, have not been doing their job. They are neither laying eggs or keeping on top of the paddock grass. Sue got to work on the mower, ploughing through the sward that used to be a front lawn... until a ghastly plume of rubbery smoke billowed from underneath. A close inspection revealed a willow stick jammed up underneath, but once removed things did not sound quite right. I'm no good at mechanical stuff, but the blade drive belt did not seem to be following the right course - though I had no idea where it should be going.
I decided to gingerly tackle the rest of the grass, as it was in danger of becoming totally unmanageable if we had to wait for the mower to be fixed. I successfully tackled the longest of the grass and moved onto the shorter grass which I had already cut last week. Typically, after about 5 minutes, the belt snapped completely. So I guess it will be an early service for the machine.

Before all this happened, I had begun the Herculean task of tackling this...

... the spare veg patch.

Unlike the potager, my main veg patch which is organised into a geometric design of 52 veg beds, this patch is to be the straightforward, functional one to house all the spare veg and the crops which demand oodles of space.

In here belong rows of maincrop potatoes, interspersed with sowings of all the spare parsnip seeds which won't be viable next year, as well as beetroots to sell or to grow big for the pigs. Wigwams of runner beans and rows of French beans will provide fresh green pods as well as pulses for the winter.

A bed too, for all those spare onion sets and garlic cloves, and for maincrop carrots to store over winter.

Then the fodder crops. I've already extolled the virtues of mangel wurzels and this year I'm intercropping them with chicory, apparently a favourite of pigs.

Finally a glorious selection of cucurbits - summer and winter squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, all growing in a sea of flowers and in the shade of towering sunflowers.

Three Sisters
Some of the trailing squashes, such as trombolino, will form part of the Three Sisters planting scheme. I have read various reports on this system of planting, ranging from the enthusiastic to the sceptical. Certainly very trendy, based on South American Indians' system of growing sweetcorn, beans and squashes together. It seems to be a good use of space and light and, in theory, the plants are complementary in terms of nutrients and light requirements. However we are not in South America, so I will give it a try and make my own judgements. I'll let you know!


So, ambitious plans for this patch of ground, but how to get it ready? In the past it's been turned with a tractor twice, it's been weedkillered (despite by better judgement), it's been power-harrowed, but every time the weeds have jumped straight back in with renewed vigour. In fact, many of these mechanical treatments actually propagated the worst of the weeds, such as dandelions, dock and couch grass, by dividing up the roots.

There was nothing else for it. This weekend's task was going to require dogged determination, hard graft, more determination and more hard graft.
And, to help out, call in Mr Rotavator!

Six new chicks

Friday 11th May 2012

A fine start to the day, the first time I've seen the sun break the horizon for a while.

Half a dozen eggs
By the time I awoke there were two chicks, one of each variety, and through the course of the morning I was entertained by the emergence of a further four. Yesterday's chick was fluffy enough to come out of the incubator into a brood box... which I had not got ready! Oops!

We have a bit of a production line on chicks at the moment, from the incubator to the brood box for the new chicks, onto the box with the two French Copper Marans, who now have most of their feather and will be ready to go outside soon. And then there's the 'teenagers', as we have collectively called them. The four chicks with attitude in their own coup in the chicken enclosure. In between watching the chicks hatch and making a new brood box, I let them out for a run around. They pushed through the long grass exploring, every now and then coming face-to-face with a guinea fowl and invariably being put in their place.

Thus my morning was pretty much spent on chicks.

It was interrupted once when I heard a Reed Warbler singing from the edge of the rape field behind the pond. A slightly unusual place for a reed warbler, but presumably it is freshly arrived and checking out the area to set up a territory.

Before I went to work for the afternoon, I went to round up the teenagers, only to find them back in their coup, inside, and huddled together in one of the nesting boxes. I guess something in the big wide world must have given them a fright!!

In the evening, a long overdue trip to Morrison's (we are not completely self-sufficient, especially at this lean time of year) was delayed slightly as we could not find Gerry to bring him in. He spends a lot of time in the dykes and in the fields, and if he is hunting he completely ignores us. After an hour of wandering around calling his name, he appeared from nowhere on the patio door step, with vole! After a successful hit on the Morrison's evening bread price reductions (freezer now topped up again - hardly worth making our own when we can get the nice loaves for 19p each), we returned home seeing two Barn Owls on the way, then a Short-eared Owl close to the road by Shell Bridge, just near the farm. It seems that some of these Short-eared Owls do not realise they should have moved way North by now. Maybe they are not going home.

On our return, two more eggs were peeping, with small holes pecked in the shells. But as the evening wore on, it looked less and less likely that these last two would make it out of their calcium coccoons. It is tempting to give them a helping hand, but this usually causes problems for them, so we now let nature take its course.

So, eventually, I went to bed on a cliffhanger!

and then there were seven.

Tuesday 8th May 2012
After a night of rain, the smallest hole in the clouds hints at a sunrise.

And then there were seven...
Life after the childcatcher.

A night of heavy rain created a quagmire in the pig enclosure. Just imagine if I'd had to catch them in this!

First job of the day was to move all the seedlings back out, indoor to greenhouse, greenhouse to coldframe, coldframe to sheltered outside position.

Just as I finished that job, I heard the beeping of a lorry reversing into the yard.
The polytunnel! ... All 28 packages of it. Now I just need to wait for a warm, sunny weekend with no wind. Should be up by August then!

The calendar reminded me, too, that today was day 19 for the incubator eggs. Two days to go before due date. This is important, since now they need to stop being turned and I need to raise the humidity in the incubator. With a bit of luck, we'll improve our hatching success rate this time.


The weather was nothing to shout about today, but it was nothing to shout at either. It actually stayed dry enough for me to get out and plant a few more seeds in the veg beds.

I've always achieved 100% success with germinating broad beans, but this time it looks like I'm down to about 50%. It seems a long time ago that I poked these seeds into the ground - I seem to remember them sitting in very dry ground for a couple of weeks, since when they've been sodden. No real surprise, then, that they didn't all get through. So today I filled the gaps. This will count as my second sowing of broad beans, ensuring that they do not all crop at once.
The pak choi seedlings have not fare at all well either. I suspect slugs this year. This is one vegetable where seed packets do not seem to contain a century's supply of seed! Anyhow, I have resown the seeds and applied a liberal sprinkling of slug granules (not the type which poison everything, but clay pellets which the slugs shouldn't like to crawl over). As I trimmed the (now very long) grass edging to the bed, it became apparent where the slugs were living. They have clearly enjoyed a month of rain, as well as my pak choi plants. 

Last seeds to be sown today were some of the quick growing brassicas - radishes and turnips, which get sown every few weeks to give a constant supply.

I am painfully aware that there are more seeds which need to go in soon (well, last week really) but a small delay won't do much harm. They won't get far until the weather improves anyway.
But the native weeds have really been enjoying the weather. Their seeds have been laying in the soil since last year and got off to an early start. Now they are racing ahead of all useful plants. That reminds me, I must do a post soon on "weeds", some of which I actually encourage in the right place.

The soil today was perfect for weeding though, even the most deeply rooted dandelions and docks coming straight out, roots and all. So that little job kept me busy till 8 in the evening, when I only stopped because the builder came round to discuss our forthcoming upheaval.

Welcome To The World!

A Celebration of Spring Growth

Today, two of our dark brown eggs hatched - French Copper Black Marans. After our dismal attempts at hatching eggs, and with 2 of these already being smashed courtesy of Royal Mail, we were just about ready to give up on these eggs and the whole idea of trusting our postal system with delivering fragile eggs.

Your old home is needed. Out you go!

2 Crested Cream Legbars and 2 Cornish Dark Indian Game chicks take on the outside world. It didn't take long to start squabbling over a worm!

Meanwhile, in the veg garden, fending for themselves...


Glad I held off with the potatoes, or I'd have been busy heaping soil
on new sprouts to protect them from the frost.

 

Parsnips pushing through



Turnips should give a quick crop







Broad beans always seem to take an eternity to come up



 

Up come the peas

And the first asparagus - two different types. I won't harvest much this year, but from next year I can take as much as I like till about June.

The natives are well advanced now.

I love Red Dead-Nettle,
but not as much as the bees.

 

And in the orchard the young plums are in full blossom.

 

While, in the protection of the greenhouse...

These young lavenders are doing brilliantly.
Reckon I should get well over 100 plants
for the price of a packet of seeds.

Young poached-egg plants,
excellent for bees and hoverflies.
They will go under the fruit trees where the hoverfly larvae will munch any nasty aphids.

and how many Gypsophila plants will I have?

All my pepper seedlings are looking very healthy this year.

Back in the herb bed the Angelica is going mad - now in its second year it will flower and produce thousands of seeds.

And, judging by this sequence of events,  young guinea is definitely a female

Bring on frost-free nights, then things really start moving!