Rhubarb Resurrection

Sunday 7th January 2018

The somewhat strained look on my face is because

I was trying to hold the trophy, the whopping great mangel

and take a selfie!

This was taken a few years back.

I didn't grow mangels one year, but every other the

Jeff Yates Mangel Shield has sat proudly on my mantelpiece.

Mangel disaster
Mangel or Mangold Wurzels are a traditional fodder crop, a member of the beet family. They are hardly grown for that purpose these days, but I like to keep the tradition going. Pigs, sheep and chickens all love them. They are an easy and attractive crop to grow.
On top of that, the Smallholders Club has an annual mangel growing competition. Participation is sadly less and less each year, but I still take great delight in seeing the trophy sitting on my mantelpiece.
But the last online supplier of the variety I have always grown, Brigadier, has ceased trading on line and no longer stocks the seeds.
I've even emailed the committee of the mangel hurling society to try to source them, but it is increasingly looking like I will, at the very least, have to change varieties. I'm not sure the sheep are going to be too happy.

Rhubarb awakes from its dormancy
While I was pottering about today I noticed that the rhubarb bed was coming back to life for the spring. The soft new growth will get knocked back a few times by the frosts. This happens every year but it doesn't seem to harm the plants. I could trying mulching them with straw, but that would just harbour slugs and the chickens would scratch it away anyway.

I might try forcing a couple of plants this year, just using inverted black dustbins.

A Siberian Waif

Monday 4th December 2017
A Siberian waif
Today I found the rarest bird to grace the smallholding since I moved here. Even more satisfying was the fact that it was in the patch of young woodland that I planted when I moved in.
I was walking the circuit of the smallholding with the dogs when a bird started calling loudly behind me. The call was clear but certainly not that of any bird species I would expect to encounter on such a walk.
I located the bird straight away, a chiffchaff. This small plain warbler is a common summer migrant to this country and one whose song and call I am very familiar with. I see chiffchaffs on the farm mostly in the autumn when birds migrate through.
Increasingly chiffchaffs winter in this country, though mostly in the south. Early December is certainly a notable time for one to appear here, but there was something special about this one. For as soon as I laid eyes on it that strange call made sense. The bird was pretty much plain brown (paler below, but importantly no hints of yellow or olive-green), even plainer than our usual chiffchaffs. Chiffchaffs come in a range of dull colours, but one so plain and brown would certainly come from quite a way east. Paired with the distinctive call this bird was undoubtedly a Siberian Chiffchaff. I played the call on a phone app just to be sure and it matched 100%. The bird even appeared to call back. The Latin subspecies name for this type of chiffchaff is tristis, which means sad, presumably because the call is a drawn out, monotone plaintive one. Unfortunately not judged to be a full species in its own right, but I have only ever encountered a handful of these birds in my years of birding. I have seen plenty of brownish chiffchaffs, greyish ones too, ones with odd calls too, but very few which so clearly match all the criteria for a tristis.
How fantastic that such a small bird can have made it all the way from Siberia to my farm! It should be wintering in the Himalayas but presumably fancied a bit of a flatter landscape.

For non-birders, just so you know just how plain the bird is! Not my actual bird, but a dead ringer, this one in Doncaster in 2009.


I found the bird late afternoon and it was generally hanging about with two blue tits. I watched it for maybe half an hour, at which point it was time to give the chickens a few handfuls of grain to keep them going through the cold night. Darkness falls quickly at this time of year and presumably the bird went to roost somewhere nearby.
Interestingly, a Siberian Chiffchaff was also reported on the Yorkshire coast at almost exactly the time as I found mine and another was trapped and ringed on the Essex coast two days later.

Wednesday 6th December 2017
Tuesday was my six-monthly hospital visit to London, so I was unable to check if the bird was still present. Having been poked and prodded I stayed at home Wednesday and just mooched around the smallholding with the dogs. There was no sign of the Siberian Chiffchaff all day.

I did however come across this beaut of a mangel wurzel. I posted it onto the Smallholders Facebook page along with the message

I 💚 mangel wurzels

Composting hots up

20th May 2017
Composting hots up
I finally have heat in my compost bins! They have been just sitting there doing very little since last summer. But they got a good watering the other day and I spent a good while turning them and incorporating some of the hovered up horse manure that next door kindly let me have.
I have resolved to be a good composting boy and to turn at least one heap every week - aerating and mixing really is the way to get the bacteria going. So today I turned a steaming heap into the next bin along and filled the vacated heap with a mixture of half rotted material and horse manure. I chopped some comfrey and threw that in too for good measure.

There are three benefits of the heaps heating up. Firstly, the mass of material rots down much quicker and is ready to go on the veg beds earlier. Secondly, the heating up kills all nasties like weed seeds, roots, bugs and diseases. Thirdly, it looks like a proper gardener's compost heap!





The brassica fortress
Well that was a big job accomplished but I still had energy and enthusiasm so I moved on to the next big job, getting the brassica area set up. Brassicas (the cabbage family) get a pretty raw deal since, apparently, they are the tastiest thing on the planet and everything tries to eat them. To compound this, they need to stay in the soil for many months which gives the enemy plenty of time to find a weakness in the defences.

First of all the posts go in to hold up the scaffold netting which goes all the way round. Then the taller aluminium poles which will support the soft butterfly netting (invest in the soft as it is so much tougher that the normal stuff). The ground has already been rotavated several times and the chickens have been allowed on to scratch around. Hopefully this will minimise the number of slugs, but on this clay ground the slugs find a perfect home, taking shelter in the cracks which open up in dry weather and relishing the moisture retaining qualities in the wet. So my final defence is a liberal scattering of organic slug pellets.
When I plant the young brassica plants I will tread them in very firmly to protect them from rocking in the wind (the scaffold net helps with this too) and I will place cut-off plastic bottles over them until they grow big enough to withstand the ravages of a slug or too.
I do not use cabbage collars as many do to protect against cabbage root fly. So far I have not had a problem with this pest, but when I did use home-made collars fashioned from carpet underlay they proved an ideal daytime hideout for slugs.

And the final, final defence, is a rabbit fence around the whole area. I don't connect it to the electric fence as it sucks too much energy, but the physical barrier serves as a deterrent at least.

No pot of gold...
With late afternoon now upon us the weather changed and we had some pretty heavy showers which at one point resulted in one of the most amazing double rainbows I have ever seen, arching right over the smallholding. Unfortunately my camera gear was not quite up to scratch to capture it well.


... but a good consolation prize
I retreated to the new conservatory to watch the birds on the feeders. I was absolutely delighted to see a group of four tree sparrows fly in, especially when two of the proved to be recently fledged young birds.

Tree Sparrow at the feeders

21st May
We're not called Swallow Farm for nothing
The day started with a swallow in the house. It eventually found its way out but not before it had found some rather novel places to perch.

Off with their bits!
Most important job for today was to apply castration rings to the two new lambs. A tricky operation this, for they have an uncanny ability to breath right in and withdraw the important bits! I don't think anybody, even vets, manages to capture both balls every time, so to speak. I rather think the process is more painful in my mind than it actually is for the lamb, since it just involves stretching a rubber ring over said bits which causes them to lose their blood supply and drop off. The lambs show no distress whatsoever once they are back with their mum - well, maybe they walk a bit funny for a few minutes. This needs to happen before they are seven days old.
While we were on the sheep, I moved Rambo and the ram we 'missed' last year back in with the ewes and older lambs. After half hour of chasing around and macho behaviour all settled down. The lambs are now plenty big enough to stay away from trouble.

Poultry news
More livestock news as we sadly lost another of the turkey poults today. There is no rime nor reason to whether young turkeys live or not. They go from perfect health one minute to dead the next. But as if by magic a day old turkey chick appeared from the next which is still be sat on by the turkey hen who won't give up.
Call me hard, but young birds give up the ghost with such ease that I have come to accept it, though obviously I'd rather it didn't happen and do everything I can to make sure it doesn't. But we do lose a young bird now, my main thought is There goes a tasty meal in a few months time.

The mangel wurzel tradition continues
The afternoon was spent planting 250 young mangel wurzel plants. I raise these in modules as otherwise the rabbits and slugs get them and I end up with some very gappy rows. Hopefully the effort will be repaid in late autumn when they will supplement dwindling grass supplies for the sheep.

Mega weeding
With this job accomplished I got distracted pulling weeds. The soil is in that rare state when the seeds virtually jump out of the ground, roots and all, even deep-rooted fiends like dock and dandelion. I spent the whole evening, maybe four hours, on a mega weeding session. The slugs absolutely love to hide in amongst the weeds and under overhanging grass edges to borders, so as I weeded I collected slugs for the ducks. They were very, very appreciative. Nothing goes to waste here on the smallholding.

Enjoying the bounty
While I was doing all this, Sue was doing her farmhouse wife bit, making a selection of delicious jams from what remained in the freezer of last year's soft fruits. We now have umpteen jars of blackcurrant (& rum), redcurrant and crab apple jellies. YUMMY.

She also made a cushion as a thank you to the people who recently gave us three of their fleeces for peg looming. Meanwhile, I have collected another twelve fleeces to keep her busy!

Back to Smallholding

So here we are. The blog I was going to post over three weeks ago!

Charlie, complete with new trendy hair style.

Sue's best friend, another Sue, brought Charlie, Boris's best friend, up to the farm for the weekend. It was the weekend of the Smallholders Annual Produce Show, so on Sunday morning we were out in the garden choosing the biggest Mangel Wurzel. We had a prize to defend.
I stayed on the farm for there was much work to catch up with, so it was a text message which informed me that we had beaten off the nearest competition by about a kilo. VICTORY!!!

Not only that, but Sue had scooped the prize for Best Recycled Object with her turkey feather lampshade.
That evening we had been invited over to a barbecue at our new neighbours. It was a lovely evening. Iain and Carol Ann were too busy for us to get to know them much better but it was a good chance to have a nose at what they've done to the place as well as to chat to our other neighbours.

25th September 2016
A rare sighting of a Muntjac deer today. It nonchalantly crossed the next field along.

I spent the morning fixing up the sheep electric fence. One of the posts had rotted at the base and needed replacing and I needed to put in a proper link to the circuit round Rambo's enclosure, as just tying the electric wire was causing it to arc and burning through the wire.
It was a good opportunity to spend some time in close proximity to the sheep. Some of them are having eye problems at the moment. I've consulted with the interweb and decided for the moment to just wait and see what happens. The two fawn ewes both have crusty, closed over eyes, but it seems to come and go. More worryingly, one of the hogget lambs has both its eyes very cloudy. This is the one which had crossed the fence into the next paddock. When I put it back with the others, they were giving it a fair bit of stick.

(ed. When I returned from Shetland, the sheep's eyes had improved greatly. Now, another week on, they are all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed again).

There was still time to put the roof on the chicken house I've been renovating and to move it down to the chicken pen. The Ixworth chicks have outgrown their accommodation up here so it was great to be able to move them to a pen within the larger chicken enclosure.



As it was chicken moving day, I let the broody and her two chicks out of the stable to explore.

26th September 2016
For the second year in a row, blight has eventually reached the tomatoes in the polytunnel. We have had a very good crop, so I took all the plants out today.

The unseasonal warm southerly wind continues and all day House Martins were heading south. We don't get them breeding on the farm and I only see them rarely on migration.

27th September 2016

The warm wind strengthened today. Four Swallows battled south and there was a late Hobby, presumably following the swallows and martins. I guess they will provide it with occasional tasty snacks all the way back to Africa.

I had a very rare trip to a shopping centre. I hate the places. I was surprised by the proliferation in mobility scooters.

The purpose of the trip was to stock up on warm clothes for Shetland.
I got it over and done with as quickly as possible.

And that's where we're up to. I've since been to the Outer Hebs, Shetland and back, Shetland and back again.

Harvesting - A Mixed Bag

9th July
Rainwater harvesting for the polytunnel
Heavy rain when I woke up, so I hastily hooked up a hosepipe to the overflowing water butts, channelling the rain into a couple of watering cans in the polytunnel. While I wait for each watering can to fill in turn I weed, harvest and thin foliage. The rain water is much appreciated by the plants.

It can get very sticky in the polytunnel so it is important to  remove foliage from ground level. To reduce humidity the courgettes got heavily trimmed and the rampant squash plants cut back.

I harvested and thinned out the kohl rabi and turnips. I've only left a few. They are very susceptible to rot once the other plants get going and temperatures warm up. Turnip fly becomes a problem too. The Purple Top Milans seem to have a harder flesh and to be more resistant to rot and fly than the Snowball and Goldenball. Next year I'll reserve the latter two for outside. Straight into the newly available space went peppers and aubergines.
Where I removed the kohl rabi plants, the sweetcorn growing in amongst them is about a foot tall. The plants growing without any competition are up to the polytunnel roof - what a difference! It's planned though. Now I've removed the kohl rabi the sweetcorn will prosper and will come ready later than the rest.
Once the rain stopped I harvested more beetroots to be processed.

Beetroots laid out ready for baking

Not going round the bend
A walk along the roadside revealed the extent of the damage to next door's field gate caused by yet another car coming off at the bend. The car must have been in quite a state as that wooden gate post has lifted a massive lump of concrete from the ground.

10th July
A lay in, a Wimbledon final and a European Cup final in which Ronaldo got floored by a Silver-Y moth
Young swallows and tree sparrows
In between all this the swallows fledged. I opened the chicken feed shed to find one fluttering against the window so I caught it and placed it back on its nest but there was only one other. They both promptly flew off the nest, one again fluttering against the window, so I caught it and released it for its first flight. A very special moment. Fortunately the hobby's daily speculative fly through the garden had already happened today.

More excitement on the wild birds front. I've planted a branch of twisted willow in the border near the bird feeding station in the hope that birds will use it as a perch coming to and from the feeders. Well, the first birds to do this were the tree sparrow family, two fledged young and their parents. Excellent.

Squishy strawberries
A much anticipated strawberry harvest was very disappointing indeed - virtually all of them had rotted before they even ripened properly. Those that had escaped this had mostly been munched by something. I'm not sure how much the straw has helped.

I checked the weather forecast before pruning the plum trees. Dry all day. Ten minutes of pruning soon changed that, precipitating a cloudburst!
I gave up.



This was also the cue to get the Ixworth chicks back inside before they caught a chill. They've been going outside for a couple of days to get them ready for a move into the stables. It means they leave their mess and smells outside too. They also get to eat grass, scratch around and peck at insects. They seem to find the outside world quite scary at the moment.


11th July
Failed Wurzels and an Injury to Mr Rotavator
I spent the morning trying to track down a spare belt for Mr Rotavator who had a rather unfortunate mishap yesterday. Hopefully he'll be back to his wonderful best soon.
In readiness for his return to good health, I got out the slasher and hacked back all the fat hen which has grown up in what was supposed to be the mangel wurzel patch. The slugs and/or rabbits did for this crop before it ever got going. Next year I'll be growing each plant in modules before planting out. This has worked brilliantly over in the main veg patch where I'm growing the mangels which will, I'm sure, help me retain the Jeff Yates Mangel Wurzel Trophy!

Poor Honey
After all the work I'd put into the strawberry beds, yesterday's failed harvest was a big let down. Today it was Sue's turn. This has been a testing year so far for the honey bees and for beekeepers. But Sue had at least managed to take off enough frames of honey to fill about 16 jars. But when she came to spin it, some wasn't yet ready to be spun and the rest surprisingly contained rape honey that had set in the combs. All Sue's hard work for just three jars of honey and if this year continues in the same vein that could be it for honey for the year.

First Broad Beans
Fortunately my harvesting today was more productive. The broad beans have survived a bit of a bashing from the weather and today I was able to gather the first few. You can tell when they are ready when the pod hang downwards. There were carrots from the polytunnel along with more mangetout and the first Swiss chard leaves of the year, which came from self-seeded plants rather than those I've planted.
Sue worked her magic in the kitchen combining these with some pork mince from the freezer. Just a little of everything always seems to make so much lovely food!

Tomorrow, weather permitting, we head into the gooseberry patch.

RIP Terry The Turkey :-(

I've decided to try a slightly different format for my blog posts from now on. At this time of year I'm incredibly busy with sowing, mowing and growing... and that's not to mention looking after all the animals. At the end of the day I'm often just too whacked to keep up with the blog. So I've decided to go over to a diary style blog with occasional longer posts devoted to one subject. That way I get to keep a record of everything I do on the smallholding (and you get a true sense of everything that is involved). Hopefully I'll catch up with myself within a week or two.
22nd April
The broad beans are finally up. I used seed collected from last year and it's always an interminably long wait for them to poke their heads up. I don't plant in the autumn like many do as I don't see the point in such an early start. Besides, if the cold and wet didn't get them, the chickens sure would!
One of our Muscovy girls has started sitting already. I did read that they were very prolific, but she can only just have had time to lay enough eggs before plonking herself down on them.
She's in the corner of the big chicken house.
Two nights ago I got fantastic views of a Short-eared Owl hunting down in the young woodland I have planted. This is an infrequent visitor to the farm and must be on its way back to its breeding grounds. Anyway, tonight it was back again, swooping into the grass hunting voles. Unfortunately I've not seen the barn owls for a while now, not since the farmer who bought the field grubbed up all the scrub in the corner where the barn owl box is. As he did this during the breeding season, it's odds on the owls will have abandoned their nest. Let's hope they return.

23rd April
I'm trying Mangetout outside again this year, but I've bought a variety called Golden Sweet which has yellow pods. Hopefully they'll be easier to spot when harvest time comes around. I constructed a frame for them to grow up made of bamboo sticks interwoven with semi-dry willow which I harvested from around the farm during the winter and I planted them out this morning. I raised them in pots in the polytunnel and have been hardening them off for a couple of days. I prefer not to plant straight out as I've lost them all in the past, either to voles, slugs or pigeons. I've planted them close to a large water butt too so I can prevent them becoming too dry.
I also sowed some Salsify and Scorzonera today. Closely related, these plants have very different roots. The scorzonera has been sown in some of my new 'mini-permaculture' beds as this plant is a perennial and if the roots don't develop enough in the first year they can be harvested at the end of next year instead. If they were sown in with the root crops, that space would be needed by potatoes next year.
Next to them I sowed some Sokol Breadseed Poppies. These should give a harvest of white poppy seeds, as well as a fine display of flowers. The seed heads don't have holes around the edge so the seeds are easily collected.

24th April
Time to sow the sweetcorn. This year I have 100 sweetcorn seeds. I am growing a supersweet variety again. The past two years my sweetcorn harvest has been disappointing after rats moved out of the fields before the corn was ripe enough to harvest. So this year I'll be growing some in the polytunnel and some further from the field edge in my main vegetable plot. I'm planning to undersow it with my prize mangel wurzels!
I'm also giving Minipop another go. This is harvested for miniature cobs before the tassels develop and hence before pollination. Therefore it shouldn't cross pollenate with the maincrop, which would risk spoiling it.
25th April
I have started some cucumbers off earlier than normal this year and this evening I took the plunge and planted three seedlings into the polytunnel beds. I grow Burpless Tasty Green - it's the bulk standard variety but serves me very well indeed when grown in the tunnel. I have tried others but found the yield inferior and the skin tougher. I will grow my cucumbers in two or three batches to extend the harvest period.
26th April
Mangel Wurzels and Finch Seed Mix.
Today I got a very big sowing job done. I have a 'spare veg patch' away from the main one, where I grow tougher crops which require more space. The soil is heavy clay here and pretty compacted, having been arable in the past. One quarter of this area is reserved for fodder crops. They only make a small donation to the animal food bill, but are a top up treat in the winter. I grow mostly Mangel Brigadier, but have sown some Yellow Eckendorff too. In all I sowed 1400 seeds, two every 15 inches or so!
Another quarter is, for the first time this year, reserved for the wild birds. I have sown a finch and bunting seed mix which should help out some of our disappearing farmland birds during the winter and early spring. Luckily this mix was simply broadcast and lightly turned in with the rotavator.
27th April

Hail and snow today and some pretty tasty thunderstorms. So I spent much of the evening in the polytunnel. I potted up all my tomato plants. These are the ones to go outside, always a bit of a gamble in our climate but I'm determined to manage them properly this year, taking off lower leaves and nipping sideshoots to give them the best chance of ripening and avoiding blight.
While I was potting up, I pricked out the celeriac seedlings too. Some of these won't be ready till late next winter so I don't want to hold up their growth even one little bit.
The storms obviously grounded a few migrant birds as my first Whitethroat for the year was calling scratchily from the dyke and a Chiffchaff was calling from the ash trees.

28th April

What a terrible start to the day. Sue was up at a ridiculously early hour and came back in to tell me that she thought Terry The Turkey had been killed. Terry is, or was, our turkey stag, a gentle giant who followed me everywhere. Only yesterday he had been stomping around in the kitchen with me. Up to now he had led a charmed life, firstly surviving Christmas and now settled with a wife and poults on the way. I went outside to investigate, but it was clear from the trail of feathers that something awful had happened. We had given up putting the pair of turkeys in housing at nights since they started roosting in random places. I often got a face full of flapping wing when I tried to move them. We've only ever lost one goose and a couple of guinea fowl to the fox, so this was a bit of a shock. He may even have died trying to protect his hen, who has been sat on her nest in the planter at the front of the house and only has 2 days to go until the chicks hopefully hatch out.

Mangel Wurzel and Pumpkin Silverware

While I was away in Shetland I entrusted Sue with the onerous task of choosing the heaviest mangel wurzel to take along to the Fenland Smallholders Club meeting.
Mangel Wurzels are a kind of beet crop which I wrote about in a previous blog here.
In the past the Fenland Goatkeepers and Smallholders Club (as it used to be known) used to have an annual competition, the prize being the Jeff Yates trophy. By the time I joined the smallholders, this annual bit of fun was dying out. Nobody was growing mangels any more and the committee were even considering ending the competition.
But it was still running, just, and I won it in two consecutive years. I faced competition from just one other mangel wurzel in that two years!

Hollow Victory

When I founded the Veg Group it seemed like an ideal time to resurrect interest in this light-hearted annual competition, so I purchased seed for everyone and threw down the gauntlet.
I have to say that I was highly disorganised and didn't get my mangels sown until way too late in the year, with the result that by competition time they were puny!
Steve walked off with 'my' trophy and the veg group never heard the last of it all year.

This year I got serious. I sowed my usual patch of mangel wurzels to be used as animal fodder, but I reserved a patch in the main veg plot for some lovingly nurtured baby mangels raised in modules.
This gave me just the headstart I needed and when I left for Shetland many of the mangels looked like they had a chance of scooping the trophy. But the opposition were being cagey, with tales of monster mangels meant to scare the opposition away, or tales of abject failure to lull into a false sense of security.

So, on the evening of the competition, I  phoned Sue to find out whether I had reclaimed my trophy.
It turns out that competition had been much stiffer than in previous years, with six entries and four weighing in at over 15lb.
Of these, two had been 15lb something, one had been 17lb something and the winner was just short of 20lb....

AND IT WAS MINE!!!!

VICTORY WAS ALL MINE!!!!!

But that's not the end of my story. For the Veg Group have had a private competition going throughout the year to grow the heaviest pumpkin. Everybody was given several seeds at the beginning of the year, but germination was poor. Some even claimed that theirs grew into other vegetables (and so marrowgate was born).

Just one of my seedlings came through and I nurtured it in the polytunnel until it was time to go out into the big wide world. I was worried, as one of my competitors had posted pictures of his with developing fruits when mine was at the two-leaf stage! But had he gone too early? Only time would tell.
I chose a rather special spot for my pumpkin, on top of the manure pile where it could get all the goodness a pumpkin could wish for. First grew the leaves, giant leaves trailing all over the heap, and then came the first fruits. I couldn't decide whether to let several fruits develop or just to go for the one. In the end the plant decided. As one pumpkin grew and grew and grew the rest of the fruits gave up the ghost and all the plant's energies went into the one fruit.

And so this last Sunday I finally severed the stem and lifted the pumpkin. I had joked with the others about needing a forklift, a new trailer and a reinforced suspension, but disappointingly the pumpkin felt rather light for its size, as if it had filled with air inside.

When I reached the veg group gathering, everybody was being very secretive. Pumpkins were left hidden in cars and Steve (yes, the one who wrestled the mangel trophy from me for a short period) had even left his growing in the garden right up until the final seconds of the weigh in.

The weigh in was tense. 500g (a joke one, a button squash actually), 5.8kg, 6.1kg, 9.98kg. No-one had yet broken the 10kg mark, but the three biggest pumpkins were still left on the table. 10.5 kg.
It was down to two. 11.9kg. The mark had been set.
I heaved my pumpkin up. It certainly looked the biggest, but was it all hot air?
But then the scales told the story. Over 21kg!!

A clear winner. More silverware and all round bragging rights for a whole year!!!!!

I'm now looking up how to grow LONG CARROTS in preparation for next year's competition. I'll be ordering my mangel seed soon too.
Hopefully I'll find time to keep the smallholding going in between polishing all the silverware.

The Produce Show

Today was the much awaited Fenland Goatkeepers and Smallholders Club annual produce show. Competition was fierce. Well actually it's all very friendly and rather charming, but I was taking it very seriously!!
In the morning we selected our squashes and pumpkins and I unearthed the biggest mangold wurzel I could find - and it was a show stopper.

Category One of the competition were the cucurbits and it was clear that the rain this year had helped everybody to a pretty good crop. I entered the potimarrons as my own and let Sue enter the acorn-type summer squashes. But when I saw the competition I feared that size would triumph over beauty and perfection.

Size isn't everything!

The winning trio.

For the vegetable categories everybody got to vote for their favourite, so it was quite a shock when the winner was announced.



Sue scooped first prize
ahead of stiff competition.

We had entries in the jams and marmalades too, as well as the chutneys, but sadly they didn't win.

But here's a selection of the other entries from the show.

Category 14 - eggs

Category 4 - Veg grown above the ground

 

 

Category 6 - Beverages

Category 7 - Jams

Category 5 - Fruits

I didn't get photos, but there were categories for recycled objects, crafts, photography and baking too. Next year we'll get our act together and go for some of these too!

Finally came category 20. The Jeff Yates Mangold Wurzel trophy. This was what I had been waiting for. The result was never in question. How could it be? Mine was the only entry!
I seriously reckon that people had seen me come in with my giant and quickly sneaked their entries back into their cars in shame.



15 lb 14 oz of Wurzel magic!

So we had turned up and scooped the first category and the last. Victorious!

Next year we'll be back to defend our titles and maybe have a serious go at some of the other categories - I fancy the bread and the vegetables grown under the ground.

But in all seriousness, it was just great to see so many familiar and friendly faces and to catch up on how the cider's developing, how the veg has done this year, how the pigs, chickens and lambs are doing and has anyone got any plums this year?

Mangel Wurzels!

Monday 16th January 2012

Mangel Wurzels!

Not a countryside expletive, but a delightful form of beet which I tried growing last year as a fodder crop. I also tried stubble turnip and swedes, but the wurzels won hands down. Beautiful to look at; growing to hefty lumps; the pigs' favourite root; providing luscious green tops; standing through the winter; unaffected by the pests which devastated the other experimental crops. And a whole stackful for the price of a packet of seeds and a small parcel of land.

The seeds were not easy to find, but if you decide to give them a try, this site is where mine came from:

http://tuckers-seeds.com/index.php?route=common/home

I would love to say I grow all my pigs' food, but these days that's not practical on a small scale, and I sure don't have enough knowledge of how to ensure the correct balance of protein and nutrients by doing this. So I rely on bought in pig nuts. These account for 90% of the cost of keeping pigs, but there's no way round it. The fodder crops I grow will make a small contribution and more importantly will give the pigs the opportunity to root and munch and crunch as nature intended. To be fair though, the pigs will leave whatever they are eating in favour of the bought in pellets. 

But I will certainly be growing a bigger crop of Mangel Wurzels this year. It says on the packet you can make wine out of them! Now there's a little project for next winter.

I am also going to try chicory for the pigs this year and maybe a couple of other experimental crops (more on these later, if they work out).

While trying to find out about mangel wurzels I came across this site.

http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2006/06/scarcity-root.html

Here's the gist of what I found out from a little surfing.
The original name, still often used, is mangold wurzel, meaning "root of the beet". This has morphed into mangel wurzel, meaning "scarcity root". Grown primarily for animal fodder, it is also edible to humans, though the palatability is questionable. The abundant succulent green leaves are said to be very tasty. If I remember I will try these next year.Traditional German recipes for mangel wurzels include pickling and turning into beer. More information, and most importantly recipes for beer and wine, are easy to find on the internet. Then of course, there's the 70's group The Wurzels

 

European Settlers Very Welcome Here
I took the back route on the way home from work today. I was rather hoping that the frozen dykes might have displaced some of their hidden birds into the fields or onto the Main Drain. As it was, the fields were rather empty save a small flock of lapwings and golden plovers. The Main Drain was frozen too. All that was on it was a carrion crow, stood on the ice trying to extract something from the frozen sheet beneath. A somewhat odd sight as furnished on one of the wider dykes, where a grey heron and two snowy white leiitle egrets stood hunched on the ice. As a teenage birder, a Little Egret was a major rarity in this country. However, I was distracted from birding while at University and living in London, so when I came back to the pastime it was a surprise to find them everywhere. They initially colonised along the South coast, but spread rapidly and are now regularly found throughout the country and even North into Scotland. They arrived here naturally, of their own accord, and are a very welcome addition to our avifauna.