A quick update on everything on the smallholding

Pigs

The pigs are all healthy and eating us out of house and home as usual. They have put on a sudden spurt of growth which prompted me to pay a visit to the butcher last week! Two will be going on a little journey at the beginning of the summer holiday. One will be spared for a while, to go off for bacon in the winter, and Daisy's future is still a matter of discussion between Sue and I.

Two of their sisters who I sold have already gone, but ours grow more slowly as they spend all their time chasing each other.

Guineas

At the last count, there were 65 guineafowl eggs hidden in the grass. But still every evening eleven birds roost on the fence so none is sitting ... yet.

The guineafowl have, however, discovered the strawberries. Not just ours, but Don's too. They have always been allowed to wander free and have never previously caused too much damage. For now, the strawberries will be netted and we will monitor the situation.

Chickens

The chickens all seem happy at the moment. We are getting about a dozen eggs a day. A few have shown signs of broodiness but have given up when we keep taking their eggs. Elvis, who we want to go broody, has most unusually shown little inclination to sit. Shame, as we were rather hoping to hatch out some blue eggs.

Geese

The geese have finally given up on their efforts to hatch an egg. Maybe next year they'll have more success. So for now they are back out in the paddock to keep the grass down. They have quickly settled into their new routine and every evening wait at the gate to waddle in line into the stable for the night. One goes on the right of the divider, the rest go on the left.

The poor girls who spent so long sitting on the nest are slowly getting back into condition.

Ducks Still waddling.

Sheep 

The sheep have settled in to living in their new home, up in the pasture, where they are beginning to make an impact on the grass. The one who had the limp is now completely better and they are all growing fast. I accidentally left the electric fence off last night and one got out, but it didn't go far. They are happy where they are as long as they have fresh grass.

Bees
Who knows! They are now closed down for a few weeks. All we can see is this unusual cluster at the bottom of the hive. We think they're clustering around newly built queen cells. With luck both hives will successfully manage to make a queen which mates successfully. We'll know if they have been successful if there are eggs when we next open them.

Owls
The owls continue to delight us, more and more during the day. I saw a young one being fed the other day. Once in a while I hear the swallows causing a commotion and look up to see a dumpy Little Owl being pursued by a line of graceful but angry swallows.
Not such good news with the Barn Owls. There seem to be very, very few about. It seems that their boxes have been taken over by Jackdaws.
Trees
A couple of weeks ago I spent some time assessing the young woodland trees. If you remember, this job was interrupted by the arrival of a Pacific Swift in Suffolk. Most are doing well, though we suffered a few losses. By next year they should be looking more like small trees than weedy saplings.
The Ash saplings all seem to be doing well. Time will tell whether the threat from Ash dieback is as serious as it seemed last year.

 

Orchard

The orchard trees, all planted two winters ago, are beginning to flourish. We should get a more significant amount of fruit this year. However, pollination was patchy, especially of the cherries and plums. Goodness knows where our bees were going to get their food, but they studiously ignored all of my and Don's offerings.

Soft Fruit

All the soft fruit is developing nicely. It looks like being a bumper year for gooseberries. I really look forward to this annual treat. The other fruit that should be ready early is the strawberries, but I seem to have very little ripe fruit this year. Neighbours and friends are already harvesting.

However, as alluded to above, I think I've discovered the reason.

Those pesky guineafowl seem to have found the fruit before me. The netting will have to come out.

Vegetables



Runners struggling to get going



Beans n Peas : Every year is different in the world of vegetable growing. Last year beans and peas, if the young shoots got past the slugs, did well. This year, nobody's beans are coming up fast. The weather has been too cool and they could do with a bit more (warm) rain.

The broad beans, though, have loved the cool weather.

 

Roots : Parsnips are flourishing again. Carrots are patchy again, but much better than last year. The experiment to sow carrots into a bed of mixed annual flowers has backfired somewhat as the weeds grew first. This happened with the other beds which I reserved just for the flowers. It's impossible to get in there with the rotavator or even the hoe. Still, a few weeks of selective weeding may just reveal some pleasant hidden treasures.  

Spuds : I'm a bit worried about the spuds. The tops are looking good, but it's been a bit dry at the crucial time when the tubers should be forming. I dug up one of my Earlies a couple of weeks ago and there were no tubers at all! Those I grew in bags had a disappointing yield too. I'll have to make changes for next year.

However, I'm still pretty confident that the outdoor crops will come good. I probably just need to be patient. They did go in a little later than I hoped and I did not get to chit them properly as the house was in such a mess with the building works. 

Brassicas : This year I've actually got round to transplanting the young brassicas into the veg beds outside and they've even got protection. They'd better work, or I'll be giving up on them.

 

As you can see, I've even gone to the effort of making collars for them out of old carpet underlay. This, in theory, should stop them being devastated by cabbage root fly.

House

Work on the house is almost finished. We're still waiting for the scaffolding to come down and there's a couple of jobs for the plumber to finish off (it's only been six months since he first came!) All we need to do now is decorate every room. That'll be in our spare time then!



Lambs meet pigs

Sunday was pretty much a perfect day.

I've already posted about taking our first honey. But the day had been pretty special even before that.

Limpy The Lamb no longer has a limp so it was time to take the lambs to their new home, further down the land. The followed Sue with gusto. In fact, Sue had to run to keep up with them. They went straight into their new enclosure and we quickly closed off the electric fence and connected it back up again.

Easily led.

Happy in their new home.

It wasn't long before the pigs realised they had some new close neighbours. They were straight over to the fence to investigate. What surprised me even more was that one of the lambs was equally as inquisitive and went straight up to them. It showed no fear whatsoever.

Of course, it wasn't long before one of the noses touched the electric fence. As it happened, it was the lamb's. It was enough to keep it from crossing but didn't seem to cause a great scare.

I spent a couple of hours just relaxing in the grass, watching the lambs, pigs, chickens and guineafowl.
Once I was happy that they wouldn't escape straightaway (I wonder how long it will take them) and that they were happy I turned my attentions to moving the geese into their old paddock now that it had been vacated by the lambs.

The first thing they did was to stick their heads back through the gate to get at the grass where they had just come from! But it wasn't long before they settled in and cleared the paddock of buttercup flowers. In fact, they seemed to enjoy these most, closely followed by the racemes of seeds atop the taller stems of grass. This is the advantage of mixed grazing, as different animals graze different plants in different ways. It's also advantageous to move grazing animals onto new areas on a rota as this stops parasites building up in the ground by breaking thier lifecycles.

Animal Helpers

One of my favourite childrens books is Farmer Duck, in which a very lazy farmer lays in bed all day scoffing chocolate while his animals do all the farm work. Every now and again he bellows "How goes the work?" I won't tell you how the story ends.

Life is busy for all of us on the farm at the moment. I dig, sow, make things, fix things, weed, mow and look after the animals. Sue juggles her work with looking after the house, helping me, making wines and preserves, and baking cakes to use up the excess eggs. Our roles aren't fixed, or stereotypical, but we both get on with what we do best. In fact, there's so much going on that I find it difficult to decide what to write about. Sometimes the more mundane jobs, but essential ones, get left out.

So I thought I'd do a little catch up blog to show how the animals have been helping out lately. For everything on the farm has to earn its keep.

The chickens have been turning the compost.

The guineafowl have been picking off all the creepy crawlies.

 

The ducks have been hoovering up the slugs in the veg patch

The geese have been cutting the grass

and the pigs were let loose in the spare veg patch

where they dug up all the old potatoes and snouted up the earth
ready for cultivation

 

 Last, but not least, these four arrived to help out with the grass.

As I wrote about a couple of days ago, Gerry has been keeping the rabbit population in check too. And then there's about twenty thousand bees who have hopefully been busy pollinating the fruit trees, though they seem to prefer the nearby rape fields.

Hopefully all my animals won't rebel, kick me off the farm and chase me in to the sunset.

Oops! I gave away the ending.

Catching up with the pigs

It's not often that I laugh out loud (and shoot me dead if I ever abbreviate it. lol!)

But the other day I stood by the polytunnel chuckling away to myself. For I could hear the piglets barking -  they more often make this sound than an oink - and I could see them haring around in circles, chasing the guineafowl! The guineas have clockwork legs which carry them with surprising speed, but they were still getting a good run for their money. It took them a while and a good amount of protestation and indignation before they thought to take flight and perch on the fence, continuing to complain in the loudest way possible.

Anyway, this reminded me that before my recent technological meltdown the pigs were still in their stables. But I did manage to take some nice piccies when they finally got to see the big outside.

Thankfully the pig enclosure has dried out significantly since then.

The boy has gone off too. Boy pigs face a tricky choice, either to have their bits chopped off or to head to the butchers before their six months birthday. Otherwise their developing hormones taint the taste of their meat. This boy did get one extra week in this world, thanks to a bank holiday. It doesn't seem to have affected the meat, which is selling very well.