Dark Clouds

Our weather seems to come in month-long blocks now. I guess it's something to do with how the jet-stream has been disrupted. After bone dry April we have May downpours. 

And gosh we have had some downpours! 

The First Swarm of the Year

Last week I had to go into self-isolation again so that I could go down to London and have one of my regular hospital check-ups. Due to Covid it was two years since my last visit so it was a relief to find nothing majorly wrong. The procedure did leave me a little wiped out though, so it was a week of pottering about in the garden.

When we arrived back from London Sue came across our first bee swarm of the season and it was an absolute monster! We were half  expecting it as we found queen cells in a few hives when we inspected them. Muggy May days seem to be when we get our swarms. Sue had just managed to take us down from ten hives to eight by amalgamating weaker hives, but this swarm needed a whole hive to itself.

In general the bees are doing very, very well at the moment, though it looks like we won't be getting much early honey as it's been a cool year so far.

Poultry News
The ducklings and chicks are growing fast, but they do make a mess! So when we can they go onto the lawn for the day. It won't be long before they need an accommodation upgrade. We're not quite sure where they'll go though as the stables are taken up by geese and turkeys. We'll sort something out.

The young turkeys are doing really well too. We lost one to a sad accident, but all the rest survive, fingers crossed, which is actually really hard to achieve with turkey poults. Quite a few are spoken for so we just need to keep hold of them until they are old enough to leave their mothers.

On The Plot

Out in the veg plot, we have hopefully had the last frost now. I'm moving young plants into the ground as quickly as possible. The only thing stopping me is the wet weather. All the onions are out, interspersed with beetroots as they make good companions. Brassica netting is up and I've planted out my collards, a new crop for this year. I'm busy earthing up potatoes as they appear. With no dig, I simply dump a forkful of compost on top of the emerging leaves.

Sowing, Hoeing, Mowing, Growing

I got the grass mowed this week for the first time this year. It's always a relief when the mower starts up. Until now the geese have been doing the job for me, but the warm weather and a bit of rainfall have spurred the grass into action.
On the whole grass is a pain. I have no want for a green carpet so welcome moles and weeds. But since I've got it I might as well make the most of it, turning it into meat and eggs via the sheep and poultry. And when there's so much that I have to mow it then it makes a good addition to the compost heaps or direct as a mulch, so it all ends up indirectly in my tummy!

I leave some of my grass to grow long. This irritates Sue but is a joy to me.













The thermometer in the polytunnel has soared this week, creeping up into the high 40s. The early sown turnips bolted but the mangetout is doing wonderfully. I have now planted all my tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash in there too. I am trying a variety of squash called Butterbush in the hope that it won't take over the whole polytunnel!


It has been perfect weather for hoeing. Within a couple of hours any weeds that have been chopped off at the base lie withered and dead. I'm gradually working my way round all the veg beds. The ones that have been previously mulched are much easier to do.

A forecast of frost for the next few mornings has been holding me back in the veg patch. As soon as this next cold spell passes the garden will fill with young bean plants, sweetcorn, squash and tomatoes which I have been raising for outdoors. Until then I am trying to hold them back in the polytunnel.

Self-seeded Poached egg plants,

wonderful for bees and a great

companion plant for broad beans.

The vegetable patch is starting to look gorgeous at the moment. I have left a lot of self-sown and naturalised plants to flower and the willow arches are coming on great. These seem to be a magnet for bee swarms and so it was that the third swarm of the year, almost definitely not from our hives, appeared on our last hot day. The swarm was huge.

And the reward for 

longest swarm

goes to...

Having already successfully housed two swarms and moved back up to 8 hives, any we collect from now will be given to fellow beekeepers. This swarm has gone off to Thorney, about ten miles down the road.

Our turkey hen who has been sat on eggs under a patch of borage and flowering rocket started clucking three days ago. I suspected that either chicks had been born or the eggs were pipping.
Sure enough, the next day a little head was poking out from under her feathers.

Our first view of our turkey hen's offspring

She sat tight for two days but was thinking of moving off the nest this morning. With the local crows loitering, we decided to catch her and any chicks and transfer them to a vacant poultry pen. There were just three chicks and three unhatched eggs. Sue retrieved the chicks while the hen slipped my grasp and proceeded to defend her family quite resolutely!
All are now settled into their new home.

Meanwhile, after three Silkie chickens only succeeded in constantly swapping the four ducks eggs they were sharing, we have put one of the Silkie hens on her own with four new eggs. Hopefully we'll have some success. Two of our Muscovy duck girls have now vanished. The optimistic side of me says that they may appear at some point with ducklings, but it is surprising that we have not seen them at all.

Finally there have been more night time capers. It seems tawny owls have moved into the neighbourhood. I regularly hear them when sat outside at night. This may be at the expense of our barn owls as I rarely see or hear them now.
A couple of nights ago as I sat outside under a wonderful full moon I could hear a female tawny nearby. I speculatively imitated a male hooting and within a minute the unmistakable silhouette of an owl flew up into one of the trees in the roadside paddock. Then it flew right over my head and into one of the large ash trees in the garden. It may have been one in the morning, but the full moon meant that it was easily visible against the moonlit sky as it passed over. Then another!
The pair started duetting really close by. Amazing stuff.

And final finally, a couple of lockdown images. One of my new lockdown hair and one my Google timeline for the month of April which tells its own story.

Easter Sunday sees the return of our Swallows

Let's start with the weather.
It rained constantly for the first two months of the year with storm upon storm sweeping through, but all this wet and windy silliness was put to bed by Coronavirus. Since its arrival we've had gorgeous weather, particularly since lockdown. We've gone from complaining about mud and flooded paddocks to complaining about bone dry ground.

Not too longer ago things were very different

As I write this on Sunday evening, the Easter weekend has seen temperatures into the mid 70s (old money). Saturday night we had some heavy showers, but it didn't make much difference to the soil. To do that we need sustained rain, even if it's just drizzle. Late afternoon today brought a change though. A chill wind howled across the fields and thunder rolled around the fenland skies.

I was up very late last night after nocmigging till the early hours. I added another new bird species for the farm list. That's seven new species heard in the last two weeks. This will have to stop when I go back to work though, as I'm now seemingly too old to burn the candle at both ends.

There was a big job planned for today, planting the maincrop potatoes.
I grow six varieties of maincrop: Orla, Cara, Desiree, Blue Danube, Valor and Pink Fir Apple.

Fossicking chickens

I no longer bother with digging trenches or burying seed potatoes deeply. Now I just clear the ground, nestle each potato into a small indentation made with the trowel and cover everything with a thick layer of compost. I then have to net or fleece the bed to stop the chickens and turkeys scratching all the compost back off the potatoes. The beds can be uncovered once the potato plants emerge and the compost settles down a bit. By then the ex free range chickens will be confined to their pen again as they can be a little too destructive in the veg plot. It is lovely having them fossicking around the place though.




I managed to get four beds cleared and planted up today. Normally the beds would have already been cleared, but my bad back over winter put paid to getting ahead with everything.
One of the beds still had last year's parsnips in. I harvested to the end of one row and was very pleased with the parsnips I got, though some were afflicted by carrotfly. That's why I always grow more than I need. These are one crop that does require soil disturbance to harvest.
I left half a row of parsnips standing and just planted the potatoes in the spaces.

I also finally discovered where the other turkey hen has been hiding as I happened across her nest complete with three eggs. She is in last year's summer salad bed, which is now full of flowering rocket and borage. Fortunately her nest was at one end of the bed so I was able to clear enough to leave her nest and still plant my Cara potatoes.

One of the beauties of no dig is that it is far easier to leave things in situ and plant around them, whether that be a turkey nest, a perennial herb or a self-seeded plant like poppies, borage or marigolds.


Not everything goes smoothly in the veg plot though. The broad beans I sowed direct a while back have germinated poorly. It may be that the voles found them, but less than half came through. These were from quite old collected seed though. It's not a total disaster as I always end up with too many broad beans. I have resown into the gaps, two beans per station this time. If they germinate it will spread the broad bean harvest over a longer period.

Of course our smallholding has plenty of livestock too. Now that the paddocks are drier and the grass is growing the sheep pretty much look after themselves. The poultry are pretty easy to look after too, thought they need twice daily feeding and locking away at night, as well as chasing out of the veg garden occasionally.
They can be a little messy though, especially the ducks. While I pottered in the veg plot, Sue was busy deep littering the chicken houses. Every couple of weeks we (well, mostly Sue) completely clean out the poultry houses, but in between we just add more straw. This bedding makes a valuable addition to the compost heap.

The bees take a fair amount of Sue's time too. One of the new hive stands had settled down and left the two hives it was supporting leaning forwards. First job of the day, while the bees were very active in the glorious sunshine, was to lift up the whole shaboodle while Sue wedged offcuts of wood under the front legs. This involved putting myself right in the line of fire at the front of the hives. This is where you need total confidence in your protective bee suit. We managed to level up the hives, but not before a bee got inside my bee hood. (The suit has a small tear which was theoretically closed off with a clothes peg. I have since insisted that Sue patch it up for me.)



This was a bit unnerving, but fortunately the bee was more intent on finding a way out than attacking my face.

I've saved the big news till last though, so if you've not managed to read this far you won't find out, but then you'll not be reading this so you won't know you've missed out.

So here goes. DRUMROLLLLLLLLLLLLLL...

The swallows are back! Yay!!! Three appeared above the veg plot early afternoon. Their calls and chattering stopped me in my tracks as I delighted in the sight, the clearest symbol of the passing of the seasons.

More new ducks

There has been a bit of a duck changeover on the smallholding. The Pekin ducks had grown into brutes, just trampling right over the netting I erected to protect my vegetables.

They had to go!

But ducks are an integral part of my slug control. So I turned to the interweb, typing in "best ducks for a vegetable plot".

The overwhelming winning breed was Khaki Campbells.

I hadn't realised that most Khaki Campbells actually reside in the West of Britain, but it didn't take me too long to locate an advert from over this side of the country.

In fact they were on a smallholding down near Lakenheath, along a road which I used to visit to see Britain's last remnant population of Golden Orioles. Sadly they have gone now.

We took the chance to take the dogs on an adventure, walking them along the river at Santon Downham. This stretch of river has otters and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers but alas we didn't see either.

Onto the smallholding and there were about 80 Khaki Campbells to choose from, all ducks. They were in muddy conditions and it was all a bit smelly! They weren't tame either so we just took the first three we could catch. Fortunately nobody ended up face down in the mud!



Khaki Campbells are a small breed of duck. They are not fancy, but hopefully will do their job well in the veg plot without causing too much destruction. Here they are on their first day, desperate to hide away in their new house.

ed     A couple of weeks have passed now. The Khakis didn't come out of their house for a day or two and I eventually had to eject them. Then I had to fish them out of the pond as their feathers weren't in a good enough state to repel the water.
But they have now settled in, made friends with the two old ducks we have, and are enjoying life in the veg plot. Their feathers have improved so they can now use the pond. They have started laying eggs for us too.

Meanwhile we managed to sell four of the five Pekin ducks. Unluckily for him, the buyers didn't want a drake so he is soon destined for the table. The four females had just started laying whopping great eggs, so they were a good buy. They have gone to a smallholding where the owners do B&B so lots of people will get to enjoy them.

Chocolate Duck Makes Bid For Freedom

A while back one of our Muscovy ducks mysteriously disappeared. It was about the same time as we lost our drake Cayuga duck. Whether it was a natural predator or they fell victim to wandering too far and didn't realise that not everybody's dogs are duck-friendly I do not know.
Anyway, there is no happy ending. There is no surprise reappearance a few weeks later.

A new chocolate Muscovy duck

This left us with our drake Muscovy and two females. As well as their eggs, the Muscovies give us birds for the table as each year we hatch some out under broody hens. Their meat is just about the tastiest of any animal, bird or mammal, that we keep.

So when a friend said they were thinning down their Muscovy flock I decided to replace the chocolate brown girl we had lost. Sue picked her up late one Saturday afternoon and when we got her home we put her straight into her own house in the chicken pen overnight. The hope was that in the morning she would emerge, meet the other Muscovies and hang about with them.
But no!
She flew straight over the fence, into the field and then across the road. The first I knew of this was Sue waking me up to come and retrieve her.

I seriously thought we had no chance. Muscovy ducks are very strong fliers and one more flight would take her too far away. If she got on the pond at the end of the track opposite we would have no chance of getting her.

Fortunately the ground was solid so we could skirt right around the field and approach her from the other side. She flew straight back over the road.
More careful approach and she started heading back toward the farm. I kept just far enough away to encourage her to keep moving without spooking her into flight. The smallholding she came from did not offer her the opportunity to fly freely so her wings were now tired from the novel experience of her long flights. But it was going to be a long waddle across the field, over the dyke and back onto the smallholding.

We eventually got there and I managed to persuade her to go into the cage with the Silkie hens.

Next stage of the plan was to move a couple of the other Muscovies in there with her so she could make friends with them and hopefully learn the ways of our smallholding.


After several nights refusing to go into a house, she has finally learned from the others and follows one of them in at night. She has also learned not to panic when we go into the cage. We'll leave it another couple of weeks before she gets another taste of unfenced freedom.

A bit of basketry and pyrography

I don't like to waste the long dark evenings so I have been turning my hand to a couple of new skills.
Pyrography Signs
The pyrography signs for the veg plot are coming along nicely. Getting them all done will be a long term project.
I am in no way artistic. The process for making these is slow and methodical.
First I produce the signs on a computer (pictures are from image searches, narrowed down to line art) and print them out.
Next I trace them onto the wood using graphite paper.
Finally I burn in the letters and pictures with a pyrography pen. This is a slow process, somewhat reminiscent of trying to colour in a picture using a felt tip pen which has all but run out of ink.
The final step is to give the signs some protection for outside. For this I am using three coats of Danish oil.

Signs for the veg plot ready for cutting and treating.

In front, 3 willow fat feeders. These are very simple to make. 

All I need to do now is mix some seed with some fat and hang up the feeders.

Basketry bird feeders
When I'm not making my signs, I have started to make bird feeders out of willow. These are straight from a book I purchased. These projects are giving me an excellent opportunity to develop my skills in willow weaving. They use the same skills as are required for making larger baskets, but they are a little more intricate. I am using purchased buff willow for these projects. This is willow which has been boiled and then stripped of its bark. The boiling process releases tannins from the bark which stains the willow rods.
So far I have made fat feeders, a cone shaped seed feeder and a barrel feeder. I hope the birds appreciate my efforts.

I am very pleased with this barrel feeder

I have filled this cone feeder with 

meal worms and mixed seed.

Finally I'd like to show you a picture of my poultry pen. It may help you imagine the smallholding as you read about it. This is where my 'sentimental flock' live. They are the ones which, financially speaking,  I shouldn't really keep any longer. Between them they have not laid an egg for several months now.

But in their day they were very productive. Among them lives Elvis, the oldest bird who has served many years hatching out chicks for us and has been here longer than we have. All the rest were born here on the smallholding. They don't cost much to keep and they still scratch around in the orchard performing my pest control for me.
In amongst the chickens live the final two guinea fowl from my waning flock alongside my breeding trio of Muscovy ducks who produce a few birds each year which we take for the table.

Talking Turkey. Or... Capital punishment - what could possibly go wrong?

Tuesday 18th December
I don't do Christmas, but I do do Christmas holidays!
It is a time to plan ahead for a new year, to clear the ground and prepare the beds.
In fact when I think about it the winter solstice is what it's all about really.

Anyway on a sort of Christmas theme, while I was pottering about in the veg plot today I could hear the turkeys making more of their strange bubbling calls than usual. This usually indicates that something is wrong. There's a predator or one of them has got out or something else exciting is happening. It doesn't usually require my immediate attention.
But after half an hour or so of endless bubbling I went to investigate.

One of the grey stags was endlessly pursuing the only black stag. It had hold of the strange dangly bits under its chin and was not about to let go. Even when I stepped in it would not let go.
So I made an instant decision. One week to go till Christmas day. hmmmm…

I caught the offender by the leg and carried him unceremoniously out of the turkey pen and out of sight of all the other poultry.
Five minutes later I was plucking our Christmas turkey!

Don't worry. This is not cruel.
He is already dead. 

Wednesday 19th December
I made a great job of plucking the turkey yesterday. It is now hanging in the stables. With the weather not too warm it can hang there a few days.
While I was planting some more willows in my new willow holt today, right next to the turkeys, the bubbling started up again. This time the black stag was the offender!
Was I too hasty yesterday? Did I get the wrong guy?

Sunday 23rd December update
Sue prepared the turkey today. It weighed in at an impressive 7.3 kg or 16lb (this is the weight once gutted and trimmed, as you would buy in the shops).
We don't necessarily aim for big birds and certainly wouldn't entertain the thought of keeping a double-breasted bird. But this was a good weight. The diet of fermented grains, seeds and pulses has obviously been a success.

Santa makes an unwelcome appearance

Tuesday 4th December 2018
Far-reaching calls through the frosty air
The year marches on. In general it has been mild, but today saw quite a heavy frost which sat around all day.
Birds were on the move all day. Two flocks of Whooper Swans flew majestically over the farm calling to announce their return for the winter. There were buntings and pipits around the smallholding too, but most unusual was a flyover of 21 jackdaws. When even a single jackdaw flies across the open fenland landscape it can be heard way before it is visible. 21 had me looking around for a while before I clocked them heading over the fields.

Where the grass is greener.
Most of today's jobs were minor jobs related to looking after the sheep and poultry. I moved the sheep onto fresh grass. There is still just about enough grass for them as long as I keep moving them, but this cold spell may mean that I soon have to start feeding hay as a supplement.


Turkey escape plans thwarted
Every few days I have to mix up the poultry feed too. Using fermented straights (that means bags of neat grain rather than industrially prepared food pellets) is working well. There's not much difference cost-wise and I won't make any wild claims about glossier feathers or tastier eggs, but I do know that all the birds go mad for it. It also makes me feel more involved with my birds, rather than just chucking processed food pellets in their direction a couple of times a day.
I have also been growing wheat fodder for the turkeys, but it is slower to grow in the cold weather and the turkeys don't seem so bothered about eating it. I'll feed them what's left and then leave it till the spring.
Final job for the morning was to mend the turkey netting for the umpteenth time. There is now more baler twine than net! The trouble is that every time a turkey breaks through a hole in the netting, they walk around on top of it trying to work out how to rejoin the others. In so doing, they create many more holes than the original one.

Santa not welcome!
This afternoon saw an unusual visitor on the smallholding. For drunkenly wrapped around one of the electric fence stakes down with the sheep was Santa Claus! To be more precise, the remains of a foil Santa helium balloon. I do wish people wouldn't celebrate in such irresponsible ways.

A few minutes later another balloon came bouncing across the fields and landed in the dyke. This one was a birthday balloon, but it had a manufacturer's address on. I promptly sent of an appropriately angry and sarcastic email. I did actually receive a reply apologising for the inconvenience. But sometimes an apology just doesn't fix anything.

A palette of willows
Another afternoon arrival was more welcome. A batch of basketry willows. I put them into water ready for planting tomorrow.

More on my willow growing plans in a post coming soon.

No more digging?

Life has been very complicated lately, but here's a little effort to start catching up.

Saturday 3rd November 2018
4 Muscovies and 2 Pekins gone!
The male Muscovy ducks which were born earlier in the year had reached a good size and were eating me out of house and home. Time for a little trip to the freezer! Bad news for two of the Pekin ducks, as I decided to keep five of them for breeding and eggs rather than seven.
I'll spare you any photos from today.

Sunday 4th November 2018
A fine autumn day outside in the veg plot, preparing some of the beds for next year. I am having a very big rethink, going back to smaller beds but without the network of grass paths which were impossible to keep on top of and gave too many edges for the slugs to hide under.



I don't think any of the no-dig systems I have come across are perfect or practical, so I plan to combine a number of methods, using cardboard, green manure, grass clippings, straw and compost to mulch and top up the soil structure every year.
Preparing the beds for the big change to no-dig has involved a surprising amount of digging! However, it should be a one off exercise.
There'll be much more on this new way of gardening in future posts.

I caught a rat in one of my snap traps today. I am trying to stop using poison bait so am really hoping that the idea of placing snap traps into a bait box (with normal wheat inside as an attractant) will work well enough to stop rats moving into the poultry pens.

Activites for winter nights.

Sue tries to make a carpet but Gerry 

has already decided to sit on it 

before it's even finished!

Tuesday 6th November 2018
I spent the morning fixing chicken houses. Goodness knows why they make the doors so close-fitting. A little bit of damp weather and the doors no longer close. Pulling them hard to open them in the morning inevitably loosens the screws which hold the bolts. So I have put handles onto the doors and shaved the tops so they don't catch. A little air circulation in the chicken house is a good thing.
Sue has been working hard on her peg-looming as she has the winter to produce enough carpets to line the floor of our tipi. Did I mention we have bought a tipi?!

With the nights drawing in there is a balance to be struck between outdoor pursuits and indoor evening pursuits. Winter gives me much more time for baking so today I made a gooseberry custard tart. Gooseberry recipes are hard to find beyond the predictable sponge, pie and fool. I made bread too, the first time using some nice Dove's Farm flour. I don't know whether it was the quality of the flour or the new dried yeast I am using, but the finished loaf was one of the nicest I have ever made.