Going Cheep

April's Showers Arrive Late

I wouldn't be English if I didn't open with the weather.

We've finally has some of this...

Rather a lot. In fact I've had a butt full of it. Water butts of course! I've managed to fill two IBC containers, that's 2000l of water collected. 

Frost-free?
Not only that, but following an overnight frost on the morning of 7th May, we now have a frost-free forecast through until 20th.

I've finally started moving some of the plants out of the conservatory. Chances of anything apart form a light frost are now very low.

Chicks, Ducklings and Poults

The week has been all about baby birds though, We suddenly have 53 extra little mouths to look after!

We bought in a score of ay old chicks. These are hubbards which grow at a medium pace and are well suited to free range life. They are meat birds but we don't place a huge priority on bringing them to weight as fast as possible. The fastest growing birds, as used in the poultry industry (and by unthinking smallholders), just grow too fast for my liking. They are genetic monsters which can easily become too heavy for their legs or hearts to carry them. On the other hand, some of the more traditional breeds really aren't economically viable, producing scrawny birds which take ages to get to weight. This is fine if you are in the privileged position to pay considerably more for your meat, but it is not a viable route.

So we strive for a happy medium, birds bred to grow faster than normal and to put on more breast meat, but which can still lead a happy and healthy (if short) life. The shortness of a meat bird's life always comes as a shock to those not in the know. A commercial meat chicken will have no more than  couple of months of life. 

Gut instinct is that we want our chickens to have a much longer life than that, but this is where reality kicks in. For no chicken bred for meat would go much past 6 months. For starters, it would be very expensive, but more than that any chicken older than that turns to rubber. Imagine eating one of those chicken dog toys!

There is obviously the option to go vegan, and I wouldn't criticise that choice at all. In fact I was a vegan for part of my life. For me the important factor is the quality of life an animal has while it is still alive and keeping our own livestock gives me complete control over that. 

Hot on the heels of the chicks came the ducklings. Indeed it was a lot hotter on the heels than I had anticipated and it had me scrabbling around for somewhere to keep them. Again the ducklings are destined for the plate and will grow quickly. I searched around the smallholding for a suitable container in which to keep them. Finally I found the perfect solution, a large and strong plastic post office sorting box which we had been gifted and were using to store logs.

I fashioned a lid from strong metal mesh and suspended a heat lamp from the rafters in the garage. The poor little things were very sleepy and would just collapse asleep. A week on and they are almost unrecognisable. I am really pleased with how strong they are. If they feather up and the weather warms it won't be too long before they can enjoy free-ranging around the smallholding. For the moment they wouldn't survive the cold and wet, not to mention crows and rats!

Back to the chicks. Just a day old, they went straight into an old gerbil cage we scrounged off a friend. Here they had warmth, food and drink and safety. But their rate of growth is phenomenal and it doesn't take long before the smell  becomes somewhat noxious.

So already, after just a week, their accommodation has been considerably upgraded. We managed to scrounge another post office sorting box so they have moved into the garage alongside the ducklings.

As if that weren't enough to keep us busy, the turkey hen who was siting on eggs under a pile of sticks by the roadside paddock has hatched out al her eggs. I returned home from work to see her leading nine poults (baby turkeys) through he long grass.

I quickly sprang into action scooping the fluffy little balls into my coat pockets while mum did her best to fend me off, flying up at my face with claws outstretched. This is a dangerous lifestyle! 

We had prepared a stable in anticipation so I led mum towards it as she followed the calls of her babies. Again it is much safer for them to be reared indoors until they can fly up onto a perch.

There's more! A week later the other hen who was sitting on the straw bales hatched out her own clutch. Interestingly these chicks look completely different. One mum is a Norfolk Black, one a Bronze, but dad is a mix. However, the poults seem to have taken on the genes of their mums. We had no idea how many eggs she was on so I was pleasantly pleased to fin myself scooping up a dozen baby birds. Just one didn't make it out of its egg. Mum will be a very good parent. I can tell by the tenacity with which she sat for four weeks and by the tenacity she showed in jumping onto my back several times to defend her young.

Pegleg's Veg

Meanwhile in the veg plot some plants have finally started to be transplanted outside. Broad beans, onions, turnips and radishes are the first out. None of thee mind the cold too much, but I've been waiting ages for rain to wet the soil.

In the polytunnel, Florence fennel I sowed last July is just now coming good. Its the first time I've had success with this crop.

I've also been busy creating a new area to attract and feed wild finches and buntings. In general they won't come too near the house but we have really good numbers of Yellowhammers on the holding this year. To attract them I've sown some of the mixed seed we feed the birds into an area bordering the sheep paddocks and orchard. It's already working as there are regularly several birds feeding there, though they are showing a remarkable ignorance of farming. Each seed they eat could potentially have produced many hundreds later in the year!

One For Sorrow

Now for some sad news on the nature front. Having watched the pair of long-tailed tits busily constructing their delightful nest, I went outside to see a pile of feathers on the floor. Something, I suspect  magpie, had found the nest and pecked a hole in the top. The long-tailed tits have abandoned, leaving their tiny eggs in the nest. Nature can be so harsh.

Nature's Undertakers

One of my favourite jobs is turning the compost. It is a thriving city of minibeasts beavering away. Last week I unearthed a large beetle, maybe an inch long, with notable orange blobs o its antennae. A minute later there was another. They scuttled a bit too quickly to get any decent pics.

I looked them up and they are black sexton beetles, nature's undertakers. They sniff out small dead animals then dig underneath them until the corpse is buried. These two had sniffed out a dead rat! Smallholding's not always as glamorous as it seems.

Cats and dogs... and fish and frogs

Finally it rained!
A little at first, on my birthday. Just an hour or so, but enough to wake the grass up a little.

We had been enjoying temperatures regularly in the high 20s and even up into the 30s. As much as I like hot weather, the ground was like concrete and getting much work done outside was absolutely exhausting.

But then, on 27th July, two months since the drought began, the heavens opened. The temperature plummeted by 10 degrees and months worth of rain fell in a couple of days. The water butts filled within an hour, quite unprecedented. I got soaked unblocking a couple of gutters, but soon had the ponds full again courtesy of diverted rainwater.
The rain was the right sort too. A little heavy maybe, but there were gaps between downpours for the soil to soak up the moisture.

Within a couple of days the top 3 inches of soil became workable again and the air was cool enough for my old body to work outside. Only problem - I had one day before we were off on our summer vacation.

ed again... now back from our week away and we are pretty much back to square one. No more rain and temperatures back up in the 30s.
While we were in cool damp West Wales, Fenland was baking again.

SPLISH, SPLASH, SPLOSH

Sunday 1st April
Is this an April Fool's Prank?

Wet does not describe it!
The whole smallholding has basically been transformed into one of those very trendy wild swimming pools. Needless to say, the only animals enjoying it are the ducks and geese.

Piled onto the cold start we've had to the growing season, this is going to put everything back even further.

The wet weather job list
I have a long list of jobs to do on the smallholding, but luckily I have a separate list for very, very wet days, when the soil can't be touched and it is just too unpleasant to be working outside. Since I much prefer to be working outside, there are some jobs that have been on this list for an exceedingly long time.
Working in the polytunnel is always a good option for such days, but there is only so much tending to seedlings that I can do. Love them too much and they die.
So reluctantly I started mending one of the chicken houses which have been sitting in the garage. The space will be needed soon for rearing chicks. Mending chicken houses is a case of scraping and scrubbing all the surfaces, a quick coat of creosote on the outside, new roof felt, often new hinges and a few bits of wood replaced. I quite enjoy doing it but always put it off too long.
Here's my starting point for the current project.



Turkey eggs-it
I spent some of the day trying to sell turkey eggs and goose eggs on the internet, as well as our trio of Ixworth chickens. It's amazing how many people can't read your location, the price, or even what you are selling!
We usually sell them at school but they quickly build up in the holidays.
Anyway, I ended up with future orders for turkey eggs which people want for hatching. So the last of last year's offspring needed to go as she was the daughter of the stag. I caught her after dark, when you can just pick the birds off their perch rather than chasing them round a muddy, waterlogged pen. Turkeys are easy to dispatch and surprisingly easy to pluck, although doing it in the dim light of the stables added a degree of challenge.
Finally, it's been covered in a separate blog post, but Ewe 0004 was looking slightly better today.

... while one of the other ewes is looking very close to giving birth. This is the same ewe who looks very close to giving birth for weeks on end every year. I am checking on her every hour or so but praying that she does not choose such awful weather to go into labour.

Monday 2nd April

Splish, splash, splosh
Me and three dogs woke up one minute before the alarm to bottle feed Rambutan.
Yes, I did say 3 dogs - Sue has abandoned me for Lapland and left me with her friend's dog. We all went for a long walk (involving lots of splashing) although Charlie was useless at dyke jumping.

I delved into the list of wet day jobs and decided to clear the stable where Ewe 0004 had given birth to twin lambs not long ago. It needed sweeping and disinfecting in preparation for the possibility of another ewe being brought up closer to the farmhouse to give birth.
Then somehow I ended up digging about 20 metres of dyke. I didn't plan to do this. The small dyke hardly ever has water in and when it does it's a good time to check for blockages.
Halfway through this I literally skewered my thumb on a reed. I initially thought it had just stuck into the end of my thumb, but when I pulled it out it became apparent that it had actually penetrated about an inch!
It quickly started bleeding quite heavily and I hastened back to the house, sucking blood as I went. Fortunately the blood stopped flowing quite quickly but it was very painful.
Undeterred and with the thumb cleaned up I continued digging the dyke until darkness was falling.
The reed had actually gone in the top of my thiumb and come out  a couple of centimetres further down.
It didn't affect me doing big jobs, but I was unable to do anything fiddly.



Tuesday 3rd April
Keeping busy

Dogs fed and watered, chicks fed and watered, Rambutan bottle fed, chickens let out, fed and watered, ducks, geese and turkeys sorted, cats fed and watered, dishwasher on.

Thumb hurts!

Raining.

A morning of clumsy seed sowing followed by trying to joint a turkey without using the thumb on my dominant hand,

Then onto breadmaking - luckily the food mixer does the kneading now, 

Then cooking - turkey tikka.

The list of wet-weather jobs is gradually growing smaller but I could really do with getting on the land now.

Wednesday 4th April

With Sue away, the three dogs and two cats get to sleep on the bed. There's a little room left for me too.

Rambo and his friend got the big pumpkin today and quickly set about devouring it. Pumpkin seeds are an excellent natural wormer, which is a bonus.

The Muscovy ducks have been having the time of their lives lately, making their way down to the 'lake' every day. The sun appeared briefly today and they rested under the plum tree - this plum tree was overtaken by whatever it was grafted onto, so it is completely unproductive but is the most attractive tree in the orchard, especially when it comes into blossom. There is still not much blossom about this year. Everything is just so late.

-

Me and the dogs went on a long walk, though we had to abort when Charlie refused to cross the dyke.

Angry Angus comes to the farm

Monday 21st November 2016
Until this weekend I only knew one Angry Angus, a farmer in a little place called Break on the Shetland Isles. But another Angry Angus, the first officially named storm of the winter, was supposed to sweep in and cause havoc on Sunday night. It seems we missed the worst of it, but Angry Angus was in no mood to depart and today we got his rain.

So I stayed inside and put up some kitchen wall units, a task which would have been somewhat easier had the wall not been bowed.

Tuesday 22nd November 2016
Angry Angus just won't go away. He woke me up in the night with his huffing and puffing and rain battering against the window, so another day of inside jobs. I did drive over to Coy Bridge to check for wild swans in amongst the Mute flock. There were seven Whooper Swans accompanying 36 Mutes.
I took the dogs with me, as they've not been getting much exercise - Boris refuses to go outside in the wet! I let them out and we went for a walk along a couple of new dykes, that was until a hare broke cover and bounded out of a field past the dogs. Off they went! There was no stopping Boris and Arthur's little legs have never moved so quickly.
Inevitably the hare got away. There was never a chance they would actually catch it, but I wasn't impressed with them ignoring my commands to come back!

All in all Angus was a bit of a damp squib. But he has left the soil heavy. Another year when I didn't get it turned before it was too late! Too much twitching in October.

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.

Water, water everywhere... Rainwater harvesting

The rest of the world may bemoan the onset of rain, but anybody who lives off the land and still maintains an affinity with nature will appreciate it. Granted that occasionally it causes us problems but, to be fair, without it we'd all be dead!
Over the last 24 hours South Lincolnshire has experienced a mini deluge, which is a very good thing indeed, for it's been an overly dry spring and summer so far. Not particularly hot, but arid enough to open up a few serious cracks in the ground.

Last night's rain though may just save the few new fruit trees which were struggling with the dry conditions. It should get the pasture growing again, which in turn means that the sheep might fatten up enough to sell. And it should get the vegetables growing a bit faster, as they've been in a state of virtual suspended animation for the last few weeks.

When the rain does come, I make the most of it by collecting as much as possible. I've got three 1000 litre IBCs (don't ask me what that stands for - they're the big white containers you see in fields) as well as the normal array of green water butts connected to the guttering.

My biggest achievement is linking most of my water collection so that the linked containers all self-level. This is how I get water into the IBC in the polytunnel, which in turn means that my polytunnel plants can have harvested rainwater whenever they need it.

1000 litres of rainwater connected to...

About three months ago I did manage to fill this container up, but I then frustratingly left the tap on overnight after filling up a watering can. 1000 litres of precious water gone, soaked away into the ground!
But as of this morning all of my collection containers are full to overflowing, which equates to about 4000 litres of water.

A slight overflow problem, now sorted and made useful.
connected to...

1000 litres of harvested rainwater for the polytunnel crops.
It acts as a heat reservoir in the winter too.

A bathful of comfrey tea - a bag of rotting
comfrey leaves suspended in the bath
 ensures a constant supply of
liquid feed

Another 1000 litres,
used to top up the sheep's water

The bees like to use this one as a water supply
- hence the floating corks and polystyrene, to save them when they fall in.

Since the different containers all sit at different levels, when the lowest one fills up I have to shut off the tap linking it to the others, otherwise the higher ones would simply drain into the lowest, causing it to overflow, before they were full. Once I've used some of it up, I can simply open the tap again and allow everything to self-level again.
The only other minor alteration I had to make this morning was to fit an outlet hose to one of the smaller water butts which was overflowing and flooding the stables. But a simple overflow hose now means that all this water goes where I choose - at the moment to a soaker hose that runs through the herb patch. The other full water butt overflows to a soaker hose in the polytunnel so it becomes self-irrigating when it rains.

It's taken a bit of time to perfect the system and I've had to think carefully about where the water would go first and what happens when any one container fills up, but I've now got a brilliant water storage system and any overflow can be directed to wherever I want it to go.

I can't realistically water the pasture or the orchard, but everywhere else should be okay now for a good month or so, even if we get no rain at all.

Rain at last. And leeks.

Despite the screen on my phone last Sunday, I had to wait till Thursday before we had any appreciable rain. This was our first rain for almost three weeks and was needed. After the wettest winter on record, there is still plenty of moisture just under the surface.

However, the top layer is where the seedlings need to get a hold. With the delightful weather we had during my whole two week Easter break, I was pretty much up to date with everything except rotavating the spare veg patch and getting the first carrot seeds in. The only other outstanding job was a second sowing of Broad Beans and planting my last bag of onion sets. One small problem with the last couple of jobs though - they'd gone missing!
This problem was easily solved when I eventually looked inside a basket hanging in the lobby. But the rotavating and seed sowing were at the behest of the weather.
So, when the rain did finally arrive, I was straight out on the rotavator. The soil in the Spare Veg Patch is clayier and lumpier than the rest of  my veg patch. Without rain, cricket ball lumps of earth just travel round and round in the rotavator tines, emerging completely unscathed. But three hours after work on Thursday and another four on Friday had the ground looking much better, even if my arms and torso felt as if they'd taken a thorough bashing!

The rain prompted the parsnip seeds into action too. Always slow to germinate, but they always seem to come good in the end. Some very careful weeding will be required though as all manner of seedlings manage to come up before the parsnips.

And the potatoes are leaping into action too, helped by the ducks who insist on flattening the ridges. Luckily nights are warm at the moment so I can ridge them back up at my leisure. At least the ducks keep the slugs at bay. Reports from other veg growers suggest a bad year for them, but as yet I'm not seeing it, fingers crossed. So if it's down to the ducks, then a few flattened potato ridges are a price well worth paying.

Anyway, here are the Red Duke of Yorks.

 

And finally... the first leeks have gone outside. I grow them in half seed trays in the polytunnel. They always seem to germinate easily and once they are about six to nine inches tall (not quite the pencil thickness that everyone seems to recommend) I move them outside, planting them 9 inches apart in each direction. Planting leeks is a bit of a ritual. I make a hole as deep as I can with a dibber. Stopping the soil from instantly falling back in is somewhat of an art.

I then drop in the seedlings. I don't bother trimming the roots or the leaves and it seems to work very well. I then water the seedlings in and just allow the holes to fill up on their own. I always grow Musselburgh, which serves me well but is quite a late variety. So this year the first leeks in are Jolant, one of the earliest.

 

I planted a few rows of carrots. Purple Haze, White Satin, Ideal Red and Chantennay for a nice colourful mixture. I also sowed some Resistafly and some Flyaway. Hopefully they'll avoid carrot fly, even if the others don't. Lastly, a row of Autumn King and a row of Early Nantes - just for a bit of bulk standard carrotage.

As soon as they start coming through I'll sow the next lot.

 

And I'm still hoping that a few more of those April showers fall on Swallow Farm.

Welcome to the world, Mr Bean

Water from a tap and water from the sky are two completely different compounds.

 

A few days ago I connected up the hosepipe to fill all the animal drinkers and duck pools - the ducks have new pools so were most excited. quacking happily and nodding their heads up and down.

Happiness is...

While I was waiting for them to fill, I inspected the onion sets. A couple of them were just beginning to emerge, but none of them was exactly in a hurry. I inspected the broad beans too. More precisely, I gazed at the soil in search of something that didn't resemble a marigold seedling. But nowt. This happens with broad beans every year. They wait until I've almost given up hope, then they appear.

Overnight it rained. What a result! For rain water doesn't just keep plants alive, it breathes life into them. So I entered the garden this morning and voila!

The first broad bean seedlings
shoving the soil out of their way
and onions two inches tall!

Generally speaking, broad beans are the first outdoor sown seed to come through in my veg patch. From now on its onward and upward.

 

The shallots put on an amazing spurt of growth too.

Free Water

Yesterday was cider making day. A small group of us spent the day cutting, bashing, squashing and squeezing a third of a ton of apples. The weather was threatening and our breaks were timed around the frequent showers. But a little bit of rain couldn't put a dampener on a fine day spent with like souls.
And of course there is the 30 litres of fresh apple juice I brought home, most to be turned into cider. A little will be reserved for pure apple juice and some will be turned into cider vinegar, a great all round panacea for the chickens.

The reason I talk about the cider day is by way of contrast with today's weather. For there was no escaping the wet this afternoon. I just bit the bullet and got wet. Very wet.


I decided to take advantage of the situation, experimenting with how far gravity would carry this surfeit of water from the various water butts I have.
I managed to fill all the baths and paddling pools as well as watering all the plants in the polytunnel with a healthy dose of fresh rainwater.

Baths and pools all full.



My bendy gutter,
formed with plastic bottles and string,
took the water round the corner
and into the waiting bath.

But still I watched more and more water just pour onto the land. Undoubtedly there will be a time this year when all that water would have come in useful. But at least I won't need to connect the hosepipe to the outdoor tap for quite some time now.








That's the positive spin on today's deluge. The ducks and geese go along with this.

However, the chickens, guineafowl and pigs are not quite so overjoyed. For today their homes were turned into a quagmire.

Luckily the pigs can choose somewhere a little less muddy.







Putting the chicken houses off the ground
seems like a very good idea right now.