Mayan Mayhem

A few days ago, most of the modern world felt fit to scorn at the ancient Mayan civilisation's prediction that the world would end imminently.
I'm writing this, you're reading it, and tonight a bloke with a long white beard will be visiting every house in the world to deliver presents down the chimney, with the aid of his flying reindeer.
So clearly those ancients got it all wrong, whereas we know much better.

But I'm not so sure we should be so smug. Bear with me and you'll see where I'm going with this one.



Sunday 23rd December 2012
Two sleeps till Christmas

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that for three of the last five mornings I've not even bothered to take a photo of the sunrise, despite the fact that, like the Mayans, I've been conducting my own form of sun worship this year by watching every single sunrise.

But here's the thing. That infamous Mayan calendar which came to an end last Friday was based on the eternal (?) cycle of the sun rising every morning and setting every evening (at least in the Mayan part of the world).
Well, since Friday 21st December 2012 I have not seen the sun! Not just as it was scheduled to break the horizon, but not at all. Instead we have had incessant rain more akin to The Great Flood in another ancient story.
So maybe that Mayan end of the world was never going to happen in quite such a sudden manner as we envisaged. Just maybe it is a slower process. Has anyone actually seen the sun since last Friday?

Even the dry dyke has water in,
for the first time since we moved here.

The water just has nowhere to go.

Asparagus trenches or individual bathing pools for the geese?

And here's another thing. I just found this on the internet. Of course, if you're reading the repeat you are free to scorn for a second time!

24 December 2012

Christmas Eve To Mark The End Of The World?

Mayan Apocalypse Now Scheduled For December 24

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/12/24/christmas-eve-end-world-mayan-apocalypse-december-24_n_2357962.html#s1872872&title=1806_

  

 

Wild, wet and windy...and more wet

I do try not to moan about our good old British weather. I try to live by the seasons and accept the extremes.

But COME ON! When is it ever going to stop raining? At least we're somewhat protected here from the worst excesses of flooding, but that doesn't prevent the ground being totally sodden.

There is plenty of standing water in the fields and the dyke at the end of the land has more water in than at any time since we moved in. The ducks and geese don't seem to mind, but the rest of the poultry are not so impressed.

And the poor pigs are wallowing around knee-deep in mud, though if they really didn't like it there's still dryish ground they could move onto. As soon as I can clear a stable room I'll move them inside for a while though, if anything else to give the land a chance to recover.

 

Tuesday 27th November 2012
Grey skies after another very wet night





If only the dyke had this much water

in all the time (I'm thinking wildfowl)



Good job the chicken houses
are on stilts.

  



Imagine the wader list if it had been
like this back in late summer

 

 

Things to do on a wet day

Thursday 19th July 2012

 Paperwork

Ironing 

 Cleaning

Catch up with the blog

Get wet

Plan for dry days

Cook, bake, preserve

Buy things on the internet

Write lists of things to do on wet days

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomato.
I have abandoned all hope of getting the polytunnel up in the near future.
This is a problem. For the greenhouse, until a couple of days ago, was full of tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers and chillis. And all waiting to go into the polytunnel which is in 28 boxes in the stables!

I just love the idea of loads of colours, shapes and flavours of tomato and pepper, crops which we use day in day out and would use more of if we had them. Tomatoes, especially, are easy to store through the winter, made into sauces or passata.
After a shaky start with damping off and a second sowing, a few seeds of each variety has eventually yielded an awful lot of plants. But stuck in seed trays and not getting anywhere near enough light or heat in the greenhouse, all my indoor crops have been languishing.

Tomatoes and asparagus make
good companions

I reached this same stage last year, when I eventually planted most of the toms outside and crossed my fingers! It worked well and we had a good crop, even if we had to ripen quite a lot hung upside down indoors. Blight will be more of a threat this year, but nevertheless my straggly plants have again been put outside to cope. Already, after just a couple of days, they seem a little stronger, their roots free to spread and their leaves exposed to full light and a healthy breeze.

Tomatoes and gooseberries

like each other too.

I read that tomatoes do well planted with asparagus, in particular that the toms deter asparagus beetle. Somewhere else I read that tomatoes and gooseberries are good companions.

So that's where many of them have gone.

Hopefully when summer comes I'll be posting images of baskets full of ripe, multicoloured tomatoes.

Space in the greenhouse
I started this post with a list of things to do in the rain. I left out pottering in the polytunnel, but in its absence the greenhouse became a rather smaller alternative today. A mixture of peat-free growbags, pots and straw bales now house my crops which will hopefully start to grow now that they have space and light.

And with things a lot less cluttered I'll be able to track down the slugs which have totally decimated every single basil seedling as soon as it has germinated.

A compact space for my greenhouse crops.
But do they have time to set fruit and ripen
after a very slow start?

p.s. A Ray of Hope
When I vowed never again to moan about the rain, along came four months of rain. As I finish writing this post in which I abandon all hope of getting the polytunnel up, what should appear on the horizon but a five day forecast for high pressure, light winds and warm temperatures! When I was a child, whenever I asked "are we nearly there?" the destination was "always just around the next corner." I've learned to wait until I see before I believe.

July drips on

The right half

The left half







I am quite a stoical man, but COME ON!!! How long can it rain for?

The weather today was so wet I even did my paperwork. Movement records and medecine records for the pigs. These can be inspected at any time so best to get them done. But it's not often I can't find something better to do.

I did try for a while to work outside but got absolutely drenched. At least I managed to separate Daisy from the piglets and to mix up wormer for the chickens.

It's all to do with the jet stream, that flow of air across the Atlantic that keeps us warmer than we otherwise would be. If it ever switches, our weather could dramatically change. So, the elephant in the room... has it ever stayed so far south for so long?

And when the sun finally came out today to reveal a beautiful evening I was faced with the choice between slug and weed bashing (perfect weather for these activities) or Andy Murray and Jo Wilfred Tsonga bashing it out on Centre Court.

... After the match, I ventured into the veg patch to do some slug bashing until I discovered that the soil was perfect for pulling weeds. Even the couch grass gave up it's sharp, tapering roots. And without the weeds the slugs have more open ground to cover and fewer damp, shady places to hang out.

I must have managed over an hours work outside when the rain came again. I soldiered on until I glanced behind me to see the most amazing double rainbow spanning the sky. A sprint for the camera, but I missed the best of it. If only there were really a pot of gold at the base!

Beautiful as they are, I'm feeling very ambivalent about rainbows right now. For they are invariably accompanied by rain. On the flip-side, they are invariably accompanied by at least a little sunshine.

Friday 6th July 2012
A fourth month of rain continues unabated.

Just One Big April Shower

 

Monday 23rd April 2012

Tuesday 24th April 2012







This year the month of April sure has lived up to its reputation.

I can't believe I'm about to do this, but I'm actually going to moan about the rain, something us English people just love to do and a pleasure we've been deprived of for quite some time.

All I need is a couple of days dry and the soil will be perfect for breaking into a fine tilth ready to welcome a host of seeds and seedlings. I don't mind getting cold and wet, though I'd rather not, but at the moment the soil's just too lumpy and cloggy for sowing seeds into. At least my system of small veg beds will mean I can minimise treading on the soil and destroying it's structure.
Meanwhile, the queue builds up. I've filled the coldframe with baby plants hardy enough to survive there and with slightly bigger ones moved on from the greenhouse. I've filled the spaces with those that needed to be in the heat of the house to germinate and reach a few days old. And I've sown the next lot of seeds and filled up the staging in the dining room.
The whole system is now on the point of gridlock, with a giant bottleneck at the actually-going-into-the-veg-garden stage.

Not only that, but the slugs are on the rampage. Not compared to London, where the imbalance of the urban ecosystem gives them an unfair advantage, but for the first time I am seeing slugs in significant numbers. Only small ones and not enough to do much significant damage at the moment, but enough to cause a threat. The one crop they seem to have gone straight for is the young pak choi seedlings. Now, as tasty as pak choi is to us, it seems to be even more tasty to every manner of moving creature out there. I'm on the point of giving up on it, but I've got a couple more experiments up my sleeve before that. I'm going to trying sowing a lot more than I need, in the hope that a few get through and survive. This is the same tactic used by a frog when it lays enough spawn to give rise to about a thousand tadpoles. I'm also going to try the other extreme, growing a few plants in the pampered luxury of the polytunnel. We'll see what works best, or we'll learn to like something else green!

The crops that did make it into the soil outside are enjoying the rain though! The peas, in all their various sizes and shades, are sprouting up and reaching for the skies. The broad beans have awakened and pushed their bushy leaves through the crust. And the first potatoes have already nudged up through the trenches and breathed the fresh air above. Let's hope we have no more sharp frosts or I'll have to get out there and earth them up a little more. In fact, I'll do that anyway at some stage, but I'd prefer to wait till the soil's a bit drier (and lighter).

Anyway, most of the day was spent inside today, sowing seeds. Some are second sowings to continue the succession at harvest time. Others are those which grow fast but can't go out until all risk of frost has passed and the soil is a little warmer. So the squashes, pumpkins and courgettes, the cucumbers, sweet corn and more beans. All these have giant seeds which result in fast-growing giant seedlings with huge leaves. They're amazing to grow. Now that they are started off, I need to prepare their final growing sites as soon as I can, digging in lots of compost and manure and giving them plenty of space. I have plans for the 'Three Sisters' - more on this at the time, and for splashes of radiant sunflowers to mingle in and brighten up this patch.
I also planted up some perennial flower seeds and a stack of rudbeckia and cosmos seeds saved from last year. And finally, I've started off most of the herbs. These packets can yield hundreds of plants and are an ample reward for patience.

A New Polytunnel Is On Its Way
Being stuck in all day often costs me money, since the internet is too inviting. And so it was today, although this was a purchase which was long overdue and not unexpected. For today, I finally got round to ordering a polytunnel, all 14 foot by 40 foot of it. The price hiked up from the basic to almost double that, mainly because I have bought every conceivable extra to protect it from our fenland winds - storm protection brackets, crop bars, a triple ridge system, the premier model with closer hoops... also double doors front and back, ground cover and irrigation system (though I hope that most of the water will be diverted from the garage roof into a bath I shall sink into the ground inside the tunnel - this will provide a little stored heat in the cold winter nights too.)

It should be here in about a week, and I'm sure it won't be long till I've filled it up.

Birdy distractions
First thing this morning, two Fieldfares flew from the Ash trees in the garden. They will certainly be very late reaching their breeding grounds as they should have been gone when most of their cousins left. I've not seen any round for a few weeks now. I was treated to stunning views of a Barn Owl just outside the dining room window but the Short-eared Owls seem to have finally moved on now. Not seen any for a couple of days.

Then, early afternoon, I find out there were two White Storks in a field on the outskirts of Spalding yesterday, and this morning! They would have been a very welcome diversion. A few days ago, a remarkable flock of nine birds were photographed from a tractor somewhere in the South-West. Six of these were subsequently seen a couple of times somewhere in Wales. Could these Lincolnshire birds have come from the same flock? Whatever their origins, they were reported to have flown South from Spalding. All they had to do was to veer a little East and they might just come over the farm. So, between the frequent and very heavy showers, I kept popping out down the garden to give me a good all round perspective, but nothing. Not really a surprise. They weren't likely to gain much height in this weather, and visibility was not great so I would need a large slice of luck for them to fly close enough to see. Besides, I doubt that in this weather they went very far at all. Probably grubbing around in some nearby field.

World's Smallest Chicken Egg.

Saturday 21st April 2012
A deceptive start to a very wet day.

I have to admit it, today I was feeling particularly grumpy and tetchy all day. Most of the time we are living a fairly idyllic life here, but it is not all plain sailing. Occasionally stresses and strains still bear down, and today they seemed to outweigh the good. Even this swallow, perched on my pea frame made from red dogwood, could not cheer me up for long.
Normally when I feel like this I just take on some impossibly hard and endless job and immerse myself in it totally, but today the rain just kept coming and everything I did seemed to need doing twice.

 

Rain stopped play many times today. Even the chickens took refuge in the pig shelter.

But who laid this tiny egg?

Left to right: Chestnut, Elvis, Speckledy Hen, Lady Guinea, ???

I did manage to get the hole in the pig ark fixed up ready for Daisy and her litter to move into it. It's only rudimentary, but the pigs won't mind. It will be lovely to finally be able to give the piglets a taste of outdoor life.

And Sue borrowed Don's blowtorch to dust off and clean up the old bee hives, which we have taken to Long Sutton to be filled with bees so we can have another go at beekeeping, something we began in London, without a lot of success.

Then, just as I was ranting and raving about giving it all up and living like normal people do, something happened to cheer me up. A car pulled up on the road, reversed and pulled in. I let Sue deal with this enquiry, fully expecting it to be somebody else with the lovely, but unrealistic, idea of keeping a pig as a pet (we get fewer of these now that the pork signs are up too!) I took myself down in the rain to hammer some wood and generally take things out on the pig ark and fence. Well, I returned to be told by Sue that she had sold three pigs to some local smallholders. They will collect them in three weeks time, when they will have been weaned (the piglets, not the smallholders). I am sure it will be the first of many piglets they will raise, as it is all a rather special experience really, even if I occasionally forget.

The day ended with a crow clearly unhappy about the presence of something or other in the horse chestnut tree at our entrance. I expected to see an owl being harangued, but the crow emerged from the tangled branches in hot pursuit of a cuckoo, my first of the year. I saw the other day that each cuckoo specialises in which species it parasitises and lays eggs which carefully match those of the host. This cuckoo had better not be looking for sedge or reed warblers upon which to foist its offspring, as it's beat them back!

Return of The Gurgle Monster



Wednesday 18th April 2012



Tuesday 17th April 2012





 



Friday 20th April 2012

Thursday 19th April 2012

On 5th April a hosepipe ban came into place.

Since then I've been unable to till the land to sow seeds.

Why? Because the ground is rock hard, set like concrete? Because it's too difficult to transport water to the seeds?

No! It's been too wet! Every single day it has rained. Water butts overfloweth. Even the bath which sits down near the chicken enclosure has filled up - that's about a foot of rain then.

For the first time, I've had to hunt slugs in the veg beds. In fact, this is the first time since we moved in that I've not been worried about watering the garden.

To be fair, before the April showers I had been worrying about the freshly sown broad beans and peas just sitting in dry soil.



So, with seed sowing put off for another week, what was I to do with my spare morning today?

How about dealing with this carnage...



Every time I go down into the meadow at the moment I am flushing hares, sometimes from right under my feet. Up till now they have only taken the very occasional nibble from the pines I have planted, but one of them has obviously developed gourmet tastes. So I gathered together what few stakes I had left, a pile of old bamboos, a roll of tree protection, hammer, staples and twine, and headed down into the meadow.



For the first time in a long time the ground actually squelched under my feet. As I drove in the stakes, I could hear the meadow's stomach rumbling below.

The Gurgle Monster has returned!

The strange gloopy, spongy noises which echo and ripple through the fenland soil as the water is sucked down below and into the dyke system. I have no idea why this happens, but it is a disconcerting experience when every footstep seems to send ripples out through the soil causing burbling, babbling and bubbling. Even more eerie when, alone in the middle of a field away from any other human, the ground starts to talk to you!

Not so Scilly

Tuesday 3rd April 2012

Only two days to go now till the hosepipe ban. Of late, my mind has been turning to last year, when we didn't get a drop of rain for three months. After the big freeze, it had seemed that Mother Nature did not approve of our smallholding plans and everything was an uphill struggle. The drought has continued, with the dykes empty and the meadow, last February holding standing water, this year covered in deep cracks. But, since last May, we have actually had just about sufficient rain to keep things alive, if not particularly flourishing. 
However, it has been getting harder and harder to remember the last significant rainfall we had, and the soil is on its way to concrete and dust again.

But today, so promised the forecast, we would get rain by the bucketload, and tomorrow too. 
I was supposed to be in Penzance to see the sun rise this morning, waiting to board the Scillonian III to take me to see a Northern Waterthrush. That's right, I finally buckled. My pager kept telling me it was still there, lurking in those pools at Lower Moors. If it didn't play ball, I was prepared to stay overnight  and give it another whole day....

That was all until we saw the weather forecast for the SW. Gales and driving rain. The Waterthrush will have to wait a while longer.

Hence, I am still here and spent the day sowing seeds, some to replace those I lost and plenty of new ones too. The dining room, the greenhouse, the coldframe, all are now full to the brim with seedtrays.

About five o'clock this evening, the rain (and hail) finally came, and did it come! I felt sorry for the man who got soaked making the short run from his van to the door to buy some pork! Not so sorry for the geese, who seemed to be in their element.
Within minutes the water butts were almost replenished, ensuring enough water for another week or two, whatever the weather. In fact, when it rains I fill everything I can with water. It's much better for the plants and animals when it's come straight from the sky.

As always when I sow seeds for too long, I have given myself an awful back twinge. I can dig all day long but the weight of those seeds!