Blow The Raspberries!

When March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb.

Let's hope so, for it has roared quite strongly so far.

Saturday 4th March 2017
A day tending to the raspberries. My rows of raspberries have wandered away from where I wanted them. What's worse, I've lost the autumn fruiting varieties in amongst the summer fruiters!
It's my own fault for not keeping them all under control.

I also made the mistake of introducing some tansy plants as a companion. They went mad too! Tansy has a delightful honeyish aroma and flowers prolifically, but when I originally read that it 'can become invasive' I just trusted to luck that it wouldn't on my smallholding. Mistake.
Nettles have also invaded to a lesser extent.

It looks a mess right now, but give it one more day...

Ideally the raspberries would have been sorted out before the end of February, but we are only a bit late and they are only just coming out of their dormancy. With the ground wet it is in prime condition for extracting the weeds. Even deep dock roots give themselves up without too much trouble.

But in the raspberry patch it's time for things to change. I'm putting my foot down. I have decided that henceforth neat, orderly rows are required, with mulch mat in between to hold back the weeds and to keep the canes in their place. This has meant moving raspberries from where I want paths and weeding the current paths, much of which is to become raspberry bed.

It has turned into a three day job (what with dodging the showers and fitting smaller jobs in between for a break) and I am more than half way through.

I have also decided to order in some new autumn-fruiting stock. Research led me to Joan J, the variety most people seemed to recommend for taste and yield. I have also ordered some All Gold, which bear yellow fruit and are supposed to taste good too.
I will carefully keep these varieties separate from the others. Besides, they need a simpler support system than the summer raspberries.

The second job for the day was to erect some heras fence panels to create a secure area for the ducks. These were well on their way to being erected before the early days of March unleashed their roar and I chose to lay them back down until I could secure everything firmly.
The ducks will be the first of the poultry to be allowed back out after an enforced three month incarceration courtesy of Avian Flu H5N8 and the Chief Government Vet.
Preparations are still ongoing to get some of the other birds out in the next couple of days. I am really looking forward to how happy they will be when they see grass, soil and sky again.

Almost a Valentine's Goose Egg

16th February 2017
A typical day on the smallholding, with all sorts going on. It is the variety of tasks every day that I love.
In no particular order:

Trip to Holbeach to stock up on nails, disinfectant, fencing staples and onion sets.
Carrots and turnips sown in polytunnel
Stables cleaned and disinfected
Blackberry posts erected
First goose egg.
Pyrethrum arrived.


A few words about some of these. First off, the first goose egg of the year! Just two days after Valentine's, the traditional start of laying. Sue snaffled it as goose eggs are her favourite. We'll take the eggs for quite some time before leaving the females to sit on a few eggs. After trying goose for the first time a few weeks ago, we'll definitely be aiming for a few young birds this year.
The carrots and turnips are the first seeds I have sown directly into the soil this year. I only grow very early turnips in the polytunnel as when it becomes a humid jungle later in the year the turnips are very quick to rot.
Meanwhile, the mangetout plants are shooting up and will be ready to go into the beds when they are 3" high.

The pyrethrum arriving is very exciting. Pyrethrum has always been a favourite of organic gardeners. As with any chemical it is still a last resort, always being better to encourage natural predators. But as I have said before, the polytunnel is hardly a natural environment. Pyrethrum has only just come back onto the market, having disappeared due to crazy and prohibitively expensive licensing rules clearly designed to favour the big multinational peddlers.
Although harmful to bees (it is after all an insecticide), if applied in the evening it does its job and won't hurt the bees in the morning.

I am trying a new way of erecting the blackberry posts. The problem is that when you strain the wires which will support the canes, they inevitably pull the posts inwards and the wires slacken off. This time I am using an idea from a very old book, nailing underground cross-braces onto the posts. They greatly increase the surface area which is pushing against the soil and should hopefully limit movement.

17th February 2017
I put up bird houses today. A colonial nest box which I hope the sparrows will find. It will probably be the house sparrows, but I am really hoping it is tree sparrows. Both these species are colonial nesters. I moved another old bird box which was incorrectly sited - facing south-east west, into the sun and the prevailing wind and rain.




Finally, an open-fronted teapot nestbox designed for birds such as robins, wrens and wagtails. I have tucked it against an ivy clad trunk near the house.
While all this was going on, unbeknown to me Sue was shooing a Sparrowhawk out of the hallway.

Next job was to finish off the blackberry posts using a system called Gripple to tension the nylon wires. It works by passing the nylon through a little gizmo which completely prevents it sliding back the other way. This is okay until you pull it a little too far onto the wire! Fortunately they provide a small wire tool just for this situation... until that gets stuck as well. Eventually I managed to extricate it with brute force and a screwdriver.
I took out my frustration on the edible hedgerow, applying the annual severe haircut. It seems drastic, but helps the hedge to bush up. Done at this time of year, it has minimal impact on the birds. This is a perilous job as the blackthorn has a habit of biting back.

Last job for the day was to rearrange the heras fencing to create an area for the turkeys to live in when they are allowed out. It needs to be netted, as otherwise the turkeys will just hop the fence and be wandering everywhere. Even with some of the restrictions lifted, this would still not be permitted.

18th February 2017
I spent some time in the dyke a the end of the land today. The reason being that, after 6 years, I spotted 3 drainage pipes leading into it from my land. I guess they must have become more exposed last time the drainage board cleared the dyke. There was quite a trickle of water coming from each pipe, but the entrances were clogged up. I cleared them, then spent some time playing with the water levels in the dyke!
I got a new species for the farm too, for there were two one inch long fish in the shallow water. I have no idea what type.

The Ixworth trio, who will lay the eggs which will become our meat chickens for the year, have settled well into the small stable. They are laying (well, the two hens at least) but today I erected a hay feeder in the corner in the hope that they start laying in there.

A winter week on the smallholding

A fairly typical winter week on the smallholding.

Sunday 8th January 2017 - Poultry, Pruning and Pickling

The chickens have settled into the stable now

With the poultry inside and the sheep short of grass at this time of year, everyday feeding and watering takes quite a while. The geese and ducks empty their water buckets as soon as they are filled up, spilling it all over the stable floor, and I can't believe how much the geese eat. They don't usually get fed, having to survive on grass and a few roots thrown to them in the winter.
It is however, a good chance to worm them properly as I know exactly what they are eating. So today all the poultry (apart from those which will shortly go for the table) went onto medicated pellets. I used to buy the worming powder and mix it in with their usual food, but I have discovered you can pay someone else to do this for you! It works out about the same price and is so much more convenient.
The sheep are getting supplementary hay at the moment but their food of choice is sugar beet, which I buy in dried pellet form and leave to soak before feeding to them. They are getting a mangel wurzel a day too, which goes down very well indeed.

It was a lovely day today and blackcurrants were on the menu. Not the harvesting menu, but the jobs menu. They needed pruning and I planned on taking some cuttings too.
Sue and the dogs worked alongside me outside today, which was lovely. I got Sue sowing my mangetout seeds to go in the polytunnel before showing her how to prepare the blackcurrant cuttings.

Blackcurrants

- Freshly pruned and mulched

With those jobs done, it was back to the chickens, for some of the meat birds would be meeting their maker today. I get the hangman's job, not a nice one but a necessary part of self-sufficiency. I have said so many times before that nothing annoys me more than people who will only touch unidentifiable meat in frozen cubes.

The dispatch is quick and humane. As these chickens were to be jointed, we dunked them in hot water before plucking. 40 seconds at 160 Fahrenheit. This makes plucking ten times easier than doing them dry, but you don't get quite such a neat finished product.

Darkness comes all too early at this time of year so I retired for the evening. A nice cold beer and a warming bowl of Curried Pumpkin Soup did just the job.

With eggs back on the menu after a two month strike by the chickens, Sue tried her hand at pickled eggs. They will be ready for tasting in three weeks time.

Monday 9th January 2017 - Transplanting cuttings

By necessity I stayed on the farm all day, waiting for the parcel redelivery I had booked. It never came. Nice one Post Office!
It was another beautiful start to the day, though it wasn't long before the showers started and by the end of the day I was battling against sticky mud.

I started by taking flowering currant cuttings, though there wasn't much young growth to use. So I cut one bush right back. It should produce plenty of new material from which to take cuttings next winter.
Next on the jobs list was to move some willow cuttings which I set down last winter. They had done well, very well. In fact, they had done so well that I couldn't get the roots out! I had to remove all the cuttings around them so I could get at them with a spade. And so it was that I ended up transplanting all my buddleia, dogwood and privet cuttings from last year before I could tackle the willow.

As the sun set, I quickly cut a few handfuls of oregano, which I steeped in oil to make, surprise, surprise, Oil of Oregano. I shall be using this in a spray this year to try to avert the dreaded leaf curl which afflicts my nectarines and my mirabelles every year.
Unlike copper based mixes, it will not poison the soil and can be used even when the plants are in leaf. Whether or not it works we shall see.

Tuesday 10th January 2017 - Survived the dentist!
Another beautiful start to the day, only spoiled by the root canal treatment I was due for at midday. My dentist looks after me but it still doesn't make for a fun day.

I decided to drop in at my bulk potato stockist on the way home - I buy a few sacks for members of the Fenland Smallholders Club - but the gates were closed and there were no cars. On further investigation online when I got home, it seems their parent company may have closed the cash and carry side of the business. It is a shame when small local companies get incorporated into larger companies and then, several years later, quietly disappear.

My new year's resolution is to do a lot more baking and cooking using our produce. The visit to the dentist left me feeling a bit beaten up, but I didn't want a bad start to my resolution.
Anyway, I managed to bake a loaf and cook up a huge dish of Parsnip and Chickpea Curry. Later in the week I will knock up a cream of chicken soup, using the old hen we dispatched at the weekend, and a potato, leek and hock soup from the offcuts of a Serrano ham I purchased for Christmas.

Wednesday 11th January - Snow in the forecast
With snow forecast for later in the week, I took the chance to take down the brassica netting. The chickens and geese are in so, hopefully, there's not much to threaten the greens. Pigeons tend to avoid our garden.

Thursday 12th January - An Uneggspected find
Look what Sue found inside the old chicken when she was cleaning it out. These are eggs slowly forming in a queue.
The rest of the country got snow today. Somehow we escaped it.

Friday 13th January - A Recipe Refound
The day passed without incident, not that I am superstitious.
I did, however, find a recipe sheet which I thought lost. It was from my days as a vegan, over 20 years ago, and included my favourite recipe for home-made mincemeat, as well as a couple of other favourites of mine. I was well chuffed.

Saturday 14th January - A rat, more pruning and a new stretch of hedge
A rat has moved into the polytunnel. It is, I'm afraid, not welcome and now that I have moved the ducks out I have put poison in. Today the poison had gone down, so hopefully it won't be long before the rat is no more.



There was more pruning to be done today, redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries. I do these on a different day to the blackcurrants as they are pruned to different principles, fruiting best on two year old wood and older. If I did them on the same day I would get confused!
Gooseberries are treated in exactly the same way as the currants, except they are considerably more prickly and time-consuming. I got ten of them done, but that's not even half of them since I took cuttings and drastically increased the number of bushes I have.

I took delivery of 25 bare-root Bird Cheery whips today and planted them in a double row. They should take well and will hopefully be providing shelter and food for birds in a couple of years time.

And lastly... I finally got round to boiling up the old chicken for soup. I boiled it a good long time, in case it was tough. The meat just fell off the bone and the juice I turned into stock.

So that was that. A typical busy winter week.

We're Going To Need A Bigger Basket

26th July 2016
I woke up two hours after the alarm went off! I could hear reverse warning beeps and thought they might have started harvesting the field next door, which could scupper my plans for a second coat of paint on the garage (dust).
I checked my phone only to see that I was already 15 minutes into a one hour time slot for a parcel delivery - to be more precise, 100kg of wild bird food. There have been 6 tree sparrows recently. This much food will do me for about a year and is well worth the investment. I get many hours of quiet satisfaction watching the birds visit the feeders.

No, it's not a new ride-on mower.

As it happens they did turn up to harvest the field too. It is rape this year so we shouldn't get the invasion of vermin that happens when they grow wheat. We normally have a lot of wild birds when they grow rape. In the past it has hosted sedge warblers, yellow wagtails, whitethroats and blackbirds. I don't know what is different this year, but these birds have been absent from the crop. I would guess they have managed to spray just about all insect life out of the crop.
We're going to need a bigger basket!
With the kibosh on plans for painting, I instead turned my attention to my own harvest. The redcurrant bushes are dripping with fruits and it took me quite a while to harvest them. The first bush alone filled a basket.


Next came the cherries. The trees are still very young so I only got a handful, but they are a real treat. Then it was on to the raspberries. They need picking every other day and I get a good few punnets worth. These are my favourite fruit.
On to the vegetables. A couple of courgettes, a few handfuls of peas and enough broad beans for dinner and a batch for the freezer.

Today's pickings

I also may have discovered the culprits for plundering the last of the gooseberries. There were some dodgy characters hanging around there today.

27th July 2016
A Welcome Return
Sue has been away on a well deserved break away in Amsterdam with friends - her first time away from the smallholding since our honeymoon almost two years ago. She is due back tonight, so I spent the day tidying! I cleaned out the chickens too, a level 2 clean today.
With time left, I moved the sheep to the next strip of grazing. I always like the moment they realise they can access the lush green meadow alongside which they have been feeding. It reminds me of the The Billy Goats Gruff. I like the fact that they eat as much and as fast as they can for about half an hour, then all sit down to digest.

28th July 2016
You're going to need a better net, Abbey!
Two ignored emails, being left on hold to an empty extension and an 18 minute phone call obviously was not quite enough effort on my part to get hold of two spare belts for the rotavator and a spare blade for the mower, despite the fact that I had bought both these machines from the very same company, Abbey Garden Sales. Six days after that last phone call and two more emails, still no response, so I made yet another phone call. Apparently my query had 'slipped through the net', even after I had politely pointed out all the company's faults last time! I think the net may need fixing. Anyway, we have moved another step and the parts are now ordered.

With that 'sorted' I gave the end of the garage a second coat of paint. Literally five minutes later it started raining. Fortunately it was just a shower and the main rain held off just long enough for the paint to dry properly. Then it bucketed down, which was most welcome.

Steam Juicing
Inside, I blew the dust off the steam juicer and set about juicing a pan of redcurrants and raspberries.
The steam juicer is basically a large metal steamer with the addition of a central section to collect the juice. This section has a pipe attached so the juice can be siphoned off. As the steam rises up through the fruits, it breaks down the cell walls and releases all the juices.
Tomorrow I plan to turn the juice I collect into cordial. The pulp that is left I hope to be able to turn into a fruit leather using the dehydrator.

Aldi Price Comparison
I then left the farm for the first time in five days for a trip into Wisbech with Sue. I had booked us to go see The BFG. It was a bit of a risk, not the usual thing we would go to see at the cinema, but it proved to be an inspired choice, a truly delightful and magical story which every child, (even the 50 year old ones) should go to see.

On the way we stopped off at Aldi and I couldn't help but price up my harvests. At Aldi price, I reckon to have harvested about £40 worth of redcurrants! The cucumbers, though, are only up to £1.11, but there are plenty more to come and they are home grown and picked fresh off the plant.


29th July 2016
I ended up with about 2 1/2 litres of pure redcurrant and raspberry juice.

I added 1.5kg of sugar to 2 litres and heated it up to boiling. I added in the juice of 1 1/2 lemons (carefully leaving the juice of the other 1 1/2 lemons on the side, forgetting to put it in). Then it was all decanted into sterilised wine bottles with screw caps.
I've no idea how well this will work, what it will taste like, how much to dilute it, whether it will last. There were no definitive recipes to be found anywhere so I just amalgamated all the recipes I'd read.
I plan to try one bottle in a week's time, one in about 3 weeks and one in a couple of months to see how it fares.

With the last half a litre I added just a quarter cup of sugar to drink as juice. This is rather an extravagant use of a precious harvest, but that's the delight of growing your own.
Finally I put the pulp from the juicer through a mouli to experiment using it to make a fruit leather. Waste not, want not.

The afternoon was spent general weeding and hoeing in the veg patch, though there were many interruptions today - plasterer, conservatory man, deliveries...

Ragwort Removal

Ragwort - pretty and a food source for Cinnabar moths,

but needs removing as it is poisonous to livestock

Come 6 o'clock I decided to do a spot of ragwort removal. I headed off to the far end of our land, the final area of very long meadow which the sheep will feed on next. The ragwort is in full flower now, so very easy to spot. This makes it a very good time to uproot it, for the plant has just put a lot of energy into making those flowers. I use a special ragwort fork which gets most of the roots out, otherwise the plants just regenerate and come back stronger. I had waited for rain so that the root did not simply snap off in the dry soil. The trouble with pulling ragwort is that you just keep spotting more plants. Some three hours later and I was finally finished. What looked like a quick and easy job had turned into a rather strenuous task!

I had narrowly avoided a thorough soaking as a storm skirted round, but was regretting my choice to wear shorts. The long grass and sow thistles can get rather itchy and scratchy. It is good to spend so much time in the long grass and the young woodland. I observe things I wouldn't otherwise notice, the insect life, the variety of plants, the young hawthorns colonising and the growth of the woodland trees which I planted just over four years ago.

Frozen Frog Spawn

12th July
Elvis did not come out with her ducklings this morning. As I suspected, she is stepping back and letting them get on with growing up... which they are dong very fast indeed. They are a pretty bunch and it will be a shame to eat them later in the year.

Today's main job was a dangerous one, summer pruning and harvesting gooseberries. We've not got a bumper harvest this year, but I'm not complaining. Every year is different. The red gooseberries all needed picking. They are small but very sweet. The standard green Invicta gooseberries were well swollen. Some were ripe enough to eat raw, the rest I left on the bushes.

The whitecurrants were easier to deal with. Their summer prune just involves cutting back the sideshoots. In previous years the ducks had enjoyed more of the currants than us, but this year they showed no interest. To look at the bushes from outside you would think there was hardly any fruit to be had, but the currants hang on short stems hidden by the leaves.Delve a little deeper and there they are.

In fact I managed to harvest about 3kg of whitecurrants. I just need to decide what to do with them now.
Picking the whitecurrants took an age as I patiently worked along each branch. But there was still time to prune the redcurrants. These are just starting to colour up and there are absolutely mountains of them hanging on the bushes. It won't be long before a redcurrant bonanza. I might try using the steam juicer to make a cordial this year.
The birds find redcurrants easier to spot than their white cousins and last year we lost them all just about the night before I was intending to pick them. So today they were netted, using the net which has just come off one of the cherry trees which Sue picked.

23 eggs have been in the incubator for 18 days now at a temperature of precisely 37.5 degrees Celsius. We tried to keep the humidity at 45% but with the ambient air at over 60% most of the time this proved impossible. (Hence 23 eggs. We started with 24 but one was replaced with a sock full of rice in an attempt to reduce the humidity. It worked a little, for a while!) Humidity is important since it dictates how much liquid evaporates through the shell of the egg and therefore how big the air sac is for the chick to breath when it comes to hatching time.
So today was Day 19. Time for the eggs to come off the roller and to increase the humidity further.
If all goes well they will start hatching in a couple of days.

13th July
I open froze the currants and berries in trays. Today I scraped them off the trays to go into freezer bags. The whitecurrants, to my evil eye at least, look like frozen frog spawn. There could be a marketing idea here for a healthy Halloween treat. I also discovered by accident that it may be an awful lot easier to remove the stems when the currants are frozen. I'll bear this in mind next time.


A surprising proportion of the rest of the day was spent picking blackcurrants and raspberries, especially given that I was supposed to be at work for the afternoon.
But for the second week in a row my car refused to start. After replacing the starter motor last week, it looks as if it was the battery after all. I won't ever be going back to Whizzywheels in Wisbech again. It's the second time they've taken the proverbial in the last few weeks.
On the bright side, it did spur me into finding a more local mechanic.

So engrossing myself in the fiddly task of picking and de-stemming blackcurrants was a welcome distraction from my thoughts. The raspberries have enjoyed the wet weather too and are starting to produce a bumper crop. I've finally worked out that I've pretty much got all summer-fruiting canes and that all the healthy canes which came up and didn't fruit last year were in fact what would bear this year's fruit. I hadn't expected them to come up so early and so made the mistake of thinking they were autumn-fruiting canes which failed to crop. Doh!  I know now.

14th July
Car fixed. New battery installed.
While the mechanic was here, this arrived. Care to guess what it is?

It's a chicken plucker. You scold the chicken, attach this contraption to a drill and the spinning rubber fingers take (most of) the feathers off the bird. I imagine these end up literally everywhere. Anyway, if it works even half as well as I hope then it will save a lot of time when it comes to processing a dozen chickens at a time.

I did actually make it to work today, though I owe them quite a bit of time now and will try to make most of it up next week before the summer holidays start.
After work I hitched up the trailer and drove to a field in the middle of nowhere where a smallholder acquaintance (who just happens to be one and the same mechanic as fixed my car this morning) was baling his hay field. What a lovely activity on a fine day under the endless fenland skies.




I slalomed between the bales on the field before pulling up and loading fifteen bales into my trailer. Back to the farm to unload, then back again for another fifteen.

This winter was so mild that the Shetland sheep got by without any hay whatsoever. Buying thirty bales now is probably a good way to guarantee another mild winter.

As I was stacking the hay in the turkey stable I discovered yet another secret hoard of eggs furtively tucked away. I'm reorganising the stables in a couple of days, but I'll try to move the nest so that hopefully the hen keeps laying in it. That way I know where they are when I want to steal the eggs. I'll mark a couple which I'll leave so she keeps coming back.

One final job for the day.
I abandoned the coriander crop in the polytunnel - it just hasn't grown leafy enough this year - and sowed another few rows of carrots which so far have been doing very well under cover. Hopefully the carrot flies won't discover that the polytunnel has doors.

Cherry Plums from the Edible Hedgerow

One of the first things I did when we moved in was to plant an edible hedgerow, more for the hedgerow and the birds than for its harvest. It's only a token hedgerow really and doesn't go far towards making amends for the miles and miles of missing wildlife corridors and habitat which farmers have destroyed over the years to accommodate their bigger and bigger machinery. Mind you, here on the fens there probably never were too many hedgerows, just dykes, but a few hedgerows wouldn't go amiss.

I don't intend to lay my hedge as it doesn't need to keep livestock in or out, but I did prune it heavily for its first two years to encourage a nice bushy base.

So now, approaching its fifth winter, my hedgerow has flourished. I even think it had nesting sparrows in it this year. If not nesting, they certainly made extensive use of it.
For the first time it is keeping up to its promise of being edible with a good harvest, several kilograms, of cherry plums already and more to come. The blackthorns are dripping with sloe berries and there are elderberries and rose hips too. We'll have to wait a while longer for hazelnuts and wild pears and the blackberries never got established.

I've since planted the same length of hedge and more again, so in a few years time we'll be overflowing with hedgerow fruits.