Sowing, growing and mowing...and just a little birding...and lambing...and no showers

I couldn't decide what to call this post. It could have been 'Sowing, Growing and Mowing' or 'My 500th Bird' or 'What No April Showers' or 'HELP! I've got to deliver a lamb'.

In the end I went for a mash up!

There's always something to be done here on the smallholding and April is no exception. There's sowing, growing and mowing to be done, and when that's done then there's more sowing, growing and mowing.
But yesterday was one of those rare days when there was actually nothing particularly urgent that I could be getting on with. The reason for this was the woefully dry April we've had - not one shower all month so far! Because of this, the sowing has ground to a halt. As so often seems to happen, forecasts of heavy rain have slowly changed to occasional light rain showers which have, in the end, never actually materialised.
So the plan for Saturday was to potter around in the polytunnel and possibly get the mower out later in the day.
That was until, just about to let the chickens out early morning, stunning news came through of a Hudsonian Godwit on the Somerset Levels.
So that was Saturday taken care of.

Hudsonain Godwit (3rd from left)
My 500th species in Britain

It was a big twitch.

I rolled back into the farm at 8 in the evening having driven a total of 461 miles and successfully twitched a very rare bird (the last gettable one was over 30 years ago!) This bird was for me more significant than most, as it was my 500th species in Britain, a goal which has taken me 17 years to achieve.

April is not supposed to be like this. I don't mean the complete lack of showers. I mean two trips to the Scilly Isles and a mad dash to Somerset in the space of less than two weeks. Anyway, I'm not complaining and I'm still relatively up with things on the farm.

Then last night we finally had some rain. Not enough to soak the ground, but enough to tempt me into sowing some seeds. Unfortunately I was due at the Green Backyard in Peterborough to further hone my skills at lime rendering the straw bale wall which we built a while ago. Sue was off to the Fenland Smallholders Meeting which was all about bees.
I say 'unfortunately' as it would otherwise have been a very good day to catch up with some of that seed sowing and potato planting which has been waiting for a little moisture in the soil.

I spent the morning sowing beetroots, carrots, turnips, mangel wurzels and fennel before reluctantly packing up ready to head off. It's not that I didn't want to go to the Green Backyard, far from it, just that sometimes the breaks in the weather happen at just the wrong time.

But all my plans changed as I popped in on the two ewes in the stables before leaving. The paler of the two was huffing and puffing and clearly going into the early stages of labour. (This was truly a great surprise to me, for reasons which will be apparent in hopefully my next post about the birth)Now I have delivered piglets and hatched all sorts of poultry (well, actually most of it was the pigs, chickens, ducks etc), but lambing is new territory for Sue and I.
All plans were cancelled so that we could be on hand if needed. This did at least mean that I could make the most of the opportunity and catch right up in the veg plot.

But I'm sure you'll want me to tell you about our first ever lambing experience. Well, it's now half past midnight and I am still on lambing duty. Our ewe is just sitting and huffing and puffing. I shall be checking on her throughout the night and if I think that the birth is imminent I have permission to wake Sue up!
I've a feeling it's going to be a long night.

Finally, as a contrast to zooming around the country in my quest to see new species of bird, I am delighted to report that the two tree sparrows continue to visit the feeders and to collect nest material. They are in very steep decline so it is a privilege that they they have come back onto the farm. The same goes for Grey Partridges. I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse of the two which currently seem to spend much of their time down near the empty pig enclosure. And this afternoon a Lapwing, yet another bird in steep decline as a breeding species, was displaying at the bottom of my land. Then tonight at least two Barn Owls were flying around calling. I managed to see one quite high up against the stars and another flutter into the hollow stem of one of the old ash trees.
I don't quite know what I'm doing, but I must be doing something right. Maybe, just maybe, it's small scale, integrated farming which is doing the trick.

And sow we begin again

The dining room table is no longer available for dining.
For the near end is where I am chitting my potatoes and the far end has just been set up as my sowing station.
I normally resist the urge to sow seeds for a couple more weeks at least. In the house they just go leggy and tend to succumb to damping off. I can give them the heat they require, though for most this is only necessary for germination itself. But I can't provide anywhere light enough and airy enough.

I'd love to move them into the polytunnel, but daytime temperatures in there at the moment range from 50 to 70, and that's in a very mild late winter. 50 should be OK for leeks, but I'm not sure about tiny tomato plants, chillies or aubergines.

Pepper seeds. Four varieties in one half tray.
I'll transplant them quickly so they don't get crowded.

Leek Jealousy
Now, every year at the Fenland Smallholders produce show, someone turns up with impossibly perfect leeks, whilst mine are still far from fully grown. Fortunately last year I managed to beat them off with my red cabbage, which took the rosette in 'best vegetable grown above ground' category.
But I resolved that I too would have leeks in September. I scoured the seed catalogues and purchased a packet of leek seeds of the variety Jolant, an early variety. I sowed the seeds last week and they are already coming through.



Babies thrown out
And with the knowledge that I now have a hotbed in the polytunnel which is already beginning to warm up, I've also started off my tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and peppers too. In fact, the smaller seeds of the cherry varieties have germinated already. I'm going to be bold and put them straight out into the mini greenhouses over the hotbed and see what happens. If the experiment fails, there's still plenty enough time to start again.

Cherry Tomato "Honeybee"

Meanwhile, in the outside beds..
Of course, with the passing of winter and the advent of spring, the veg beds need getting ready. There's a constant ebb and flow between the ground drying out and another rainy day making it too wet to work. But the balance is moving towards being workable and if I don't start now, it won't be long before I have queues of young plants waiting to go into beds which are not ready.
Here's the first bed to get the treatment. Doesn't it look neat!

Meanwhile, the garlic cloves which I planted about a month ago have been making the very most of their head start.

88 degrees in early March!
ed. The newly germinated leeks and a few tomatoes which have just started to come through have been thrown into the cauldron today. They are in a mini greenhouse, over the hotbed, in the polytunnel. This morning, under perfectly blue skies, I recorded a temperature of 88 degrees in there! I really need to get myself a max/min thermometer though to see what's happening at night.





A Seedy Tale

Friday 15th June 2012
A windy one with its fair share of rain

I see the hosepipe ban has finally been lifted. Who knows, the water companies might start taking some long-term decisions now.

I also saw on the news last night NASA images of a storm about to hit the South West of England, described as a once in fifty year event. This sort of extreme weather seems to be the norm these days. If it's not storms it's droughts, record rainfall, high winds...
And it's all sent to make life more difficult for the smallholder!

Luckily over in The Fens we've escaped the worst of the recent weather, though driving rain and gusting winds did mean that I spent most of today confined to the greenhouse.

Lost Seeds
During a dry spell this morning I conducted a thorough audit of the veg beds, checking out just which seeds I'd planted and their germination rate.
A couple of beds seem to have suffered slug damage (the emerging Swis chard and dwarf beans). Aside from that though, I think I have got to the root of the problem. Old seeds.

Early this spring I came across a Roses tin full of seed packets from a couple of years ago. A few varieties which I'd completely forgotten about and a few which I'd replaced with newer seed. Always one to skimp on costs I thought I'd use the old seed before the new. You can guess what's happened.
Yes, hardly any of the older seed has germinated, including just about all of the carrots.

I know that some seeds, such as parsnip, just don't stay viable even through to the next year. I didn't think this would be the case with my Hamburg Parsley, but last year's seed has yielded precisely zero seedlings. Obviously more akin to Parsnip than Parsley. This should be a lovely crop, with nutty, parsnip-like roots and leaves which can be used as parsley.
Last year I had a seed disaster with this too, dropping all the seed as I was in the process of sowing it. In the end I replaced the seed and sowed late, mid June, and still ended up with a half decent crop. Looks like it'll be a repeat this year, hopefully with the same result.

As for the rest of the seeds, I have a few carrots germinated but I'll be resowing lots more this week, using new seed. Same with the spring onions which I like to plant with carrots. My favourite golden beetroot, delicious, and the gloriously patterned Chiogga have not faired well either. But I do have plenty of the more traditional varieties, so they'll have to do for this year.

In general, I think seeds lose about 20% of their viability each year, so I should have expected well over half of the two year old seeds to germinate. That clearly hasn't been the case.
I'm guessing that the way they were stored is the problem, especially since most of the packets were opened and half used. In fact, I have no idea where the seeds have been for the last year and a half!

Another lesson learned.

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.

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!

As you sow...



Wednesday 21st March 2012



Thursday 22nd March 2012
A surprise frost, a warm day ahead.
I didn't miss the sunrise, it took this long to break through.





Piglet Progress
The piglets have been provided with the luxury of a heat lamp to keep them warm. Today I decided to try them without. In theory the straw and their mum's heat should keep them warm enough, and they should have enough body fat by now to help keep themselves warm.



I'm not sure whether Daisy is happy

about this or not, but the piglets

now cuddle up to mum instead

of huddling under the heat lamp.



Outdoor sowing

The last of the winter crops has been harvested, most of the beds are prepared, and it's time to get the show going! In went the parsnips, with garlic and marigolds as companions. They'll be ready for harvest come next year's frosts. Then turnips, a quick growing crop to use the soil space before the cabbages go in. Next some broad beans, dipped in paraffin to keep the mice off them. They'll need netting before the shoots appear, as those tender tips proved irresistible to something last year. Two varieties of pak choi - I don't particularly enjoy eating anything green, but these I find one of the more palatable. And this year I have a plan to thwart the flea beetles and whitefly that plagued last year's plants.

Finally I dug over the Jerusalem artichoke patch and replanted a dozen of the healthiest looking tubers. Alongside these I put in eight large bulbs which I found tucked in an envelope, already beginning to sprout. I think they're Elephant Garlic. It's unusual for me not to label something, as I know this is what happens - miscellaneous crops.