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.

Wild Swans

As I put the chickens away two nights ago, a line of gleaming white swans flew low over the horizon, under a deep orange setting sun. I suspected that these were wild swans beginning their journey northwards to their summering grounds in Iceland. Most years there are a couple of evenings when I see this spectacle. In the past some of these flocks have flown right over the house.

These are not the Mute Swans with which most people are familiar, but Whooper Swans (and possibly Bewick's Swans) which visit us only for the winter. They seem whiter than our resident swans and sleeker. With close enough views, their bills are different, with patches of yellow instead of orange, and lacking the bulbous base of a mute swan.

Anyway, as I returned home from the Smallholders meeting late yesterday afternoon, I caught sight of a group of swans settled in the field right next to our farm. I shot upstairs to view them from the bedroom window and yes, they were indeed Whoopers.
There is a flock of Mute Swans which spends most of the winter in the fields round here, usually over toward South Holland Main Drain, but only in the coldest winter do any of these wild swans join them.

A very distant record shot, but good enough to show the bills.

The departure of the wild swans is a sure sign that winter is over (cue frost, snow and ice!).
It won't be long before the swallows are back nesting n the stables.

Swan Love

Monday 9th January 2012 Dramatic                        

                                                                                   Tuesday 10th January 2012  Undramatic


Piglets still growing, hens still popping out plenty of eggs, trees still waiting to be planted. Limited time on the farm due to work commitments. Got to earn money somehow and the smallholding still consumes considerably more than it earns, although monetary value isn't everything by any means. The pay packet will cover the new rotavator I plan to buy in the next couple of weeks.

Herd of Swans?
On the way home from work I often take a slight detour along the small road which runs through the back fields and crosses South Holland Main Drain.Last year a herd of swans wintered here. The familiar Mute Swans (same as the ones you might see on your local lake or river) were joined by northern wild swans, Whoopers and the occasional Bewick's. These elegant birds lounged and fed in the same fields every day, announcing their early morning arriving with honking and trumpeting and their wings whooshing them away at sunset. I guess they roosted with the wild swans at Welney WWT. http://www.wwt.org.uk/visit-us/welney
On one occasion they were joined by a Black Swan, an antipodean escape from someone's exotic collection.


This year there are 32 Mute Swans in the fields, though they have moved their favourite field to the other side of the river. Back in December they were joined one morning by 62 Whooper Swans (a sizeable flock in this country), presumably fresh in from their long migration - amazing to think  that these birds migrate at 30000 feet. Unfortunately they quickly dispersed and I'm hoping for their return if the winter ever bites hard.


Another Owl Surprise
As I  drove along the back road, a large bird flew up from the dyke into an isolated bush. I raised by binoculars to see, there not more than 20 feet away, a stunning Short-eared Owl staring straight at me. It then proceeded to hunt along the dyke, floating right next to the car. Towards the end of last Autumn there was a major influx of these owls into Britain over the North Sea from their Scandanavian breeding grounds. So it is that this winter has provided us birdy people with the best chance ever of encountering one of these masked hunters. This was my third one so far this winter, but I'll never tire of watching owls.


MEGA
On Tuesday night something happened which meant that all farm work was abandoned for Wednesday...

2012 - A Resolution is a Resolution.



I intend to see every sunrise this year.



Sunrises and the weather.

Well, sunrise is easy to capture at the moment although under normal circumstances I might have laid in bed an extra hour or so on a couple of days. Then that's the whole point of this resolution. I want to live more closely to nature's patterns. If that means going to bed early to wake up early, then so be it.

Forgive my attempts at sunrise pics. I'm sure I'll have learned a bit by number 366!

In fact, a few times this week I've been laying awake listening to the howling and roaring of the wind. We've escaped lightly compared to some, but a steady 60km wind overnight in The Fens is still quite awe inspiring.

On the smallholding

A continuation of December's unseasonably warm and dry weather made for excellent digging. The brassica beds are almost ready for manuring and we even had time to create some border beds and plant some cheap bulbs - in theory it's too late to plant them, but we'll see. The bed was a delight to dig as it followed a mole run - these rarely seen creatures are the bane of the obsessive green lawn brigade, but I love them. If they get somewhere I don't want them, I'm assured a few elder twigs inserted into their run will gently move them elsewhere.

I got the shallots in too - good healthy bulbs saved from last year's crop. Some garlic has been saved as well, bulbs I uncovered beginning to shoot up as I was digging. Hopefully some netting will keep the chickens off them for a while. The girls (and boy) still have free roam over the whole garden - they are doing a sterling job scrattling around devouring all those nasty insects lurking in the soil. Not a good time to be a worm (not that they're bad atall), though there are plenty of them. It won't be long until the chooks get banished from the veg garden though. Most of them have come through moult and have beautiful plumage now, but their wings will need clipping soon as at least 4 of them have realised they can fly out of their luxurious compound.

Other jobs this week have revolved around trying to anticipate the gales. Last week the water butt was found detached from the wall and spread in pieces over the drive and the chimney lost another lump of render. This week it was the turn of the greenhouse to lose another couple of panels. I've now tightened every bolt, sealed all vulnerable joins with super strong gaffer tape, and was spurred into action to move some laurels to act as a wind break. It was also a reminder to clear the greenhouse out in preparation for a good clean in preparation for early sowings. The straw bales which worked so well for growing tomatoes last year were harbouring one of the many short-tailed field voles which Gerry is obsessed with catching. There seem to be plenty of them about.

Harvesting continues. I've never grown leeks before and, although they went in late, I have a reasonable crop. So when I retrieved some yellow label lamb chops from the freezer (hoping to produce our own this year to save on mowing the paddock) the trusty old Good Housekeeping Cookery Book offered me the delicacy of Lamb Chops with Leeks and Lentils. There is still nothing better than pulling your own produce from the ground and eating it that same day - it is hard to believe the intensity and subtlety of the flavours which are completely lost in shop bought veg. Anyway, if you have that recipe, try it. It was scrummy.

Birds

It's been a quiet time for birds a the moment, although the weather has not been conducive to seeing them. A huge female sparrowhawk has appeared on the scene this week, causing consternation at the feeders. The finch flocks seem to have dispersed back into the fields, although chaffinches and goldfinches are always around in good numbers. The swan flock at Coy Bridge is still in the region of 30 Mutes, but the 62 Whoopers that joined them a month or so ago have all moved on. Maybe they'll come back later in the winter. Likewise, no show from the hen harriers yet this year. Maybe it was the exceptional cold last year which drove them inland from the coastal marshes. Meadow Pipit numbers always swell at this time of year.The regular five birds seem to attract in other parties. One day there were 22 in the flock. A couple of flyover rooks this week are surprisingly quite an unusual sight.

Other stuff

A knock at the door on Wednesday informed me that one of the cows from the Settlement Field was again on the road. It was funny to watch the lorries poodling along following a rather bemused and stubborn Freesian cow.