Ducks move into Spare Veg Patch

Not only do I have a rather intricately designed veg plot known as The Wheel, but I also have a rather sizeable plot simply known as The Spare Veg Patch.
This is where I grow the crops which grow too large to fit nicely into beds - Pumpkins, Mangel Wurzels, large brassicas such as cauliflowers.

Buddleia and elder cuttings with sweetcorn and pumpkings behind

and the brassica cage in the background.

All a bit overgrown at this time of year!

Unlike The Wheel, the Spare Veg Patch used to be arable land so it is denuded of decent top soil. It is pretty windswept too, although I have planted hedges which are beginning to give some shelter. And another thing... once the field next door is harvested, the rodents tend to flee to The Spare Veg Patch and eat all the sweetcorn before it has ripened. And one last thing... the rabbits come up out of the dry dyke and nibble everything.
But still I persist with growing things there. Admittedly I have given quarter of it over to growing seed for wild birds and another quarter as a temporary home for hardwood cuttings until they are big enough to move to their permanent homes.
The rest I have heavily nourished with horse muck and grass cuttings. Having the dogs seems to have deterred the rodents - for the first time this year my sweetcorn still has cobs on even once the field has been cleared.

Sweetcorn Minipop - the cobs are picked early,

before they mature and before anything can eat them.

Mangel wurzels actually do pretty well in the heavy soil - they are closely related to the sugar beet which is a favourite crop in the area. Pumpkins fare okay too as does sweetcorn. I think that the hard clay surface holds plenty of moisture underneath and further down, where deep in the past this was an inlet from the sea (you can still see the lines of old Roman salt works) lies a layer of sandy loam.

So everything in the Spare Veg Patch is hunky dory. No!

Those cracks which open up on the clay surface are proving to be an excellent daytime hiding place for slugs - big orange ones, long black ones, small pale ones, squidgy brown ones.
I managed to protect my brassicas from cabbage fly, cabbage whites, pigeons and rabbits, only for an enemy to rise from beneath the soil and invade from outside the protective netting, mostly disappearing during the day leaving behind just the occasional slimy trail and decimated leaves resembling the worst lacework you have ever seen. Even worse, they have taken a liking to my cauliflowers, the vegetable which has taken me six years to finally succeed with.

Part of it is my own fault. I've let the nasturtiums get out of control and they provide the perfect cool, shady habitat underneath their lily-like leaves and splashes of orange-red flowers. I totally cleared them once, but I need to keep more on top of it. There's just so much to do though.

The slugs live under the nasturtium canopy.

So in one last desperate attempt I have resorted to biological control - the ducks. They have moved in to the Spare Veg Patch. At the moment they are still scared of everything and spend most of their time huddled up by the gate, nowhere near where most of the slugs are. But hopefully in the winter they will come into their own, when I can work the soil, hopefully with a trio of ducks and a gang of chickens following me along enjoying the feast that is thrown up from beneath the surface.
Yes, the chickens get through an awful lot of worms which are the gardener's friend, but there are plenty more of them thank goodness.

And so, with tweaks and adjustments, the Spare Veg Patch will continue into the autumn and next year. It's getting there.

Biological control

Turkeys in a Twizzle

Frampton Marsh RSPB is turning into a very special little reserve

12th September 2016
A lovely morning spent at Frampton Marsh bird reserve.
I decided to do the long walk and explore parts of the reserve I'd not been to before. Sunflowers, cows, open skies and wading birds.
Returned to find a note that the roofer had been. It's their own fault for never bothering to communicate.

The sheep enjoyed the husks of the sweetcorn I cleared yesterday. This was the Sweetcorn Minipop which I grow for baby corns. The plants have grown way more vigorously than their relatives which produce full-size cobs. The early minicobs were impressive, but as the plants have matured they have produced woodier cobs with bigger kernels. The last of these got fed to the sheep so one way or another we'll end up eating them anyway!

Sweetcorn Minipop being cleared

13th September 2016
Temperatures soared to 30 degrees plus today. I was up early to greet the roofer.
We now have a skylight in the dining room, though it is not finished to anywhere like the standard it should be.

Turkeys in a twizzle!
The turkeys got a fright today for some of them ventured over the fence into next door's field, where they got a shock when one of the neighbours' ten dogs took an unhealthy interest in them.
I was alerted by strange alarm calls and looked up to see several turkeys flying up onto Don's shed - it's not Don's any more! I was worried that some might be on the road so opened the front gate and walked along. As I did so, one flew from the trees and crossed the road!

I continued with refurbishing and redesigning one of the chicken houses. I started it several weeks ago but then it came to a grinding halt. Necessity has spurred me into action though, as the youngest batch of chicks will be needing a house of their own in the chicken pen soon.

The freezers are down
At 11pm the electricity went off. Not all of it, so not a bulk standard power cut but a problem at our end. All of the upstairs lights and all of the sockets, including all our freezers!

14th September 2016
Texted electrician at 6.30am and problem was fixed by 9.20am
Even got into work for the afternoon.

The other good news is that all 8 turkeys are reunited.



15th September 2016



Foggy start
Warm nights bring foggy mornings. This didn't stop Arthur from making his first ever rabbit kill. He did have a slight advantage as all the rabbits seem now to have mixy. A small part of me feels sorry for them, but they are very destructive. Just one or two would be ok, but they are rather famous for multiplying rapidly. That's now one each for Boris and Arthur. At least they put the poor creatures out of their misery quickly.


16th September 2016
Stuck in work. There was good birding to be had on the east coast today, but not for me! Here's a pic of next door's ponies and sheep and another nice one of the dogs with the turkeys and geese.

17th September 2016
A flock of over a hundred linnets in the next door field today was great to see. Sizeable winter finch flocks are becoming rare as farming becomes more and more industrial and our farmland birds rapidly disappear.

A chick saved
Less good to see was that one of the baby chicks had been quite badly pecked by the others. I removed it and sorted out separate living quarters until it heals up. Chickens can be pretty vicious, but this time I think they weren't so much picking on a weak individual as being pre-programmed to peck at anything red.

Token apple harvest
A couple of the apple and pear trees have done well this year, though on the whole it has been very disappointing.
But there were enough apples on one of the trees to fill two large baskets and to spare quite a few windfalls for the sheep, who very much appreciated them.
Nuts!
We picked the cobnuts too. One tree had loads, one was average and two had none whatsoever. Explain that.

A Cloud Tick

25th August 2016

Minipop ready for harvest

as soon as the tassles show

After my trips to Cornwall and Ireland, I needed to catch up on some harvesting. The Sweetcorn Minipop has harvested very well so far, but the later flush of cobs have grown differently, with larger kernels. They don't taste quite so sweet and the cores are slightly woodier, but as long as you catch them early they are still perfectly edible.






In contrast, the maincrop Sweetcorn has been very disappointing this year. Even in the polytunnel I only got about 0.5 cobs per plant. The cobs I did get, though, were huge and a real treat. Outside was a similar story. The plants never flourished and produced small, half pollenated cobs. It clearly wasn't the year for sweetcorn, not enough sun in May and June.

I've cleared all the corn from the tunnel now, which should let more light and moisture in for the crops I've underplanted.
I had lots more vegetables to harvest, but a tweet to 'get ready to hammer it to Spurn' had me heading off again. For the rumour quickly firmed up that a probable Yellow-breasted Bunting had been photographed there round about midday. Several hours had passed since then, but if I waited for further news it would be too late for me to get there.

Curlew Sandpiper at Frampton Marsh

So I started driving, but it wasn't long before a very rare Yellow-breasted Bunting turned back into a Corn Bunting, a British breeding bird. As I was close by, I considered it rude not to pop into Frampton Marsh, an excellent RSPB reserve just north of The Wash. I had great views of a Kingfisher and there were lots of waders, most notably large numbers of Curlew Sandpipers. I see these every summer when the waders pass through, but numbers this year have been exceptional affording good opportunities to really study the birds.


I was most impressed, however, by a strip of sunflowers underplanted with winter seed plants for the finches. I had tried to achieve something similar here on the farm, but sunflowers just can't seem to make it past the ravages of the slugs.







26th August 2016
Back into the polytunnel today as I spotted a few cucumbers hiding. In fact, more than a few!

The polytunnel tomatoes are doing brilliantly this year too. I've grown fewer plants but given them more space and more attention. This strategy has paid off as Sue today froze our 30th carton of tomatoes.
Some of the outdoor tomatoes seem to have made it past the blight too, particularly a variety known as Outdoor Girl which I am trying this year. We're having to pick them before they are fully ripe, otherwise the birds find them, but they ripen off nicely on the windowsill.

27th August 2016
Absolutely stunning views of a hobby today as it repeatedly swooped through the top paddock attempting to catch itself a swallow for lunch.
But it was totally eclipsed later in the day by a sky the like of which I've never seen. The weather was spooky, on the edge of a storm. The air was incredibly humid and still, but it felt as if something major was about to go down.
It was at this point that the Asperitas clouds appeared in the sky. I first noticed a strange inverted funnel looking like the precursor to an alien invasion. The sky then filled with clouds in strange wave formations. It was just like snorkelling under the sea and looking up at the surface.

Asperitas clouds are, I have since learned, the newest named form of cloud, only officially going on the list in 2015. I don't think that means they've only just started occurring, but I've certainly never seen anything like them before.

They were accompanied by rolling thunder and occasional flashes of lightening, but despite their menacing appearance the rain did not come... Not till about half an hour later when the sky darkened ominously and the heavens opened. So much rain fell so quickly that it started coming through the porch ceiling. I quickly scurried outside to clear the gutter. While I was at it I linked hosepipes to all the water butt overflows to collect as much rainwater as possible.

If I ever see asperitas clouds again I'll get ready for the downpour.

Broad Beans Sleeping In A Blankety Bed...

August has been busy and at the same time not busy. Busy because there's been harvesting and weeding and mowing to be done, plus I've been trying to catch up on a few jobs like creosoting and mending chicken houses. Not busy because it's the holidays and I don't have to work every spare minute just to keep on top of things. It's been dry so the weeds and grass have slowed their growth. At the same time, some of the warm weather vegetable crops like the beans and squashes have really started to thrive. I've had the onions out drying too.

7th August 2016
Mowing today. It's so much easier if I can keep on top of it, but it still takes a good couple of hours.
Before I could mow I had to collect up the potatoes which had been laid out on the surface to dry before storage.

I was in a good mood today for Sue was due back from a little break in Italy. Apparently if she hadn't been there just at the right time this tower would have toppled over.

8th August 2016

Harvest.
Broad beans- time for all the broad beans to come out. The harvest is good but the plants are looking a real mess now.
I've grown them from saved beans for a couple of years now, Bunyard's Exhibition originally from a mixed pack of beans from Poundland! They've now given me three years of good harvests, so not bad value really. This year we got 6 large freezer bags full, once podded.
Unfortunately you used to get 30 beans for your £1 (plus some less useful dwarf and climbing beans and some peas). Now you only get 10.
Anyway, it's time for some new seed stock now, so I may change variety.
Climbing French beans
They've been a bit slow to get going this year, but we finally took a first small harvest of climbing French beans. The tastiest beans are the Cobras, but the seedlings were deformed this year and I almost abandoned them. In the end, I just threw the healthiest few plants into the ground and stuck a cane next to them. They are doing fine now and we'll probably get a decent harvest. Next year I'll invest in some new seed though.
I do like a waxy yellow French bean too and hunted high and low for a climbing variety. I eventually came across Kentucky Yellow Wax. Again, it's not been the most vigorous of plants but it has just started to crop. Hopefully the plants will thicken up and we'll get a bumper harvest by the end of the year.
Courgettes
The courgette crop used to be an officially classified threat to the human race! But last year I was struck by mosaic virus and courgettes are proving a real struggle to grow now. One of the forgotten principles of organic growing is to find the right variety for your conditions. Although more expensive, Courgette Defender has survived where others have failed and is now starting to give us a crop.
Sweetcorn Minipop
Sweetcorn Minipop, despite being grown just for its baby cobs, is a handsome and vigorous plant. Today we took the first harvest from the outdoor plants. 78 baby corn cobs. This variety has grown just as well outside as in the polytunnel, so next year I'll use the tunnel space for something else, probably more standard sweetcorn, which has been a little disappointing this year. I'm sure the cool weather hasn't helped, but even in the polytunnel the crop has been slim, though the cobs which have been produced are plump and delicious. Next year I'll have a change of variety though.

Pea trial not good
I find growing peas hardly worthwhile. Lots of effort protecting the crop and constructing a climbing frame for at best modest harvests. Add to that the destruction caused by pea moth larvae and I abandoned all peas apart from mangetout for a few years.
But this year I decided to grow an old traditional climbing pea in the hope that it would crop over a longer period. I purchased a pack of Champion Of England from RealSeeds.co.uk. They weren't cheap but would hopefully be worth the expense and I could save the seed from year to year. I sowed it at the back end of April to avoid the attentions of the Pea Moth.
So far so good. The plants germinated fairly well and started producing some very tasty peas. Up till this week I'd taken a few handfuls. It is important to keep harvesting peas so they keep producing, so today I expected to take my first significant harvest. How wrong I was! The plants had gone over already. All I could do was to leave the few pods there were to collect the seeds and have another go next year. What a disappointment.

9th August 2016

Our new neighbours had their hay baled today. It's good to see the hay not going to waste. They have a couple of rescue Dartmoor ponies which have not moved in yet. It will be nice to have some animals in the field.

Hay cut...

and baled.

As the baler chomped up and down the field, I chomped my way through the task of podding all the broad beans we harvested yesterday. If I see another broad bean!









It was a momentous day for the youngest batch of Ixworth chicks as they came outside for the first time. They'll go back into their cage with the electric broody overnight, but with the weather warm they hardly ever seek out the warmth it provides now.

The older chicks chilling out

Let there be light
For the past three months we've had no lights in the kitchen! Every time we turn them on they trip the switch. We have a good electrician, but he often needs several phone calls before pinning him down. So somehow we've just kept putting it off. We did call him a week ago, but our call has not been returned. We've finally trained ourselves not to switch on the light.
Anyway this morning we had a builder round to give us a quote for some other work. He gave us the number of a different electrician. At 5 this afternoon I came in from the garden to discover a very tall young man fixing the kitchen lights. He wasn't even stood on a chair. Even I can't reach the kitchen ceiling without climbing up on something.
We now have kitchen lights and it is amazing! The place is so bright. But we still hesitate before hitting the switch. We also now have a new electrician who has the decency to return our phone calls and doesn't make endless promises. 

We should be safe from vampires this year

1st August
Happy Cotton Anniversary To Us!
Today is mine and Sue's second anniversary. It has been a low key affair getting on with the business of smallholding.

While I harvested the onions and a few broad beans and peas, Sue inspected her bees. It's been a testing year for Sue and her bees. On her last inspection she was pleased to finally find some eggs in the first hive, though it appears she has lost the queen from the second hive. The third hive continues to do well. But today's inspection brought more disheartening news as the brood pattern in the first hive didn't look correct. It seems most likely that the young queen was not properly mated and is laying drone eggs. Either that or there is a laying worker.


Meanwhile Boris has learned to jump through the open window to get in and out of the garden. Unfortunately, he has not yet learned that the window is not always open!!! I've heard of birds colliding with windows, but a labradoodle!

We should be safe from vampires this year
Sue then continued celebrating our anniversary by plaiting garlic and trying her hand at pickled garlic.



2nd August
The polytunnel tomatoes are doing well this year. I have squeezed in fewer plants but it makes managing and harvesting  them much easier. I still have 18 plants which should give us plenty, even if we don't get any from the outdoor plants.
I sacrificed the two courgette plants which were running rampant in their tunnel bed. Unfortunately they seemed more intent on producing a jungle of leaves than on producing viable fruits. I only really grew them as insurance in case the outdoor plants failed (as they did last year).

At lunch time I tried my raspberry and redcurrant juice for the first time. It was delicious but it didn't last long! I'll make more next year.



Here is the last photo of all the geese together (along with the turkeys). For tomorrow the two young white geese move to a new home. I was intending to stable them up this evening and then risk my life catching the two young ones. Fortunately this afternoon the opportunity suddenly came up to achieve the separation. As the geese headed down the central path, I noticed the two youngsters in the lead. I quickly jumped in, aided (not!) by Boris and Arthur and hurried them along with the plan to close the gate before all the adults could get through. It felt like some surreal dreamtime version of One Man And His Dog where they are tasked with separating off two specific sheep.
I managed to narrow the group down to three and the final adult was easily separated from the others in the stables.

3rd August

Arthur has caught a mole! He is very proud of himself. It must be the Daschund in him. Daschunds were bred for hunting badgers, but Arthur certainly won't be doing that. The Jack Russell in him has started chasing after rabbits, bouncing down the land to try to surprise them, but he lacks technique at the moment.
I don't really mind him catching a mole. Unlike most other people, I think moles are absolutely amazing creatures and that we should be very proud to have such a special creature native to this country. Sadly most people are more precious about their monoculture flat lawns. However, there are plenty of moles here on the farm. Unusually Arthur didn't eat the mole, despite the fact that he devours the voles and rabbits that our cat Gerry brings back as presents for him. Apparently moles don't taste very nice at all. I won't be testing out that particular theory.

Carrot success
The sun has been shining lately and the vegetables have responded. Today I harvested my first mini sweetcorn cobs from outside and the courgettes have started to crop in reasonable numbers too.
Main job for the day was to sort out the carrot patch. I lifted the mesh netting, in place to keep carrotfly at bay, and tackled the weeds. There weren't too many as the carrots have done so well they have crowded out any weeds. My carrot crops have been pretty disastrous in the past, so I was pleased to find rows of carrots doing very well indeed.
It was a little overdue, but I did one last sowing today which should give us plenty of carrots to harvest before winter arrives.

The two young white geese have gone now, to a new home just down the road where I hope they will be very happy. Already, without young to protect, the rest of the geese have calmed down and are being a lot less macho.

The day ended with a stunning sunset across the road.

4th August
Flatpacked Frustration
The day started with an attempt to construct a flatpack garden table. It came with what were probably the worst set of instructions I have ever seen. Some of the bolts came in and out six times as I basically had to work everything out as I went along. I got there in the end.

Roma defeated!
I'm not talking football, but tomatoes. I have been endeavouring to protect my row of Roma tomatoes from blight but it has been a losing battle. I've been picking off any leaves at the first signs of infection and have been spraying them with a bicarbonate spray - this is supposed to create an alkaline environment where the fungus cannot thrive. But it was inevitable following the ravaging of the potatoes that the blight would reach the tomatoes. Today I took the decision to uproot the row of Romas as the blight had clearly got into the stems. Hopefully some of the other tomatoes outside will be far enough away to escape the scourge.

On a brighter note, I harvested the first of the sweetcorn proper (as opposed to the Minipop which I grow for baby cobs) from the polytunnel today. When I pulled back the husk it was a real gem and went very nicely with the pork ribs and stir fry which I made for dinner - almost totally our own produce. The stir fry had fourteen ingredients from the garden!

Following on from sowing carrots yesterday, I did one last sowing of Boltardy beetroot today. It should stand in the ground over winter. I've sown plenty as any spare will be gobbled up by the sheep or the geese.
I also sowed a trial crop, Spanish Black Round Radish. This is unlike other radishes as it is a winter veg which is cooked. I'm expecting it to be more like a turnip. We'll see. Some of my trial crops earn a place in the veg patch, many fall by the wayside.

5th August


Not put off by the flatpack garden furniture experience yesterday, I decided to get the woodwork tools out today and do a complete overhaul of one of the chicken houses. Here it is having been completely disassembled and half rebuilt. This is as far as I've got as it took quite a lot longer than anticipated.

Same Old, Same Old Gulls
The morning was interrupted by a flock of gulls in the neighbouring field. The rape straw has been baled and collected up and today they were harrowing the field which was pulling in the gulls. I scanned through the flock with my telescope and, as every year, it was composed mainly of Black-headed gulls with lesser numbers of Common Gulls and a few Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls. One year I'll find something different in amongst them.
At one point the whole flock rose suddenly, along with the starlings, lapwings and a small group of Stock Doves. The reason for the panic soon became obvious as a Peregrine Falcon torpedoed through the flock, the first of the winter.
Bizarrely a roe deer appeared in the field as well today, right out in the open.

The day was flying by. Sue is away again with friends visiting Venice, Florence and Piza. Looking after all the animals, myself and the crops is a lot of work and I have been putting in very long days.
The young chicks needed cleaning out as well today. They are growing up fast and it won't be long before they get to go outside during the day.

For the second evening there was a stunning fire in the sky. Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.