What a Very Productive couple of days

Sunday 11th February 2018
Looking after my body
I woke up aching. These old muscles need recuperation time from activities such as lugging sacks of potatoes about.

So I chose gentle jobs for the day. First up was creosoting all the wood in the polytunnel for I suspect that is where the red spider mites hide away to overwinter. The metal frame has already been nuked with disinfectant and blasted with water but a multifaceted chemical attack is clearly what is needed.

All I need to do now is to clean the polythene. Most of the algae is on the inside and the outside is just grimy. I have ordered a long handled squeegee / soft broom affair for the job. The reason it is not here yet is another story.
This is a great job to do, as the light floods in afterwards.

We are not exactly having many beautiful clear winter days at the moment, so again it was not a day for outdoor jobs.

Instead I potted up some of the tomato seedlings. I've started a few varieties off early this year just to see how they do compared to the others. My hope is that the conservatory proves to be the ultimate plant rearing facility and I can start everything off that bit earlier so that harvests come sooner. I don't normally rush things, but the sooner I get a harvest the more tomatoes I will get if blight strikes later on.
I have sown some lemongrass as well and it has already germinated as has my first sowing of coriander.
I potted up the chilli seedlings too. I am still waiting for a couple of varieties to come through, but old chilli seed often loses its viability.

Finally I sowed my leek seeds for the year. I have changed variety this year as last year's suffered terribly from rust and have not stood the frosts well. I just feel it is time for a swap, so I've gone for Porbella which claims to have good rust resistance. By the way, this is not the same rust that cars suffer from!

With the sowing of this year's leeks, I harvested the last of last year's for a leek and potato soup. I harvested the last of the carrots too. They should have been harvested before the winter to save them from the slugs, but we got plenty this year so I left some standing in the ground.
The last ones left were Autumn King and had grown to a good size.
There was a fair amount of slug damage and a few millipedes and woodlice had been munching too, but I still got a good bowl full even after sorting. The geese got the rest and spent the next few days doing orange poo!
As I harvested the carrots, the chickens pecked up the baby keel slugs which had moved in. One I'm particular waited for me to hold up each newly dug carrot. The fate of this carrot harvest was a carrot and ginger soup which came out very nicely. In addition, any spare carrots, leeks and a few other bits and bobs were used to make two big pans of stock to add depth of flavour to the soups.

The evening was spent cooking. I am still keeping to my New Year's resolution of cooking more with our produce. The two aforementioned soups plus a big pot of roast sweet potato and pumpkin soup.
These soups will feed the first meeting of the Fenland Smallholders Club committee that I am chairing this weekend.

Monday 12th February 2018
Cooking and Preserving

Beef Goulash with roast Salsify and Scorzonera.

Portuguese Corn bread and very British Lardy Cake.

What a very productive day. After three batches of soup yesterday evening, I took on a Beef Goulash with Roast Salsify and Scorzonera with Ginger, Lemon and Honey. Yummy!

Then onto bread making. with a Portuguese Corn Bread (thanks to finding somewhere to buy corn meal) and a soda Pumpkin Bread (courtesy of the buttermilk I found in the same shop)

While I was doing all this, Sue was processing a ton of blackcurrants from the freezer, juicing them ready to make a jelly. She mad 30 jars of delicious damson jam too.

Next up for me was Lardy Cake. I make this wicked favourite every year, using some of the very best lard we saved from Daisy when she went to the great pigsty in the sky. 

Then biscuits for the committee meeting. Orange Biscuits, Walnut and Chocolate Slices and Prune and Peel Rock Buns.

It's a good job I am trying to lose a bit of weight at the moment!

Spring... for one day only

Tuesday 30th January

Spring is here!

Today I heard a song thrush, a mistle thrush, great tits, robins, dunnocks, chaffinches, little owls (more of a duet than a song), skylarks and goldfinches all singing for joy. The sun beat down and cheered up the whole smallholding,

A farm record 22 Tree Sparrows were at the feeders. There were probably quite a few more as they were coming and going, their familiar chipping calls announcing their flights in and out.

I put up some very temporary stock fencing along the boundary where the geese kept going yesterday, but they just waddled further up the land, much further than they have ever been before, until they found the end of the fence.

This was solved with a few sheep hurdles. Why didn't I think of this earlier?

I got on with washing plant pots and cleaning plant labels - the best way to get the pencil off them from last year is to rub wet dirt on them.

I sowed 54 Mangetout seeds to grow in the polytunnel. This has worked brilliantly in previous years and the plants have cropped and are out before the space is needed.

This year I am trying some Sugarsnap peas too. The seeds are old but hopefully they will germinate successfully.

I can't grow peas outside - they need more water than I can provide, so this quick early crop in the polytunnel is perfect.

I sowed my chillies for the year too. Just four varieties and I will only grow one plant of each, for they are prolific.

The Piccolo tomatoes have germinated well already, as have the Black Russians and Gardener's Delight. They germinate on a heated propagator base. As soon as they come up, I open the vent on the plastic lid to allow air to circulate, otherwise they will just rot off.

In another couple of days they will come off heat and go into a mini greenhouse in the conservatory. At this early stage in their growth, light is essential so they don't get leggy.

Taking advantage of the glorious weather, I took Boris and Arthur out for a nice long walk along the river. Unfortunately the drainage board have felt it necessary to completely strip the banks, so no kingfishers, moorhens or reed buntings to be seen. The photo below shows the only small stretch where the vegetation has been left on one bank.

There was still time when I got back to plant up three small blueberry bushes which I purchased. I did have some of these in the soft fruit area, but the rabbits took a liking to them. Besides, they are better in pots which I can fill with ericaceous compost.

I will only need one decent harvest to repay the investment.

Wednesday 31st January 2018

SuperBlueBloodmoon!

Supermoons seem ten a penny these days. Hardly a full moon passes without making the grade. It is encouraging that people are finally noticing the natural wonders around them.

Tonight's supermoon was a blue moon too - that just means the second in a calendar month, so really it's just a coincidence of numbers. What I didn't know was that February will be a Black Moon month - no full moon.

The Blue Moon was also a Blood Moon, something to do with an eclipse earlier in the day and on another side of the world.

To be fair it was a nice moon that shone in through the skylight, though my camera totally failed to do it justice.

Up, Up and Away

Wednesday 24th January 2018
Turkey escape

High winds forecast again so I stayed at home to keep an eye on the place. Good job really, for Boris woke me up barking. He often barks at nothing in particular, but there was meaning in his bark this morning. I threw on some clothes and rushed downstairs just in time to see five turkeys heading past the kitchen window on a mission!

The girls were clucking excitedly.

I herded them back up the land and eventually back into their cage. The heras fencing was jumping around and had gradually jolted the bolt loose on the door. The door had swung open and the turkeys seized their opportunity.
I did my best to secure the fencing but the howling wind made it an uncomfortable task.

Twenty minutes later the turkeys were out again!!! Much as I wanted to retreat inside, I had to make some adjustments to the latch arrangement. I secured everything with baling twine just in case.

Then it was time for a retreat indoors. Arthur agreed.

Up, up and away - the first seeds of the year

I made the most of my incarceration by sowing the first seeds of the year, some rather early tomatoes. Sowing them this early will mean they need a lot of nurturing but if I can get them through they will hopefully be producing tomatoes ahead of the rest and I might get an acceptable harvest before blight strikes. 

On the other hand, the later sown plants might just catch up and overtake. Nothing ventured...

One tray contains seeds scooped straight from Sue's favourite Tesco Picollo tomatoes. Online forums indicate that they are likely to come true.

I've also put some potatoes to chit. These are destined for the polytunnel and should give me a crop at least a month before those which have to brave the big outdoors.

Saturday 27th January 2018
Rainy day filing
Rain all day. I'm not just a fair weather smallholder, but there's no point trudging through the mud doing more damage than good.
So I busied myself sorting the seeds. They are filed by date. For successional sowing, I simply move the envelope to the second sowing date once the first have been sowed.
It's a great system which means that nothing gets forgotten.

It also did my Big Garden Birdwatch, recording every bird that came to the feeders or onto the lawn during the period of an hour. A sharp frost would have made the list more exciting, but I ended up with a fairly representative list of the birds which are regular in the garden.

Seeds for a new growing season

Monday 22nd January 2018
This year's seed order
After yesterday's seed audit, I sat down to think about what to grow this year. I have decided to concentrate on what we know we like to eat and what I know grows.
I am going to finally give up on some crops.

OUT 😢

Celeriac - too unpredictable, with decent bulbs only every few years

Aubergine - I've never had anything more than a pathetic crop in the polytunnel. Never ripens well and fruits are small. Also one of the first plants to host red spider mite. Has to go.

Outdoor peas - only grew well one year, when we were virtually waterlogged. OK for a small plot where it can be watered plenty. 

Kohl rabi - grows well but we're not that fussed

Asparagus pea - great for bees and a pretty plant, but the pods taste less like asparagus and more like cardboard

Hamburg Parsley - a nice idea, parsley leaves and parsnip roots, but I find parsnips give better roots and curled parsley gives better leaves

Watermelon - fails every year in the polytunnel, which is a shame as I love it

Cauliflower - when I have managed to get decent curds, the slugs or the weather have invariably got to them first. I have much more success with Romanesco, which is a cross between cauli and broccoli.

Radishes - I grow them because I feel I should, but we never eat them before they bolt

IN 😊
Celtuce - a cross between lettuce and celery. I'm going to give it a try. More in a later post if it's successful, otherwise it can quietly disappear off the list like so many other experimental crops in the past.

Blight Resistant Tomatoes - Legend, Lizzano, Mountain Magic. Growing tomatoes outside is disheartening when they suddenly get hit by blight a few weeks after it has hit the potatoes. Pretty much the whole crop is devastated and the plants have to be pulled up just as they are beginning to crop. So this year I have splashed out. At nearly £3 for six seeds (yes, SIX) they are ridiculously expensive. They are F1 too, which means the big companies have you hooked in. But a full season's harvest from just one plant would easily repay the cost.

Leek Porbella - I've been getting more and more rust on my leeks, so in an effort to break the cycle I am going to switch varieties to a more rust resistant type. Growing disease-resistant strains is one of the mainstays of organic gardening, but one which I often forget to use.

All go

Entertainment for the day involved the setting up of traffic lights outside for BT to do something to the phone lines. Mid morning my internet and phone went off. It amazes me that, with just three houses affected and about a dozen men on the job, that none of them bothered to knock on the door and politely explain what they were doing and that the service would be interrupted for a while. Just common courtesy and good public relations, but there you go.
So instead I decided to go and pick up some bales of straw. I just had to manoeuvre past the van that was parked half across my driveway and pull out in the middle of the traffic lights. Maybe my house is invisible.

I set the alarms off at the farm where I get the straw. They have been having terrible problems with hare coursers. The level of intimidation, even with the police present, is disgusting. These people are vile human beings and need locking up or worse.

Nuking the Polytunnel
With the straw unloaded, main job for the day was to spray the polytunnel with disinfectant. Not particularly nice stuff, but I need to nuke it every winter to try to get rid of the red spider mite which can devastate the plants. I then blasted every inch with a hosepipe. Most of the water seemed to end up soaking up my sleeve, dripping on my head or splashing back onto my glasses.
Tomorrow I will repeat the whole procedure.
If I could rid the tunnel of red spider mite for good I could begin to use it to hold and grow crops through the winter. As it is, we have to go for a full clear-out every year.

There was just time to take the dogs along the river before sunset. The afternoons are getting longer by the day and it won't be long before we have light evenings.

Plague and pestilence - a thoroughly disheartening affair

How dare we have a holiday!
We were only gone for just less than a week during which time a plague of pestilence and disease was wrought upon the smallholding. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration but this is a post to show that smallholding is not always a bed of roses.

On the positive side the animals were ok. But it was a different story in the veg plot.

Blight
For the umpteenth year in a row blight has swept through my potatoes and moved onto my tomatoes. And because I wasn't here to spot it early it had a chance to kill off all the foliage on the Earlies and Second Earlies before starting on the Maincrops. There were no signs of it when we left for Scotland and by the time we returned it had ravaged the crop. The timing could not have been worse. I took the tops off all the potatoes and have left them in the ground so they don't come into  contact with any spores on the soil surface, but harvesting has been a thoroughly depressing activity, with perhaps just a quarter of the Early potatoes surviving. I haven't yet dared check the other potatoes, but am clinging onto the hope that Charlottes have been pretty blight resistant in previous years.
The blight has then moved onto the tomatoes. It enters the plants through the leaves so I have removed most of the leaves and check daily, removing all affected leaves and fruit. But once it gets into the stem you are fighting a losing battle. For some reason the plum varieties, Roma and San Marzano, seem to fare the worst. A fairly decent crop can still be salvaged from the others.

Spanish Slugs
Next on the list is slugs. More precisely the big fat orange ones which some people call Spanish slugs. The problem is they are too big and slimy for natural enemies to predate. I think the key to controlling them is to leave them no cover, but this means keeping the veg beds perfectly edged. The most effective killer of these orange slime-monsters is my edging shears - messy but effective!
Unfortunately they also seem to like living under a dense canopy of nasturtium leaves and whenever I have let these companion plants ramble it has resulted in an army of slugs attacking the crops.
So habitat destruction is proving the key to control here, as well as direct hunting out of the enemy followed by quick dispatch.

I have also released the ducks into the spare veg patch where my brassica leaves are more hole than leaf. This is in the part of the smallholding which used to be arable with the result that there is very little topsoil. The clay surface opens into wide cracks during the summer, a perfect daytime hideout for the slugs.
During my research of Spanish slugs I have come across an awful lot of poor advice on various forums, but one comment I read has reminded me of a technique which could possibly work. Apparently slugs are suckers for porridge oats, which then swell up inside them with disastrous consequences (for the slug).
I can buy sacks of porridge oats for just a few pounds and have some in stock, for the sheep love them soaked and mixed in with a few sugar beet pellets.  I would imagine the ground needs to be dry for this to work well and the oats to achieve maximum swell inside the slug, so now would be a perfect time to try.

Red Spider Mite
Third on the most unwanted list is Red Spider Mite. I nuked the polytunnel this winter but they have crept back in, though much later than in previous years. I am managing to keep them under control with weekly sprays of pyrethrum on to the most affected plants and sprays of rosemary oil mixed with eucalyptus oil and a little soap every other day in between. The trouble is you can never quite totally eradicate them.
While we were away they multiplied rapidly in the polytunnel, moving from the aubergines (always the first to be hit) onto the cucumbers (always the second). However, I have been working hard and they are back under control for the moment.



Well, that was a depressing post wasn't it. But we came back from our holiday refreshed and full of optimism. The disappointments have been shrugged off and we have been forging ahead with new projects. Hence the lack of posts recently. We really have been working very, very hard till late every evening.
More on these exciting new projects very soon.

Return of the red spider mite

GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
They're back.

Spider mites are the peskiest of pests. There are two sorts of red spider mite, those which suck the blood of chickens and those which suck the life out of plants in the polytunnel. Neither red spider mite is red! Both are very destructive and an absolute pain to get rid of.

I first identified red spider mite in my polytunnel four years ago. These tiny arachnids multiply rapidly and in that first year weakened my Yardlong beans so much that I got virtually no crop.
One standard treatment for red spider mite is to import a biological control predator, but it's not cheap. I don't mind spending twenty quid if it gets rid of the problem, but not if it merely controls the numbers to come back every year.

In my ignorance I hoped the spider mites would vanish over the winter, but over the following two years they came back stronger each spring. Last year I'm pretty sure they got outside too as my whole bean crop was disastrous with the plants making no headway whatsoever.

So this winter I blitzed the polytunnel, spraying with Jeyes fluid (I had previously tried less aggressive solutions such as Citrox) and treating the wood with creosote. I also removed all possible overwintering homes such as bits of wood, support ropes etc. I've also been using the overhead irrigation regularly, as spider mite do not like humid conditions. The trouble is, these conditions encourage moulds too, which can be a problem when the vegetation in the tunnel inhibits air circulation.

All of this brought me success in my battle... or so I thought. My plants have grown well with none of the tell-tale signs of spider mite damage.

Luxuriant growth in the polytunnel

Growth trimmed back to allow air circulation

But then, a couple of days ago, I went to check if any of my aubergines were beginning to grow fruits and I came face to face with leaves that looked like this.

This mottled effect is caused by a

multitude of bite holes which

significantly weaken the plant and can kill it.

On very close inspection, for spider mites are absolutely tiny, I could just about see the pesky little blighters crawling along the stems.

Look very closely!

In preparation for this I had brought in some Pyrethrum, newly available as a group of producers clubbed together to pay the huge cost of getting it approved for use. I also made some rosemary oil earlier in the year, as this is supposed to be the active ingredient in some hideously expensive commercial sprays.

The pyrethrum is to be sprayed at seven day intervals. I spray it in the evening, after the bees and hoverflies have gone to bed, making sure to drench the plants and get right under the leaves. Fortunately I have caught it early so only need to do a small area of plants.
In the morning I turn on the irrigation to wash the leaves before the sun comes up and to keep conditions humid during the day.
But I am taking no chances. On the days I don't spray with pyrethrum I will use a weak rosemary oil solution. I am praying that my actions have a significant impact, as last year it was a tad demoralising.
If I don't see a change very soon the aubergine plants will go - they rarely give me a crop anyway, though I suspect that is because for some reason they seem to be extremely prone to spider mite.
Other plants which get hit are beans (I don't grow these in the tunnel any more), cucumbers and melons and, in a bad year, even the pepper plants. So far the tomato plants have seemed largely unaffected. Removing all the leaves below the developing fruits probably helps too.

Meanwhile, the harvest has started in earnest. Tomatoes are ripening and cucumbers are coming thick and fast. It looks like a very good year for melons too.

Cucumbers galore

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.

Creamed Honey and a Freezer Spreadsheet

13th August 2016
Preparing for winter
Sue was with the West Norfolk Bee-keepers today, focusing on preparations for winter! Taking the advice of people with years and years of experience, she is going to combine the two weaker colonies. Between them they probably have one laying queen and hopefully they will unite and get strong enough to make it through the winter. After a difficult year, if we can get two colonies through the winter it will be considered a satisfactory outcome.

Outdoor Toms a Losing Battle with Blight
While Sue was busy doing that, I was doing my best to save a few outdoor tomatoes. Despite my best efforts to remove leaves and whole plants if necessary at the first signs of blight, I continue to have to chop the plants smaller and smaller. Blight just keeps creeping steadily forward. I'm taking tomatoes off the plants as soon as they show any signs of blush and ripening them on the kitchen windowsill. This saves them from the unwanted attentions of mice and the turkeys too! Growing tomatoes outside is a bit of a lottery. Several years ago we had pounds and pounds of outdoor tomatoes, but since then we have had very little harvest. I really must get the greenhouse up this winter so I can grow the vast majority indoors from now on.

Sow Thistles for the Sheep
Once I'd done this I moved the sheep down to the very bottom section of field where the grass is waist high and the sow thistles grow thick. The sheep love sow thistle, even if it means their fleece gets wallpapered with the prickly stems and leaves. They will knock it back in no time.
One didn't want to go and was a complete pain. At least it gave me some exercise.

Freezer Spreadsheet
Best job of the day though went to Sue, who compiled a list of all the food in our many freezers. I then put this on a spreadsheet. Now this may sound more than a bit OCD, but it's easy to lose food at the bottom of the freezers. Despite pickling, dehydrating, vacuum-packing and making preserves, many of our fruit and vegetables and most of our meat still ends up going into the freezer. At this time of year there is more going in than coming out, despite our best efforts. The spreadsheet means we can keep track of what's in there and make sure our cooking is planned around using up the oldest food first.

14th August 2016
Creaming Honey
The first honey of the year is always rape honey. It sets absolutely concrete solid. This year Sue siphoned it into large buckets with a plan to turn it into creamed honey, a much more versatile product. To achieve this, the set honey needs to be very gently warmed, so as not to destroy all its health-giving properties. The dehydrator works perfectly for this. Then it is just a matter of attaching the honey creamer to the drill and agitating for at least five minutes.

Softened rape honey

The resulting product tasted delicious. We're just hoping that it has worked and it does not reset.

15th August 2016
An Excursion into the Modern World
A trip into Wisbech. I don't get off the farm very much and a couple of pieces of modern technology caught my attention. Firstly, new gizmos at the pedestrian crossings and secondly a machine in the bank which automatically reads cheques, adds them up and issues a receipt including a copy of the cheques. It seems the modern world advances a little more each time I leave it for a while!
One thing about living in a fairly remote setting is that you can't pop into town every time you need one thing, otherwise the petrol cost would often be significantly more than the cost of whatever you are buying. So we tend to save up a list of things to do in town.
We were also meeting up with someone near Wisbech to sell all of this year's honey! (we just kept a couple of jars back for ourselves). Unfortunately Sue only collected about 50 jars this year as only one hive was consistent enough to collect from.

16th August 2016
Most of the day was spent making the place look spick and span for tomorrow's gathering of the Grow Your Own group. The grass got a cut as did my hair, for the first time in a long while. It has gone from a weedy patch of overgrown grass and sow thistles to a neatly mown lawn, without the lines - I'm talking about my hair. I don't really do things in half measures.

Royal Tern Dip still hurts
It seems that every day I get the ride-on mower out, there is a MEGA bird to interrupt proceedings. Today's news was of a Royal Tern on the west coast of Ireland. I have bad memories of Royal Tern. There has only been one record since I have been seriously twitching. It appeared at several sites in North Wales on 15th June 2009, ending up sat on Black Rock Sands beach from 8:47pm until dark, last reported at 10:32pm. I turned up in the very early hours of the morning and slept in the car. In the morning it was gone, only to reappear four days later off Llandudno beach, where it flew up and down, occasionally disappearing round the corner for short periods, from 3:25pm till 6pm, five minutes before I arrived! When I turned up I was told "It's just gone round the corner, but don't worry, it's done that a few times. It'll be back soon." Well it didn't come back. Apart from one brief apparent sighting late in the evening, that was it. Gone. That dip hurt.

So, back to today's sighting. Should I get in the car and head for the ferry to Ireland, letting down the whole Grow Your Own group, or should I be patient and see what the bird gets up to in the next day or two? Had it been this side of the water, I would have been straight in the car without hesitation, but as it was I decided to hang on. After all, I had just spent the whole day getting the place looking nice for my visitors.
The rest of the evening was a nervy one though.

17th August 2016
Well, the Royal Tern was briefly seen for a couple of minutes early in the morning and then disappeared. I wouldn't have seen it had I gone last night, so I got lucky on this occasion.

Back on the farm, there were six buzzards in the air at once today, making use of the sunny weather and the light breeze to soar and hunt the freshly harvested fields.
There were four Grey Partridges (aka English Partridges) in the field at the back of me today. These are getting very scarce indeed now, just another of our farmland birds which is in steep decline.

Grow Your Own group
In the evening I had the Grow Your Own group round. The discussion subject for today was Flowers In The Veg Garden. Top Of The Crops was Potatoes. For this, we focus on one crop, looking at how to grow it, best varieties, pests and diseases and what to do with it when it is harvested. Everybody is encouraged to bring along a dish to share and I was trying my hand at Bombay Potatoes. They turned out very nice indeed and I will certainly be making them again. I'll probably make a big batch and freeze some ... if there is ever spare space in the freezers! Others brought along an Irish Colcannon type dish, a potato, ham and cheese bake and there was even a cake which contained potatoes. All very tasty and a great evening was had by all. We even managed to sit outside and my redcurrant and raspberry sparkling cordial was enjoyed by all.

18th August 2016
Rain At Last!
A rest day today but the rain was very, very welcome indeed, much needed outside. The wind that came with it was not quite so welcome.

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.