No digging, plenty of lugging!

With Spring hurtling towards us, there is plenty to do to get ready for sowing and growing. The ground has been pretty much frozen for a while now, so I have used my time to do some of the more physical jobs on the smallholding, mainly moving piles of stuff from one place to another.

Firstly an offer of woodchip rapidly developed into collecting 6 trailer loads of the stuff over several days. It's not heavy, but that's still a lot of shovel fulls to load and then unload at this end.
Considering how much I shifted, it seems to have gone nowhere. I do at least now have some nice woodchip paths between my new no-dig veg beds.
Not all the beds are ready yet as there are leeks and brassicas still in the ground holding up my redesign of the bed system, so the last couple of trailer loads are piled up waiting to go to their new home.

While the trailer was on the car I used the opportunity to collect a couple of loads of straw bales. We are fortunate that a couple of very local farms still do conventional small bales which are far easier to handle than the massive agricultural scale ones which mostly go straight off to be burned for energy these days.
They are still only £1 per bale here, which is ridiculously cheap compared to other areas of the country.

I've continued moving compost onto some of the new beds too. The asparagus bed is looking particularly swanky. I hope the asparagus plants appreciate my efforts and throw up a forest of lovely spears this year.

Final job, and one which Sue excels at, was to clear a year's bedding from the goose stable. We run them on a deep litter system and have a good clean out once a year just before they begin laying, which traditionally happens on Valentine's day (give or take a couple of weeks).
This heady mix of straw and goose poo goes by wheelbarrow straight down to the soft fruit patch. I had to hurriedly prune all the currant bushes before it went down.
I pile it around the base of each bush and then the chickens come along and spread it everywhere!
This practice seems to reward me with ample currants. The blackcurrants especially thrive under this system.

While I was down in the soft fruit patch, I finally finished

cutting back the summer raspberries.

 

I laid cardboard on the grass (thanks Big Dug) and covered it with 

goose bedding. This will create a new bed into which I intend 

to plant more blackcurrant bushes which I raised from cuttings two years ago.

No more digging?

Life has been very complicated lately, but here's a little effort to start catching up.

Saturday 3rd November 2018
4 Muscovies and 2 Pekins gone!
The male Muscovy ducks which were born earlier in the year had reached a good size and were eating me out of house and home. Time for a little trip to the freezer! Bad news for two of the Pekin ducks, as I decided to keep five of them for breeding and eggs rather than seven.
I'll spare you any photos from today.

Sunday 4th November 2018
A fine autumn day outside in the veg plot, preparing some of the beds for next year. I am having a very big rethink, going back to smaller beds but without the network of grass paths which were impossible to keep on top of and gave too many edges for the slugs to hide under.



I don't think any of the no-dig systems I have come across are perfect or practical, so I plan to combine a number of methods, using cardboard, green manure, grass clippings, straw and compost to mulch and top up the soil structure every year.
Preparing the beds for the big change to no-dig has involved a surprising amount of digging! However, it should be a one off exercise.
There'll be much more on this new way of gardening in future posts.

I caught a rat in one of my snap traps today. I am trying to stop using poison bait so am really hoping that the idea of placing snap traps into a bait box (with normal wheat inside as an attractant) will work well enough to stop rats moving into the poultry pens.

Activites for winter nights.

Sue tries to make a carpet but Gerry 

has already decided to sit on it 

before it's even finished!

Tuesday 6th November 2018
I spent the morning fixing chicken houses. Goodness knows why they make the doors so close-fitting. A little bit of damp weather and the doors no longer close. Pulling them hard to open them in the morning inevitably loosens the screws which hold the bolts. So I have put handles onto the doors and shaved the tops so they don't catch. A little air circulation in the chicken house is a good thing.
Sue has been working hard on her peg-looming as she has the winter to produce enough carpets to line the floor of our tipi. Did I mention we have bought a tipi?!

With the nights drawing in there is a balance to be struck between outdoor pursuits and indoor evening pursuits. Winter gives me much more time for baking so today I made a gooseberry custard tart. Gooseberry recipes are hard to find beyond the predictable sponge, pie and fool. I made bread too, the first time using some nice Dove's Farm flour. I don't know whether it was the quality of the flour or the new dried yeast I am using, but the finished loaf was one of the nicest I have ever made.

Compost designs

Steaming heaps

There are big changes afoot with my compost heaps. I have 6 made of pallets and three bays made of corrugated iron. But it is an effort turning the compost from one pallet to another and to be honest it doesn't get done anywhere near as much as it should, resulting in cold composting which takes years rather than hot composting which can take a little as a couple of months in the summer.

So gone are the dividers between the bays. This year's compost is now in one giant long heap, easily accessed and easily turned every time I pass or throw something on the heap.

If this new way is successful, most of the pallet compost heaps will go too. I'll just keep the best ones to store well-rotted compost in or for perennial weed roots or leaf mould.

The queen is dead

Sunday 6th May 2018
The queen is dead
Lovely Weather!
But I couldn't spend too long outside today as Sue was planning on killing one of her queen bees. I know this sounds a bit drastic, but queens don't keep laying well for ever - a bit like chickens really.
Like many others this extended winter, Sue's bees are struggling a bit. The smallest colony is barely hanging on and the queen in the largest colony has started laying drone brood - that's male bees. In the world of smallholding, males are pretty useless. One of each species is generally enough.

Today I needed to keep my distance from the bees would likely not be happy, though using lavender cuttings in the smoker seems to be having a calming effect on them.

So I decided to erect my bean poles. I use old willow for this which the sheep enjoy debarking for me - this stops the poles taking root.
I dig these in about a foot and stamp the soil back down around them to secure. They are sturdier than bamboo canes and carry a lot less 'food' miles. They are better looking too and give some real height and structure to the vegetable garden.

For the first time in ever I have actually got the bean poles erected in advance of the beans being ready to be planted out. In fact I have not even sown them yet.
I prefer to sow them in paper modules indoors rather than direct. I can get  slightly earlier start but more importantly they are protected from birds and voles. Further, germination can be a bit patchy if the soil is not warm enough, so if I grow them in modules I can make sure that every pole has a bean.

The bottle fed lambs, Flash and Rambutan, are getting big now. They have become good friends and nothing pleases them more than a little run around with the dogs. Rambutan is Boris size and Flash is Arthur size.

Monday 7th May 2018

Getting Crabby

I've just got to show you this crab apple. Look how much blossom! I am anticipating a good year for all our fruit trees this year. Even if I say so myself, I have done a good job of pruning them. We had a decent spell of cold weather in the winter to kill off some of the nasties and we seem to escaped any heavy frosts, high winds or hail storms at the wrong time of year.

Tuesday 8th May 2018
Been bean sowing

A day of seed sowing and potting up. timing the sowing of the beans is a fine art. For they grow quickly but can't go outside until we are frost free. Most of them are for drying so I need as long a season as possible. For these I prefer to grow climbing varieties as they are up in the air and more exposed. It is hard to dry the beans on dwarf varieties which are low to the ground and shaded by their own leaves.

For seeds and seedlings sown earlier in the year I use plastic trays and modules, but for those sown late which go in the ground quickly I make paper pots, wither round ones using a special wooden shaper or cube ones using origami.
I like the fact that they are reusing old paper and that they can be planted straight in the ground with no further rot disturbance.

The Hub - A Duck-Free Wildlife Pond

Saturday 14th April 2018
A dry day and blue skies!
Today's job was to build a hazel and willow barricade around the small wildlife pond which forms the hub of The Wheel, my veg plot design. This preformed plastic pond has followed Sue and I from our first house in London where it was the centrepiece of our 16 foot square garden. Our current plot is over 800 times that size!

I want to move the ducks into the veg plot to hoover up the slugs which live under the grass overhangs where the beds are edged. But they will trash the pond. Instead, I am building a new pond for them, more of a duck lido in fact.

So I set about cutting the stakes for my duck barrier, using hazel I had harvested. I then weaved in the willows, using basic weaving techniques.

I have to say I am very pleased with the end result.

And the ducks are so impressed with their new lido that they have not even noticed the other pond. That one can be kept a secret between me and the wild birds and the frogs and toads.

When you get dangly bits in your beard

Sunday 25th February 2018

A new space for pumpkins
I wanted to move last year's cuttings and take this year's cuttings before spring breaks in March, but this week's weather forecast has put a halt to that.

For the moment we have frosty mornings and beautiful, sunny days.

So this morning it was out with the rotavator to begin shaping a couple of new veg beds. I just broke up the surface today, but a couple of more goes will have the grass turned in and the new beds ready to grow. They are going to be used for pumpkins and cuttings in alternate years.
I seem to be constantly reorganising the smallholding. Since the turkeys and Ixworths moved into the old pig pen, that space is no longer an option as an emergency holding pen for any sheep I need to keep away from the others.

So I have decided that the spare veg patch is to be sacrificed to make way for a small paddock with occasional use as a pig rearing pen. The mangels, the larger brassicas, the pumpkins and the cuttings will all have to squeeze in with the other vegetables.

At the moment that would be quite impossible, but where there's grass there's a future veg bed! The added bonus is that grass needs a lot more management than a veg bed, so I will be cutting down on mower time too.

Boris was especially keen to help today!

Though the problem with so much digging is how to get rid of the dangly bits that get stuck in your beard!Well, if you ever get that problem, I can confidently prescribe a good long walk with regular dips in icy dykes! 

2018 Veg - All Systems Go Go GO!

Sunday 7th January 2018
Poultry losses
We lost one of the ducks on Saturday, the male Cayuga. He just wasn't there when I went to put them away. No feathers, no blood, no body. I count my blessings really that whatever took him just took one. It rarely happens and always at this time of year, when food is short for predators.

And today one of the commercial meat chicks. I didn't count them in last night, but only 7 emerged this morning. I searched everywhere before the gruesome find of the poor little thing encased in ice in the paddling pool. This is the first bird we have lost in there, as we have placed bricks around the edge and a wooden ramp to aid escape.
Losses are always sad, but sometimes they are unpredictable or unavoidable. It's part of the price of letting the birds have more freedom.
Monday8th January 2018
Turning the soil
Onto more positive things.
I took advantage of drier and frosty conditions this morning to finally get the bed ready for the garlic cloves. They'll be going in tomorrow when the soil is a bit softer. 100 cloves to produce 100 garlic bulbs. This will be the fifth year I've used my old bulbs with no negative effect on harvest. Not bad considering I ignored all the advice to buy specialist stock and instead brought them originally from a small Asian supermarket in Harrow.

Mr Rotavator comes out for the first time in 2018. I love to see the chickens and robins grabbing the opportunity to rid my soil of creepy crawlies. I'm sure they eat some good ones too, but so be it. As long as they get the slug eggs.

Sue picked up some Early potatoes for me too yesterday. They are to go in the polytunnel immediately, to start the new potato harvest early.  So after I had rotavated the garlic bed I set to clearing out the polytunnel. I'm tight for time for a spring clean, but if I can get the tubers into the soil I can get the spring clean done before the leaves poke through the surface.

I need to plant my polytunnel mangetout seeds too - which means auditing what seeds I have and completing my vegetable seed order for the year.

Wow! All of a sudden it feels as if the 2018 growing season is upon us. It gives me a spring in my step. Between now and February half term I'll try to take advantage of any fine days when the soil is not sodden to work all the veg beds, emptying the compost bins and incorporating it into the soil.

This year I plan to stick to the basics. No fancy crops that we don't really eat. Besides, I've tried just about every exotic vegetable there is to try.

I have some major smallholding projects planned for the year, so I am going to try to make my veg growing more simple and organised.

The Bean Forest

Monday 29th May
With a bout of summery weather on the cards, main job for the day was to get all the beans and peas planted outside. I rear most of them in modules to protect them from the attentions of slugs and voles. They quickly fill the little pockets of soil with roots and are soon ready to go out. I sink branches into the ground to grow them up. These branches come from winter's tree pruning and are helpfully and enthusiastically debarked by the Shetland sheep.
The young bean plants still need protection from slugs, so each gets its own cut down milk bottle or lemonade bottle as a mini cloche. This helps shelter them from the wind too and helps to harden them off.
This year I am growing Gigantes beans along with Runner Beans (I forget the variety), Borlottis and Pea Beans. All of these I use for drying. Then there are Cobra beans, my favourite for French green beans.

I do like the bean and pea patch. It adds height and interest to the garden.

In the gaps I grow sweetcorn, courgettes and dwarf beans.

Tuesday 30th May
The sheep have been crossing the electric fence with impunity, even the two little brown lambs. I began to suspect that it wasn't working properly, so today I dug out the voltage tester only to discover that there was actually no electricity running through half of the fence!

And so began the long process of tracking down the problem. First job is to walk the fence and check for any obvious breaks. With this eliminated, it gets trickier. The voltage can drop if there is too much connection with long, wet vegetation, so that by the end of the line the fence is very weak. So I walked the line, clearing vegetation and moving the fence clear. This increased the voltage slightly, but clearly wasn't the main problem.

I eventually worked out where the problem lay - in the sections of tape which link one side of the paddock to the other. What followed was several attempts to get the connection working properly. Each check necessitated a long walk back to turn the fence off at source. Thank goodness Sue was there to help.
Eventually I managed to get a current flowing all the way around the paddock where the sheep are feeding. Doubtless the lambs will charge through it a couple more times until they actually get a shock. After that they will be a bit more wary.

Wednesday 31st May
Look what started today. More in future posts.

A Springtime Catch-Up

No blog posts for a while. I won't apologise. It's not through laziness but through business.
It really is all go on the smallholding at this time of year. Dawn till dusk working the soil, sowing seeds, mowing lawns. Then there are baby animals imminent and chicks galore waiting to hatch. Plus all the routine work.
So instead of my usual day by day post, here's a catch up across the smallholding.

Firstly, the weather. April has been warm and sunny, a perfect start to the growing season. We could do with one night of rain now though!

The 'Family'

Gerry has caught his first rabbit of the year and is now catching at least one daily. He sometimes brings one back for the dogs, particularly Arthur our young jackadackadoodle. It was just such a gift that caused the first ever brief fight between him and Boris who has finally realised that fresh rabbit is actually quite a tasty treat. They quickly made up.

I'm sorry if anybody reading this is feeling sorry for the cute little bunny-wunnies, but I find it hard to feel sympathy for an animal which takes great delight in digging up my freshly planted garden shrubs and flowers. Besides, it saves on the animal feed bills.

Boris and Arthur have been enjoying the life of Riley lately. I discovered a supplier of knuckle bones who sell a whole sack full for under a tenner. These should keep the dogs busy for quite some time.

Most delightfully, a year and a half into his life, Arthur has finally realised how much fun it is playing with a ball. He bounces around with sheer joy at his new discovery.

Poultry
The farm fowl are all back outside now, albeit with a few restrictions in place. The geese make regular trips back into the stables to lay. They are sharing two nests this year.
We collected the first 60 eggs or so as they are Sue's favourite egg for eating and we managed to sell quite a few of them, which will have gone a long way to offsetting the costs of feeding the geese while they were imprisoned inside.

Caught in the act by The Silver Stag

The turkeys are laying too. Again we collected the first couple of dozen eggs, but the hens quickly started sitting for long periods. Currently two nests are set up next to each other and two birds seem to have settled on them. I will be very happy if they hatch any young. We would like to keep about six for meat, but any more than that should be fairly easy to sell as chicks to fellow smallholders wanting to rear them.
In the same pen, the Muscovy Ducks are creating a sizeable clutch of eggs too. Last year, letting the duck hatch out her own eggs proved unsuccessful whereas Elvis, our broody hen, managed to rear all of her ten successfully. So that is the plan again this year. I would like to get two batches hatched out over the year as the Muscovy Ducks are the tastiest of birds, as well as being rather charming inhabitants of the poultry pen.
Last but not least we have started the cycle of hatching out chicks. These are collected from our trio of Ixworths and will be raised for the table. The first hatching only delivered eight healthy chicks, which was a bit disappointing. We have started collecting the eggs for the second batch in the incubator. Hopefully this lot will do better.

The chickens were absolutely delighted to go back outside. I herded them down the land to their pen and they instantly set about dust bathing and scratching around. Their egg production has gone right up again too and it is lovely to have them attending to my every move as I dig in the veg garden.

Last years ram lambs tucking into a nice piece of willow

Just going by their tummies,

it's looking like a 3-2-1-0 again this year.

Sheep
We have brought the four Shetland ewes down to the stables in readiness for lambing, which was due anytime from Friday onwards. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.
Rambo has settled in with the three wethers (last year's male lambs, no longer 'intact') but he likes to show them who is boss occasionally. There are enough of them to share the hassle and they have enough space to escape it.


Yesterday we went to a sheep day run by Mick at CSSG. We had a fantastic day and it was great to finally be properly shown some of the techniques which we have so far just been using common sense to achieve. We haven't been doing anything dreadfully wrong, but I know I will be more confident from now onwards.

Bees
Sue's department. She is very happy with how the two colonies are faring at the moment. They have come through the winter strongly and the queens are laying well. One hive already has a super over the brood box where the bees can make honey for us. The second hive should have enough brood in to extend upwards this week.
All around us the rape is in flower. There seems to be more this year than ever. Probably something to do with subsidies and not a lot to do with need. This means that the bees will be well fed but their honey will need taking off and processing quickly before it sets like concrete.
At least we now have the tools to cream the honey which stops it setting solid.

Fruit and Veg
Fruit
Pruning is finished, moved, new bushes and canes are planted and mulched, blackberries are tied in to new supports and the raspberry beds have had an overhaul. Mr Rotavator has done a brilliant job tidying up the strawberry beds. Leaves are unfurling and buds are bursting. We should get bumper crops of everything this year.
The fruit trees are coming into blossom and the weather has been good for pollination.
We have already harvested mountains of rhubarb and we managed to sell a fair amount which made a small contribution to the coffers. We don't charge much, but I would rather people enjoyed it than it went to waste every year. Rhubarb plants are dead easy to grow, even easier to propagate and they shade out all weeds. The perfect crop!

We have had both mowers out and they are both still working. The veg patch starts to reveal its plan once the top is taken off the winter grass growth and the beds are cleared and worked.













Veg plot
The soil is warming up and drying rapidly. Working it is a delight at the moment and I have been working hard to get all the weeds out and prepare the beds for planting. Broad beans, early potatoes, parsnip seeds, garlic and onion sets are in the ground already. In the next week there'll be a lot more crops being sown.

The garlic is doing well.

I have now sown parsnips down the rows.

These two crops always do very well together and

the garlic is out before the parsnips take over the space

If we don't get any rain very soon I'll have to consider watering just so that the young seedlings don't wither and die before they can get their roots deep enough.

Polytunnel
The early potatoes in the polytunnel will be ready soon and the mangetout are rapidly growing. I am anticipating the first flowers and pods very soon. My second sowing of carrots has germinated well, unlike the first and my turnip rows are already shading out the weeds.
The polytunnel is full of seed trays at this time of year, young plants being raised either to go in the tunnel beds or to go outside later.
Today I start making my rosemary oil which I am hoping will be my chief weapon of destruction when it comes to spider mites this year.

Birdlife on the farm
Our winter visitors have all but moved on now and we are still awaiting the arrival of most of our summer visitors. Every evening I anticipate the chattering of swallows in the skies above the veg patch but as yet they are still not back.
Our resident birds are taking full advantage of the early start that braving the English winter gives them. The Little Owls are back in the hollow Ash tree again and the Pied Wagtails are back under the pallets. Crows, Woodpigeons, Blue and Great Tits are all nesting in the Ash trees while Blackbirds, Stock Doves, Song Thrushes and Robins hide away in the ivy which clambers up the trees.
A pair of Linnets has appeared and I am very pleased to see Greenfinches occasionally visiting the feeders, though the Tree Sparrows are not around so far this year.
It's been a good spring for Reed Buntings and Yellowhammers which continue to frequent the feeders, both near the house and the feeding station I have set up down in the young woodland.