Going Cheep

April's Showers Arrive Late

I wouldn't be English if I didn't open with the weather.

We've finally has some of this...

Rather a lot. In fact I've had a butt full of it. Water butts of course! I've managed to fill two IBC containers, that's 2000l of water collected. 

Frost-free?
Not only that, but following an overnight frost on the morning of 7th May, we now have a frost-free forecast through until 20th.

I've finally started moving some of the plants out of the conservatory. Chances of anything apart form a light frost are now very low.

Chicks, Ducklings and Poults

The week has been all about baby birds though, We suddenly have 53 extra little mouths to look after!

We bought in a score of ay old chicks. These are hubbards which grow at a medium pace and are well suited to free range life. They are meat birds but we don't place a huge priority on bringing them to weight as fast as possible. The fastest growing birds, as used in the poultry industry (and by unthinking smallholders), just grow too fast for my liking. They are genetic monsters which can easily become too heavy for their legs or hearts to carry them. On the other hand, some of the more traditional breeds really aren't economically viable, producing scrawny birds which take ages to get to weight. This is fine if you are in the privileged position to pay considerably more for your meat, but it is not a viable route.

So we strive for a happy medium, birds bred to grow faster than normal and to put on more breast meat, but which can still lead a happy and healthy (if short) life. The shortness of a meat bird's life always comes as a shock to those not in the know. A commercial meat chicken will have no more than  couple of months of life. 

Gut instinct is that we want our chickens to have a much longer life than that, but this is where reality kicks in. For no chicken bred for meat would go much past 6 months. For starters, it would be very expensive, but more than that any chicken older than that turns to rubber. Imagine eating one of those chicken dog toys!

There is obviously the option to go vegan, and I wouldn't criticise that choice at all. In fact I was a vegan for part of my life. For me the important factor is the quality of life an animal has while it is still alive and keeping our own livestock gives me complete control over that. 

Hot on the heels of the chicks came the ducklings. Indeed it was a lot hotter on the heels than I had anticipated and it had me scrabbling around for somewhere to keep them. Again the ducklings are destined for the plate and will grow quickly. I searched around the smallholding for a suitable container in which to keep them. Finally I found the perfect solution, a large and strong plastic post office sorting box which we had been gifted and were using to store logs.

I fashioned a lid from strong metal mesh and suspended a heat lamp from the rafters in the garage. The poor little things were very sleepy and would just collapse asleep. A week on and they are almost unrecognisable. I am really pleased with how strong they are. If they feather up and the weather warms it won't be too long before they can enjoy free-ranging around the smallholding. For the moment they wouldn't survive the cold and wet, not to mention crows and rats!

Back to the chicks. Just a day old, they went straight into an old gerbil cage we scrounged off a friend. Here they had warmth, food and drink and safety. But their rate of growth is phenomenal and it doesn't take long before the smell  becomes somewhat noxious.

So already, after just a week, their accommodation has been considerably upgraded. We managed to scrounge another post office sorting box so they have moved into the garage alongside the ducklings.

As if that weren't enough to keep us busy, the turkey hen who was siting on eggs under a pile of sticks by the roadside paddock has hatched out al her eggs. I returned home from work to see her leading nine poults (baby turkeys) through he long grass.

I quickly sprang into action scooping the fluffy little balls into my coat pockets while mum did her best to fend me off, flying up at my face with claws outstretched. This is a dangerous lifestyle! 

We had prepared a stable in anticipation so I led mum towards it as she followed the calls of her babies. Again it is much safer for them to be reared indoors until they can fly up onto a perch.

There's more! A week later the other hen who was sitting on the straw bales hatched out her own clutch. Interestingly these chicks look completely different. One mum is a Norfolk Black, one a Bronze, but dad is a mix. However, the poults seem to have taken on the genes of their mums. We had no idea how many eggs she was on so I was pleasantly pleased to fin myself scooping up a dozen baby birds. Just one didn't make it out of its egg. Mum will be a very good parent. I can tell by the tenacity with which she sat for four weeks and by the tenacity she showed in jumping onto my back several times to defend her young.

Pegleg's Veg

Meanwhile in the veg plot some plants have finally started to be transplanted outside. Broad beans, onions, turnips and radishes are the first out. None of thee mind the cold too much, but I've been waiting ages for rain to wet the soil.

In the polytunnel, Florence fennel I sowed last July is just now coming good. Its the first time I've had success with this crop.

I've also been busy creating a new area to attract and feed wild finches and buntings. In general they won't come too near the house but we have really good numbers of Yellowhammers on the holding this year. To attract them I've sown some of the mixed seed we feed the birds into an area bordering the sheep paddocks and orchard. It's already working as there are regularly several birds feeding there, though they are showing a remarkable ignorance of farming. Each seed they eat could potentially have produced many hundreds later in the year!

One For Sorrow

Now for some sad news on the nature front. Having watched the pair of long-tailed tits busily constructing their delightful nest, I went outside to see a pile of feathers on the floor. Something, I suspect  magpie, had found the nest and pecked a hole in the top. The long-tailed tits have abandoned, leaving their tiny eggs in the nest. Nature can be so harsh.

Nature's Undertakers

One of my favourite jobs is turning the compost. It is a thriving city of minibeasts beavering away. Last week I unearthed a large beetle, maybe an inch long, with notable orange blobs o its antennae. A minute later there was another. They scuttled a bit too quickly to get any decent pics.

I looked them up and they are black sexton beetles, nature's undertakers. They sniff out small dead animals then dig underneath them until the corpse is buried. These two had sniffed out a dead rat! Smallholding's not always as glamorous as it seems.

May Daze

Come back Rain, all is forgiven

Hot sunny days and lockdown have meant that I don't particularly have to work around the weather or other commitments. I can relax a little more and still keep on top of things on the smallholding.

Having said that, our boom and bust weather patterns do make things more difficult. 7% of our usual May rainfall has necessitated watering in new plantings and watering where I sowed the carrots, one of only two crops which I now sow direct. The parsnips failed to come through this year, so did their replacements. Worse still, the water butts have run dry so I now have to use metered and treated water. At least hoeing has been easy.

The body and soul of the soil

I have steadily been moving last year's compost onto beds. The huge pile is now all gone, but the encouraging news is that I had enough to cover the majority of the 80 or so beds I have. 

It's amazing how much material we produce to feed the compost heaps. Hopefully I can persuade some to break down enough for a mid summer mulch. 

Bee-keeping Update

We have only had five swarms of bees this year so far. Three of them have been huge swarms. One we gave away, the other four we collected and created new hives. One of these disappeared again, so Sue is now left with NINE hives. Her ideal number is three!!!

It looks like a good honey year. Sue has already taken 60 jars of early honey. She is not one to rob the bees of too much and always leaves plenty for the girls. 

A welcome hair cut

The hot weather is hard on the sheep too, so it was a relief for them when the shearer came a few days back. Jason and his wife Chloe are really friendly and fantastic with the sheep. Not only do the sheep get rid of their uncomfortably hot fleeces, but they get their feet trimmed and a dose of Clik to protect against fly strike. It's also a chance for a health check by people who know much more than us and for us to ask any questions we have.

One of our ewes looks suspiciously fat. If she is pregnant, it will be a virgin birth as the three rams have been kept well away. I have my suspicions how it may have happened. We'll see if she really is pregnant and what the lamb looks like if there is one.

Rambo, our breeding ram, has lost a lot of weight and his stools are not solid. We have tried worm and fluke treatment but it has not made a lot of difference. Jason gave him a mineral drench (this is not as it sounds, but simply means given orally) and says that often cures unknown problems. Let's hope.

Respect your Elders

Another feature of this time of year is that the elders come into flower. This is the cue for Sue to make elderflower champagne. The process is very simple. Just dissolve sugar in water, est and juice lemons, add elderflowers.

Stir daily until it starts to bubble from the natural fermentation. Then bottle and burp.

Sue has also frozen about 50 heads. Don't worry, there are absolutely loads left for the birds and insects.

Birdlife on the Farm

These two swallows ended up inside the house.

One found the exit and I caught 

and released the other.

Swallows are now swooping in and out of the stables, robins, blackbirds and starlings are already feeding young. Blue tits and great tits are busy collecting food for young families. A pair of pied wagtails loiter around the stables and often fly out of there as I approach. A couple of years back they nested under some pallets by the polytunnel. Woodpigeons, chaffinches and goldfinches breed in good numbers here and we have a thriving colony of house sparrows. Further down the land there are meadow pipits nesting in the rough grass and skylarks rise high to blast out their song. Wrens sing loudly and are dotted all about the smallholding. We have thrushes breeding on the smallholding too, both mistle thrushes and song thrush. But they are outcompeted in the song stakes by our blackcap which hasn't shut up for weeks now. I saw the male carrying food into a bush in the front garden yesterday.

Above: The rewilded front garden

Below: Native hedgerows as they should look, planted by me 7 years ago.

The Little Owls are incredibly secretive at this time of year. I rarely even hear them. Excitingly though, tawny owls have moved in and I hear them almost nightly. They may have driven the barn owls out though.

Finally we have summer migrant warblers back. Our first singing sedge warbler and whitethroat appeared earlier this week. We had a reed warbler singing from the hedge for a couple of weeks, but it needs to move on and find the right habitat. 

I've probably forgotten a few of our breeding species, but every year we seem to get more and more which is a fantastic result of all the work I've put into creating a nature friendly smallholding.

It's a Rat Trap

One species not so welcome on the farm is rats. The traps are working well and at the moment I am catching young ones. The traps are not live traps but are very secure in terms of not catching non-target species. I leave the dead rats on a post and something takes them.

A few weeks back I was just checking and resetting the traps when one of our geese got trapped inside the brassica netting. In my rush to free it, I misplaced the rat trap (not set to spring) and have been searching for it ever since. Well yesterday I found it as it go mangled by the mower blades. It fought hard though, so I now need to get the blade mechanism fixed.

Poultry News

On the subject of the geese, they are still laying and we are still trying to steal their eggs. However, one is now permanently settled on the nest so we'll leave it to fate whether or not we get goslings this year. 

The glut of goose eggs means Sue keeps busy making cakes. We freeze these and they are an extremely good way of storing a surplus of eggs. Goose eggs make the best sponge.

In other poultry news, one of our turkey hens managed to hatch out three healthy poults. We put them in the poultry cage as protection against crows and they are all doing well. The other hen is desperate to sit on eggs but the crows keep finding her eggs. Hopefully she'll find a good spot somewhere in the veg plot or soft fruit patch before it's too late. We are happy to leave this up to fate again.

We have two Silkie hens sitting on Muscovy duck eggs and now one of the Muscovy ducks herself has made a nest in the corner of the chicken house and is sitting. Hopefully we'll end up with a few ducklings. Two of our Muscovy girls are now missing in action. We don;t know if they've been taken by something, moved away or are secretly rearing clutches in some forgotten part of the smallholding.

Clearing the seedling log jam.

Planting out beans. The climbing structures are made from coppiced willow rods

which the sheep strip for me.

With the last frost gone (a really late one would be a bit disastrous) I have been busy clearing the logjam of young plants in the polytunnel. I have moved most of them to benches outside as temperatures have stayed in double figures day and night for quite a while now. 

Corn, beans, tomatoes, courgettes and squashes have all gone into the ground outside. We had a couple of very windy days which was a challenge for the newly planted beans, but on the whole I've never had young plants settle in so well. They usually suffer a setback for a week or so but not this year.

The Rewards

At the other end of this process, we are already starting to get some decent harvests, particularly from the polytunnel which is yielding delicious new potatoes, carrots and mangetout. Once these are harvested their space will be required for tomatoes, peppers, melons and cucumbers. In fact, they are already underplanted. Outdoors we have now stopped harvesting the rhubarb but we have a couple more weeks of asparagus left. The gooseberry bushes are bursting to overflowing and we'll very soon be thinning out the early picking for the sharp gooseberries. The rest are left on to sweeten. 

We have salad leaves coming out of our ears. We have so many different types of salad leaf and can always spice them up even more with edible flowers or herbs such as fennel or oregano.

So, that's about all for now. As you can see, we're always busy on the smallholding. 

Stay safe.

Sowing, Hoeing, Mowing, Growing

I got the grass mowed this week for the first time this year. It's always a relief when the mower starts up. Until now the geese have been doing the job for me, but the warm weather and a bit of rainfall have spurred the grass into action.
On the whole grass is a pain. I have no want for a green carpet so welcome moles and weeds. But since I've got it I might as well make the most of it, turning it into meat and eggs via the sheep and poultry. And when there's so much that I have to mow it then it makes a good addition to the compost heaps or direct as a mulch, so it all ends up indirectly in my tummy!

I leave some of my grass to grow long. This irritates Sue but is a joy to me.













The thermometer in the polytunnel has soared this week, creeping up into the high 40s. The early sown turnips bolted but the mangetout is doing wonderfully. I have now planted all my tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash in there too. I am trying a variety of squash called Butterbush in the hope that it won't take over the whole polytunnel!


It has been perfect weather for hoeing. Within a couple of hours any weeds that have been chopped off at the base lie withered and dead. I'm gradually working my way round all the veg beds. The ones that have been previously mulched are much easier to do.

A forecast of frost for the next few mornings has been holding me back in the veg patch. As soon as this next cold spell passes the garden will fill with young bean plants, sweetcorn, squash and tomatoes which I have been raising for outdoors. Until then I am trying to hold them back in the polytunnel.

Self-seeded Poached egg plants,

wonderful for bees and a great

companion plant for broad beans.

The vegetable patch is starting to look gorgeous at the moment. I have left a lot of self-sown and naturalised plants to flower and the willow arches are coming on great. These seem to be a magnet for bee swarms and so it was that the third swarm of the year, almost definitely not from our hives, appeared on our last hot day. The swarm was huge.

And the reward for 

longest swarm

goes to...

Having already successfully housed two swarms and moved back up to 8 hives, any we collect from now will be given to fellow beekeepers. This swarm has gone off to Thorney, about ten miles down the road.

Our turkey hen who has been sat on eggs under a patch of borage and flowering rocket started clucking three days ago. I suspected that either chicks had been born or the eggs were pipping.
Sure enough, the next day a little head was poking out from under her feathers.

Our first view of our turkey hen's offspring

She sat tight for two days but was thinking of moving off the nest this morning. With the local crows loitering, we decided to catch her and any chicks and transfer them to a vacant poultry pen. There were just three chicks and three unhatched eggs. Sue retrieved the chicks while the hen slipped my grasp and proceeded to defend her family quite resolutely!
All are now settled into their new home.

Meanwhile, after three Silkie chickens only succeeded in constantly swapping the four ducks eggs they were sharing, we have put one of the Silkie hens on her own with four new eggs. Hopefully we'll have some success. Two of our Muscovy duck girls have now vanished. The optimistic side of me says that they may appear at some point with ducklings, but it is surprising that we have not seen them at all.

Finally there have been more night time capers. It seems tawny owls have moved into the neighbourhood. I regularly hear them when sat outside at night. This may be at the expense of our barn owls as I rarely see or hear them now.
A couple of nights ago as I sat outside under a wonderful full moon I could hear a female tawny nearby. I speculatively imitated a male hooting and within a minute the unmistakable silhouette of an owl flew up into one of the trees in the roadside paddock. Then it flew right over my head and into one of the large ash trees in the garden. It may have been one in the morning, but the full moon meant that it was easily visible against the moonlit sky as it passed over. Then another!
The pair started duetting really close by. Amazing stuff.

And final finally, a couple of lockdown images. One of my new lockdown hair and one my Google timeline for the month of April which tells its own story.

Life in the Polytunnel

Some things sit on my to do list until it's too late to do them. This I find is an excellent way of clearing the list!

Cleaning the polytunnel was one such job, but out of the blue last week I summoned up the enthusiasm to undertake the yearly task. Another week and it would be too late as there would be too many plants in there to get to the polythene walls.

The outside is quite easy, though reaching the top is a challenge. The inside is more tricky, particularly the roof as everything drips back down in your face. This is one reason to do this on a cooler day too so the drops are not boiling hot.

I use Citrox on the inside, a natural disinfectant which contains extracts of citrus fruit. It is antibacterial and antifungal.

The difference between cleaned and not cleaned.

The polytunnel is the ideal place to work when it's cold and raining. On the other hand it is not the ideal place to work when it is sunny, temperatures rapidly escalating to 40+ degrees.

It provides a unique climate.

Ideal for a dust bath but 

all poultry are now excluded

The challenges:

No rain, so watering must be done manually. Extreme temperatures, meaning that dehydration can be astonishingly quick in trays of seedlings. Low night temperatures. Limited ventilation.

The advantages:

Protection from winds. Protection from sparrows, pigeons etc. Warm soil. Excellent light levels compared even to a windowsill or conservatory.

The classic use for a polytunnel is to grow what I refer to as Mediterranean crops. Peppers, aubergines, melons and tomatoes do particularly well. In fact for some of these it is the only way to guarantee a ripe crop by the end of the season. These are high value crops which earn their allocated space.

Early mangetout just about to come into flower.

Turnips and early potatoes.

But the space is not required by these crops year round. In early spring there is time to grow some early crops which wouldn't be possible outside for another couple of months. I squeeze in a crop of early potatoes, mangetout, turnips and carrots. All of these are harvested before the Mediterranean crops can go into the ground. Once things heat up the polytunnel becomes too hot for these cool weather crops. This year some of my turnips are already bolting (producing flowers in response to hot conditions, which often makes root crops tough and woody).

Polytunnel Plan, rotation year 6.

This plan is flexible. I don't grow all of these plants every year. 

Another really positive advantage of the polytunnel is as a place for raising seedlings. As I've alluded to seedlings growing in relatively small soil volumes such as seed trays or modules can easily die if the soil dries out. But this challenge is more than outweighed by the warm temperatures and in particular the light levels. I find that all but the most tender of seedlings can cope with dips in night time temperatures. If necessary they get the added protection of a cloche or fleece.

Raising seedlings in the polytunnel.

Some of these are ready to go outside just as soon as we get some rain.

One final use of the polytunnel is to hold young plants overwinter which have been started in the autumn. When light and temperature levels lift in early spring, these plants have a huge head start.

With the polytunnel all cleaned I decided to plant my tomato plants. The literature says to only plant tomatoes in the soil when the first flowers have appeared. I don't really know why you need to wait, so this year I have taken the risk and planted them before that time. Sometimes you just need to get things done when you can.

I grow many varieties of tomato of many shapes, sizes and colours. Last year's experiment of growing them up strings worked well. I actually use baling twine which is never in short supply on a smallholding and has a multitude of uses. I loop one end under the plant plugs and tie the other to the polytunnel frame. The tomatoes are planted quite deeply, up to their first true leaves, as they are capable of putting out extra roots from the buried stem.

I always grow too many from seed, just in case they fail, which they rarely do! And I always struggle not to plant too many. Any spares get given away to encourage others to grow their own food.

I can fit a couple of dozen plants down one side of the tunnel (actually half of one side). This year I have carrots down the other side as they grow brilliantly in the tunnel and are protected from carrot fly. I decided to double the tomato capacity by overplanting these with tomato plants. Hopefully they will grow together on different levels.