A new look AND comments boxes.

Monday 18th June 2012

What a glorious start to the day! With my muscles aching big-time from yesterday's endeavours I decided to have a lazy day.

A blog redesign
What started out as minor tinkering ended up being a full overhaul. Don't be surprised if it changes again - I need a while to let it sink in and assess whether I like it.

Do let me know what you think!

And on that subject, I just spent hours trying to sort out the comments system. I have seen other blogs where all comments display at the bottom of each post and I like this. It seems more friendly and interactive, more like belonging to a community.

Internet searches and trawling through blogs led me to attempts to tinker with the template code of this blog. In my hands, anything could have happened as I've decided I am now old enough to let technology sprint ahead of me!

Anyway, when I searched for the lines of code that should be there, they already were.
So more internet trawling. More lines of code to check. And all there!

Then a brainwave!

When I view an individual post, the comments boxes are there. But when I scroll through several posts, they've disappeared. In my trawling I found plenty of people looking for similar advice and plenty who got the same result as me. Could this be the answer after all?

The upshot is, you now get ONE POST AT A TIME. I've shifted the post archive up the page on the right so that it's easy to access my other posts.
There is a balance. I know this might be a bit of a pain, but I'm hoping it's one of those changes that, after a while, you forget was ever any other way. And the benefit. Well, hopefully added interest with lots of comments streams.

Well! What are you waiting for?


Go on!

Let me know what you think...

(I so hope this works...)


ed... also a LinkWithin gadget, should eventually lead you to related posts. Just give it a bit of time to get working. Goodness knows what it will find to start with, before it has crawled and trawled my site.

THE EARLIEST SUNRISE

Sunday 17th June 2012

Holbeach

52°43'N 000°00'W

Rise 04:35 BST

Set 21:27 BST

Rise 03:04 BST

Set 19:36 BST

Phase Morning Crescent

Loading...

http://www.sunrisesunsetmap.com/

Major Cities

I wrote about this in connection with the shortest day, and now  I find myself here. Not the longest day, but the EARLIEST SUNRISE. From now until late December I get extra time in bed every day.

To celebrate, I thought I'd put together some basic information on sunrises (mostly nabbed from Wikipedia)

 

The earliest sunrise does not occur on the shortest day

This is all to do with atmospheric refraction. Basically, light bends over the horizon. The average amount of refraction is 34 arcminutes! Bet you didn't know that.

It's also because Earth has an eccentric orbit and an axial tilt. (Wobbly circles)

 

What is the definition of sunrise?

Sunrise time is the moment at which the upper limb of the sun appears tangent with the horizon.

I think that means the moment the first bit of the sun appears.(So, not when the centre of the sun or the whole sun has crossed the horizon)

 

The Sun does not actually go round the Earth.

If you thought this was the case then this is a stunning piece of information.

A geezer called Nicolaus Copernicus came up with this idea way back in the 16th century.Of course, it is the rotation of the Earth that causes the sun to rise, cross the sky and set again.

This may sound simple enough, but it's amazing to stand in the open fenland landscape, watch the sun rise and actually concentrate on the fact that the sun is staying still. Just for a few minutes you can actually get a sense of the earth spinning (though perhaps not as much as after I've tried some of my home-made cider!)

 

Why does sunrise occur at different times every day?

Again, this is all to do with the tilt and rotation of the earth and it's elliptical orbit around the sun. (Wobbly circles again) I guess if everything were perfect circles (or spheres) on the right angle, then we would get the same 12 hours of sunlight every day all year.

 

Why does the sun change colour?

Rayleigh scattering of course!

Pure sunlight is white in color, containing a spectrum of colors from violet to red. When sunlight interacts with atmospheric particles the light is scattered. Violet, blue and green are scattered more than orange and red. The sun appears yellow because the violets, blues and greens have been scattered into the sky. This is also why the sky appears increasingly blue further away from the sun.

This effect is exaggerated during sunrise and sunset, as the light is travelling further through the atmosphere. Hence oranges and reds.

 

Then there's Mie scattering.

This is caused by larger particles in the atmosphere, such as volcanic ash and cloud droplets. So the already reddened sunlight is scattered further to light up the horizon orange and red.

 

So, Mie scattering is responsible for the light scattered by clouds, and also for the daytime halo of white light around the Sun. Without this, the sky along the horizon has only a dull-reddish appearance, while the rest of the sky remains mostly blue and sometimes green.

 

Why are sunsets more dramatic that sunrises?

Simply because the evening air typically contains more large particles, such as clouds and smog, than morning air. (Having said that, too much cloud is obviously not great for spectacular skies, as witnessed in about half of my sunrise photos.)

 

 

So, I urge you, once in a while make the effort to see the sun rise. If you really concentrate on the scale of what is happening it'll teach you a lot about yourself.

 

Goosey, Goosey, Gone-der : A General Farm update

Saturday 16th June 2012

A general update.
Geese
To my surprise I have sold one of the gang of three. A knock at the door from a very knowledgeable old couple with two geese eating their own eggs. Apparently a gander would help the situation. So that leaves two for Christmas.
Pigs
The pigs are booked in at the butchers. I have changed butcher, as the last ones seemed to spend about ten minutes doing the job and I think they had their apprentice doing it with an axe. Result...traditional, rustic pork joints...with the emphasis on rustic. The new butcher was much more helpful.The boys are booked for 3rd September, just before their 6 month birthdays. Then two girls are going on 15th October. The last three gilts will get to stay a bit longer and will go off for sausages and bacon in the new year. All seven have put on a significant growth spurt in the last week.
Meanwhile, Gerald is still in the stables. I shall move him down to "team up" with Daisy in the next few days.

Chickens
What's not happening on the chicken front? Well, most exciting news is that Chick of Elvis, our first hatched chicken, is a mum, making Elvis a surrogate grandma.

Chick of Elvis was sitting on seven eggs, so when I looked and found 2 chicks, one dead chick and NINE eggs my mathematical brain clicked into action! The other chickens have been laying their eggs in with her, hoping that she'll hatch them and do all the work!
That's good news though, since it means the laying situation is not quite as bad as we thought. I also found out from Ron, who bought the gander, that everybody round here's chickens are laying less at the moment. So it's not that we're doing something wrong.
On a similar note, remember those blue eggs that didn't hatch. I fired off a polite e-mail and found out that it was the cockerel firing blanks! I am currently trying to arrange some replacement, fertile eggs.
While all this is going on, the chicks at various ages continue to grow well and provide entertainment. The teenagers are pretty much grown-ups now and we have new teenagers. I did think abut letting them all out the other day, but the Indian Game chicks are still a bit small. Gerry has brought in young pheasants bigger than this before!
Lambs
That's right, I did say lambs. We've got two Zwartbles on order for mid July. We'll fatten them up in the paddock and they'll be in the freezer by winter. More on these later.
Gerry
Geronimo the cat, not Gerald the boar. We hadn't realised how much weight Gerry had lost until he got his appetite back! Always a fussy eater (no fish, no chicken, no pork, no beef), he has now decided he does not like biscuits, not since he has discovered pouches! It's great to see him happy and healthy again.
Birdlife
Birdlife on the farm is pretty quiet at the moment. I see the occasional Marsh Harrier over the fields and the Barn Owl passes by every couple of days. Most of the other birds are nesting and rearing young. I saw a gang of young starlings the other day and a family of blackbirds has been making sorties into the garden. Most singing has stopped, though the skylarks still shoot up into the air the minute the sun comes up and blast out their song. The chaffinch calls the same note incessantly from one of the Ash trees, where it can be seen flying into the ivy-clad branches with mouthfuls of insects and larvae.
At least two swallow nests in the stables have chicks, but I think numbers are down a little on last year.
Fruit & Veg

The veg patch extension, to eventually house the polytunnel, continues. Fencing is hard work, especially when it's dug in to stop rabbit excavating underneath. At least the ground is nice and soft at the moment.
My recent campaign against the slugs has vastly reduced their numbers but I'll need to keep it up. I've started resowing the veg which failed to germinate, but in general the veg is a frustrating experience at the moment. Plants need water and sun. At the moment, they're only getting enough of one of those things and growth is slow.
On a much more positive note though, I've started harvesting the Early potatoes. The Dunluces are the first to be ready and taste wonderful. New potatoes, cooked just after they've been dug from the ground, are a real treat. Who needs exotic?
And yesterday, four strawberries (and another four which the slugs found first) from the new patch.
The lean spell is coming to an end and the bountiful harvest is beginning.

A Seedy Tale

Friday 15th June 2012
A windy one with its fair share of rain

I see the hosepipe ban has finally been lifted. Who knows, the water companies might start taking some long-term decisions now.

I also saw on the news last night NASA images of a storm about to hit the South West of England, described as a once in fifty year event. This sort of extreme weather seems to be the norm these days. If it's not storms it's droughts, record rainfall, high winds...
And it's all sent to make life more difficult for the smallholder!

Luckily over in The Fens we've escaped the worst of the recent weather, though driving rain and gusting winds did mean that I spent most of today confined to the greenhouse.

Lost Seeds
During a dry spell this morning I conducted a thorough audit of the veg beds, checking out just which seeds I'd planted and their germination rate.
A couple of beds seem to have suffered slug damage (the emerging Swis chard and dwarf beans). Aside from that though, I think I have got to the root of the problem. Old seeds.

Early this spring I came across a Roses tin full of seed packets from a couple of years ago. A few varieties which I'd completely forgotten about and a few which I'd replaced with newer seed. Always one to skimp on costs I thought I'd use the old seed before the new. You can guess what's happened.
Yes, hardly any of the older seed has germinated, including just about all of the carrots.

I know that some seeds, such as parsnip, just don't stay viable even through to the next year. I didn't think this would be the case with my Hamburg Parsley, but last year's seed has yielded precisely zero seedlings. Obviously more akin to Parsnip than Parsley. This should be a lovely crop, with nutty, parsnip-like roots and leaves which can be used as parsley.
Last year I had a seed disaster with this too, dropping all the seed as I was in the process of sowing it. In the end I replaced the seed and sowed late, mid June, and still ended up with a half decent crop. Looks like it'll be a repeat this year, hopefully with the same result.

As for the rest of the seeds, I have a few carrots germinated but I'll be resowing lots more this week, using new seed. Same with the spring onions which I like to plant with carrots. My favourite golden beetroot, delicious, and the gloriously patterned Chiogga have not faired well either. But I do have plenty of the more traditional varieties, so they'll have to do for this year.

In general, I think seeds lose about 20% of their viability each year, so I should have expected well over half of the two year old seeds to germinate. That clearly hasn't been the case.
I'm guessing that the way they were stored is the problem, especially since most of the packets were opened and half used. In fact, I have no idea where the seeds have been for the last year and a half!

Another lesson learned.

Slugs.



Thursday 14th June 2012

Someone has asked how I control slugs.

Well, it would appear that "not well enough" should be the answer. They somewhat took me by surprise this year, after I saw barely a handful in the whole of last year. Guess that's one benefit of a drought.
In stark contrast, this year there are hundreds. Not the big, fat juicy ones, but small, flesh-coloured little cigarillos. Where have they all come from? They seem to live in the grass, which has been difficult to keep short this year, and particularly like to lurk around the base of dandelions.

Let's get straight tho the point.

I will not use slug pellets. They may do a good job of poisoning the slugs and snails, but where do you think that poison goes when a hedgehog or a toad eats its nightly fill of slugs, or when a song thrush smashes snails against its anvil? And when they're gone, I don't see many other candidates willing to make a meal of a slug.

In fact, I've got nothing against slugs per se. They are actually quite wonderful inventions of nature. But completely untrainable! They are welcome to live in my grass as long as they stick to recycling dead vegetation. But no! They have to get greedy. If only they'd wait for the plants to get big, they would be welcome to a few of the outside leaves. But instead they continue their unsustainable ways, destroying any succulent leaf or stem before it gets the chance to grow into something bigger and tastier. Why on earth can't they eat grass instead? Then they'd actually be doing something useful.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that they need to be controlled, shown no mercy. But how?

Barriers
Last year I bought a job lot of SlugStoppa (or some other similar name which escapes me) while it was on special offer. Basically, it's small clay granules which the slugs don't like to crawl over - I think it sucks the moisture from their slimy coat. This is great in the dry, but it does not work when the ground is wet, as it has been for the last 10 weeks. It does dry out again and continue to work, but for a veg garden as large as mine I'd need a mountain of the stuff. It'd be cheaper to get all my veg delivered from Harrods!

So I use it selectively, usually inside a milk carton cloche. Used in this way it seems to do a pretty decent job of protecting individual young plants.

But I can't protect every bean and squash seedling in this way. Nor will it stop them nibbling my turnips and getting into my brassicas.

So I need to look for other methods to control them. I am thinking that the broken oyster shell which I buy for the chickens might do a very good job as a natural barrier. It is sharp, very dry to the touch, and can be bought fairly cheaply in bulk amounts. Next time I order from the feed suppliers I'll get them to put in a bag.

Other barrier methods I read about include using thorny offcuts, holly leaves, sand, broken egg shells. I'm sure they all help, but not on the scale I would need to use them. Past experiments have shown these methods to be partial deterrents, but wet weather makes them less effective at a time when they need to be at their most effective.
Of course, if you've got unlimited access to copper you could surround your beds with copper pipes. Slugs and snails will not crawl ove rthe stuff. This could mean they stay IN your veg bed too!
Just mind out for metal thieves!


Traps and enticements
I must admit, I've been left on the starting blocks here. I do have a few slug traps and should really deploy them. A job to go high up on the list.
Always seems like a terrible waste of beer though! But the damage at the moment outweighs the alcohol considerations. Must start brewing my own. Not sure if cider or elderflower champagne will work as well.

Another way to catch the slimy little critters is to invite them in. Deliberately tempt them by placing flat stones or large leaves strategically. Upturned orange and grapefruit skins are supposed to work well for this. Comfrey is, apparently, irresistible to slugs.
Though I feel guilty and really should add some of these to my armoury, I have my reservations too. I have enough routine jobs to more than fill my days already. I know it's a question of priorities, but I can't help thinking I'd just be providing the slugs with some luxury accommodation within easy reach of a first class eating establishment.
The same goes for leaving some nice rotting comfrey leaves as a tasty nibble. I just feel I could end up attracting more slugs into the area.

Give them the chop.
The best method of control, by far, is to get out there on a damp evening with a sharp tool (I use the edge of my trowel) and go hunting. Show no mercy!
There may be times when it seems that every chopped slug you have left has grown back into two, but if you put in a concerted effort it will begin to work. The other evening I killed 700 slugs in about an hour! The population will not be able to sustain this, as long as I keep at the job.
Unfortunately, by far the best time to do this is when it's actually drizzling. You will be shocked at the number of slugs you find, but better that you find them than they stay hidden in the vegetation. Just be prepared to get a bit soggy and think of all those lovely veg you'll enjoy in a couple of months time.


Encourage predators
Do everything you can to encourage helpers. A small pond will bring in frogs and toads. You may not have any hedgehogs left in your area, but if you do make sure you don't harm them. Give them a brush pile to move into, or even one of those overpriced hedgehog houses. Same goes for song thrushes. If you can, give them somewhere to nest like a hedgerow or an ivy-clad tree.

I could let the chickens into the veg patch for a while. They would help the situation by eating any slugs they found, but would completely undermine this by scratching up all the seedlings and pecking all their favourite leaves such as the sorrel and Swiss chard! I do let the guineafowl wander freely as they are not so destructive, but clearly two is not enough to keep on top of all the creepy-crawlies.

Nematodes
The soil is full of nematode worms, millions and billions and zillions of them. Some of them are very harmful to slugs. Not sure how, but they can be a very effective control mechanism. You can buy them conveniently in a powder which you just add to water. It only lasts about 6 weeks, so you need to apply  a course of them from early spring.
The main trouble with this method of control is the expense. It's the Harrods thing again. Although if I just had a couple of small veg beds I would consider this method of control.

Writing this has reminded me though. I'm sure I read somewhere that you can grow your own nematodes. I seem to remember it's pretty disgusting. Leaving a pile of dead slugs in water for a few weeks seems to ring a bell.
Now I really must get onto that.

Don't throw them over the neighbours
Not that the neighbours might not deserve it, but they'll just come back if you're the one supplying the food. Unless you are prepared to pick them all up and drive them miles away, you really do need to kill them.

Salt
If you've ever poured salt onto a slug or snail, you'll see what effect it has on them. Looks like a slow, painful death, but it will kill them. However, if you really can't bear to touch them or chop them in half, just remember that you will end up using a lot of salt if you have as many slugs as me and that salt really is not good for nearly all plants.


In conclusion, then, there are many ways to control slugs but none of them is perfect. Probably best to combine as many as possible. The key is to keep the offensive going. And please don't be tempted to take the easy option and scatter poison all over the place.

Is Fencing still an Olympic Sport?

If so I want a medal.  And if it is, do they have to run the gauntlet of the geese?

This is to be my extension to the veg plot, to house the polytunnel. Although we've hardly any rabbits this year, the rest of the plot was laboriously rabbit-fenced last year. This means trenching in the bottom of the fence, making the job take about three times as long. It would be foolhardy to skimp on effort for the last little bit.

At least our land, reclaimed from the sea as it was at some point in the past, has stoneless soil. And with it being generously watered for the last two months, getting the spade in was not a problem.
I always start by marking out the area to be fenced, ramming the post into the ground by hand so they at least stand up.

There ensues much walking up and down the line, squinting along the posts and making adjustments so that they are roughly in a straight line.
(Two people would be ideal for this).




I then use the post rammer (gets the muscles nicely pumped up) to drive the posts half way in before digging the trench out. At this point they can still easily be shoved and kicked into an upright position, or even extracted from the ground and shifted if need be. Finally I drive the posts almost all the way home.

Now the job has to stop until Saturday, when I'm picking up the telegraph posts and railway sleepers which will act as my gate posts. Being the strongest posts, dug furthest into the ground and secured by tamping hardcore all around them, they make an obvious straining post for one end of the wire. The posts at the other end will require diagonal struts to stop them being pulled inwards.

Hopefully the weather will be half decent at the weekend and I'll be able to show you the next steps towards my completed fence.

After that, we just need a warm, windless day and the polytunnel can go up. Some time in 2013 then I'm guessing!

Eggs-asperation

Wednesday 13th June 2012

Before my tales of woe, this is my first significant harvest of the year.
They were lovely with sausages.

Eggs-asperation
Well, the chickens are down to one measly egg a day between the lot of them and I really don't know what's going on. Since they were laying at full capacity on the shortest day of the year, I suspect they've just gone off lay as it approaches the longest day of the year...ummmm...something wrong there, isn't it supposed to be the other way round?

Not only that. Remember that dozen beautiful blue eggs I collected about three and a half weeks ago. They're now three days late hatching...in other words, scrambled and fried! Not a single hatchling out of twelve. Something must have gone seriously wrong, either at the chicken end of things or at our incubator end.

As the for chicks which we have managed to hatch over the last few attempts. The vast majority seem to be cockerels! Only four new hens to lay eggs out of fifteen chicks that we did actually manage to hatch.

Let's hope that Chick of Elvis, who has somehow managed to acquire NINE eggs to sit on, has a bit more luck. They'll be hybrids, not the beautiful mixed flock of rare breed hens which I am aiming for, but at least they might lay some eggs!

So overall not going too well on the egg front.

Slugging it to the slugs!
If only they were like slugs. It seems that for every one I chop in half with the trowel another two spawn. Tonight, in one hour, I got over SEVEN HUNDRED of the blighters. Multiply that by one nibble each and it's a lot of damage. So my plan is to have a concentrated attack on them every evening, which usually means means me getting a drenching. They've certainly enjoyed the wet conditions this year. And to think, last year I only saw about a dozen all year. They must have been lying dormant in the soil.

Look what they've done to my lovely Globe Artichoke seedlings.
They got past the milk carton.
I've now applied a liberal sprinkling of slug deterrent - just in time.

What a Boar.

Just look who returned yesterday evening.
Gerald will spend a couple of days in the stables before I reunite him with Daisy.

Tuesday 12th June 2012
And what does the sky have in store for us today?

Gerry - An update

Gerry (Geronimo) our cat is slowly on the mend. He's purring and responding to us again, but is still not quite back to his old self. He has been out though and remembered how to sit deep within a hedge ignoring my pleas for him to come out.

A Tale of Two Hives

Monday 11th June 2012
A real shocker of a day.

Before the bees, back to the egg thief. Last night I decided to attempt to move Broody White Chick Number Two to a new nest box, to allow the others a chance to lay without their eggs being stolen. I lifted her in the dark to find SEVEN eggs under her plus a smashed one. It fell into place what has been happening.
She has been appropriating eggs to satisfy her maternal instincts. But this necessitates rolling them from one nest box to the other, over a couple of wooden rims. Clearly several have got smashed along the way.
Anyway, I placed her into the new house, next to where the other White Chick is sitting and moved the eggs there too. Eventually I got her to realise what had happened and she nestled down onto her clutch of eggs,  clucking contentedly.
At 4:30 this morning she was still sat and I opened up all the chicken houses as I always do.
At 8:30 this morning (I was a little late feeding as the weather was wretched all day) she was to be found sitting back on the original nest. It was too late for the clutch of eggs which she had abandoned. So that plan had not gone as well as anticipated! I have decided not to let her sit for now, so today I removed the eggs as the other chickens laid them. I still had to retrieve them from under her, but at least I got three, our best count for a while. Hopefully, if I keep doing this, she will soon give up sitting and carry on with normal chicken life.


As mentioned, the weather this last two days has been horrendous, with several areas of Britain experiencing flooding. So today was spent clearing and reorganising the stable block, in readiness for the return of Gerald from his boar duties.

Yesterday was spent in the greenhouse potting up and sorting out the seed trays.
There was a break in the weather and we took the opportunity to open up the hives. Our original queen is still present with a slowly growing colony. The other hive has plenty of bees, but we were unable to locate the freshly hatched queen which we introduced last week. Nor could we find any eggs, so we may well have a queenless hive here. We'll give it another week and then make a decision what to do.

For now, I did manage to get some pictures which I'll use to illustrate a few basic beekeeping terms. Apologies for poor quality, but it's not easy using an SLR when wearing a bee veil and wearing thick leather gloves.

In this slightly blurry shot you can make out our queen. She is marked with a white blob. This shows that she is a 2011 queen, as the colour for marking changes each year. You can maybe see that she is a slightly different shape to the female bees around her, longer and slightly larger. Without the white mark, and surrounded by a denser mass of bees, she would not be easy to find.

The picture on the right shows a frame. These hold thin sheets of foundation, a wax sheet marked out with slightly raised tessellated hexagons. The bees build this foundation up to make the familiar hexagonal cells. This is called drawing the comb.

This frame is a shallow one which we used instead of a deeper one in the brood box. (This is the bottom section of the hive, where the queen lives and lays eggs, and where the larvae are raised).

You can see that the bees have added their own comb to the bottom of the frame (on the left in this picture) to fill the space.

The open cells in the picture on the right contain larvae - those white, maggot-like things curled up in the bottom. You can just make out different sizes, from small ones on the left to larger ones towards the middle of the photo. Further right than that and the cells have been capped by the bees. This is known as capped brood. Inside, the larvae are developing into bees.



In this wider picture of the same brood frame, you can just make out the capped brood in the centre. To the left of that are the growing larvae. Around the edges are stores of pollen and honey.

There is an ideal pattern to all of this. This frame does not look bad to my inexperienced eye.




So there you have it. Bee-keeping lesson number one.


 

Back from the dead

Sunday 10th June 2012

The harsh frost at the turn of the year did for my bay tree, fig, a bamboo, kiwi fruit, olive, mahonias, hibiscus and grapes. It nearly did for my walnut tree too.
In fact, anything mildly exotic was a goner.

But hold on!
We have the green shoots of recovery.
On the left, the bay tree. On the right the fig.

And below, the kiwi and the bamboo are coming back, just.

The hibiscus and mahonias have already come back to life, so that just leaves the olive and the grapes. I am waiting with renewed expectation.

The lesson is to give the plants time. If there is a root system, it has a chance.