Volelets.

I was going to write all about brassicas today, but that can wait, as it turned out to be a day of unexpected finds.

After the swarm of bees, other surprises today included five eggs from the chooks and this ...

Volelets, I presume, next to a 5p coin for scale.
I came across them by accident while pulling weeds.
Can't be long born.

...the second totally new experience for me today.

Just three days short of my 46th birthday it is always nice when life still throws little surprises in my direction.

Not Another Swarm!!

Tuesday 17th July 2012
A dry, muggy day.

Just finished watering the greenhouse plants, carrying a tray of brassica seedlings to their new homes in the veg patch and there, on the pea wigwam, my first ever swarm of bees... My bees!

I ran back to the house to grab the camera, a box and my bee suit, stopping only to quickly open the lids on the hives to try to ascertain which one they'd come from, if they were indeed ours. Without any protective clothes, I made this a quick operation before a couple of angry bees started bothering me. It was quite clear they'd come from Hive 1, which was very thin on bees.

It can't have been more than about 3 minutes before I was back at the pea wigwam, cardboard box in hand, ready to work out how to collect this mass of bees. Except, small problem, no bees. Not there, not in the orchard, or Don's orchard, or the roadside hedge. In fact, nowhere to be seen. No photos and the swarm lost! At least I got to see my first ever swarm.
As last time, they'd quickly moved off and I'd missed them. About a hundred quid's worth of bees gone!

A short history of our hives might help here. After we first got our colony of bees they quickly started building masses of queen cells. We split the hive into two, putting the old queen into Hive 2. A newly emerged queen went into Hive 1.
Then we waited...and waited...and waited, but no sign of any eggs or brood in Hive 1. After four weeks we felt it likely that something had happened to the virgin queen we had put in. The weather had been lousy, but by now she shoudl have made her mating flight and there should be some sign of eggs and larvae.
So when we found a couple of queen cells in Hive 2 it seemed prudent to transfer them into Hive 1, for without a queen and fresh bees this colony was sure to eventually die out. An active bee only lasts about 6 weeks at this time of year (maybe a bit longer as they've not been able to fly much).
Hive 1 was by no means heaving and today's swarm came as a complete surprise to me. Obviously either the first queen survived or one of the queen cells hatched and, for whatever reason, off they went!

I would like to say this was an expensive lesson learned, but on reflection I don't think I've learned a thing from this experience. Bee behaviour remains a complete mystery to me.

Chicken Diary Part III

This little fella (or lass) looks very grumpy.
Hatched last night.

Polands
When our last batch of a dozen blue eggs all failed to hatch, we took six white eggs as part replacement. And just look what emerged overnight!

This is a Poland and will grow up to have the most ridiculous hairstyle. I'm not really into fancy chickens, but these are ultra friendly, small (so low feed costs) and lay white eggs. Another two eggs are peeping, but I'll be a bit disappointed if I only get three.

These Indian Games have me a bit confused.

When is a hen not a hen?
Down in the chicken pen, our oldest two Indian Games don't look quite right for their breed. Obviously related in some way, but not the real deal. The hen has started crowing. Although this can happen, it is entirely possible that she will be a he! I was going on feather colouration, but if they're not quite what they're supposed to be...
Meanwhile the cock has not crowed once! Matters should become clearer in the next couple of weeks, but a realignment of loyalties may be needed as it is unlikely we will keep the cockerel (which may actually be the ultra friendly ex-hen).

Egg diary

Things are looking a little better on the egg production front now. We are getting three a day and sometimes four. I am still keeping my chicken diary and have worked out that Speckledy lays medium, speckled eggs, Honey lays large, pale eggs and Chestnut lays slightly dark eggs with pale speckles. Elvis lays very distinctive, small pale eggs.

Intermittently other eggs appear too, so I've implemented a system of isolating a couple of chickens at a time to see who is laying what. This morning I think Mrs Brown laid an egg. If not her, then it was Hazel.

The five Welsummers and one of the younger Indian Games
at the entrance to their self-made den.

How to catch 26 chickens
Yesterday morning Sue and I had great fun and games. I wanted to dust all the chickens for lice now that they have finished their course of worm treatment (see, it's not all cute, cuddly rural idyll). This meant catching each one and holding upside down by the legs (this is not cruel) while Sue administered generous amounts of powder.
I remembered not to let them all out at sunrise, and at 7 o'clock we began. The tactic was to open the door to a henhouse and grab the first chicken to exit. This worked very smoothly for the old hens, even the cockerel who has some quite sizeable spurs to avoid.

But the youngsters fairly quickly cottoned on to what was happening and retreated to the parts of their house too distant for my reach. We managed to do about half of them, but the only way to catch the rest was to grab them as they shot through the door.
But these chickens are more intelligent than the average chicken!

Two managed to bolt past us and evade our grip. They then took refuge in the den they've constructed for themselves, where they are totally uncatchable. However, eventually a combination of pestering, poking, cadjoling and chasing came together and the job was done.

They may have lost a bit of dignity, but all are now spick-and-span and none the worse for wear.

Next time we catch a chicken it may well be one for the pot!

And finally...
When did these two grow so big?

Am I Going To Cheshire Today?

Well, no Northern Lights last night (at least not up till 1.30 in the morning).

But this was pretty spectacular at 4.50.

Monday 16th July 2012
Evolution of a sunrise.

It's now 6.33 and I'm just off down to give the animals an early morning feed and water.
A bit earlier than usual, but I'm on a state of full alert for the next few hours, ready to jump in my car and drive to Cheshire to see a Hudsonian Godwit. No news yet!

Just in case you're wondering what all the fuss is about, here's a link to the bird. It's the one with a pale head. The others are Black-tailed Godwits.

http://frodshammarshbirdblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/15-07-12-birdlog/godwit-by-p-crawley/

Midday update
Well, the bird was there this morning. Unfortunately it lifted it's wing to reveal a shiny white underwing which meant it was definitely not a Hudsonian Godwit.


Bit of a shame really since I'm now confined inside avoiding the rain. At least I got to pull some weeds this morning and clear a bit more ragwort from the meadow. I'm supposed to burn the stuff but that just ain't gonna happen for quite a while yet, so I've shoved it all into several old animal feed bags to keep it safe and stop it seeding.
I did come acroos another guinea egg in the meadow - I seem to be finding them all over the place at the moment. And I enjoyed watching a Marsh Harrier quartering over the fields - a rarer sight this year than last. Presumably they're not breeding so close.

As for that Hudsonian Godwit shaped gap on my UK list, that'll probably have to wait another decade or so! You never know.

Soft fruits



Today I ate the tastiest gooseberry I've ever tasted, straight from the bush.
The raspberries aren't bad either.

Sunday 15th July 2012
A fine day.

I've not talked much about the soft fruit patch so far. That's because the young bushes and canes were put in last year and are only just beginning to yield any bounty.

It'll be another year before we see a significant harvest, so for the moment I tend to just leave everything to set it's roots and mature. Every now and again I venture in to pull the weeds.



Sue's early morning harvest.

But this area potentially has our most valuable harvest. Crops such as gooseberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, strawberries and blueberries are seemingly worth their weight in gold these days. In fact, if we didn't grow them they'd remain rarely tasted luxuries. I can't even remember the last time I saw gooseberries for sale. As for honeyberries, chokeberries, wineberries, tayberries and mulberries!

My soft fruits had a very difficult start, with the severest of winters followed by an 18 month drought, with a night of minus 16 in their second winter. The currants and gooseberries have withstood all that has been thrown at them, whereas only a few of the original raspberries and strawberries came through. But four months of almost constant rain has been more to their liking.

Now, at last, I can pluck the occasional dew-covered fruit on my early morning strolls, each a veritable jewel bursting with flavour. Sue harvests a little of each fruit a couple of times a week and freezes them on open trays. Already our freezer contents are beginning to look more opulent.

Next year we'll be ready for jams, sorbets, ice cream, tarts, crumbles, jellies and even wines.

Birding Stop Press

Probable Hudsonian Godwit, Cheshire 10am - 3.30pm.

Last one in Britain - 1988, Aberdeenshire for 1 day.

Total British records ever - 2!

Tomorrow I shall be waiting on tenterhooks for news. If anyone can show it definitely was one, I'll go overnight and hope it reappears in the morning.

All else is on hold!

Aurora Borealis Alert

The Northern Lights could, potentially, be visible anywhere in Britain tonight.

To see this spectacular sky show is one of my greatest ambitions in life, so with this alert and what looks to be a clear night, I'll be staying up late tonight. Photos (?) in the morning.

OOPS!!

You can't park there, mate!

Not much happens out here, stuck between the major conurbations of Holbeach Drove and Holbeach St Johns. So it was very exciting when Sue came in this morning and told me there was a lorry in the ditch just across the road. For a while they even closed the road.

Saturday 14th July 2012
Menacingly dark skies threatened all day,
but their bark was worse than their bite.

Today my body was having an achy day, so I decided to give it a complete rest. Apart from the lorry in the ditch, three events vied for second place in the excitement stakes. A barn owl quartering the meadow right in front of me at sunrise was not that unusual, but always a delightful sight. We got four intact eggs today, the best haul for a while. And finally, a foray into Holbeach where I stocked up in the hardware stores - straining bolts and staples so I can finish the fencing whenever I choose.

Life was never this hectic in London!!

 

"Look, Mummy's giving Daddy a piggy back!!"

Early morning romance.
Scroll no further if you are easily offended.



Friday 13th July 2012
The sunrise was nothing to talk about, but there was plenty else to talk about on the smallholding this morning.
Today saw some of the heaviest rain we've had here all summer.
And that's saying something.



HOT GOS this morning.

Or should I say hot Gloucester Old Spot?

For Gerald and Daisy were enjoying the sunrise, though neither seemed particularly impressed by the experience. Clearly no-one had reminded them that it was Friday 13th. Anyhow, November 6th is pencilled in on the calendar. Should be the patter of tiny trotters.



A Tale of a West African Chicken

Back when Sue and I used to do a lot of travel, we spent one eventful summer holiday travelling around West Africa in a truck. All along the roadsides and among the huts in the villages would be foraging groups of guineafowl, which were referred to as West African Chickens.

And very tasty they were too.

The best word for a group of guineafowl has to be a gang. And a gang of guineafowl are supposed to provide an extremely good predator alarm system. Our pair are certainly noisy enough and the male, G'nea G'nea, despite his dashing good looks and delicate appearance, is most definitely fearless. Occasionally I engage in a rather comical chase around the chicken pen, just to keep him in his place and show him who is boss. His clockwork legs move him at amazing speed!

In the old French vegetable gardens guineafowl were much valued helpers, for they do an excellent job clearing insects and do not share the destructive habits of chickens, save the odd dust bath.

Anyway, to the point of this post. We would like a gang of guineafowl to roam around our smallholding warding off all evil and providing the occasional tasty treat for us. Lady Guinea has sporadically laid eggs this year. To start with, when she still thought she was a chicken, we would find her small, fat eggs in the nest boxes with the other chickens' eggs. But more recently we have been finding them sitting in hidden depressions on the ground all around the garden. Most of them the crows have found too.
But I suspect Lady Guinea has found somewhere else to lay her eggs at the moment, as every morning when I go through the orchard I get heckled and charged at by G'nea G'nea himself. This is since I took the decision to allow the guineafowl to roost outside. They are always up and about when I turn up to watch the sun break the horizon.
I don't really expect to see a gang of mini guineafowl appear any time soon, but maybe when she is a bit older and more experienced.

Thursday 12th July 2012

And as for that guineafowl tale...

Well, it concerns a friend whose mother had a pair of guineafowl. No-one had realised that their lady guineafowl was laying eggs until one day they came upon, nestled in the undergrowth, their own shallow depression in the ground...

...complete with 93 (yes, ninety-three!) eggs!!

They blew the eggs and decorated them. They now sit in a basket on the hearth as a permanent reminder of the day they realised their West African Chicken had secretly been laying eggs!

Caca da Luna

Wednesday 11th July 2012

The weather turned out nice today. A little early morning drizzle, but then patches of brightness. A fresh breeze meant that at last I was able to get the lawns (by now more accurately described as meadows) mown, though I had to circumvent the electrics on the ride-on so that it could throw the cuttings straight out of the back without having anywhere to catch on and clog up.

A mystery today.

On one of the porch uprights on the garage I found this growing two days ago. It started out about an inch high and white. By yesterday it was over 2 inches and silver. It's not often that nature produces anything silver.

I'm fairly sure it's some sort of fungus. Sue reckons there's a beetle inside.

By today, it looked like this...

Following my instincts, I've just typed "silver fungus" into Google image search and there it was. The fifth image. My fungus.

Or, to be more precise, the slime mould, Enteridium lycoperdon, or False Puffball.

Sue was a little bit right too. There is a slime mold fly which lays its eggs inside, hatching out as worm-like larvae.

Rather delightfully, according to Wikipedia, it's known as Caca da Luna in Mexico. Moonshit!!
What a very appropriate name.

Devil's Coach Horse

Devil's Coach Horse Beetle

There's nothing better to capture the imagination of a young boy than a name like Devil's Coach Horse Beetle and that's what happened to me many years ago. Although not rare, I think I've only seen a couple in my life. That is until this year, when I've been encountering about one a day.

What an amazing beetle it is with its long, thin body, large jaws (adults) and scorpion-like defence posture. I did get to see this action the other day when I disturbed one in the strawberry patch. Apparently they are capable of emitting a foul smell from special glands too.

The DCHB is a predator, eating just about anything that moves, and according to at least one website this includes slugs. Finally! I have an ally in my battle.

But it would need a small army of DCHBs to impact on the slug population at the present. As we enter our fourth wet month, those slimy little critters are having a field day. Sue read the other day that there are two and a half times the usual number of slugs this year. I think the whole nation's population must have decamped to my veg patches!

Monday 9th July 2012
A most featureless sky.

Tuesday 10th July
What's there to say?

Sorry to go on about them, but yesterday morning I actually got quite depressed when my tired body dragged itself up to find the most featureless sky imagineable. I took a snap, let the chickens out and headed back for bed. That wasn't the depressing bit. That was just a disappointing sunrise and a tired body. No. The depressing bit was the hordes of slugs devouring my squashes (the hairier varieties seem most resistant) and, worse still, the lovingly nurtured bean plants which I had transplanted just the previous evening to replace those which I'd lost.

Instead of back to bed, it was two hours of slug destruction and the same again this morning to get back on top of the problem.

Pragmatic organic??
I seriously felt like abandoning my principles and driving straight to the shop to invest in bucket loads of slug pellets (despite my previous utterances on this subject). I have resisted for now, but I have always said that I would be pragmatic organic. By this I mean I will garden according to organic principles except in exceptional circumstances where whole crops are faced with destruction.

Nature's balance has clearly been thrown out of kilter and my efforts to fit in with it have been seriously derailed. For now at least I have held back on such a big decision.
But it clearly won't be a bumper crop of beans this year, any variety. I'll be happy if we get a few to eat and enough to save for next year's seed. Considering how many I've planted this year, that's some scaling back of my expectations!

To take my mind off my gardening woes, I returned to the house and spent the whole day cleaning. Although not my natural inclination, we had a builder coming round late afternoon and I knew that Sue would want to present a visitor with a house that was spick-and-span. When I took breaks, it was to check on the chickens or transport carts of manure down to the muck heaps. What a glamorous life I lead!
Typically it stayed dry all day. The forecast for tomorrow...


Peas and Harmony
Not all is negative. It's been a great year so far for peas and potatoes. As I dug Charlottes from the ground for dinner last evening, a strange call overhead was an unexpected barn owl quite high up. Then, as I plucked cascading pea pods and purple mangetout, fourteen lapwings passed by. It's been a bad year for breeding birds and these could well have given up and be thinking about where to spend winter!

The spuds and the peas, by the way, tasted wonderful. The sugar snaps were like small packages of perfect freshness and sweetness.