Three Sisters resurrected

Last year I attempted to cultivate The Three Sisters.

That's the system where you grow sweetcorn in small clumps, interspersed with squashes and pumpkins. Then you add the third "sister" - climbing beans, whose sole purpose is to feed the slugs and divert them away from the other crops... or so it seemed.

Well, that was last year.
As it was, the sweetcorn, squashes, courgettes and pumpkins did very well given copious amounts of rain.

This year is a very different year. So last week the three sisters were resurrected.

The sweetcorn is growing well now.
Time to sow the French beans.

I doubt the original growers of Three Sisters
surrounded their crops with electric fence
to protect it against rabbits.

Young sweetcorn plants, back on 27th May


The sweetcorn has been planted for well over a fortnight now. It always takes a knock back when it first goes into the ground outside and the weakest specimens don't make it.
After a tricky germination, where several complete trays just rotted away as they failed to spring into life in the cool conditions, I didn't really have any to spare. As it is a high proportion of plants have made it through and have begun to grow more strongly.

Various types of courgette, squash and pumpkin have now been transplanted out between them.

I decided to invest time erecting the electric rabbit fence around my lovingly nurtured plants. There is nothing as soul-destroying as the disappointment of finding your freshly planted crops nibbled or, worse still, uprooted and laying wilted on the surface of the soil.

And so to the third sister. While the cucurbits spread and shade the surface of the soil, the beans climb up the sweetcorn stalks, in the process capturing nitrogen and enriching the soil for next year.
I had some beans already sown, but they are about three times as tall as the corn and reaching rapidly for the skies. So I decided instead to sow fresh beans at the bases of the sweetcorn. I have plumped for French bean Blue Lake, a stringless variety which has performed well in our soil in the past.

And in honour of the Native American origins of the Three Sisters planting system, I have planted some wigwams of runner beans alongside!

But in all seriousness there are some very valid reasons for growing these crops in combination. Get the timing right and the plants aid each others' growth. They provide a good nutritional balance too.
There's some good information on this website:

http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

One very useful hint I picked up from this site, so indirectly from the Native American Indians, is to use nature to time sowing and planting.
For early spring in the books is different across the whole country and from year to year. If you sowed seeds strictly by date this year, as I found out to my cost with the sweetcorn, they just sat in the cold conditions not realising it was time to sprout into life.
But if you sowed when, for instance, the cow parsley came into flower or the sowthistles started to grow, then nature would be your calendar...

Not that nature always gets it right.

I got myself a second Roller.

Sunday was such a good day that I failed to notice news of a Roller in Norfolk, found mid afternoon and remaining until dusk at least. I was kicking myself a little, as I have only seen one of these beautiful aquamarine birds in Britain before. Instead, I did see this fledgeling Whitethroat marooned  and all alone on the grass. As I lay on the ground to snap it, the poor, parentless bird took a couple of hops straight onto the top of the camera!

(Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending).

So, Monday morning I was keen to get over to Holt and bag myself my second British Roller.  But I had the small matter of a trip to the dentist first. With that successfully negotiated, I pondered the negative news from Norfolk. The Roller had been seen early morning but had flown off, only to be relocated a little way away before it flew off again. It had gone missing for a couple of hours, so I decided to pop into Frampton Marsh for a while rather than head straight home. A stunning Spotted Redshank, resplendent in full breeding plumage, fed daintily in amongst the throng and din of breeding Black-headed Gulls. There were plenty of baby Avocets around too. I can remember when this would have been a very rare sight indeed.

As I sat in the hide just taking in the scene, news came through that the Roller was back. So I headed over to Holt and was surprised by the crowd as I pulled up. There seem to be an awful lot of retired birders in Norfolk. As they usually do, the Roller spent most of its time perched up, performing occasional sallies before returning to its perch. However, it was always slightly distant and in heat haze.

After about forty minutes the Roller flew high over the trees and over the road. But this was becoming a pattern now so I followed it. Several of us headed towards another cleared area amongst the pines and scanned every protruding branch for a flash of aquamarine blue. After a few minutes I picked it up, sat on top of a heap. Although still distant, the light was much better. I chatted to some of the locals, enjoyed watching the Roller and then headed back through Norfolk and just across the border to the farm.

This was the end of a very good long weekend indeed.

Lambs meet pigs

Sunday was pretty much a perfect day.

I've already posted about taking our first honey. But the day had been pretty special even before that.

Limpy The Lamb no longer has a limp so it was time to take the lambs to their new home, further down the land. The followed Sue with gusto. In fact, Sue had to run to keep up with them. They went straight into their new enclosure and we quickly closed off the electric fence and connected it back up again.

Easily led.

Happy in their new home.

It wasn't long before the pigs realised they had some new close neighbours. They were straight over to the fence to investigate. What surprised me even more was that one of the lambs was equally as inquisitive and went straight up to them. It showed no fear whatsoever.

Of course, it wasn't long before one of the noses touched the electric fence. As it happened, it was the lamb's. It was enough to keep it from crossing but didn't seem to cause a great scare.

I spent a couple of hours just relaxing in the grass, watching the lambs, pigs, chickens and guineafowl.
Once I was happy that they wouldn't escape straightaway (I wonder how long it will take them) and that they were happy I turned my attentions to moving the geese into their old paddock now that it had been vacated by the lambs.

The first thing they did was to stick their heads back through the gate to get at the grass where they had just come from! But it wasn't long before they settled in and cleared the paddock of buttercup flowers. In fact, they seemed to enjoy these most, closely followed by the racemes of seeds atop the taller stems of grass. This is the advantage of mixed grazing, as different animals graze different plants in different ways. It's also advantageous to move grazing animals onto new areas on a rota as this stops parasites building up in the ground by breaking thier lifecycles.

Our first honey - a very special day.

Honey!

I've not blogged about the bees for a while.

We are still novices to beekeeping and Sue has taken over the mantle of head beekeeper. We had our first bees while we still lived in South-East London. Surprisingly the patchwork of urban gardens there is actually a very good place to keep bees. We did rather well for a while, but our hive failed to come through its first winter and got robbed and finally killed off by robber bees from another colony.

We kept all the gear, sure that we would start up again one day. Last year, now in The Fens of South-East Lincolnshire, we embarked on our beekeeping career again. The first year was an interesting one - very hot early spring during which bee colonies everywhere quickly became strong, followed by half a year of rain. Everybody's bees were swarming all over the place, including ours.

It was a fast learning curve and, although we collected no honey, we did end the year with two healthy colonies of honey bees.

Early on in this year's spring, both hives looked OK, but spring never really warmed up and ended up being the coldest in 50 years. Unfortunately we lost one of the colonies, but the second was (and is) still looking very strong.

So strong, in fact, that they have started building queen cells again, a sure sign that the colony is filling up and planning on splitting. This is  the bees' way of spreading and sending out new colonies. But it is not great news for the beekeeper. Effectively you face losing half your bees (more if subsidiary swarms occur) and won't be able to take honey from them this year.

But it also creates the opportunity to anticipate the departure of half your bees and to set up a new colony. I won't go into the ins and outs of how to do this, but Sue has attempted to achieve it and we have our fingers crossed.

This is all very exciting (and slightly worrying) but even more exciting action came on Sunday when Sue decided there were enough supers of capped honey to try spinning some off.

The way a hive works is that at the bottom lives the queen and there she lays her eggs which develop and hatch. Other bees tend the larvae and the foragers go out everyday to collect pollen and nectar. In the cells around the brood they store this food in the form of honey.

Above this brood box the beekeeper places more frames of hexagonal foundation cells, which the bees build up into storage larders for more honey. But there is one very important difference with this part of the hive. For the queen is excluded from here, which means there are no eggs and no larvae. This honey is there for the taking!

Once the honey has reached the correct consistency, the bees cap it with a thin layer of wax.  So the first step is to scrape this off. We have a comb for this purpose, though a special knife can be used too.



Uncapping the honey.



This was amazing as the honey just started oozing out. Next the frames go into a spinner where centrifugal force sends the honey flying out of the cells and against the side walls, whereupon it trickles down to the bottom of the spinner. At this stage, there will be wax mixed in too.

I was  a bit enthusiastic with the spinning and one of the frames disintegrated a little bit. Not a total disaster, as the frames go back in with the bees to be cleaned and repaired by them.



Draining the honey from the spinner.





A tap at the bottom of the spinner allows the honey to be drained out through a double spinner. At this stage we could really see how our honey was going to turn out. Of course, we couldn't resist dipping our fingers in either.

The honey was surprisingly delicate and light. None of it seemed to have crystallised in the cells and we are hoping that the influence of oil seed rape is not too great, as this causes honey to set rock hard.

In all we got nine jars of honey. Some beekeepers don't get this much in their first few years, but with a bit of luck it will just be the start of a very successful honey year this year.

Now to go find some honey recipes.

Egg tales

On Thursday morning, all six geese ventured out together for the first time in a very, very long time. Not before Tatty Anna had carefully covered the two remaining eggs with feathers and straw.


An opportunity missed.



I should really have surreptitiously removed the remaining two eggs but it didn't occur to me until it was way too late. The window of opportunity only lasted about five minutes anyway. Tatty Anna is no longer the prime carer for the eggs and it wasn't long before the new sitter returned to the nest.





 

But just when it looked as though all things egg-linked had settled down, I find this...

Thirty guinea eggs! The only reason I came across them was that Sue thought one of the girls may be sitting on eggs in the long grass which has shot up in the chicken enclosure.
As long as there are eleven guineafowl on the fence in the evening we know that none are sitting. If one evening we find less than eleven, it will probably mean that one of them has decided to sit.

Last year, Girl Guinea managed to lay a clutch of eighteen eggs, unnoticed by us or predators, before she sat tight and hatched the lot.

We don't really want another thirty guineafowl! So if Girl Guinea decides to incubate, we shall let her. But once they hatch then last year's birds will be freezer bound!
If any others decide to sit, we shall remove the eggs.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ed. As I write, we are up to 45 guinea eggs.

I took the last goose egg and fed it to Daisy. It stunk to high heaven, but Daisy didn't seem to mind.
This morning, one of the geese has built a new nest and laid an egg!

PACIFIC SWIFT!

Yesterday did not go quite as I had planned when I woke up in the morning.

For, as I was sorting out tree stakes at the bottom of the land, a text on my phone informed me that a Pacific Swift was present over a marsh in Suffolk. Pacific Swift is very, very rare in this country and usually hangs around for about 5 minutes. Famously, one in Cley in 1993 was the only one to be seen by more than a handful of birders. Tales abound of speeding along country lanes, getting stuck in traffic jams on the one narrow road through the middle of Cley village, abandoning cars... then there are the tales of those who missed it by minutes.

At the same time as I was pondering what course of action to take, Sue came running down the land waving my pager in the air to let me know there was a mega. Seconds later my phone rang. My friend who lives in Scotland, just in case I'd missed the messages in this communications backwater. Given the fleeting nature of most Pacific Swifts, he resolved to do the same as me, that is to wait for a second message. If it was still there in 15 minutes then the chances of connecting with it would be greatly improved.

And so I carried on hammering in stakes and clearing grass from the base of young saplings until the next message. Still there at 10:59!

That was it. There was just a 100 mile drive to the far corner of Suffolk then a 3 mile 'walk'.
The SatNav said it would take 2 hours and the dashboard said I had 67 miles of petrol left - at normal driving speed.
What ensued was a somewhat fraught journey across country until I hit the A14 and really put my foot down. An hour away from a Pacific Swift...Half an hour away...Fifteen minutes to go...And all the time I reined in the arrival time on the SatNav.
And so it was that after an hour and thirty five minutes I was parking up in a congested country lane. I decided to leave the scope so I could run most of the 3 miles. Now I'm no Olympic athlete but I do keep reasonably fit so a combination of jogging and resting to chat with others heading the same way had me within sight of the crowd in about half an hour.
Along the way I had been reassured by those leaving site "Don't worry, it's still there." Famous last words.
But even with just a couple of hundred yards to go, I was fully aware that those people I could see watching the bird might just be watching it head high into the sky and over the horizon. That can happen with swifts and I wasn't going to be the one telling the tale, in 20 years time, of missing a Pacific Swift by one minute.

As I jogged along the base of the seawall, someone beckoned me and a couple of others just arriving into the hide. I knelt on the ground and raised my bins to my eyes, desperately trying to control my breathing and stop my hands from shaking. Instructions were coming thick and fast about which way the bird was flying, how high it was, which birds it was flying over... And after what seemed like an eternity (in truth about ten seconds of frantic searching) there it was.

PACIFIC SWIFT

Skimming low over the marsh.

Elation. Relief. Joy. Success.

There are some birds which I know I'll see in Britain at some point in my life - provided I live long enough! But Pacific Swift was one that I suspected I may not.

I left the hide and spent the next hour or so on the seawall watching the swift as it kept loyal to one small area of the marsh. I caught up with a few old friends too.
For some reason, everyone seemed in a good mood.

Then storm clouds loomed and I decided to head back to the car with some friends. I just made it in time before the heavens opened.
Good news for the veg plot back on the farm. But bad news for those still on their way.

The downpour was the cue for the Pacifc Swift, in the company of our own Common Swifts, to depart. Fortunately for my friend from Scotland it came back late in the afternoon and he connected too.

He popped into the farm on his way back later in the evening, just for a brief catch up before making his way back to Scotland.

This morning I finished those tree stakes. Roll on the next lifer.

It's been a good year so far. Four already and there's still the autumn to come. But before that I'm hoping for a Bridled Tern, preferably somewhere near.

Wildlife on the farm

"Our" Little Owl.

I've been waiting two years for views like this.

A Buzzard circled over the farm today before a couple of crows  decided to harass it. It headed off toward the trees where it always heads. Then a shining white Little Egret flew into the dyke while swallows skimmed the surface of the pasture before returning to the stables where they always chatter excitedly, their young poking their wide gapes over the edge of the muddy nest and begging loudly.

Hungry mouths

Down in the pig pen, the wagtail family were darting around after insects and the red-legged partridges must be nesting somewhere near, as a pair are always to be seen around the pigs extensive run, sometimes in fairly close association with the guineafowl.

Overhead, there was a good passage of Swifts heading south today. I never cease to be in awe of their aerial agility.

Late afternoon this character came out to hunt.

 

Eyes in the back of its head.

A pair have moved into the old Ash trees for definite. I'm pretty sure they are breeding, but can't prove it yet. The Little Owls are very active at the moment and have become slightly more trusting, showing during daylight hours. I watched this one from the dining room this evening, perching on fenceposts and flying down onto the ground, presumably feeding on grubs and worms.

But it's not just about the birds.

Three nights ago a stoat bounced across the driveway under Sue's car. We know they're around, but it's not often we see them. The hares are back in the pasture again - more welcome than the rabbits which nibble and uproot my plants.

The moles have been very busy too and the other day I was lucky enough to actually see one, not on the farm but crossing the road nearby.

We've got amphibians too. I usually find them when I'm rooting around pulling weeds or when I rearrange the polytunnel. A couple of toads inhabit the polytunnel and greenhouse, seeming to enjoy the warm, humid conditions. One of the guineas was carrying one last week. It was the cause of much squabbling. It's not great that they caught one, but at least it shows that there are enough around. Frogs are more difficult to find, but I do occasionally find them crawling around deep down in the long grassy fringes alongside the dyke.

Root around enough and there's more to be found too. As I pulled the nettles and thistles from around the beehives at the weekend, I unearthed this little critter.

A young newt.
I moved him away from the chickens
which were scraping around where I'd been weeding.

Very occasionally I am lucky enough to witness one rising to the surface of the pond for air, but this is not the first time I've found one well away from water.

I won't pretend I always come across this much wildlife on the farm. I guess it's the season, with babies around and parents busily trying to feed them.

But we must be doing something right.

Raining in the Polytunnel

It's June. The sun has been shining. And the swallows are feeding young. Could it be that summer is threatening to arrive?

It has been a bit chilly here on the East coast though, with an unusual northeasterly wind blowing straight from The Wash and across The Fens. Still, the soil has warmed up and the plants know it, especially the weeds.

I've been trying to care for the seedlings in the polytunnel and moving them into the ground outside as soon as I thought they were big enough to look after themselves. But the wind and the sun have been drying out the soil and those poor baby plants haven't quite had time to send their roots down far enough.

Up till now the rain situation has been almost perfect this year. A couple of nights of rain each week.

But last week the hosepipe came out to save the young sweetcorn, the beans and the newly emerging seedlings across the veg plot. The baths are now empty of rain water, mostly gone on watering can relays into the polytunnel.

I prefer not to have to use tap water for the garden, but at this time of year the plants are not leafy enough to shade the soil and their roots are not deep enough.

And in the polytunnel, which no rain penetrates, young plants can wilt to the point of death in seemingly no time at all. I tend tray upon tray of baby vegetable plants, herbs and flowers every morning and evening, more often if I can. But give them too much water and they go the other way.

So I've been endeavouring to move as many plants as I can to the great outside. But every evening I have to stop early in order to water the plants in the tunnel.

That is, until this evening.

For this evening it rained in the polytunnel.

Well, technically it wasn't really rain, more a hosepipe connected up to an overhead irrigation system. But it sure was a shock for the plants. I hope they appreciate it.

In the process I got absolutely drenched, for the spiders had taken up residence in the pipework and their webs (and bodies) clogged up the sprayers. It was far easier to dismantle them and clear out the pipes and nozzles with the water still on!
I did, however, forget that my phone was in my pocket. It completely packed up, but was back to its old self in the morning.

As for those swallows. We have three nests this year, down from last year's five.

Lambs

The geese are now sitting on just 3 eggs, down from the original 16. And yesterday even Tatty Anna came off the nest, having been sat there for over two months. Although the last couple of eggs are still attended day and night, the dream of having 16 goslings to fatten themselves up on my rapidly growing grass has faded to a distant memory.

But there are more efficient lawnmowers. The couple of lambs we got in last year were such a success that we decided we would definitely be getting more this year. 

One of last year's lambs.



Sheep were never in our original plans. Read up on keeping them and all you read about seems to be maggots, bums and rotten feet! Compare this to pigs, which if you believe the books are impregnable, built like tanks and spend their whole lives on a trail of desruction and hatching escape plans.

There's a small element of truth in all this. But what the books don't tell you is that once a pig reaches little pig size, it is built like a brick ****house and stubborn beyond belief. It's a good job they can look after themselves, as administering medicines or inspecting them closely is nigh on impossible.
Whereas sheep are easy to catch - for they are much, much tamer and friendlier than we ever imagined - and are light enough to pick up.
OK. So they can wriggle and struggle a little, but overall they are manageable. The maggots, bums and feet thing is just a matter of vigilance.

The other advantage of sheep is that they actually do a service as they grow, keeping down the grass and so saving time and money on mowing. And you don't need to buy in loads of extra food pellets for them. With the price of food rocketing over the last couple of years, this has made lambs a much more economical choice than pigs. I can't help thinking too that it's much more environmentally friendly to keep animals which feed on what's already growing where they are.

But this year, getting hold of lambs has been more difficult than usual. On top of Schmallenberg virus, we had a very cold and extended late winter period, which had a disastrous impact on lambing. Fortunately, we are not yet (notice the use of the word yet) into breeding our own sheep.
But the impact has been that there are far fewer lambs to go around this year. Also, many sheep had multiple births, meaning that a high percentage of lambs had to be taken off their mums and hand-reared.
This may sound cute, but it's very hard work, expensive to buy in milk powder, and a complete pain if you're a commercial farmer with a sizeable flock.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, through a well-connected friend we managed to get hold of four very scraggy cade lambs. Cade refers to those which were the extras, those taken off their mums and hand-fed. They grow more weakly than their siblings and their futures are not so bright.

So a couple of weeks ago four little, scraggy urchins arrived on the farm. They are no special breed, just scruffy little crosses. One was very skinny and one had a niggling cough - the same one whose tail never fell off when it was docked as a youngster. They just put a band tight around it at birth and it dries up and drops off. Why? Well, we're back to bums and maggots again! I don't think it's painful for them, and the same treatment is applied to the boys' bits. Now that does bring water to the eyes.
Anyway, this scruffiest little urchin has also turned out to be the most adventurous and the friendliest. Its cough has now gone, though it has been passed to one of the others. Again, though, it seems to be on the way out - the cough, not the lamb.

But they enjoyed the fresh, lush grass in the paddock and have settled in very nicely. They are growing at an astonishing rate. We probably won't name them, beyond their numbers, but they do have their own very strong individual characters.

The four of them all decided to use the goose house (originally a dog kennel) as a night-time shelter, but they have gradually outgrown it and now only two and a half can fit in. Besides that, they leave it in a foul state so it has now been closed to them.

We did originally intend to move the four lambs down the land, in to the meadow, to strip-graze it and hopefully keep the sward at a reasonable length. However, the grass is growing so quickly at the moment that the four lambs are barely even keeping up with the small area of grass in their paddock.

We had decided to move them down at the end of the half-term holiday. Then the geese could have their paddock back too.
However, then I noticed that one of them, the one with the black face and the very spotty legs, was limping quite heavily. We caught it and were surprised to find that its toenails were already in need of a trim. Otherwise they grow beyond the bottom of the hoof and can curl into the foot. This is when sores and cuts can rapidly turn into foot rot - more maggots!

And so Monday evening was appointed as the time to trim all the lambs' nails. This is a bit of an operation, but one which we can manage without too much problem.
The poor lambs weren't sure what was going on, and one was more strong-minded in its wriggling than the others, but eventually all feet were trimmed. That's sixteen feet, and the cloven hooves effectively double that.

It was a lovely evening for the job though and all went well.

Except that the lamb is still limping! We couldn't see any particular problems with the feet, so it seems that it may have hurt its leg at some point. The plan for the moment is to observe. It doesn't seem to be causing any distress, apart from the limp. With a bit of luck it will get better on its own, otherwise we may have to give the vet a call. This would not be a particularly economical move, but we would never see an animal suffer unnecessarily.

Life in the duck lane

Quite unexpectedly, the ducks have become everyone's favourite farm animal.
Everything they do is comical - the way they move, the noises they make, the way they behave.

They waddle around the vegetable garden in line, like a runaway train, this way, that way and back this way again. The drake's reassuring quacks give away their presence. Otherwise, they just get on with life, coming and going, going and coming, ever dabbing their beaks into the ground after juicy morsels.

They demand very little. A toddlers paddling pool for the occasional dip, the odd handful of food and a house for the night.

The ducks struggled to get in and out of their water,
so I made a ramp for them out of turves.

As well as the three lovely duck eggs they leave in their house most mornings, the ducks have fulfilled their primary function, as there are now very few slugs to be found in the veg plot. In fact, they have learned to follow the rotavator, snapping up the worms and such like. When Don is working his land, they stand by the fence watching.

They did once though unearth all my onion sets just minutes after I had planted them! Had they unearthed the lot, I could have just replanted them. However, they just scattered a few randomly over the soil, leaving me with no clue where the gaps were. The result is that I now have some very gappy rows of onions.

I have learned to give it half an hour or so between rotavating a veg bed and planting anything into it.



The ducks have learned to go in after the rotavator.

But the ducks are naughty!

Leave the gate open for a few seconds and they're out, without fail, exploring and wandering.

And so to my party trick. For all I have to do is shout "DUCKS" in my firmest teacher voice and up pop their heads in unison before they waddle off at speed back towards the veg plot.

The good news is that the ducks cannot fly. Otherwise I've a sneaky feeling they'd be off into the sky with the wild mallards which wheel around and fly low over every now and then.

So that's it. Life in the duck lane.

...and I never even stooped to a "quackers" pun.