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.

Easy and Delicious Home-Made Butter - in photos

Next time you see a large pot of double cream going cheap, make sure you snap it up. For in just a few minutes you can have your own, deliciously creamy, home-made butter. Plus a little buttermilk, ideal for making soda bread or muffins.

So here's what to do.

Buy the cream. It doesn't matter if its on its sell-by date. In fact it's better.

Pour into a food mixer. We use a plastic blade, or you can use a balloon whisk.

 Whizz.

 Until it looks like this...

 Whizz more...until it looks like this...

 Whizz more...until it looks like scrambled egg sitting in a pool of liquid.

This is your butter and buttermilk, separated.

Now drain through a muslin - you could just use a sieve.

 Squeeze as much liquid out of the butter as possible

From now on, keep the butter as cold as you can.

We got our lovely neighbour to make us some special butter paddles, which were soaked in iced water beforehand. You could just use cold hands!

Wash the butter several times in cold water. You are trying to get every last drop of buttermilk out, otherwise your butter will quickly go rancid. Don't worry though, it doesn't take very long and after a few washes the water stays clear.

Here's what you should now have.
You're almost there.

Add salt if desired. Dairy salt is recommended (whatever that is). But you can just use normal salt.
Half a teaspoon per 4oz of butter  (Half a pint of double cream makes about 8oz of butter)

 Work the salt through the butter

 Shape the butter

And there you have it.
You can cut it into blocks to freeze, but you'll probably just want to spread it on some lovely fresh bread and eat it straight away.

Battling with weeds

Today a battle which I thought I was going to have to fight never happened and a weight was lifted from my mind.
Yesterday was about another battle. I lost an hour of my life, for I had my annual visit to hospital, my reminder that Mr C always lurks in the background.

They generally poke, prod and peer, so the more sedative they pump into me the better! And yesterday they gave me plenty. So much, in fact, that I don't remember a jot between 6 and 7 o'clock.

Still groggy this morning, and not really allowed to drive or use any machinery, I decided to have a day of gentle pottering in the polytunnel. Outside it was dreary and none too warm.
But my plan didn't last long, as I passed the newly emerging line of beetroots and decided to just pull a few weeds. Well, the ground was so soft that they virtually jumped out of the ground themselves.

A line of Beetroot Cylindra, looking very healthy.

As usual, one thing led to another and before I knew it I had spent a couple of hours weeding. It was good to really see which crops had germinated well and which were a little more patchy. For some crops there is still just time to fill the gaps, either by sowing new seed or, in the worst cases, with young plants which I will raise in the polytunnel for protection in their early lives.

Only one or two gaps in the parsnip rows.

I came back into the house once to document Sue making butter (next post) and once to check on the plumber's progress. For today he finally finished his last job after what has been quite an epic saga.

My only other rest was to admire Gerry's surgical dissection of a rabbit he had caught.
It's a bit gory again, but here's what he left, neatly arranged.

Stomach, intestines, one paw and a tail!

Gerry retired upstairs for several hours to digest, while I returned to my weeding - the broad bean bed, the asparagus peas, the carrots and the brassica beds.
I am now lying on the sofa with a severe twinge in by back. Give me some sedative!

Beans, beans, beans.

Against all tradition, the bank holiday weekend we've just had gave us some most glorious weather.

So it was time for a drastic haircut.



a haircut for the orchard grass



a haircut for the hay meadow
(thanks Don)

and my twice yearly haircut.

I paid for it with burnt ears, a rather raw neck and sore temples. For, as I took advantage of the sunshine and put in a very long weekend outside, areas of skin long-covered by my rather wild hair were exposed to ultraviolet rays for the first time in a long while.

In the veg patch, this weekend was all about the beans. They have been growing happily in the protective environment of the polytunnel but, now that all danger of frost has passed (I sincerely hope), they will grow into stronger plants in the soil outside.

During last week the Runner Beans went in. I have changed varieties this year. As with all my beans, I have prioritised stringlessness. Much as I like to grow heritage varieties, I find a stringy bean somewhat akin to a fish full of bones. So, for the runners, I have plumped for two varieties. Armstrong, a red flowered cultivar, and White Lady, surprisingly a white-flowered type, but more significantly white beans for drying.

I ran out of time to dig trenches for the beans, which should be
filled with compost, newspaper and all manner of rotting
material.
So instead, I transplanted each young plant onto a bed
of comfrey leaves, which should provide plenty
of goodness as they rot down.

Some French Beans have gone into the ground in the polytunnel too.

Yardlong (though the beans are best harvested before they reach this length), Cobra, Pea Beans (again for dried beans) and climbing Borlottis.

The spares have gone outside to brave the British weather. But my main French bean variety outside is Blue Lake, with its small, white haricot beans. I grew a few two years ago and the beans were beautifully crisp with not a hint of string.

We also planted some purple climbing beans, Blauhilde. These have gone in as seeds, rather than plants raised in the polytunnel.

Likewise, three types of dwarf beans: Canada Wonder, which can be stringy but should yield a good harvest of kidney beans for drying; Tendergreen; and Helda, which I snapped up ridiculously cheap at the end of last year.

All my beans will grow accompanied by climbing nasturtiums and sweet peas, to make them more attractive both to the human eye and to pollinating insects.

There's also an experiment going on with more exotic beans, nabbed from the kitchen store cupboard. More on this later.

A Muntjac Deer and Three Pairs of Wellies

This morning I strolled out early and the action started straight away. A Shelduck flew away calling. The way it flew suggested I had just flushed it off our land. As it flapped its way across the wheat field, I saw what must be the largest rabbit I've ever seen bobbing up and down, disappearing into the fast-growing cereal crop and then springing into the air again.

As it got closer, I realised my mistake, for this was no rabbit. It was a muntjac deer. Another new mammal for the farm, though not a particularly welcome one if sightings become too frequent. I don't think Gerry could quite deal with this threat either. Muntjacs are an introduced species which has thrived in this country. They are the size of a medium dog, with strange little fang-like tusks.
It headed towards the dyke and I never saw it again.

Job for the day was to tart the place up a bit. Though the scaffold is still up and piles of rubble still lie on the ground, we have been gradually getting back to normal. So it was somewhat of a luxury and a turning point to be able today to turn our attentiions to getting some hanging baskets up.
I had grown several trays of lobelias, petunias, nasturtiums and  black-eyed Susan. A visit to a local factory outlet garden centre, on our way back from droppiong my car off for a service, yielded more plants.

It was a good day for this job as drizzle and occasional heavier showers made the polytunnel a perfect place to be planting up hanging baskets.
Anyway, here's a couple of them. They should really start to bulk up over the next few weeks.

I used the chance to refresh a pot of growing herbs
with a lemon balm plant to release its scent as people pass
by and some garlic chives to ward off nasty bugs.

Then our creativity really got going, as I remembered a plan I had to use some old wellies which had failed hopelessly in their primary function in the garden. I just filled them with compost, pierced a few drainage holes and cut out some extra holes to insert plants.

For a while I've been trying to think how I can have small patches of herbs dotted around the veg garden. I wanted some near the veg beds and some at the entrances. But in the ground they would soon be swamped by grasses and weeds, or otherwise I would have yet more areas to keep weed-free.

You've guessed it. Wellies! I now have a welly at each of the gates into the veg patch, each planted up with  mint, chives, lemon balm and nasturtiums.

There's even a welly hanging in the polytunnel filled with salad crops.

Next job is to plant up the old bathroom suite. Toilet, cistern, sink and shower cubicle!