First Frost Winter 2014/15

Well, I'm back!!!

The blog has been on a birding break for autumn. While it's been away, I've been to Shetland for a week (exciting birding with such waifs as White's Thrush, Siberian Rubythroat, Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll, Myrtle Warbler, Swainson's Thrush), Barra (Outer Hebrides) for a day trip (for a Scarlet Tanager which hid for 7 hours and only came out for half an hour - luckily just as we arrived), Cornwall (another day trip and a big 840 mile dip), Cleveland (another dip), Norfolk... Oh, and I've spent some time on the smallholding too, mostly gathering in the harvest.

I guess a quick catch up is in order.

 

Well, this morning we had the first frost of the year. With only one light frost during the whole of last winter, some of the poultry were clearly puzzled by their water being frozen!



Frosty fleeces.
Fortunately the Shetlands are well adapted
for tough conditions

Some of the sheep are almost ready to go off on their final journey. They've certainly been doing a good job of munching down the grass. I've moved my Shetland ram (really must think of a name for him) in with four of the Shetland ewes. The two who had twins last year are getting a rest. The White-faced Woodland continues to escape and has been moved to the top paddock to keep the two girls company. They do like to boss him about.

Is it Boxing Day yet?

With Christmas (yes, I've mentioned the 'C' word) looming, the turkeys are growing fast. They have proven to be very likeable characters, much friendlier than we expected. I'm sure that won't stop us enjoying one for Christmas dinner though!














I can't remember how many guinea fowl keets there were when I last blogged, but it's been a difficult time for them. Some very wet weather back in September made survival of the chicks a very precarious affair and we came out of that with just 7 youngsters. When they were big enough, mum stopped going into a hut for the night and took them onto the fence, which resulted in another two disappearing overnight. We then had the nightly ritual of catching the remaining five and putting them in with Elvis and her fast growing chicks. Just a few days ago I took the decision that they could fend for themselves at night. Unfortunately yesterday I found another one perished so we are down to four. It all sounds a bit sad, but it wouldn't be right to confine the guinea fowls. Of all the birds we keep, they behave the most like wild birds and in the wild four survivors would be plenty enough to sustain the size of the flock. It just means that we don't get to sell any and that guinea fowl will remain be a special treat on the menu.

I mentioned Elvis. Our faithful broody is now the last of the original chickens which came with the farm when we purchased it. She has successfully reared another clutch of chicks. They have grown well and are remarkably bold. In fact a couple of them hop up into the feed bucket even when I'm carrying it around!

Another hen was determined to have her own chicks too. She tried several corners of the stables before eventually managing to keep secret a stash of 18 eggs. But she was disturbed on the night the chicks started hatching which resulted in the loss of a couple of new born chicks and the abandonment of the unhatched eggs. However, she has come out of it with 5 healthy chicks (there were six, but one got stick under an overturned dish and Sue only discovered this unfortunate mishap when it was too late.)




And lastly the bees. They have finally gone to bed after staying out very late this year. Hopefully the weather won't trick them into coming out again and they can reappear stronger than ever in the spring.

So here's looking forward to 2015!

Oooooooooh, Saucy!

 

Sue has been getting saucy. At the back, from left to right, we have Pontack Sauce, Sweet Chilli Sauce and home-made Brown Sauce. At the front is Spiced Plum and Port Jam, a revelation in taste!

 

I was chopping down an elder bush, which has been somewhat smothering a fig sapling, and it seemed a shame to let the bountiful bunches of deep purple berries go to waste. So they appeared in a basket on the kitchen bench.

 

Sue dug out a recipe for Pontack Sauce. I must admit to never having heard of this before. I've certainly never seen it on the shelf in Tesco. It is in fact a traditional English spicy elderberry sauce, served with duck, venison or game. It can also be used added into stews and supposedly gives them a wonderfully rich flavour. It was, however, invented by a Frenchman, Francois-Auguste de Pontac (1636-1694). In 1666 he came to London and opened what was to become a trendy society tavern frequented by the likes of Danuel Defoe and Swift.

Sue used Hugh F-W's recipe, but you can find plenty of recipes on the net. The kitchen filled with deliciously spicy and rich aromas as the sauce was boiling down. I would tell you that the sauce tasted delicious, but it needs to store for at least two months to develop its full taste. Apparently it will last for years and just keep getting better and better. A bit like Sue!

 

Not such a traditional recipe up next. We have plenty of chillis from the polytunnel this year, so Sue decided to turn some of them into chilli sauce. As the chillis, chopped onions, vinegar and sugar boiled up, this did not look too promising, though the vapours it was giving off certainly had a punch to them! However, once it was whisked up it began to look like the real deal and it tasted, well, like sweet chilli sauce. But there's something special when you make it yourself using ingredients you've grown.

 

Third up, and definitely available in Tesco, came brown sauce. I remember when, to enjoy brown sauce, you had to tip up the thick glass bottle and tap, tap, tap the bottom until out came a dollop of rich, spicy sauce. But something has happened to brown sauce. It now comes in an upside down squeezy plastic bottle from which squirts a slightly runny brown liquid. You would certainly be hard pushed to detect the main ingredients.

So Sue started off with a pile of apples and plums, malt vinegar, Worcester sauce and a handful of spices. The cauldron bubbled and spat and the kitchen filled with the smell of good old-fashioned brown sauce. That night I had sausages (our own) liberally dolloped with brown sauce. Perfect! And you know what, I had to tap, tap, tap the bottom of the bottle to get it out.

 

Lastly on Sue's list of alchemy came her Spicy Plum and Port Jam. All I can say is wonderful smell, wonderful colour, amazing taste. A wine connoisseur would really go to town on this one, for it has layer upon layer of tastes, ending with a rich, exotic hint of dates. Certainly one to make again.

 

Keets progress

Of the 32 guinea fowl eggs which were shared in the corner of the chicken pen, 12 hatched on 31st August. This was a slightly disappointing number, especially as at least another dozen had fully grown chicks inside. I don't know what happened there.















But life as a keet (that's a guinea fowl chick) is tough. Within the first week they were down to ten and then, just when I thought that the weakest had succumbed, I went down one morning and could find only 8. I later found one dead under an apple tree.
I don't know if it's just coincidence, but the same day I unearthed, under the biggest chicken house, a nest of young rats. They did actually look rather cute, but no mercy was shown! I have also raised the house up onto tyres. If the space underneath is big enough, the rats won't burrow under and feel safe.


A cute nest of ratlets.



But the guinea fowl saga has dragged on and on. Not quite sure when they started sitting, as we were away on honeymoon, we had almost given up hope on any hatching from either of the other two nests. But then on Saturday a fluffy little chick appeared next to G'nea, G'nea, the original mother of all guinea fowl who had devotedly sat on a wonderfully concealed nest further down the land.



3 very little keets. Look how much smaller they are than the one from the first hatch.

We left her undisturbed and I expected that, by Sunday evening, she would be attending to a small tribe of keets. But yesterday morning Sue came to tell me that she had moved back to the chicken enclosure, but with only three babies. This was very disappointing, especially as I had actually sold half a dozen keets and was hoping to be able to take three from each brood.




Sue retrieved the rest of the eggs and tried putting them under the third sitting guinea fowl. She also found one alive, half-hatched. She placed that under the girl too, but she showed no maternal instincts towards it and by this morning it had slipped away. however, when she stood up she had another chick underneath her, so I am now waiting with bated breath to see if any others hatch.

Meanwhile, down in the chicken enclosure, all the new youngsters are getting to know each other.





Elvis with her latest family.

ed  Intriguingly tonight, there are nine guinea fowl roosting up on the fence. This only leaves two adults for three broods! My guess is that the three very young keets have been adopted by the hen who has brought up the other eight. Either that, or the weasel who has appeared on the farm (and is most welcome) has had them, but I doubt it as all three were fit and healthy a couple of hours before dusk.

double ed   All three still there this morning, plus four new keets from the third nest!

What a Nice Pear!

We finally have enough fruit to just about constitute a crop! An unlikely star has emerged this year, for at the far end of the orchard a little pear tree has been flourishing.

Pear Concorde

It's not unknown for a chicken or guinea fowl to spend a few minutes jumping up and down to reach the pears. So it was that the lowest three pears on this tree had little chinks missing from them. I thought that if the poultry were enjoying them so much, I had better try one. I got a real surprise. Not only were the pears ready to eat but they were completely without blemish and tasted delicious. I'm not sure if I should really divulge my secret, but the variety is Concorde, a cross between Conference and Comice. Well done to whoever came up with that idea!

Unfortunately, Sue has also discovered how tasty these are so it doesn't look as if this year's harvest of about thirty pears is going to last very long. She doesn't even usually like pears. However, there are a few gaps need filling in the orchard so I will most definitely be looking out for more of this variety.

Stop the Bleating

A big day for the sheep today. Movements, treatments and separations.
First the movement bit. For the last week most of the sheep have been at the far end of the land, the last area to be grazed before they come right back to the beginning and start over again.
Until now, moving them from one section to another has been a doddle, for they are always chomping at the bit to get to the lush grass in the next section. But the task today was to get them all the way back through the previously grazed sections, some of which are pretty lush and green again, preferably without lingering too long.

The plan was that half way along they would be lured into a pen of hurdles. For once, the plan actually worked, apart from the White-faced Woodland who, as usual, was on a different side of the fence to everyone else.
Once encircled by sheep hurdles, we closed the hurdles in until the sheep were squashed in with no room to escape or jump. For we still needed to apply flystrike treatment to those who had evaded capture last week. This simply involves spraying some blue liquid down their backs and around their bum. It needs doing every six weeks as long as there are flies around. Hopefully this will be the final treatment of the year.

The White-faced Woodland, eventually reunited with the flock.

So one of today's aims was completed successfully.

Next job was to separate the Shetland lambs from their mums. For two of our ewes came with twin lambs at foot. The black lambs weaned themselves a while ago, but one of them is still 'intact' and needed to be separated from the females. The black and white lambs have continued to suckle, though more and more infrequently. But this puts a strain on mum and she now desperately needs a break so she can build up her condition ready for breeding later in the year.

This mum needs a break from her lambs

It seemed a good idea, while the sheep were tightly penned, to lift up the lambs and carry them down to the top paddock. I started with the  intact one and boy did he wriggle! Luckily he has small horns now, so I was able to 'lead' him. But it sure did seem a long way and my arms were aching by the end of it. I went back for his brother, but not having horns I had to carry him all the way. Let me tell you, by the end I was feeling as if my arms were about to drop off. I decided to leave the other two till later in the day.

Then, for the rest, it was onwards to the pasture closest to the farm. The Shetlands followed Sue and the bucket all the way. The others decided to linger a while. This was much better than it being the other way round, for the others are much tamer and easy to catch if necessary. In the end, we went back to them and it was easy to drive them to their destination.

Some of the Shetland ewes in their new home.

Back to the beginning of the rotation.
The grass has grown back nicely.

One thing I had forgotten was that the flock were now right next to the Shetland ram and his wether companion. It wouldn't take long for his loins to be girded. One determined fence hop and he would be in with the flock, which I did not want to happen... not yet, otherwise I could end up with lambs in January. So we hurriedly drove the two of them back out of the pig enclosure, where they have been eating down the weeds, and up the land to join the two black lambs in the top paddock. Sue led with a bucket, I followed behind, moving them along and making sure they did not turn back.

 

I needed a break before attempting to separate the final two lambs from their mother, so to fill the time I planted the oak 'sapling', an operation which had been interrupted by stumbling across a hornets nest several days ago. In fact. I used the hole vacated by the destruction of the underground nest to plant the oak into. If it grows, I'll always think of those hornets when I look at it.

 

With my arm muscles rested, I quickly moved the two lambs. They were easy to catch having become the tamest of the Shetlands, but I had to carry them all the way, kicking and protesting as we went (the lambs, not me!) For there was no way they would follow me away from their mother.

I put them into the top paddock with all the other boys and they spent the rest of the day bleating pathetically. People had told me they would do this but in fact they weren't quite so persistent as I had expected.

The lads size each other up.

Everyone is now settled in to their new homes. Rotating the flock through the pasture will be simple again for the next five weeks, when it will be time to come back to the beginning again.

Stirring Up a Hornet's Nest!

No pictures for this one. Read on and you'll understand why.

Remember the wasps nests from last week? Well, the saga goes on. Not a single wasp had emerged from the first nest after Sue squirted nasty white powder into the entrance hole.
So yesterday morning I deemed it safe to dig a big hole about a foot away in which to plant the oak 'sapling' which I had rescued from someone's garden. (It was actually about 8 foot tall when I got there. I dug out as much tap root as I could, but I don't rate its chances of survival. Trees are best moved when very small and in winter.)
So, there I am digging away when my foot gently breaks through the ground with an unfamiliar crunching sound. I had broken through into the underground paper caverns of the wasps nest. Not really a problem, except that dozens of wasps were sleepily crawling around and beginning to emerge!
I didn't really take the time to look at them closely when I first saw them, but I could now see that these 'wasps' were massive, about an inch long. They weren't wasps, they were hornets!!!
I had just plunged my foot into a hornets nest!

I guess that at this time of year many of them must stay in the nest and tend the queen and the brood. Anyway, I felt a bit guilty about this, but I liberally dusted the new hole I had made with white powder. I stayed to watch as more and more of these remarkable creatures emerged from underground. I then broke up the nest with my garden fork. If you've never seen a wasp or hornet nest, they are amazing - a huge paper teardrop and inside a multi-storey conurbation, layers of perfect hexagonal comb. This nest must have gone down about two foot. It was amazing. Even to excavate that much soil must have been quite a feat, let alone to fill up the underground space with such a wonderful structure.

But I had come along and destroyed the whole thing then waged chemical warfare on the entire population! The more I watched them, the more guilty I felt. So, to justify my use of weapons of mass destruction, I took to Wikipedia to find out a little more about hornets. I found out that in late summer there will be up to 700 hornets in a nest, but that only the fertilised queens survive the winter to start new colonies.

I also read the following, which I have copied here:

Hornets have stings used to kill prey and defend hives. Hornet stings are more painful to humans than typical wasp stings because hornet venom contains a large amount (pkp,5%) of acetylcholine.

Hornets, like many social wasps, can mobilize the entire nest to sting in defence, which is highly dangerous to animals, including humans. The attack pheromone is released in case of threat to the nest.

In light of that, I would advise that you never use a garden fork to destroy a hornets nest, and if you do attempt such an act, at least make sure you are wearing full protective clothing!!!

The queen hornet, back in the spring must have thought she had died and gone to heaven when she came upon this location to found her city, conveniently close not only to an orchard, but to a small group of bee hives too.
More information from Wikipedia:

Prey

Adult hornets and their relatives (e.g., yellowjackets) feed themselves on nectar and sugar-rich plant foods. Thus, they can often be seen on the sap of oak trees, rotting sweet fruits, honey and any sugar-containing foodstuffs. Hornets frequently fly into orchards to feast on over-ripe fruit. Hornets tend to gnaw a hole into fruit to be totally immersed in its meat. A person who accidentally plucks a fruit with a feeding hornet can be attacked by the disturbed insect.
The adults prey on various insects as well, which they kill with stings and jaws. Due to their size and the power of venom, hornets are able to kill large insects such as honey bees, grasshoppers, locusts and mantises without difficulty or much effort. The victim is fully masticated and then fed down in the form of slurry to the larvae developing in the nest, rather than consumed by the adult hornets. Given that some of their prey are considered pests, hornets may be considered beneficial under some circumstances.

On balance, I think that hornets and their nests are amazing creations, but sadly there is not room for them here on my smallholding. Too many conflicts of interest.

Now all I have to do is find the source of the wasps which are still raiding the middle hive. I have tried following their flight path, but it comes to an end at the top of a willow tree. I'm pretty sure their nest is not in this, so they must be using it as a stopping off point before heading home.
If I do find the nest, I'll make sure I put a bee suit on before I tackle it!

Fog and a Short-eared Owl

Yesterday morning, the view from the bedroom window was like this...

The first fog of the autumn was a sure sign of high pressure. It soon cleared though and the day that followed was a good one. Firstly, we got the mower back, repaired. Even better, Errol is going to fix my Allen Scythe and my trailer too! Then remarkably I found another wasps nest, in the dyke. I was clearing some nettles when I started getting buzzed. Another lucky escape.

One of the guinea fowl keets didn't have such a lucky escape though. Late morning it was struggling to keep up with the others and by early afternoon we were down to ten. We started with twelve, so losses thus far are about what would be expected. The biggest surprise was that of the 20 eggs which were left abandoned, at least a dozen contained fully grown chicks. I'm not sure what happened there. Anyway, ten is enough and there are signs that the other two nests might be hatching soon.

 

As for the wasps, Sue donned her bee suit again and destroyed the nest (nasty powder puffed into the entrance hole). However, there is still a fairly steady stream of wasps heading into the middle hive. Despite introducing a new queen, I'm not optimistic about the colony's chances of survival. I've already found two wasp nests in three days. Chances of me finding any remaining nests are slim but I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Anyway, back to that high pressure. Hopefully it will mean that the next couple of days stay dry and warm enough to allow me to make headway into the grass which has now grown rather long. I have put the geese into the veg patch to nibble it down a little. They are well happy!

The high pressure extends right over Scandinavia too, and at this time of year that means birds! A large female Sparrowhawk shot low over the farm yesterday. I've not seen one for a good few months and I'm guessing it was a migrant. Could explain where the slow guineafowl keet went.
The Swallows are still with us, though they are out of the stables now and beginning to congregate at the tops of the Ash trees, chattering constantly. I reckon they're giving directions for the journey south.
When I woke up this morning, the garden was alive with birds. There must have been a dozen blackbirds in the Ash trees and a similar number of Great Tits - too many to be accounted for by our resident population. The first lapwings of the autumn were flying over too. But it was to get much better. For when I wandered down to check on the sheep, I took the opportunity to scan the freshly ploughed fields and up from a dyke, chased by a raucous crow, came a Short-eared Owl. A buzzard quickly got in on the act, chasing it into the sky as it flapped lazily over my head and over the farm. As it went over the chickens, quite high now, the swallows all rose to harass it. It's not often that these two species meet here, for the owl is an early one and the swallows will be leaving very soon.

With a bit of luck it will be another good winter for Short-eared Owls. I'll never forget the sight of three hunting together over the farm a couple of years ago.

Barcelona Beans

Barcelona have Messi, Neymar and Suarez up front. A ridiculous embarrassment of riches.

I have a similar embarrassment of riches. I have Borlotti, Rocquencourt and Cobra, plus Tendergreens, Canada Wonders, Pea Beans and Blue Lake - an embarrassment of beans.
They all grow well (as long as I am patient and leave sowing them until uncomfortably late in the spring). They all crop well. They all taste delicious.

I also grow runner beans, two types. I feel I should grow runner beans. Every veg patch has runner beans. I can't be a proper gardener if I don't grow runner beans. If you know your football, runner beans are my Fred. In the team, but nobody quite knows why.
To be honest if you put a runner bean and a French bean next to each other, I'd go for the French every time. And there's no risk of ending up with a mouthful of stringiness (even 'stringless' runners end up stringy if you neglect picking them, which I inevitably do when all those crisp, fresh French beans are growing right next door.)

I do like the flowers, though, as do the bees. So the runners survive in the plan, but just for drying and using through the winter.



The French beans
You'll have to excuse the long grass - the mower's broken... again.

The French beans fall into two categories. Borlottis, Pea Beans and Canada Wonder are all grown just for drying, for the beans inside the pods.

The rest are grown for the pods, to be eaten fresh or sliced and frozen for later.
Cobra beans are climbers, which crop early and heavily, but which are gone all too soon. Blue Lake are similar. There's nothing between them really, but I suspect that if I measured the yield carefully the Cobras would just edge it. Besides, they have wonderful black beans inside. The Blue Lake have white beans.
Then there are the Rocquencourts. Dwarf yellow beans which snap crisply and have a wonderful waxy texture. Even with a failure first time round (too cold, too dry, didn't make it past the slugs and rabbits), the second attempt which I netted has yielded several bags of beans for the freezer.
So that just leaves the Dwarf Tendergreens. These came in a mixed packet from Poundland or some such shop, so I wasn't expecting too much. In fact, I forgot about them until yesterday when I noticed bunches of beans hiding below the leaves. So I picked a few to try and they were disappointingly good, even the ones which had grown a little long and fat. I say 'disappointingly' as this leaves me with my Barcelona bean situation. A ubiquity of quality.

Then there are the broad beans and, just for the extravagance, the Yardlong beans in the polytunnel.

So, here's my team. The final eleven.

Borlotti Bean 'Lingua de Fuoco'

French Bean 'Canada Wonder' (kidney beans)

Pea Bean

Runner Bean Armstrong (red)

Runner Bean 'White Lady'

Climbing French Bean 'Cobra'

Climbing French Bean 'Blue Lake'

Dwarf French Bean 'Tendergreen'

Dwarf French Bean 'Rocquencourt'

Broad Bean 'Bunyard's Exhibition'

Yardlong Bean

 

Just don't make me choose one to leave on the bench.

There's A Buzz Around The Place

Last week a strange package arrived in the post. A sealed, padded brown envelope... and it was buzzing!

Believe it or not, live bees actually get sent through the post. But this was not just any old bee. This was a queen, along with a small gang of attendants to look after her on her journey. They come in a plastic box, sealed in with candy.
Upon arrival, they are placed in the hive, but first contact with her new subjects will only be after they have eaten through the candy. This hopefully gives enough time for the hive to get used to the queen's pheromones and not attack her as an intruder.



You can just make out the queen,
marked with a green spot.

Ideally we wouldn't be buying a queen and getting her sent through the post, but for a while now one of the hives has contained no eggs and no brood. There are still, however, plenty of bees inside so it was worth saving. The alternative would be to unite it with one of the other hives to bolster up the size of the colony ready to go into the winter. But both of the other hives are doing very well indeed without reinforcements.
Twice Sue has tried to introduce frames of eggs to this hive, in the hope that the bees would make one of them into a queen - for remarkably they are able to do this - but neither time has it succeeded. This could mean that there is already a queen in the hive but she is not laying. If that is the case, then our expensive purchase of a new queen will not work, for she will be killed by the old queen. But Sue has searched and searched and not been able to find a queen.

It is getting late in the year to introduce a queen, but the colony would not survive much longer without new blood. Already it is being raided by wasps. Normally a strong colony can repel them, but as it weakens, so more and more make it past the bees' defences and into the hive to steal the honey. Sue has narrowed the entrance to make it easier for the bees to defend. It's like war. To further help the bees, for we are most definitely taking sides and intervening in this war, there is an array of wasp traps hung around the hives. They catch a lot of wasps, but there must be a nest nearby so we'll never catch enough of them.
There's also a new-fangled device hanging next to the hives. It's called a Waspinator! It's basically a mock wasp nest and the idea is that visiting wasps will see it and stay clear. However, it does not really work at this time of year if there is already a real nest in the area. The manufacturers do make this clear, but we've put it up anyway just in case it helps.



Here you can see various wasp traps hanging around the hives.
The grey bag hanging up is the Waspinator.

Last year I was fortunate enough to locate a wasp nest - just a hole in the ground from which emerged a steady flow of yellowjackets. Remarkably yesterday I managed to locate the source of this year's wasps. I actually had a lucky escape, for I was just about to start digging to plant an oak sapling when I noticed a hole in the long grass. Initially I thought it to be a rat hole, but then I noticed a stream of stripy black and yellow bodies crawling to the entrance and heading off to do their worst - either to the bee hives or to the orchard.



No apologies for the quality of the picture.
No way I was getting too close!

I'm afraid that, remarkable creatures as they are, wasps are not welcome here on the farm. So it was that at 5:30am today Sue donned her bee suit and headed toward the hole in the ground armed with a tube of white powder. A few puffs down the hole resulted in the emergence of a small gang of wasps, which is why we (Sue) were performing this operation at first light.

Now all we have to do is wait and see if it has worked. In a couple of days, Sue will be able to look in the bee hive again too. If all has gone well, there will be newly laid eggs. If not, we'll be heading into the winter with just two colonies of honey bees instead of three.

Sweetcorn decimated

Just a quick one. Thank goodness we harvested these when we did.



192 sweetcorn cobs in a wheelbarrow

For, although some of them had not had sufficient time to properly ripen, they certainly ended up better than these....

















As predicted, the harvesting of the fields drove the rats across the dyke, with catastrophic results for the sweetcorn. Fortunately, they don't touch any of the other crops. Besides, they've started taking the bait I put down, so the problem should soon be eradicated.


Guinea Gnanza

"Money is the seed of money and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million." I think Jean-Jacques Rousseau may have been confusing his guineas.

I really wasn't holding out much hope so I didn't mention this before. The appointed time has been approaching, but I wasn't sure when they started sitting. They just quietly slipped off and were only conspicuous by their absence on the roosting fence at night.
Last year they laid dozens of eggs but we did our best to disrupt them. We didn't want a whole population roaming around the place. We decided that a family of eleven was enough. Eventually some did sneak off and sit, but it all came to nothing.

This year I decided to let them sit, on condition that if any hatch we start eating them! (We will, of course, wait until they are a bit bigger). And so, for a while now, there have only been five guineafowl sitting on the fence at night, presumably the males.

There are three nests: one in the corner of the chicken pen where three fowl have been sitting on 32 eggs; one under the soft fruits, containing maybe 15 or so eggs sat upon by two fowl; the third took some finding. I presume it's the oldest female who has buried herself deep in the grass in the young woodland. I have no idea how many eggs she is sitting on.

A couple of days ago there was a false alarm when all five males were in close attendance of the nest in the chicken pen. I was half expecting to see stripy heads poking out from under the wings of their mothers, but when they moved there were just 32 eggs to be seen.

Anyone with any ability in maths has probably worked out that we could end up with rather a lot of guineafowl! But I've not been optimistic about the chances of any hatching and even if some do, they will run the gauntlet of rats and other predators. Guineafowl are brave and protective parents though. More of a threat will be long, damp grass, for this kills more guineafowl chicks than anything else.

Well, if you've been reading carefully, you've probably guessed that today the hatching has begun! I went to give the chickens their afternoon feed and collect eggs when I noticed that only one guineafowl hen was sitting in the corner. Half the eggs had disappeared and there were eggshell remnants in the grass. Not quite sure what had gone on, I guessed that maybe something (rat?) had disturbed the nest. But as I approached close, the hen got up and there, on top of all the other eggs, were three extremely small guineafowl chicks.

I quickly retreated and left them in peace. Only another 29 to hatch. That's from this nest! Pictures to follow.

Big, Bouncy Recycling

I collect as much rainwater as I can, of course. I am, after all, on metered water. There are some green reasons too, and water quality. Plants, unlike us, would rather their drink wasn't cold, hard and treated.

I have some green water butts, but they are getting old and need a bit of attention. When we moved here, there were also two 1000 litre containers balanced on pallets. They are industrial / agricultural and fairly easy to get round here. If I remember correctly, they are known as IPCs, though it could be three different letters!
Anyway, the guttering from the outbuildings had been cobbled together to lead the water into these. The trouble was that when they filled up the water just spilled out of the top. Not a problem in itself, except that a tower of pallets with a tonne of water on top does not last long, especially when it is being constantly dowsed in water.

Eventually I had to take the IPCs down and since then I have been trying to come up with a way of raising them up. Sleepers was an option, but not a cheap one. Concrete plinths was another option, again not cheap and I don't really like using concrete unless I have to.

But last week I had a bit of a brainwave. What about tyres? What about tractor tyres? A quick look on ebay and I'd placed a bid. £1 for two. Two days later and I'd won them, for 99p. Three days later and I'd got the measurements and figured out they wouldn't fit in my car or my livestock trailer!

Over to Don the friendly neighbour, and yesterday morning I was heading over to the other side of Kings Lynn to collect my tractor tyres. When I got there, they were huge! Goodness knows how big the tractor had been. Not only that, but they were heavy, especially as the rims had filled with water. We had about an inch to spare across the trailer, but unfortunately they wouldn't quite both fit in flat lengthways, which made for a somewhat bouncy drive home. I certainly drove gently, especially along some of our bumpier fenland roads.

An unusual load

I kept a careful eye on my bouncy load on the way home.

 I got back to the farm and set about hauling and rolling the tyres into position.


Giant specs

There was always the chance that they would be too big for the IPCs, in which case they would make impressive raised beds. But actually they were a pretty good fit.

The next test is whether or not they will support 1000kg of water. If not, the plan is to fill them with rubble and soil. If that still doesn't work, it'll be back to raised beds and trying to figure out how to raise the IPCs off the ground.
An afternoon of teaching myself how to route guttering and I now have a way of capturing two cubic metres of water at a time. A little more plumbing and they will be connected to hosepipes and have overflows leading to a pond which is not yet dug.

All I need now is a good rainstorm