YOU KEEP AWAY FROM THE BIRDMAN

"YOU KEEP AWAY FROM THE BIRDMAN, GRACIE," my father had warned me often enough. "Keep well clear of him, you hear me now?" And we never would have gone anywhere near him, Daniel and I, had the swans not driven us away from the pool under Gweal Hill where we always went to sail our boats.

The opening lines of Why The Whales Came, my favourite book by my favourite children's author, Michael Morpurgo. I've just started reading it with a couple of the children I teach. This, as you'll see, is a remarkable coincidence.

The first time I dipped Great Blue Heron, Britain's first record, on the Isles of Scilly back in 2007, I distinctly remember the waves breaking over Bryher - not just the beach but over the whole island!

The second time I dipped Great Blue Heron, I couldn't even see Bryher - the whole of the Scilly Isles were cloaked in thick fog. And that was just last Wednesday.

But when I disconsolately boarded the Scillonian III late afternoon last Wednesday, I didn't expect Bryher to be weighing quite so heavily on my mind all weekend. For on Thursday evening the Great Blue Heron, having given the run around to so many who had dropped everything to try to see it, was relocated on Big Pool, Bryher. This is that very same 'pool under Gweal Hill' in the book.

The pool under Gweal Hill, aka Big Pool, Bryher

And there the Great Blue Heron (henceforth known just as GBH) stayed, more or less, all weekend. In any other circumstances, I'd have been straight back down to the Scilly Isles, but circumstances colluded to keep me on the farm. There was no getting out of it. While those who take their twitching at a slightly more leisurely pace headed down to those famous birding islands to see this beast of a heron, only the second to cross the Atlantic and be found in Britain, I was at home, licking my wounds after my two previous misses and straining at the leash to get back down there.
The GBH was weighing heavily on my mind and it seemed inescapable. Everywhere I turned on the internet I came face to face with images of it.

Finally the time came. GBH had become personal. The first dip, back in 2007, had taken us by surprise. We really had expected to see that bird. Even worse was that the truly horrendous weather had us stranded on the islands and cost me a day's pay. It still stands as my most expensive dip (don't ask how much). Last Wednesday the bird was watched feeding in Old Town Bay all morning until 11 o'clock, just an hour before the Scillonian III was due to arrive with us on board. Had it not been foggy, we would have flown on and arrived in time. Had the tide not been up, the bird might not have flown off into the fog. Had we been differently placed at 2:40pm we might have caught up with the bird when it was briefly refound further up the island.

With this history, nothing was to be taken for granted. The overnight drive down to Cornwall was uneventful, if long, but we arrived with time to catch up on a couple of hour's sleep in the car. The Scillonian was leaving early today, which told me that there was something abnormal about the tides. The weather, at least, was gorgeous. No gales, no fog. Just blue skies.
A couple more hours sleep in the quiet area down in the belly of the boat and I emerged refreshed to news that the bird was still present this morning. But still I was taking nothing for granted. I had butterflies in my stomach and they had pretty much been fluttering around in there since Thursday evening.
The boat docked early and we formed an impatient queue on the quay to hop straight onto another boat. The Scilly Boatmen had a boat ready for us and we were soon chugging across to Bryher. Due to the low tide, we headed right out past Samson (a cursed island in Why The Whales Came, where none of the islanders dared to step) and round the back of Bryher.
By now, most of us had taken off our shoes and socks and rolled up our trousers, for we had been warned that this may not be a dry landing. In fact, there was another boat first, for we were shuttled across closer to the sand in a small rib. I didn't make the first shuttle, but didn't have too long to wait before I just about made it into the second rib (though by now any amount of time was too long as far as I was concerned).
No photos of this delightful scene, I'm afraid. The bird was all that I was thinking about. We jumped into the clear, shallow water, paddled to the beach and headed straight up the sand and across the island. Most of us were still barefoot, though a few thorns had some hopping along trying to pull on their shoes.

It didn't take too long until we could see the birders from the first shuttle rib lined up along the edge of Big Pool.
I ran up alongside them and there, on the other side of the pool, was the object of my quest. First views, through the bins, were enough to confirm its identity and get it on the list. But you should be able to tell from this account that it's not just about the tick on the list.

Great Blue Heron...My first view

After that I could relax and enjoy the sight. We had enjoyed a bit of an adventure to land on a beautiful island bathed in sunshine and now we were looking down the barrels of our scopes at Britain's second ever Great Blue Heron.

This was not a conventional twitch, as you can see! Look closely at the man in the light green coat.












We soon found a better vantage point and the bird even had the decency to fly much closer to us. Even just using my phone held up to the scope, I managed to get some half decent images.

This had, so far, been just about the perfect twitch. The GBH was more impressive than I had anticipated. It was most definitely beyond just a tick.
But there was the possibility of doing something else which I could not resist. For, with the tide so low, it was possible to walk from Bryher across to Tresco. So the trousers got rolled up again and we tried to avoid the quicksand and beat the incoming tide.

Soon we had crossed this:

No, I haven't yet learned to walk on water. In fact it was more like this when we crossed...

 

Once over on the other side, we walked the delightfully tropical paths which skirt Great Pool. Dan imagined finding an American warbler in this luxuriant growth. We emerged on the shores of Abbey Pool, where we were able to study the subtle plumage of a drake American Black Duck. (This one really is boring! But it's still amazing that it's come all the way over The Atlantic to settle here.)

We were more interested in checking out the swallows and martins, but we found nothing more unusual. We headed back to Great Pool to search for a Green-winged Teal, but to no avail. I was lucky to bump into an unexpected Wryneck, a nice bird to find and not a bird you see every day.

By now the time to depart the islands was approaching. We still had an inter island boat to catch back to board The Scillonian. We had to stop by the New Grimsby Inn for a salted caramel ice cream before waiting at the quay. The tide was coming in at quite a staggering rate and a small shoal of mullet were wheeling around in the clear waters.
Across the channel, the Bryher boat was somewhat more full than ours.

Happy birders waiting for the return boat from Bryher

 Our boat was a lot less cramped.

As we waited to depart, apparently the GBH flew from Bryher and passed right over us before dropping in somewhere near Great Pool on Tresco. We didn't notice it! Good job it didn't decide to do that earlier in the day, or we wouldn't have had quite such a relaxing time.

The Kingfisher dropped us at the quay just in time to board The Scillonian. A celebratory strong coffee and bacon roll before grabbing a bit more sleep ready for the long drag home.
There was time to drop into Marazion Marsh on the mainland, where a Great White Egret had the good grace to fly up out of the reeds, do a circuit and drop back in again. Just for us. A few miles up the road, a Ring-billed Gull was quickly located on Ryan's Field at the Hayle.

Then it was foot to the floor (minor diversion at Bodmin for Fish and Chips) and back to The Fens.
By 2:30am I was heading upstairs for a well-earned deep sleep.

In Why The Whales Came, the story develops to revolve around a group of narwhals which beach on the shores of Bryher. Now, if that happened I'd be straight back down there. It's not just birds.

Not So Great Blue Heron

My highlight bird of the week.
And no, it's not a Great Blue Heron.

If you're expecting photos of Britain's second ever Great Blue Heron, or even a thrilling description of the bird and its behaviour, then you'd better go find someone else's blog - someone who actually saw it!
No. This is a tale of woe, but quite possibly an unfinished tale. The story starts on 7th December 2007 with breaking news of Britain's first ever Great Blue Heron being found on the pools at Lower Moors, St Marys, Isles of Scilly. Great Blue Heron is the American version of our Grey Heron. The weather that weekend was horrendous, but we headed down overnight into the storm and crossed over to St Marys in the morning, more confident than usual that we would be adding a new bird to our lists. After all, the heron had found a perfect place to live, or at least to stay for a while. It was probably freshly in from America so would need a few days to feed up and regain its strength. And finally there was no way anything was going anywhere in this weather. The waves were literally crashing over the island and the buildings in Hugh Town were being pummelled, fresh seaweed being hurled up against their walls with every incoming wave.
Well, you've probably guessed what happened by now. No sign of the Great Blue Heron. Not ever. Never to be seen again. We trudged all over the island that day, getting pretty soaked, windswept and deflated in the process. To make it worse, the only way off the islands on Sunday morning was to get across to the heliport at Tresco, the neighbouring island. But there was no way that any of the boatmen were going to take us across, so we ended up stuck on the islands with a whole extra day to trudge around in our soul-destroying search. There was always a chance that we would get stuck, but at the time the priority was just to get across to the islands and see the bird. We could sort out minor details like getting back for work after that. Well, that was the plan and it all went rather spectacularly wrong. With the day's pay that I got docked, this entered the record books as my most expensive dip of all time.

Now, some seven years later, the pain of that miss has just about worn off. My life has changed a lot, but birds are still a big part of it. This Tuesday morning I was feeling pretty happy. For when I looked out of the window I found two Tree Sparrows, an ever rarer sight in our English countryside, dining at my feeders and even collecting nest material from the ground. These have been absent from the farm for the last two years, so I was thrilled by this sighting.

But the day was to take an unexpected turn. For that evening I came back from putting the chickens to bed to find my pager flashing and missed calls on my phone.
There was another Great Blue Heron in the country. It was on The Isles of Scilly, St Marys Island from the hide at Lower Moors. The exact same place that the first one was found. Not only that, but it was watched till dark feeding in the shallow waters of the adjacent Old Town Bay.
The timing was perfect. I was not due at work till Friday. Sue was going away this weekend, but I could be down to Scilly and back before she went. Perfect! Two hours later I was heading down to the outskirts of London to meet up with some birding mates from my old life in London and Kent. And by 6 o'clock Wednesday morning we were in Penzance ready for the almost 3 hours crossing. We would like to have flown, not only for speed and comfort but because we would get longer to see the bird. But the islands were enveloped in thick fog and for the third day running no planes were running so the only option was to wait till 9:15 and chug across on the Scillonian III.

We quickly had news from the island that the heron was still there and regular updates as we sailed towards our target through the fog had us feeling pretty confident that this time we would mend some of those old wounds and finally get to see Great Blue Heron in Britain.
But at 11am news came through that the bird had vanished from the bay where it was feeding and could not be relocated. This was worrying but not disastrous as there were about 70 people about to arrive on the island to help with the search. It wouldn't be too long before someone refound it .

...

...

...

Come half past two in the afternoon our mood was becoming somewhat less optimistic. We had about an hour left before we had to head back for the boat. Rich had to be back for a pre-wedding photo shoot (not something that's easily missed) and I really needed to get back to the farm. Overnight one of our ewes had slightly taken us by surprise and given birth. Sadly, the lamb had not survived the birth. The other animals needed looking after too and Sue would not be around to do it.
The thought of needing to stay on the island had not even crossed our minds till now.

Our undoing had been the tides, for the rising waters had clearly pushed the bird away from where it was happy feeding and the tide would not be going down again until after the boat had left the island! It was almost certain that the heron would return to the bay to feed in the evening, so with that in mind most of the travelling birders had decided to miss the boat and stay on the island, including half of our team. Rich and I were becoming pretty disconsolate when suddenly news came through that the bird had been refound in a weedy field further up the island. We ran back to the road and bundled into the first passing taxi. A five minute dash, out of the taxi only to be told that the bird had flown again.
We were firmly in headless chicken mode by now! We decided to head back to where we had just come in a bid to outwit the bird, but there was no sign when we got there. We met other birders with tales of poor views of two herons, one bigger than the other, one darker than the other, but it seemed no one had enjoyed great views. But right now any view would do! We had about 20 minutes left before we had to leave in the knowledge that while we were sitting on that miserable boat everybody else was sure to be enjoying protracted views of the heron as it returned to Old Town Bay to feed.

At that moment a heron flew toward us and dropped into an area at the back of the reeds, but try as we might we could not turn it into the Great Blue. There is no happy ending to this tale.

The time had come. We had to go. Ahead of us was a three hour chug across the sea, a five hour drive back to London and, for me, another two hours back to the farm. There was also the prospect of when we would be doing this whole trip again. In all likelihood we would be driving back on Thursday night if we had the energy. Not only would I be totally knackered, but the list of jobs to do on the farm would be mounting, I would have to ask favours of people and I would probably be in the dog house too!

And so to this morning. Amazingly the bird did not return to any of its favourite spots yesterday evening and, so far, it has not been found this morning. Rich's photo shoot may inadvertently have saved us from further misery.
I'm sure the story's not over yet, but as long as the bird does not reappear today it does seem like there is time for us to catch our breath and muster ourselves for the next attempt.

Meanwhile I am watching goldfinches and greenfinches on my feeders and hoping for the reappearance of the tree sparrows. I am anxiously keeping an eye on my pager too.



Edit: The 2 Tree Sparrows are still here.

... and the GBH has just reappeared on Bryher, another of the Scilly Isles.

Warning. Post contains rooed images.

I've not talked about the sheep for a while.
Well the grass has finally started growing and we may have lambs on the way. I say "may" as it's all a bit unplanned.
It all depends on Rambo really.

RAMBO... up close and personal

The one benefit of having to feed the sheep over the winter is that they will at least now follow a bucket, which make moving them much easier. Their wild Shetland instincts are still there and they won't stand for being touched. All, that is, except Rambo, who in just the past 2 weeks has suddenly decided to be friends.
He has needed a little training not to playfully butt me! This consists of me grabbing him by the horns and holding him for about 30 seconds so he knows who is boss. Gradually he is beginning to respond to my stern teacher's voice too.

Anyway, he now runs over to see me and loves a stroke under the chin. He also loves having his wool plucked. Shetlands are self-shedding. This means that their wool falls out of its own accord. For a while they look a right mess. When they start shedding their wool can simply be plucked, or 'rooed'.
So far only the wool from Rambo's neck has come loose enough to be rooed, but it makes a fine god-beard for me!

In fact, one of the lambs is moulting so fast that his wool comes out in handfuls. The other day I managed to catch him and pretty much sheared him in 5 minutes. The only problem is that I couldn't get to his rump end - they seem to start shedding from the head backwards so this end was not quite ready to come, even if I could reach it.
The end result is rather reminiscent of an advert for a certain well known chain of opticians.

An Easter Swallow

Yesterday was Easter Sunday. I haven't turned religious, but it marked the most important day in the calendar. It is not a fixed date but it is one which marks hope and new growth.
For as I was digging out a new pond, I happened to glance up just at the right time to see a swallow disappearing through the window into the stables. Before I continue, I'd like to do something very unusual and apologise for being wrong. It's not the apology which is rare, it's me being wrong! But I did say in a recent blog that the swallows wouldn't be back until later in the month. So the appearance of this single swallow took me somewhat by surprise. But when I checked up, they returned on 8th April last year, so three days earlier this year.
The morning had seen a large flock, maybe 50, of wild swans departing to the north, so it was definitely a case of out with the winter and in with the summer.
Last year six swallows returned together and alerted me to their presence with their excited overhead chattering. This year's bird is a lone bird, but it headed straight into the stable as if it knew where it was going and rested up there for quite some time before heading into the sky over the farm to feed up.

For reasons I won't go into (not to do with Sue), I am making myself scarce in the house at the moment and spending about 12 hours a day outside. I am achieving plenty. I have had some help too. For the guinea fowl have been putting a lot of effort into turning my onion bed into a very fine tilth.

I obliged them by planting all my onion sets today, 350 of them in total.
I have placed them in rows 10" apart (25cm new money). When I have squeezed the spacing in the past, not only do the onions come out smaller but hoeing down the rows is a nightmare, normally resulting in the beheading of at least a couple of onions.
I have spaced the Giant Stuttgarters at 6" apart to give them plenty of space to grow into fine specimens. The Red Barons are closer at 4" apart.

Needless to say, I've netted them all just in case the guinea fowl return!

A temporary new home for the cockerels

A few weeks back we moved four young cockerels up into one of the stables. Three reasons. One: they had started fighting with each other and they don't hold back. Two: they had started harassing the hens too much. Three: they needed to fatten up.
Too many cockerels in the chicken pen just causes stress for everyone. As soon as we remove a few, the whole place settles down. Calm pecking about takes over from manic chasing around.
We have left two cockerels. One, the big white one, tends to stay in the chicken pen and keep the girls in order there. The other, the barred grey one which used to jump into the food bucket as we carried it along, hops the fence and spends the day wandering the farm with his harem. Together they do a good job. They are bossy enough to keep everyone in order, but gentle enough to look after their girls.

As for the cockerels which moved into the stable, don't worry. It's not like some fenland cockfighting pit! For once removed from the girls they settle down and chill out ... and fatten up.
But the boys have been ejected from their stable again since it is needed as a lambing pen and the other two stables are occupied by the geese. Enter at your peril as there are three nests set up within.

Fortunately we have acquired some moveable fencing which means we can easily build extensions and partitions in the chicken pen. And so last weekend I set them up a new home. It's got all the conveniences a chicken needs - a house, a feeder and a water trough. It's got grass, even a couple of small trees, fresh air and sky.

All in all it's a more interesting place for the cockerels than the stable. In fact it's a little too interesting for them because, just on the other side of the fence cluck the hens and strut the two chosen cockerels. It's like letting a child look at the toys but not touch.
I was a little worried that all of this would get their testosterone going again and, to begin with, it did. But after a few hours the four boys settled down. They all went into their house together on the first night and they haven't looked back since then. What's more, I swear that they have grown noticeably since moving back outside.

Once the boys are gone (don't ask where!), I'm planning on using the new extension to house a trio of Ixworth chickens which will give us a constant supply of meat birds. There's also enough fencing to build a nice new enclosure for the three turkeys which should be coming soon.

An inventory of the farm's more commonly seen birds.

I've just uncovered another bird feeder while sorting out the stables, so setting that up is one quick job for outside today.  But it's a Good Friday for staying indoors. Grey sky, drizzle and cold air. I'll just sort out my seeds, drink coffee and watch the birds on the feeders. Even I have a lazy day occasionally.

It's been a very quiet winter for birds here on the farm.
I moved the feeders into a more sheltered spot, as the wind was blowing them all over the place and throwing the seed all over the floor. They're also now right in front of the patio doors. Watching the birds at the feeders is on my list of things of which I will never tire.
The niger feeders have been full of squabbling goldfinches. The fat balls are the preserve of the agile blue tit, while its bigger cousin, the great tit prefers to dart in, grab a seed and disappear again. We enjoyed a brief visit by a couple of long-tailed tits, the most delicate of birds but only an occasional visitor to the farm. A small colony of house sparrows chatter from inside nearby bushes, hopping around on the ground with the chaffinches mopping up the scraps. Unfortunately tree sparrows seem to be a thing of the past. Another ground feeder is the dunnock and a pair are always present. They have even learned to perch on the feeders. Then, of course there are the robins, bossing all the other birds, and the ubiquitous blackbirds. At quieter times a pair of collared doves comes to the feeders too, though there's not much on the ground for them. I would love to scatter seed everywhere, but this would quickly attract the rats.
I recently acquired a no-no feeder which I have filled with sunflower seeds. Within days, greenfinches became a regular visitor and a reed bunting ventured close to the house. No yellowhammers this year though. They only come onto the farm in the harshest of conditions, though it wont be long before they can be heard singing from nearby hawthorn bushes "a little bit of bread and no cheeeeese".
Always around in the garden, but with no reason to visit the feeders, are wrens. Goodness knows how many we actually have here. Another loiterer is the song thrush.  I am very pleased that we seem to have a pair moved back into the garden.

Keeping a bit more distance from the house, mistle thrushes, stock doves and woodpigeons tend to stay in the old ash trees or come to the ground only right in the open. Fortunately most of the woodpigeons stay out in the fields. Great spotted woodpeckers and the occasional green woodpecker visit the ash trees too and early in the morning crows perch in them scanning for loot. Very occasionally a buzzard will seek rest in the branches of the ash trees, but it never takes long for the crows to harass them.

Of course, the stars of the show are the owls. At this time of year, barn owls regularly hunt over the farm and along the dykes. They've got young to feed and are much more active during the day. Just occasionally, late evening or early morning, we surprise one which has settled up in the old ash trees.
Then, of course, there are the little owls. Our pair are surprisingly secretive, as little owls can be very showy. But early afternoon they always start calling and any time spent outside in the crepuscular hours is sure to guarantee a sighting of them. Seeing owls is another thing on my 'never tire of' list.

The winter has been surprisingly lacking in raptors. No merlin. No harriers. Just a couple of passing peregrines. Kestrels, of course, do very well here all year round and buzzards are becoming more and more common.

The red kite has still not spread into the fens. I did see one low over the farm last week though. Only the third record in over four years. There's obviously a bit of movement going on at the moment though, as in the last week, as well as the red kite, I've had a woodcock fly through late one evening and a short-eared owl has been quartering the fields in the late afternoons. This latter species didn't winter in the area this year, so I presume this one is making its way back towards its breeding grounds.

The fields are home to lapwings (up to a thousand earlier this year) and golden plovers too, though they have long since departed. The last week has seen the disappearance of the winter thrushes too, redwings and fieldfares. Keeping sheep over winter has meant that these have stayed around the farm this year. Up to about a hundred of each have been around, hopping around on the ground in the sheep field. A couple of the redwings became remarkably tame and spent much of their time around the chicken pen. The sheep have attracted a couple of magpies too, though their cousin the jackdaw is more regularly seen flying over in noisy parties, commuting between villages. Jays are only very occasional visitors too and rooks even rarer.

I am hoping that the sheep paddocks will attract migrating wheatears this year too. The first year we were here, the grass was short in April and we had up to nine wheatears drop in late in the month, with up to four together. Since then, though, we have managed the grassland differently and I have only seen a couple more all too briefly.
And in the longer grass in the young woodland the pheasants and partridges hang out. Sadly grey partridges are a very rare sight now, though I think they are still around in very small numbers. We've not had any sizeable flocks of skylarks or meadow pipits this winter either. The skylarks have started singing again though - it seems that any vaguely sunny day gives them an excuse.

And right at the back of the farm runs the dyke. It has, in the past, attracted snipe, a jack snipe and singles of redshank, greenshank and green sandpiper. More usual though are a couple of mallards, perhaps a teal and maybe a grey heron or a little egret in the winter.

A pair of pied wagtails have moved back onto the farm. I don't know where they go in the winter, but they are back in late March every year. I like to think that it's the same pair. They always choose to nest in the most bizarre locations - under pallets, being their favourite.

And so we move into the spring. Some birds leave the farm but others arrive, and some merely pass through on their way somewhere else.

It won't be long until the pondside bushes hold chiffchaffs, blackcaps and whitethroats and yellow wagtails call as they fly low over nearby fields. They'll be followed by reed warblers and sedge warblers jinking and rattling away in the dykes. And of course, the swallows which should be back in the barn by the end of the month.
The last migrants will be the cuckoos - we still get one or two calling each summer - and finally the screaming of swifts scything through the air on balmy summer days.

Hopefully, in amongst all these, I'll find another new bird for the farm list which currently stands on 106 species. The last new bird was a couple of fly-through gannets on a windy day back on 11th October 2013.
An osprey flying over would do nicely.

Growing Gooseberries

When we started setting up the smallholding, I planted a few soft fruit bushes. They were very small and took a while to develop. Among them were nine gooseberry plants. Three Invicta (green), three Hinnomaki Yellow and three Hinnomaki Red.

We have had a pretty good crop from these for the past two years, but one thing has become clear. We do not have enough soft fruits as, even with freezing, we run out of them halfway through the year.

So last year I decided to try something completely whacky. When the gooseberries were fully ripe I planted them, just as you would with seeds. I planted them about 2" deep (5cm in new money) in rows 12" apart, kept them watered during the driest part of the summer and left them to it. I've not heard of anyone growing gooseberries in this way before and I wasn't expecting any great results. However, in theory the gooseberries are fruits containing seeds so there is no reason why it shouldn't work, unless somehow the fertility had been bred out of them.

Well, by late August about 60% of them had germinated. I even had to thin some of them as multiple seeds from within the gooseberry had sprouted.

I pretty much forgot about them during the winter, as they were in a 'spare' bed a little away from the other crops. Weeds grew up amongst them and they sort of got lost.

But last week I remembered them while I was transplanting the more conventionally grown currant cuttings (black, red and white).



More conventional cuttings. I put these in at the beginning of winter.
They will be ready to transplant in early spring next year.

The weeds had died down over winter and the gooseberries had grown into decent sized little bushes with healthy root systems. I was really quite pleasantly surprised.
















I have now moved them in with the older gooseberry bushes and already, in just their first year, they do not look out of place. I'd be surprised if I don't get a half decent crop on them this year. If I'd taken cuttings, I'd be looking at an extra year till cropping.
I also had enough new plants to dot others around the smallholding.

The new plants
looking at home with the more established bushes.

It seems that nature's way is best after all.

It looks like this year there'll be plenty of GOOSEBERRY FOOL!

Reclaiming the egg.

It's been a good year for eggs so far. It's not yet the end of March and we're getting about 15 chicken eggs a day. That's over 60% production, if you want to see it in those terms.

Now there is a huge difference between the eggs that properly free range hens produce and anything you can buy in a supermarket, even so called 'free range'.
Firstly, commercial chickens are bred specifically for maximum egg production. Presumably there is a size, shape and colour which it has been calculated that the public prefers. But the prime consideration, I'm sure, is egg production, even if that is at the expense of variety, quality or, most importantly, the chickens themselves.
I'm not saying that the producers have to be overly sentimental. I don't really expect them to keep all their old broilers into old age, but some degree of balance would be nice. But then eggs would cost more, wouldn't they, and not many people care to look past the headline price.

But what I really don't get is that the public are not actually getting proper eggs. They don't even know what an egg is supposed to look like or taste like. I get the price thing, these are hard times for many. But at what expense?

Nobody would buy an insipid, pale, runny, tasteless orange. So when did we come to think that this is how an egg should be.

So this post is just to reclaim the egg! And not just the chicken egg. No more words are necessary.

Here's one that went a bit wrong!
I posted this on Facebook as
"giant steals blue egg".

A duck egg omelette and a giant fried goose egg. All our eggs are this colour, or even oranger.

One day's chicken eggs.
The beautiful feather is a guinea fowl's.
Their eggs come later and are delicious.

 

Early Spuds, Broad Beans and Companions



Strong chits on my Red Duke of Yorks

The potatoes have been sitting in egg boxes to chit since early February. The cool entrance porchway seems to have been a good place to do this, as the earlies have developed good, strong chits.
But the big question is, when to plant them out? Some say Easter Friday, but this is clearly ridiculous as that's not even a fixed date. When potatoes first came over to Britain they were, apparently, not well thought of. Devil's food, in fact. Hence the belief that they should be planted on Good Friday. Needless to say, I don't believe in that.
Others say to plant out on St Patrick's Day. For me that's a tad early. I don't want to be spending cold evenings earthing up potatoes to try to stop the frost nipping their leaves, nor do I want to be running in and out with fleece, trying to keep it weighed down and avoid churning it up in the mower.

Almond blossom signals time to plant the Early spuds

For this reason, I go early on the Earlies, but the Mains can wait till Good Friday! (Well, actually about the second week of April.) March 17th is still a bit too early, even for the Earlies. I tend to wait a week or so. To compensate, I have six plants already poking their leaves above the soil in the polytunnel. I've grown these in the soil this year, as previous attempts to grow them in the polytunnel in bags have not gone well, mainly due to difficulties in regulating their water.

Maybe a better sign for me to start preparing the way for the Earlies to go outside might be the blossoming of the almond tree. That's more likely to take into account the vagaries of the weather in any particular year.

It has to be said, another factor in my decision has to be when the school holidays fall. For two weeks holiday gives me a great chance to catch up if I've already started falling behind.
And it doesn't take much for that to happen. My long weekend in Latvia, for example, coincided with a weekend of perfect weather and perfect soil conditions. By the time I'd returned and made up all the work days I needed to, the soil was too dry to rotavate.
But heavy overnight rain was forecast for late last week. This is the very best type of rain for a couple of days later and the soil was just begging to be worked one final time before being planted up.

Now, I had intended just to rotavate a few of the bean beds and a couple of the potato beds. The broad beans were a little overdue to be sown. Having said that, we've still got some in the freezer from last year so there's no rush to produce the first beans.
As it was, I ended up rotavating for nearly 8 hours yesterday. I can't tell you how much my body knew about it last night! The soil was in such good condition that I just kept doing one more bed. I decided to stop when the tank of petrol ran out. An incredible 18 beds later and that finally happened, just as I was finishing anyway.
Mr Rotavator the Motivator had done me proud. As a reward, I have booked him in for a service.

The leeks had to make way for the rotavator,
so I've healed them in until I need them.

I'd worked so hard on this, though, that I never did get the broad beans sown or the Early spuds planted. With rain forecast for midday today, I was up nice and early. My muscles had had a chance to recuperate and I was out into the garden. The broad beans took no time to sow. I used seed saved from last year, Broad Bean Bunyard's Exhibition. Having tried Sutton and Aquadulce, this is the variety that seems to serve me best.

The potatoes didn't take too long either. I don't bother digging almighty trenches. As long as the soil is well worked, I just place my seed potatoes and sink each one as deep as I can get it with a trowel before all the soil falls back into the hole. I then simply go along each row drawing up the earth. I mark everything with a string. It's surprising how, once you've buried the spuds, how quickly you begin to forget exactly along what line they were planted.

The Earlies ready to go in.
I leave as much space as I can between rows and run the rows
so that the prevailing wind can blow down them.
Hopefully blight won't be a problem with the earlies,
but last year it struck as early as June.

As a new precaution this year, I hauled some old chicken wire over the bed until the soil settles down. Otherwise the few chickens who can scale the fence into the veg garden plus the resident trio of ducks and the guinea fowl all do their best to make the earth flat again!

Oh, I should have said. I have settled on Red Duke of York and Arran Pilot for my earlies. The Red Duke of York are my favourite, for they are floury and make excellent chips - there's not many early spuds you can say that about. Arran Pilot are a good, solid early variety and they seem to keep pretty well in the ground in case you've not eaten them all come the summer.

One last word. I used to grow pot marigolds in the trenches between my rows of potatoes. They are a good companion plant. However, I have decided that I'd rather leave nice airy corridors instead. Also, growing the marigolds made it virtually impossible to weed between the potatoes. I know they crowd out most weeds, but our fertile fenland soil ensures that the occasional stinging nettle, and boy ours certainly do sting, can give you a nasty surprise and really spoil your day when you're harvesting.
The marigolds will still find a place in the garden. I'm growing them between the asparagus plants this year in an effort to control the asparagus beetles. I grew tomatoes there last year (another good companion for asparagus) but don't want to keep growing toms in the same spot.

I have also tried planting a horse radish plant in each potato bed in the past, but I find that they do not really get established before the potatoes get dug up. Maybe I should be more organised and plant them two years ahead! I don't think that's likely to happen. Besides, they'd probably get mangled by the rotavator as they disappear below ground for the winter and are only now just starting to poke their crinkled leaves above the surface.

Well, that rain has come and the wind's picked up, which is why I've retreated indoors for a while. But I'm back out in a moment. The poached egg plants have self-seeded from last year and I want to move them, for they are there as companions to the broad beans. It may just be luck, or the exposed site, but I've never had blackfly on my broad beans (you know what will happen now!) as long as I've grown them with poached egg plants underneath. Besides, they look pretty and the bees like them too.

Wild Swans

As I put the chickens away two nights ago, a line of gleaming white swans flew low over the horizon, under a deep orange setting sun. I suspected that these were wild swans beginning their journey northwards to their summering grounds in Iceland. Most years there are a couple of evenings when I see this spectacle. In the past some of these flocks have flown right over the house.

These are not the Mute Swans with which most people are familiar, but Whooper Swans (and possibly Bewick's Swans) which visit us only for the winter. They seem whiter than our resident swans and sleeker. With close enough views, their bills are different, with patches of yellow instead of orange, and lacking the bulbous base of a mute swan.

Anyway, as I returned home from the Smallholders meeting late yesterday afternoon, I caught sight of a group of swans settled in the field right next to our farm. I shot upstairs to view them from the bedroom window and yes, they were indeed Whoopers.
There is a flock of Mute Swans which spends most of the winter in the fields round here, usually over toward South Holland Main Drain, but only in the coldest winter do any of these wild swans join them.

A very distant record shot, but good enough to show the bills.

The departure of the wild swans is a sure sign that winter is over (cue frost, snow and ice!).
It won't be long before the swallows are back nesting n the stables.

The first (and only) chicks of the year

The Crested Cream Legbar cockerel went to cockerel heaven a few weeks back now. This means that we are no longer able to produce pure Cream Legbar chicks, which is a shame as they are a lovely looking bird and lay the most wonderful blue eggs.
However, the young cockerels are just too 'rampant' at a very early age and do their very best to maraud about the chicken pen upsetting all the other inhabitants. Typical loutish teenagers really.
Not only that, but they don't make a particularly meaty meal at the end of it. Here the comparison with teenagers has to stop.

Our Cream Legbar cockerel has, however left us with the legacy of several blue egg laying hens (blue eggs, not blue hens), which together with the other eggs makes for an attractive half dozen eggs.

Now, if there are any egg colour genetic experts out there, your input would be most welcome. For the question is, will the mixed offspring of the Cream Legbar hens, whether first or second generation, still lay blue eggs? Or will the cockerel's genes dominate? Or will the eggs come out a different colour altogether?

We don't need any more chickens at the moment, since we are getting up to 16 eggs a day already (plus duck, goose and guinea fowl eggs) and it's still only March.
But some friends of ours wanted some hens to lay blue eggs, so a month ago Sue placed 12 blue eggs in the incubator. The day before I headed to Latvia, they started hatching and we ended up with 6 healthy chicks.
The picture above shows them all packed up in a little box ready to head off in the car to their new home. It would appear that 5 of them come from our barred cockerel and 1 from the white cockerel. Let's hope that most of them turn into hens and that some of them eventually lay blue eggs.

Sachertorte eclipses the eclipse and the aurora borealis.

Well, I couldn't let the solar eclipse go by without comment.

Unfortunately I was at work, where the class I was working with were receiving a visit from a very friendly police sniffer dog - no, the school's not that rough, it was a demonstration visit only!

Anyway, while everyone was preoccupied with this, I sneaked outside at 9:30 am to see what was happening with the sun The light was already dimming and the temperature had dropped. Unfortunately we had just struck out on the weather and there was a cloudy sky. However, this did me a favour really, as I was expecting only to be able to glance at a crescent of bright sun (I know, I know. I shouldn't do that.) As it was, there was a smiling face peering through the clouds in the sky and it was quite easy to look at. The clouds also meant that my phone didn't get too freaked out by staring straight at the sun and surprised me by managing to capture the moment.

 

I've opted for the long view as I'm bored of everybody's close-ups
which all seem to be rather the same.

This was quite some improvement on what happened with the northern lights two days previously, when a low blanket of fog enveloped the fens just enough to make sure that again we saw nothing of it. It was so frustrating, as looking straight up we could see all the stars in the sky. The only part of the sky we could not see was the horizon, where all the action was happening. We even drove out along the dark, murky lanes toward The Wash and away from all habitation, but the fog just stubbornly refused to budge.

Anyway, one celestial phenomenon in a week is enough to keep me happy, but last night this was surely outshone by the Blokes Baking Group's most ambitious project so far.

We decided to tackle Sachertorte. Invented by Franz Sacher in Vienna in 1832, this chocolate cake or torte has recently acquired fame with appearances on The Great British Bake-Off. We decided to risk following Mary Berry's recipe, available here, despite being let down by her in the past!
New techniques were required - bain-maries for melting chocolate, folding ingredients, whipping up egg whites, a ganache, using an icing gun. It was all new territory, much more fiddly than our preferred techniques of chucking everything in a bowl, bashing it around a bit, cooking it and eating it.

Conversation and beer flowed and at the end of the evening we had produced three of these:

Mine was the only one which said Sacher Tart on it though! And before you wonder, this was done on purpose as a retort to the others trying their utmost to confuse me over the spelling. With hindsight, I should have included a smiling sun on it to mark the occasion. Maybe next time.




If you need an excuse to make a Sachertorte cake, 5 Decemeber is, apparently, National Sachertorte Day - though I think that may only be in Austria.