We should be safe from vampires this year

1st August
Happy Cotton Anniversary To Us!
Today is mine and Sue's second anniversary. It has been a low key affair getting on with the business of smallholding.

While I harvested the onions and a few broad beans and peas, Sue inspected her bees. It's been a testing year for Sue and her bees. On her last inspection she was pleased to finally find some eggs in the first hive, though it appears she has lost the queen from the second hive. The third hive continues to do well. But today's inspection brought more disheartening news as the brood pattern in the first hive didn't look correct. It seems most likely that the young queen was not properly mated and is laying drone eggs. Either that or there is a laying worker.


Meanwhile Boris has learned to jump through the open window to get in and out of the garden. Unfortunately, he has not yet learned that the window is not always open!!! I've heard of birds colliding with windows, but a labradoodle!

We should be safe from vampires this year
Sue then continued celebrating our anniversary by plaiting garlic and trying her hand at pickled garlic.



2nd August
The polytunnel tomatoes are doing well this year. I have squeezed in fewer plants but it makes managing and harvesting  them much easier. I still have 18 plants which should give us plenty, even if we don't get any from the outdoor plants.
I sacrificed the two courgette plants which were running rampant in their tunnel bed. Unfortunately they seemed more intent on producing a jungle of leaves than on producing viable fruits. I only really grew them as insurance in case the outdoor plants failed (as they did last year).

At lunch time I tried my raspberry and redcurrant juice for the first time. It was delicious but it didn't last long! I'll make more next year.



Here is the last photo of all the geese together (along with the turkeys). For tomorrow the two young white geese move to a new home. I was intending to stable them up this evening and then risk my life catching the two young ones. Fortunately this afternoon the opportunity suddenly came up to achieve the separation. As the geese headed down the central path, I noticed the two youngsters in the lead. I quickly jumped in, aided (not!) by Boris and Arthur and hurried them along with the plan to close the gate before all the adults could get through. It felt like some surreal dreamtime version of One Man And His Dog where they are tasked with separating off two specific sheep.
I managed to narrow the group down to three and the final adult was easily separated from the others in the stables.

3rd August

Arthur has caught a mole! He is very proud of himself. It must be the Daschund in him. Daschunds were bred for hunting badgers, but Arthur certainly won't be doing that. The Jack Russell in him has started chasing after rabbits, bouncing down the land to try to surprise them, but he lacks technique at the moment.
I don't really mind him catching a mole. Unlike most other people, I think moles are absolutely amazing creatures and that we should be very proud to have such a special creature native to this country. Sadly most people are more precious about their monoculture flat lawns. However, there are plenty of moles here on the farm. Unusually Arthur didn't eat the mole, despite the fact that he devours the voles and rabbits that our cat Gerry brings back as presents for him. Apparently moles don't taste very nice at all. I won't be testing out that particular theory.

Carrot success
The sun has been shining lately and the vegetables have responded. Today I harvested my first mini sweetcorn cobs from outside and the courgettes have started to crop in reasonable numbers too.
Main job for the day was to sort out the carrot patch. I lifted the mesh netting, in place to keep carrotfly at bay, and tackled the weeds. There weren't too many as the carrots have done so well they have crowded out any weeds. My carrot crops have been pretty disastrous in the past, so I was pleased to find rows of carrots doing very well indeed.
It was a little overdue, but I did one last sowing today which should give us plenty of carrots to harvest before winter arrives.

The two young white geese have gone now, to a new home just down the road where I hope they will be very happy. Already, without young to protect, the rest of the geese have calmed down and are being a lot less macho.

The day ended with a stunning sunset across the road.

4th August
Flatpacked Frustration
The day started with an attempt to construct a flatpack garden table. It came with what were probably the worst set of instructions I have ever seen. Some of the bolts came in and out six times as I basically had to work everything out as I went along. I got there in the end.

Roma defeated!
I'm not talking football, but tomatoes. I have been endeavouring to protect my row of Roma tomatoes from blight but it has been a losing battle. I've been picking off any leaves at the first signs of infection and have been spraying them with a bicarbonate spray - this is supposed to create an alkaline environment where the fungus cannot thrive. But it was inevitable following the ravaging of the potatoes that the blight would reach the tomatoes. Today I took the decision to uproot the row of Romas as the blight had clearly got into the stems. Hopefully some of the other tomatoes outside will be far enough away to escape the scourge.

On a brighter note, I harvested the first of the sweetcorn proper (as opposed to the Minipop which I grow for baby cobs) from the polytunnel today. When I pulled back the husk it was a real gem and went very nicely with the pork ribs and stir fry which I made for dinner - almost totally our own produce. The stir fry had fourteen ingredients from the garden!

Following on from sowing carrots yesterday, I did one last sowing of Boltardy beetroot today. It should stand in the ground over winter. I've sown plenty as any spare will be gobbled up by the sheep or the geese.
I also sowed a trial crop, Spanish Black Round Radish. This is unlike other radishes as it is a winter veg which is cooked. I'm expecting it to be more like a turnip. We'll see. Some of my trial crops earn a place in the veg patch, many fall by the wayside.

5th August


Not put off by the flatpack garden furniture experience yesterday, I decided to get the woodwork tools out today and do a complete overhaul of one of the chicken houses. Here it is having been completely disassembled and half rebuilt. This is as far as I've got as it took quite a lot longer than anticipated.

Same Old, Same Old Gulls
The morning was interrupted by a flock of gulls in the neighbouring field. The rape straw has been baled and collected up and today they were harrowing the field which was pulling in the gulls. I scanned through the flock with my telescope and, as every year, it was composed mainly of Black-headed gulls with lesser numbers of Common Gulls and a few Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls. One year I'll find something different in amongst them.
At one point the whole flock rose suddenly, along with the starlings, lapwings and a small group of Stock Doves. The reason for the panic soon became obvious as a Peregrine Falcon torpedoed through the flock, the first of the winter.
Bizarrely a roe deer appeared in the field as well today, right out in the open.

The day was flying by. Sue is away again with friends visiting Venice, Florence and Piza. Looking after all the animals, myself and the crops is a lot of work and I have been putting in very long days.
The young chicks needed cleaning out as well today. They are growing up fast and it won't be long before they get to go outside during the day.

For the second evening there was a stunning fire in the sky. Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.

Pruned Plums and a Purple Chicken

30th July 2016
My Plums Are Pruned
I finally got my plums pruned! It doesn't look like a good year for orchard fruits though. The spring rains saw to that.
With a little bit of rain in the mix this last few days, the soil is perfect for weeding, so I spent most of the day just generally tidying up the veg beds. It gave me a chance to check on the progress of all my crops and to kill a few giant slugs!
Signs of autumn
Migrant birds seem to like the hedge that borders the veg patch and today saw the first returning migrants of the autumn (yes, I've used that word, AUTUMN!) A blackcap was tacking and a smart young Chiffchaff was getting chased all over the place by one of our resident robins, talking of which, look what I found today when I took a basket down from the stable wall to do some harvesting, so someone's not yet ready for autumn. I carefully put the basket back and will enjoy watching the robin rear its young.

The rape stubble in the field next door is proving rather attractive to birds at the moment. A small flock of starlings has moved in and I counted 73 Lapwings too.

31st July
Purple Chicken interrupts proceedings
I harvested more shallots today and the last of the early beetroots. Some had bolted and were much appreciated by the chickens.
Sue is going to pickle them for me. For some odd reason beetroots are the only thing I actually like pickled.

Major job for the day was mowing. I collected the grass today rather than spitting it back out - the compost heaps need some green stuff to get them going. I have 8 compost heaps and they are all full to bursting at the moment.
So I spent a very satisfying couple of hours whizzing around everywhere, oblivious to the rest of the world. It was late afternoon when I finally ran out of petrol and decided to take a little break before finishing the job.

I looked at my phone and saw a tweet with the hashtag #purpleswamphentwitch. I then noticed 20 messages!
I grabbed my bins and scope, had a mad search for my wallet and jumped in the car still in my grassy old gardening clothes. I set the SatNav for Minsmere RSPB and began the arduous cross country drive to the Suffolk coast. I should get there by 7 which would give a good couple of hours light to see the bird.

Purple Swamphen used to be called Purple Gallinule. I prefer the new name. It is also known as Purple Swamp Chicken, which is an even better name. It is basically a monster-sized moorhen, a purple-blue chicken with a stonking bright red bill, a red iris and bright red legs ending in ridiculously ginormous red feet! It spends most of its time wandering along the edge of reedbeds, often just inside the reeds, looking for tasty bits of old reed stem to eat. When it finds a good bit, it grips it between its toes and bites off chunks with its secateur mandibles.

There have been Purple Swamphens in this country before, but they have virtually all been of one of the more exotic eastern races and judged to have escaped from captivity. But today's bird was of the Western race, which breeds in Spain and Southern France. Add to that the fact that several this year have ended up far north of their breeding range, including Britanny which currently has its first record (presumably wild) and this Minsmere bird looks like it might be the real deal.
Purple Swamphens are a dispersive species, which means that individuals will wander quite widely if their pools dry up or after breeding.

It was good to catch up with many old friends at this evening's twitch.

And so it was that I found myself joining a crowd of over a hundred twitchers, peering through gaps in reeds waiting for the bird to make an appearance. It had walked out of view and I had a tense half hour wait before it came back along the reedy edge. First views were of its white undertail flicking up and down, then its gaudy red legs and bill. Finally the whole bird. What a monster!
I watched it for the next hour, until it flew across the pool and out of sight, those long legs and ginormous feet dangling as it did so.

I pulled back onto the farm at just gone 11 o'clock.
Hopefully the forecast rain will hold off for long enough tomorrow for me to finish the mowing.

We're Going To Need A Bigger Basket

26th July 2016
I woke up two hours after the alarm went off! I could hear reverse warning beeps and thought they might have started harvesting the field next door, which could scupper my plans for a second coat of paint on the garage (dust).
I checked my phone only to see that I was already 15 minutes into a one hour time slot for a parcel delivery - to be more precise, 100kg of wild bird food. There have been 6 tree sparrows recently. This much food will do me for about a year and is well worth the investment. I get many hours of quiet satisfaction watching the birds visit the feeders.

No, it's not a new ride-on mower.

As it happens they did turn up to harvest the field too. It is rape this year so we shouldn't get the invasion of vermin that happens when they grow wheat. We normally have a lot of wild birds when they grow rape. In the past it has hosted sedge warblers, yellow wagtails, whitethroats and blackbirds. I don't know what is different this year, but these birds have been absent from the crop. I would guess they have managed to spray just about all insect life out of the crop.
We're going to need a bigger basket!
With the kibosh on plans for painting, I instead turned my attention to my own harvest. The redcurrant bushes are dripping with fruits and it took me quite a while to harvest them. The first bush alone filled a basket.


Next came the cherries. The trees are still very young so I only got a handful, but they are a real treat. Then it was on to the raspberries. They need picking every other day and I get a good few punnets worth. These are my favourite fruit.
On to the vegetables. A couple of courgettes, a few handfuls of peas and enough broad beans for dinner and a batch for the freezer.

Today's pickings

I also may have discovered the culprits for plundering the last of the gooseberries. There were some dodgy characters hanging around there today.

27th July 2016
A Welcome Return
Sue has been away on a well deserved break away in Amsterdam with friends - her first time away from the smallholding since our honeymoon almost two years ago. She is due back tonight, so I spent the day tidying! I cleaned out the chickens too, a level 2 clean today.
With time left, I moved the sheep to the next strip of grazing. I always like the moment they realise they can access the lush green meadow alongside which they have been feeding. It reminds me of the The Billy Goats Gruff. I like the fact that they eat as much and as fast as they can for about half an hour, then all sit down to digest.

28th July 2016
You're going to need a better net, Abbey!
Two ignored emails, being left on hold to an empty extension and an 18 minute phone call obviously was not quite enough effort on my part to get hold of two spare belts for the rotavator and a spare blade for the mower, despite the fact that I had bought both these machines from the very same company, Abbey Garden Sales. Six days after that last phone call and two more emails, still no response, so I made yet another phone call. Apparently my query had 'slipped through the net', even after I had politely pointed out all the company's faults last time! I think the net may need fixing. Anyway, we have moved another step and the parts are now ordered.

With that 'sorted' I gave the end of the garage a second coat of paint. Literally five minutes later it started raining. Fortunately it was just a shower and the main rain held off just long enough for the paint to dry properly. Then it bucketed down, which was most welcome.

Steam Juicing
Inside, I blew the dust off the steam juicer and set about juicing a pan of redcurrants and raspberries.
The steam juicer is basically a large metal steamer with the addition of a central section to collect the juice. This section has a pipe attached so the juice can be siphoned off. As the steam rises up through the fruits, it breaks down the cell walls and releases all the juices.
Tomorrow I plan to turn the juice I collect into cordial. The pulp that is left I hope to be able to turn into a fruit leather using the dehydrator.

Aldi Price Comparison
I then left the farm for the first time in five days for a trip into Wisbech with Sue. I had booked us to go see The BFG. It was a bit of a risk, not the usual thing we would go to see at the cinema, but it proved to be an inspired choice, a truly delightful and magical story which every child, (even the 50 year old ones) should go to see.

On the way we stopped off at Aldi and I couldn't help but price up my harvests. At Aldi price, I reckon to have harvested about £40 worth of redcurrants! The cucumbers, though, are only up to £1.11, but there are plenty more to come and they are home grown and picked fresh off the plant.


29th July 2016
I ended up with about 2 1/2 litres of pure redcurrant and raspberry juice.

I added 1.5kg of sugar to 2 litres and heated it up to boiling. I added in the juice of 1 1/2 lemons (carefully leaving the juice of the other 1 1/2 lemons on the side, forgetting to put it in). Then it was all decanted into sterilised wine bottles with screw caps.
I've no idea how well this will work, what it will taste like, how much to dilute it, whether it will last. There were no definitive recipes to be found anywhere so I just amalgamated all the recipes I'd read.
I plan to try one bottle in a week's time, one in about 3 weeks and one in a couple of months to see how it fares.

With the last half a litre I added just a quarter cup of sugar to drink as juice. This is rather an extravagant use of a precious harvest, but that's the delight of growing your own.
Finally I put the pulp from the juicer through a mouli to experiment using it to make a fruit leather. Waste not, want not.

The afternoon was spent general weeding and hoeing in the veg patch, though there were many interruptions today - plasterer, conservatory man, deliveries...

Ragwort Removal

Ragwort - pretty and a food source for Cinnabar moths,

but needs removing as it is poisonous to livestock

Come 6 o'clock I decided to do a spot of ragwort removal. I headed off to the far end of our land, the final area of very long meadow which the sheep will feed on next. The ragwort is in full flower now, so very easy to spot. This makes it a very good time to uproot it, for the plant has just put a lot of energy into making those flowers. I use a special ragwort fork which gets most of the roots out, otherwise the plants just regenerate and come back stronger. I had waited for rain so that the root did not simply snap off in the dry soil. The trouble with pulling ragwort is that you just keep spotting more plants. Some three hours later and I was finally finished. What looked like a quick and easy job had turned into a rather strenuous task!

I had narrowly avoided a thorough soaking as a storm skirted round, but was regretting my choice to wear shorts. The long grass and sow thistles can get rather itchy and scratchy. It is good to spend so much time in the long grass and the young woodland. I observe things I wouldn't otherwise notice, the insect life, the variety of plants, the young hawthorns colonising and the growth of the woodland trees which I planted just over four years ago.

Those Pesky Carrot Crunchers

24th July 2016

Warfare in the Polytunnel
There is warfare in the polytunnel. Everything is growing brilliantly. Tomatoes and cucumbers are now cropping, the Uchiki Kuri and Butternut squashes are rampant and the sweetcorn is reaching for the skies. The peppers and aubergines are forming fruits and the courgette plants are reaching epic proportions.
But in one hidden corner I noticed today one of the melon plants looking very sickly indeed, showing all the tell tale signs of Red Spider Mite infestation. These tiny little creatures live on the underside of the leaves, sucking the life out of the plant. Despite their name, they can be many colours. In reality, they are so small that my 50 year old eyes can only just pick them up.
Red Spider Mite prefers hot, dry conditions. It has its favourite victim plants. Melons and cucumbers are a favourite, along with aubergines and beans, but it can get on almost anything in the polytunnel. After heavy damage for the last two years, I took as many precautions as possible this year. The main deterrent is to keep the soil moist and the air humid. The mites don't like this. So I was a little surprised and disappointed to find that it has established a foothold again this year. I mixed up a lethal concoction of soap, lemon eucalyptus oil, chilli and garlic and sprayed the plants thoroughly making sure to drench the underside of every leaf. However, those pesky little mites are resilient. They weave fine meshes of silk which, along with the hairy underside of the leaves, affords them quite a bit of protection. I could buy in some biological control, a predator to control them, but it is not cheap and not guaranteed to work.
I did, however, discover the possible reason for the mite invasion into that corner of the polytunnel. I had wondered at how dry the soil was, little colonies of ants being a sure sign of dry conditions. When I turned on the sprinkler system I noticed from the outside of the polytunnel that the walls at that end were not getting wet. On further investigation I found that the overhead sprinklers at that end of the tunnel were blocked by spiderweb silk, not from the mites - that would be ridiculously clever! But the effect was to neutralise my main deterrent of not letting things become too dry.

Carrot Crunchers Not Welcome
There are larger pests at work too, for the Carrot Crunchers have moved back in. I'm growing lots of carrots in the tunnel this year as it affords them a good level of protection, but when I was harvesting the baby sweetcorn I  noticed that some of the carrots underneath had been nibbled, sure signs of vole attack. In fact one carrot was even nibbled while I left the tunnel for half an hour!
So I set the traps and within an hour I heard one snap shut. There will be more than one vole, but as long as I keep on top of checking the traps I should be able to nip this little problem in the bud before I start losing all my carrots.

25th July 2016
We have a rather useless porch adjoining the side of the garage. One of the supporting posts was never put in properly and the whole thing has dropped on one side. I discussed with Sue the possibility of removing it and she came up with the brilliant idea of moving it and turning it into a log shelter.
With the weather still holding dry, today seemed a good time to paint the end of the garage before the log store is constructed. As ever, this took longer than I thought but it looks good now.

What a Smoothie!
The paint dried quickly in the sun and it was thirsty work climbing up and down the ladder. In the winter I would be refuelling with soup, a great way of eating vegetables. I have now discovered the equivalent for a hot summer day. Smoothies. The freezers are already rapidly filling with fruit, so much so that it's hard to see where the forthcoming vegetable harvest and the late autumn meat will go. Today I whizzed up some yogurt, apple juice, a couple of mushy bananas and a handful of frozen raspberries. Delicious! And disgracefully healthy!




A Major Hair Cut for Outside
After lunch I did something I had been avoiding for quite some time. After two days the mower battery had finally charged up and it was time to start it up. I was not optimistic. I pumped up the tyres and then tentatively put the key in the ignition and turned it.
The good thing about being a pessimist is that sometimes you get a pleasant surprise. The ride-on started straight away and I got straight to work.
Four hours later I'd mowed the veg patch, the orchard, the top paddock, the central walkway, the back lawn, the front lawn, the pond area and the borders round the spare veg patch. A very, very good day's work.
While the going was good I hardly stopped for a break, but I did stop to take a quick snap of the sun bursting through the clouds in the evening sky.

The summer time of my life

20th July 2016
50! How did that happen? I am 50 years old!
I used to say I still felt 20 in my mind and about 70 in my body but I think that's changed a little now. I think I think a little more old these days, so maybe 30 in my mind, though some would say more like 6! And that's partially true too, which is why I am such a brilliant teacher. I am also starting to benefit from the confidence of age.
As for the 70 in body, to be fair there are days when I feel I can do anything and days when every single inch of my body seems to ache and groan.
I have done a lot in my 50 years on this planet (not that I spent any time before that on another planet, though again some would disagree). I don't intend to do quite so much in the next 50 years, but I do intend to savour and enjoy most of it.
I don't really do birthdays, or any celebrations for that matter, but especially not birthdays. My preference would have been that it pass by largely unnoticed. I got as close to this as was probably possible and celebrated with a quiet meal out with Sue in the evening. I splashed out and went for almost the most expensive thing on the menu but there was no way I was paying an extra £2 for a sauce to go with my fillet steak! That would be too wild a celebration!

There was a better reason for celebration today, for I finished work at midday and I'm not due back in till 1st September.

21st July 2016
Back to normal today.
One of the young chicks in the broody box was clearly not well today. I tried gently holding its beak to the water trough, I placed it under the electric hen to warm up, but as usual when a bird is ill it did not respond. After a couple of hours I decided to end it quickly. Better for the chick and better to remove it from the others too. Five years ago I would have struggled to do this and put it off, but I have hardened up now. I still quietly say sorry and I still have a sad feeling in my heart. Compassion sometimes means being decisive.

The turkey family picking through the cut grass

With the protracted spell of summer proper, I took advantage and started mowing the lawns. They've got out of control again and the mower needs a new blade so it was slow work. I just mowed paths through the sward to allow the air in and the grass to dry a little.

This year's lambs in the foreground

Next job on such a fine day was another chemical attack on those nasty nettles and thistles. I've left a few patches for the wildlife, but any others that spring up need to be dealt with harshly, particularly since I seem to have become very reactive to nettle stings, an almost daily occurrence which needs nipping in the bud. I resprayed the electric fence line too. This tactic seems to be working well. I'd rather not use any spray but needs must. Physically controlling the weeds and the growth under the fence are not possible on this scale. I use minimum sprays and just about everything else I do on the smallholding is pretty much for the benefit of wildlife.

That's shallot of shallots!
Last year's stored onions have come to an end now and this year's are not quite ready. It's not looking like a great crop coming so thank goodness for the shallots, which were ready to harvest today after a few sunny days to dry them out.

Lady Penelope, Single Parent
There was still time to lop some of the trees along the boundary. The branches go to the sheep who love stripping off the leaves and the bark. Nothing goes to waste here. It was while I was doing this that I spotted Lady Penelope Peacock and she was accompanied by a single poult, now large enough to be showing a clear crest. I had not seen her for a couple of weeks and was fearing for her.

The days are long now so I can get stacks done when I'm off work. But darkness still comes in the end and todays dusk brought with it a calling Little Owl in the old ash trees and a calling Barn Owl, a nice combo.

22nd July 2016
Chicken in a basket box
Every day now I move the Ixworth chicks outside into a large dog cage on the lawn and every night they go back into the garage under the heat lamp. The accommodation en route is cosy!

Bad service
I finally managed to get through to someone to order a spare rotavator belt and mower blade. It's taken three phone calls and two ignored emails to finally get someone who didn't pass the problem on to an empty phone extension. It took 18 minutes on the phone and I'm not confident I've moved much further forwards despite the promises. It's a shame as Abbey Garden Sales have provided me with good service in the past but I am now starting to see the reasons for other people's bad reviews.

Harvest news
The first tomatoes are ready in the polytunnel and they are looking good! These are Black Cherry, Gardener's Delight, Golden Sunrise and Honybee.

There were more raspberries to be had today too. It really is a good crop this year. Delving a little deeper in the polytunnel, I came across a couple of yellow courgettes I'd missed. Here they are dwarfing the first cucumber of the year!



Some crops are already over though. Sue went out to do one final pick of the yellow mangetout plants but they were going over so the geese got a few. We've got  loads in the freezer already along with the green ones from the tunnel. Fortunately I managed to stop Sue in time to leave a few plants still standing. These are a heritage variety and I want to save the seed.

You know those jobs you keep putting off because you just know something's going to go wrong and you wish you'd never started? Well today I plugged the ride-on mower into the charger. If the battery charges up then I've just got to persuade it to start for the first time this year and to keep going. Reliability has never been my Mountfield mower's strongest point. If it had a name it would be called Flimsy!

And finally my nature note for today.
There have been strange calls coming from the ash trees for the last couple of days. In the past these calls have had me stumped, but now I recognise them as the calls of young Green Woodpeckers. Today I was lucky enough to see one of them perched out in the open on a branch next to its parent. They have timed it incredibly well, for today was also the day the ants came out. Every year they find their way into the house and swarm all over the windows. The delights of countryside living.

23rd July 2016
Harvest speeds up
Minipops
Some of the sweetcorn in the polytunnel is going absolutely bananas. In fact it actually resembles a banana plantation in there. The outdoor crop isn't far behind either.
Surprisingly the biggest plants belong to the variety Minipop. This is a corn grown for its baby cobs. You don't get a huge harvest but it adds variety and is a high value crop.
It is ready to pick as soon as the tassles appear. No need to wait for them to be pollinated. In the polytunnel I am also growing normal sweetcorn, so I actually removed the male flowers from the top of the minipop plants today so they wouldn't cross-pollinate the other variety. Hopefully this won't stem the flow of min cobs.
A word of caution here. Parts of the plant would appear to be razor sharp! A couple of slashes across my fingers are testament to this.



Anyway, after much dehusking (great material for the compost heap) I ended up with 26 baby corns to go in the freezer. There are a lot more to come too.
Gooseberry gazumped!
I moved on to harvesting the last of the gooseberries ... except they were all gone! Something had got to them first. Oh well. Not to worry. Next year I'll pick them all when they are harder and sharper. That's the best quality about gooseberries anyway.
Champion.
I moved on again, this time to the peas. I've not grown conventional peas for a few years now because of the pea moth which has a nasty habit of depositing maggots inside the pods. But this year I am trialling an old-fashioned tall pea, Champion of England. I sowed it late, at the end of April, in an attempt to avoid the period when the moth lays its eggs. Today the first plump pods were ready for picking. As ever with fresh peas they tasted amazing, little globes of summer sweetness. As this is a climbing variety they should crop over a longer period which means I can graze them rather than harvesting the whole lot at once.

Saving the Tomatoes
Another of the outdoor crops is under serious threat though. For it was only a matter of time before the potato blight spread to the tomatoes. A couple of the leaves were showing the first signs of attack today. It was time for another major prune of the toms anyway, so I removed all of the lower leaves and any sideshoots. I weeded thoroughly around the plants and tied them to their supports. The whole idea is to reduce the amount of foliage through which the blight spores can attack the plant while at the same time maximising air flow around the plants. I then mixed up a bicarbonate spray and thoroughly soaked every plant. I will repeat this once weekly for a while and with a bit of luck I might just save my outdoor tomato crop.
Outdoor tomatoes are always a huge risk and more often than not they fail. It doesn't matter too much as there are plenty coming from the greenhouse, but a bumper crop once in a while is good for stocking up the freezers with tomato sauce.

With daylight still left I started painting the garage, beginning with a first applicaton of creosote to the wood. Proper creosote is wonderful. I love the smell. It is not as nasty as people make out. In fact, one of the main reasons it's use was severely limited by the EU was to do with a very low cancer risk under specific circumstances. I get the feeling this is more about protecting large corporations rather than for any environmental reasons.

Today's nature notes
The swallow's nest in the chicken feed shed is wonderful, for it is at head level. I can raise the phone above my head and get a great view of the inside. It has been empy for a while now, but today I noticed two eggs inside. It seems they are going for another brood. Wonderful news! I counted another four active nests inside the stables today too.






Dark Daggers
Down in the chicken pen I found a small group of rather splendid caterpillars on a plum tree today. I took photos and then scoured the internet to identify them. I eventually identified them as belonging to the Dark Dagger moth. It has a great name but is actually very drab, unlike its glamorous larvae.

Scorched by Blight

15th June
New Chicks On The Block
Bang on time the first three chicks hatched out in the incubator. Tomorrow morning they'll be needing the electric hen to keep them warm. This means that the previous batch of chicks, now nearly four weeks old, need to move out.
With this in mind, much of today was spent cleaning out and reorganising the stables. The turkeys have a new perch which they have instantly taken to.
For the Ixworth chicks I've set up a broody ring - basically a long piece of very expensive Correx formed into a circle and held together with some very expensive cheap bulldog clips. I've constructed a lid out of spare bits of wood and mesh, this to deter vermin. Heat will be supplied from a heat lamp suspended from the joists, though at the moment I rather suspect the chicks would be absolutely fine without this. They've been going outside during the day for a while now.

16th June

New Accommodation for All
At the last count we were up to 13 chicks. Most of them have dried and fluffed up now. They can survive about the first 24 hours on goodness supplied from their egg, but after that they need to come out of the incubator and into controlled housing with heat, food and water.
There was a big change this evening for the previous generation of chicks too, who found themselves in a rather cosy stable under a heat lamp.

They have much more space there, but more importantly they won't be stinking out the entrance hall to the house any more. So far everything seems to be going very well.



In fact it was all change for everyone today. The sheep have moved paddocks to fresh grass and are revelling in finding new patches of clover and young sowthistle leaves. They will stay in this section for a week or more before moving on. This method of strip grazing keeps the grass fresher and helps with worm control.



Blighted
Final job of the day was a somewhat depressing one. Despite there being no Smith period or near miss in the last two weeks, blight has swept through the potatoes in the last couple of days. There is no choice but to cut off the tops to try to prevent it getting into the tubers. Of course, some of the later variety may not have had enough time to develop any decent size tubers, so last year's bumper crop of Pink Fir Apples will definitely not be repeated. The First and Second Earlies seem to have swelled nicely though. I guess the rain is a double-edged sword.

17th July

Chilly chicks, cold eggs and thawing freezers
Woken up at 6 o'clock to be told by Sue that half the house had no electricity. If she had said that all the electricity had failed I would not have been concerned for power cuts are pretty much the norm here. But this was different. We still had lights downstairs but not upstairs. Anything plugged in wasn't working either - the freezers, the incubator, the electric broody.

On investigation the switched had tripped, but it just wouldn't flick back on. Fortunately the electrics in the garage were still working so I moved the incubator and the electric broody out there. The electric in the stables was working too, but the heat lamp had gone off. It seemed a huge coincidence, but I couldn't really understand how this could affect the house electrics as it had 2 RCD protectors before the trail got anywhere near the house.

It was early Sunday morning. There was no-one we could call at this time and the house had virtually no electricity. We decided to go back to sleep and ring around later on. With no home phone, no internet and poor mobile reception, I was not looking forward to this.

I woke up again at 9.30am! Had it all been a dream?

I headed downstairs and the circuit breaker switch was still in the down position. I tried once more to flick it back up... and it stayed! The kettle came on, the phone beeped back into life, the printer aligned itself and some of the lights came on.

Out in the stable, I unplugged the heat lamp and tried it in another socket, without the extension lead. It worked. I don't really understand what went on overnight, but I've just got my fingers crossed everything stays working. I'm not risking anything though. The chicks are on the move again into the garage where the heat lamp can reach them without needing the extension lead.

The youngest batch of chicks are staying out in the garage too. It's a good set up that we have accidentally hit upon.

After a hectic morning I headed off to a friend's smallholding where the Grow-Your Own group which I coordinate was gathering today. On the menu today were Discussion Subject: My favourite tool/most useless tool. Plant Doctors: Mosaic Virus. Trial Crop: Spanish Black Round Radish. Growing and Cooking with: Berries and Currants.
Sue had kindly made a frozen blackcurrant yogurt and a whitecurrant sorbet for me to take along. The sorbet especially went down a storm on such a hot sunny day.

Here's what blight looks like
One thing I did find out today was that I am just about the last person to have been hit by blight, so I guess I should count my blessings. I was hoping not to have to chop the haulms off the last bed of potatoes, the Desiree and Pink Fir Apple, as there would be little chance these would have developed any decent size tubers yet. But when I inspected closely, blight was taking hold of these too so reluctantly they got the chop.

Potato blight taking hold

Sometimes it is not totally clear whether plants have blight or if it is just that the plants are dying down naturally. However, this year the symptoms are classic and unmistakeable, so I took a few snaps today for you to compare if you ever need.

Once all the growth above ground has been removed, it needs to be moved away since it holds spores which can easily contaminate the soil and are very likely to spread to the tomatoes. Ideally it is burned, but that's easier said than done when it is still green. I put mine into a closed system compost bin and it never sees the light of day again!
As for the potatoes under the soil, they are best left for a couple of weeks, for if they are dug up immediately they will get contaminated by the spores on the soil surface and will rot in storage.

The turkey hen investigates the Ixworth chicks

18th July
Thirsty work
The thermometer hit 30 degrees today. I love the hot weather. Unfortunately I had to be in work to make up for the time lost when my car was broken down last week.
I spent the evening piping water to all the animals and poultry and watering the young plants in pots outside the polytunnel. Everything is thirsty on days like this.
I then mixed up a spray of sodium bicarbonate, just a couple of tablespoons mixed with a gallon of water, a tablespoon of oil and a few drops of soap. This spray was for the tomatoes in the polytunnel as well as anything else which might be affected by fungi, such as the courgette leaves and aubergines. The main reason for this spray is to prevent the tomatoes getting blight and the other plants getting powdery mildew.

19th July
El Scorchio
I woke up late for work after Arthini had twice escaped from his overnight basket, the second time by busting through the wall! A hot night obviously had the dogs sleepless as they woke us up at regular intervals.
The day was definitely el scorchio.
In the evening we finally got to the Thai restaurant in Holbeach. We love Thai food and have been living here almost six years now, but it has inexplicably taken someone's leaving do to get us there. The food was gorgeous and it certainly won't be another six years before we are back.