The Perfect Day... almost

Yesterday was just about perfect.

It started with two swallows chattering in the stables. These two birds spent the day air-dancing over the farm. One of the little owl pair sat on sentry duty outside their nest hole.

It ended with two beautiful black lambs delivered in record time.

In between I worked the soil and sowed the first outdoor carrots, turnips and spring onion. Then came the rain to water them and prepare the soil for working the next veg beds. I moved into the polytunnel to sow more carrots, transplant seedlings and pot on some of the faster growing young tomato plants.

Along the way I discovered a secret stash of chicken eggs.

In the evening, Sue cooked up a tasty lamb dish accompanied by the first fresh asparagus of the year, a real treat.

Today has been more testing. The mother ewe still has a trail of membrane hanging from her back end. Though she and the lambs seem healthy enough, we are worried for her. Two phone calls to the vets have left us just keeping an eye on things, so that's what we are doing, but it's a very worried eye.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

There is only one subject I can possibly write about today... this year's first lambs, delivered late last night, Easter Friday.

Our Shetland ewes do not have names, but the first mum of 2017 is the fawn girl, the fat one at the back with the big udders!

We moved the ewes away from Rambo the ram about a week ago and put them into the stables. But after a few days it was getting a bit stuffy and there were no imminent births, so we let them back outside into the small paddock up by the farmhouse. We have been resting this paddock so the grass was nice and green.




Yesterday the fawn ewe was spending most of her time in the small shed. Apart from clearly being the largest and her udders being enormous, she showed none of the other classic signs of being in early labour. No teeth grinding. No star gazing. No lip curling.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to bring her back into the stable, along with the non-pregnant ewe for companionship, but penned separately. We guessed she would probably give birth some time over the weekend.







At 10 o'clock last night I headed out to lock up the chicken houses and to check on the ewe on the way. I peered over the stable door and in the torchlight could see a dark, wet ball on the ground right below the ewe's back end. I ran to get Sue. "Sue, you might want to come out to the stable!"
With the lights on, we could see a freshly born, all black lamb, still basically a wet bundle of wool. It was just taking its first breaths, which was a relief.



Mum's instincts kicked in straight away as she started licking her newborn and giving it reassuring deep baas.
We dimmed the lights and left mum and baby boy to get on with it. There was clearly at least one other lamb to come out and it would probably be half an hour or so until anything else happened. Sue headed back in and I headed down in the darkness to shut away the poultry.

While I was at the chickens, I could hear much loud baaing. I don't know how you judge it, but it sounded like contented baaing. So I took another peek in the stable on my way back to the farmhouse and there on the straw was another black lamb, gangly legs in all directions.

It had certainly been a quick labour.

Both lambs were quickly up and mum's licking soon had them looking clean and fluffy. Instinct quickly led them towards mum's udders where they were doing all the right things - kneeling down and butting away at the milk sack, though for a while one of them was trying to get milk out of the hay rack!

There was not much for us to do apart from take photos. We snipped the umbilical cords and sprayed on iodine to prevent infection. Mum was happy to let me handle her lambs but I resisted the temptation to fuss them, giving them back to mum as quickly as I could for there was bonding to be done.

The only thing to do now was to check back in a while that the third stage of labour, passing the placenta, was going smoothly.

By midnight there were still two bags and a trail of slimy skin hanging out the back of mum. We went to bed and I set my alarm for sunrise.

When I put the lights on in the stable, mum was standing and both lambs were looking very healthy. It took a while for her to turn around, but to my disappointment there was still a trail of messy stuff hanging from her rear end, though it had clearly progressed from last night and was hanging much further.
Ideally the placenta would have been completely expelled (and probably eaten by mum) by now. Not to panic though. A quick google and we decided to leave it a while until a civilised hour when if necessary we could call the vets for a little advice.

And that's where we're up to now. It's 6.30 in the morning and I am tapping away at the keyboard and downloading photos while I wait to go back out and check on the fawn ewe and her two black lambs.

By the way, we have a boy and a girl.

Hooray! The First Swallow.

I've been anticipating their arrival for a while now but this evening, as I relaxed in my living willow chair with a cold beer and the two dogs, admiring another glorious sunset, I heard the familiar call of a swallow overhead.

I swear they call either to say hello for another year or with joy at  the completion of their journey. There was just one swallow, but more will arrive over the next couple of weeks until we reach five or six pairs.
This moment I look forward to every year, for it really is a great time of year symbolised by the return of these joyful birds from their amazing migration.

It cheered me up greatly, for it had started badly with me having to put one of the guinea fowl out of its misery. It had a damaged leg and wing and was getting more and more sickly. We just have three left now and with no breeding success for a few years it is looking like these comical characters won't be gracing the farm for too much longer.

There was mixed news though this morning, for one of the Muscovy girls was flopping around last night, seemingly unable to walk. I put her to bed but was expecting the worst this morning. Instead, out she came right as rain.



The incident did make me consider whether two Muscovy females is enough though, so today I collected a third, a chocolate brown girl. She really is very pretty (for a Muscovy duck).

Sue and I worked outside all day today. Sue spent much of the day on the mower while I concentrated on taking the tops off a few willows which were in danger of becoming too big to handle. It was a gorgeous spring day. The Shetland ewes are back outside for the moment - it was getting stuffy in the stables and they were not showing any signs of going into labour. They appreciated the willow cuttings which I threw them.

Over in the veg patch, the Morello cherry is out in blossom and the honeybees are doing a great job of turning those beautifully delicate flowers into nascent sour cherries.


Today spring was most definitely in the air.

A Springtime Catch-Up

No blog posts for a while. I won't apologise. It's not through laziness but through business.
It really is all go on the smallholding at this time of year. Dawn till dusk working the soil, sowing seeds, mowing lawns. Then there are baby animals imminent and chicks galore waiting to hatch. Plus all the routine work.
So instead of my usual day by day post, here's a catch up across the smallholding.

Firstly, the weather. April has been warm and sunny, a perfect start to the growing season. We could do with one night of rain now though!

The 'Family'

Gerry has caught his first rabbit of the year and is now catching at least one daily. He sometimes brings one back for the dogs, particularly Arthur our young jackadackadoodle. It was just such a gift that caused the first ever brief fight between him and Boris who has finally realised that fresh rabbit is actually quite a tasty treat. They quickly made up.

I'm sorry if anybody reading this is feeling sorry for the cute little bunny-wunnies, but I find it hard to feel sympathy for an animal which takes great delight in digging up my freshly planted garden shrubs and flowers. Besides, it saves on the animal feed bills.

Boris and Arthur have been enjoying the life of Riley lately. I discovered a supplier of knuckle bones who sell a whole sack full for under a tenner. These should keep the dogs busy for quite some time.

Most delightfully, a year and a half into his life, Arthur has finally realised how much fun it is playing with a ball. He bounces around with sheer joy at his new discovery.

Poultry
The farm fowl are all back outside now, albeit with a few restrictions in place. The geese make regular trips back into the stables to lay. They are sharing two nests this year.
We collected the first 60 eggs or so as they are Sue's favourite egg for eating and we managed to sell quite a few of them, which will have gone a long way to offsetting the costs of feeding the geese while they were imprisoned inside.

Caught in the act by The Silver Stag

The turkeys are laying too. Again we collected the first couple of dozen eggs, but the hens quickly started sitting for long periods. Currently two nests are set up next to each other and two birds seem to have settled on them. I will be very happy if they hatch any young. We would like to keep about six for meat, but any more than that should be fairly easy to sell as chicks to fellow smallholders wanting to rear them.
In the same pen, the Muscovy Ducks are creating a sizeable clutch of eggs too. Last year, letting the duck hatch out her own eggs proved unsuccessful whereas Elvis, our broody hen, managed to rear all of her ten successfully. So that is the plan again this year. I would like to get two batches hatched out over the year as the Muscovy Ducks are the tastiest of birds, as well as being rather charming inhabitants of the poultry pen.
Last but not least we have started the cycle of hatching out chicks. These are collected from our trio of Ixworths and will be raised for the table. The first hatching only delivered eight healthy chicks, which was a bit disappointing. We have started collecting the eggs for the second batch in the incubator. Hopefully this lot will do better.

The chickens were absolutely delighted to go back outside. I herded them down the land to their pen and they instantly set about dust bathing and scratching around. Their egg production has gone right up again too and it is lovely to have them attending to my every move as I dig in the veg garden.

Last years ram lambs tucking into a nice piece of willow

Just going by their tummies,

it's looking like a 3-2-1-0 again this year.

Sheep
We have brought the four Shetland ewes down to the stables in readiness for lambing, which was due anytime from Friday onwards. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.
Rambo has settled in with the three wethers (last year's male lambs, no longer 'intact') but he likes to show them who is boss occasionally. There are enough of them to share the hassle and they have enough space to escape it.


Yesterday we went to a sheep day run by Mick at CSSG. We had a fantastic day and it was great to finally be properly shown some of the techniques which we have so far just been using common sense to achieve. We haven't been doing anything dreadfully wrong, but I know I will be more confident from now onwards.

Bees
Sue's department. She is very happy with how the two colonies are faring at the moment. They have come through the winter strongly and the queens are laying well. One hive already has a super over the brood box where the bees can make honey for us. The second hive should have enough brood in to extend upwards this week.
All around us the rape is in flower. There seems to be more this year than ever. Probably something to do with subsidies and not a lot to do with need. This means that the bees will be well fed but their honey will need taking off and processing quickly before it sets like concrete.
At least we now have the tools to cream the honey which stops it setting solid.

Fruit and Veg
Fruit
Pruning is finished, moved, new bushes and canes are planted and mulched, blackberries are tied in to new supports and the raspberry beds have had an overhaul. Mr Rotavator has done a brilliant job tidying up the strawberry beds. Leaves are unfurling and buds are bursting. We should get bumper crops of everything this year.
The fruit trees are coming into blossom and the weather has been good for pollination.
We have already harvested mountains of rhubarb and we managed to sell a fair amount which made a small contribution to the coffers. We don't charge much, but I would rather people enjoyed it than it went to waste every year. Rhubarb plants are dead easy to grow, even easier to propagate and they shade out all weeds. The perfect crop!

We have had both mowers out and they are both still working. The veg patch starts to reveal its plan once the top is taken off the winter grass growth and the beds are cleared and worked.













Veg plot
The soil is warming up and drying rapidly. Working it is a delight at the moment and I have been working hard to get all the weeds out and prepare the beds for planting. Broad beans, early potatoes, parsnip seeds, garlic and onion sets are in the ground already. In the next week there'll be a lot more crops being sown.

The garlic is doing well.

I have now sown parsnips down the rows.

These two crops always do very well together and

the garlic is out before the parsnips take over the space

If we don't get any rain very soon I'll have to consider watering just so that the young seedlings don't wither and die before they can get their roots deep enough.

Polytunnel
The early potatoes in the polytunnel will be ready soon and the mangetout are rapidly growing. I am anticipating the first flowers and pods very soon. My second sowing of carrots has germinated well, unlike the first and my turnip rows are already shading out the weeds.
The polytunnel is full of seed trays at this time of year, young plants being raised either to go in the tunnel beds or to go outside later.
Today I start making my rosemary oil which I am hoping will be my chief weapon of destruction when it comes to spider mites this year.

Birdlife on the farm
Our winter visitors have all but moved on now and we are still awaiting the arrival of most of our summer visitors. Every evening I anticipate the chattering of swallows in the skies above the veg patch but as yet they are still not back.
Our resident birds are taking full advantage of the early start that braving the English winter gives them. The Little Owls are back in the hollow Ash tree again and the Pied Wagtails are back under the pallets. Crows, Woodpigeons, Blue and Great Tits are all nesting in the Ash trees while Blackbirds, Stock Doves, Song Thrushes and Robins hide away in the ivy which clambers up the trees.
A pair of Linnets has appeared and I am very pleased to see Greenfinches occasionally visiting the feeders, though the Tree Sparrows are not around so far this year.
It's been a good spring for Reed Buntings and Yellowhammers which continue to frequent the feeders, both near the house and the feeding station I have set up down in the young woodland.

Giant Eggs and PSB on the menu

Sunday 19th March 2017

Perky Turkeys
A few days ago I found a turkey egg sitting out in the open all on its own. We placed it into one of the houses in the hope that whichever hen had laid it would get the idea and lay any future eggs in the same place.
Since then three eggs a day have appeared buried in the straw. This morning I found two of the girls in the house laying. We want the older hen to incubate the eggs and we don't have plans to keep all three hens. But at this rate there will be a mountain of eggs before anybody decides to sit, so turkey eggs will be on the menu for a while. Once we reach the Easter holidays, one of the turkey hens will probably be on the menu too!




A Pruning Lesson
It was an early start today for we were off to Three Holes for the Fenland Smallholders meeting on pruning fruit trees. A bit late really, as I had already done all mine, but I thought I might learn something and it would be good to meet up with some of the club members.
Fortunately I found out that I did all my pruning correctly. 😁

A Pre-lambing Health Check
The good thing about an early start was that it left a decent portion of the day to get other things done. I wanted to check up on the adult Shetland sheep as the ewes are only a few weeks off lambing now. Main job was to give them a pre-lambing dose of wormer. Each ewe looks about the same size as last year, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get triplets, twins, a single and a zero again.

Rambo and his ladies, tightly penned for worming and inspection.

PSB!
We have a new crop to harvest. My attempts to grow brassicas yield slight improvements year on year. I never quite understood how long Purple Sprouting Broccoli took to give a harvest. It is almost a year since this beauty was sown, yet only now am I harvesting delicious purple sprouts. I missed some of the harvest but this year I shall be growing my PSB plants in a less hidden away location. I plan to plant them out into the broad bean bed once those plants have come out.

Monday 20th March 2017
Giant Eggs Galore!
As if a pile of turkey eggs is not enough, we are getting between one and four goose eggs a day too! That is a lot of egg.
We do our best to keep up, but one goose egg makes a large omelette for lunch.

Planting Potatoes in the Rain
I needed a hearty lunch today for I worked like a trooper in the morning, battling to get as much done as possible before the forecast heavy rain arrived. I didn't fancy another soaking, but more importantly the soil would become unworkable very quickly. I just about managed to get the early potatoes in, but I was drawing the earth up over them in a downpour.
I have planted Arran Pilot, which is my bulk standard early potato. I do find it stands well in the ground though. There's also Red Duke of York, my favourite early as it makes great chips. I've also gone for Duke of York, another variety which can be left to turn into a Main.
The advantage of the Earlies is that if blight comes early again then there should at least be a crop to be had.
No pictures I'm afraid as I had to make a run for the polytunnel and stay there, for the rest of the day was a day for the geese to enjoy.



A Splash of Yellow(hammer)
The afternoon was however brightened up by the sight of eight male yellowhammers feeding on the ground in next door's horse paddock. These birds are becoming scarce in our countryside now but they seem to like the horse paddocks. Their bright yellow plumage is enough to bring a little sunshine to even the rainiest of days.

21st March 2017
Conquering the Grass with Mr Mowtivator
Yesterday's wetness was forgotten today. The sun came out enough to feel on the back of the neck. The grass has been growing at an alarming rate this last week. I have learned from the past to take full advantage of any dry day to tackle the first mow. Miss the chance and a week of rain can leave you with an impenetrable jungle of grass which struggles to ever be dry enough to mow.
It is important to establish who is boss early in the season!
Starting up the lawn mower is always a dread. I do not pretend to be mechanical and if the mower doesn't work there will be no chance of getting it fixed in a hurry. I always do the first couple of mows with the hand mower. It is a more reliable and trustworthy machine than the ride-on. So out came Mr Mowtivator. Mr Mowtivator suffers from the opposite affliction to Mr Rotavator. The latter's engine always starts first time but has been racing apace. The former never wants to start after a winter of rest in the shed. I have to pull and yank the starter cord endlessly, experimenting with choke in, choke out, leaving it for five minutes, trying again... But eventually it splutters and burps into life and all is fine.
I had to wait until late morning for the dew to be driven out of the grass, but by mid afternoon, after four hours pushing the lawnmower, I had tackled the veg plot, the front lawn, the back lawn and the path through the orchard and young woodland. What a relief!
This year I want to treat my grass as a resource for mulching, though I am making the best of a bad job for I consider grass to be a curse. If there was a cheaper way of covering the ground I would. I wouldn't even have a problem with plastic turf, though the voles and moles might not enjoy it quite so much.

Into The Kitchen
That was enough of the great outdoors for the day. Time to hit the kitchen. This afternoon's delights were Portuguese Corn Bread (which did its rising while I was mowing), Spicy Vegetable Pasties, Walnut Cookies and Jerk Chicken - it was going to be Jerky Turkey, but we have run out of turkey breasts for the moment.

So there ends another three days of our smallholding adventure. No day the same. Always learning.

A New Comfrey Bed

18th March 2017
Re-reading the works of Lawrence D Hills (founder of the UK organic movement) has inspired me to make better use of my comfrey plants.

My established comfrey plants are coming up fast.

Half a comfrey plant will make many more.

They are of the variety Russian Bocking 14, which importantly does not self-seed all over the place. Instead you multiply it by dividing the rootstock. This is the time of year to perform this operation, just as the leaves of established plants are poking their heads up into the spring air.

It is achieved by simply plunging a spade into an existing plant. The considerable rootstock is surprisingly juicy and crisp. I like to leave at least half of the old plant in its place, but the other half can be subdivided into a dozen new plants easily. In theory, each small part of root will become a new plant, but I like to use a part of root which is throwing up new leaves. I think this may be the difference between a root cutting and an offset, though I may be wrong! Anyway, you can't really go wrong with comfrey.

I guess the only thing would be to establish a bed where you don't want it to be in a few years time, for the depth of the roots and the ease with which they grow into new plants when chopped up means that getting it out of the ground is almost impossible (repeated doses of weedkiller would have to be the solution I guess)

Today I used three of my established plants to create a new bed of 50 plants! The parent plants will be back to their best very quickly and by next year the young plants will have caught up with them.

Why do I need this much comfrey? Mainly as a natural fertiliser and as a compost component. Comfrey has extraordinarily deep roots which bring nutrients from way down. The leaves can be cut half a dozen times a year and if you let it flower it is much appreciated by the bees. I have planted a few in odd corners which I allow to flower, but the main beds I try to keep on top of cutting.

Comfrey leaves can be put straight into the ground under transplanted seedlings or laid on top as a mulch. They can be added to the compost heap or steeped in water to make a tomato feed soup. If I can grow enough, I intend to feed it to the chickens too as a once a week treat.

It took me most of the morning to create my new bed (much of which was taken up extracting dock roots and creeping thistle from the new site) which is down in the spare veg patch, next to the compost bins there.

While we are on the subject of compost, I now have a new source of horse manure. Next door have a fancy poo hoover and today I took delivery of my first poo, all nicely chopped up. It will be a fantastic addition to the compost bins, adding goodness and considerably speeding up the rate at which they turn garden rubbish into black gold.

Much of last year's mature compost went onto the veg beds at the beginning of winter. More specifically it went onto the beds where this year I will grow potatoes. It has been rotting down and being incorporated into the soil by the worms.
Today I took Mr Rotavator onto those beds and managed to turn them. Mr Rotavator has been a bit poorly of late. His engine has been running far too fast and threatening to explode! I have poked around a little bit and today he seemed to run fine which was a relief as now is not a good time for him to throw a sickie!

New potatoes and rows of turnip seedlings

doing well in the polytunnel

Double protection for the carrot seedlings

I was hoping to get my early spuds into the ground, but the heavens opened and drove me into the polytunnel. In there the extra early potatoes have already reached the surface. We should have scrummy new potatoes just as last year's stored tubers have run their course.
I sowed a new row of turnips too and resowed the carrots. For the second year in a row they seemed to disappear as soon as they germinated. I have taken the precaution of cloching the new ones in case it is too cold for the seedlings at night time. I have scattered some organic slug pellets in there too to cover that option.

The rain never stopped for the rest of the day. I did all the work I could think of to do in the tunnel and then retreated indoors.

The evening was spent at a Race Night (lots of gambling, drinking and eating, all in moderation of course) to raise money for Sue's school. They raised over £1000 which is not bad for a small village school. The money will be used to pay for the children to go to the pantomime later in the year. I reckon it should be Jack and The Beanstalk or Mother Goose.