Let the courgette chaos commence!

A few images from the last couple of weeks. This is my way of catching up on the blog.

All the lambs together for the first time,

enjoying the lush grass growth in the first sheep paddock.

The white chicks get the run of the whole chicken enclosure.

They'll have to hold their own against all the other poultry now.

Sheep separated again, after last year's ram lamb taught the two brown lambs

to duck through the electric fence.

They are enjoying the mound left when we had the drive scraped back.

Ladybird (and manbird)

8 chicks safely hatched out of 18.

I'm beginning to think one of the hens may not be producing fertile eggs.

But which one?

The first courgette of the year. Let courgette chaos commence! 

Swiss Chard, Lettuces, Courgettes and Butternut Squash all thriving in the polytunnel.

Temperatures have regularly exceeded the thermometer maximum (125F) recently.

When the old turkey hen went missing from her roost perch,

I found her sitting on a new clutch of eggs inside one of the houses.

As usual, the geese have completely cocked up rearing their young.

We are down to one gosling, with Christmas dinner written all over it 😃

Twitch on! A day away on the Sussex coast to catch up with an Elegant Tern,

a Pacific species.

This year has been fairly quiet for twitching so far so an away day in the sun was most welcome.

Heatwave deadly for young swallows

So the summer solstice marked the end of a heatwave with temperatures in the low 30s for days on end.
But that heatwave spelled bad news for some. We lost one of the turkey poults, even though I thought they had now grown to an age where they would be safe. Even more sadly, at least 3 of the swallow nests have failed.
The first hint of this was when I found two dead swallows on the floor in one of the stables. They were well grown young, on the point of fledging - in fact that very morning I had noticed the first young swallows joining their excited parents in flight over the farm.
Another stable and another three dead young, another alive but helplessly crawling around on the floor.

And finally a gruesome find in the chicken feed shed down near the poultry pen. These swallows have nested for the last three years just above the flimsy shed door, virtually at head height. Every time we enter the shed to fill the feed bucket out shoots a swallow.

A couple of weeks back I found a broken egg on the floor and a peek inside the nest revealed at least four rather ugly youngsters, their mouths gaping open hoping for a nourishing insect meal.
Then, just a few days back, five well grown chicks were hanging over the edge of the nest. I just presumed that they were growing too big for the nest, but on the morning of 20th June I found one dead, hanging out of the nest. Another three were dead inside the nest. Looking back on that photo with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder how well those chicks were at the time.

The last time I saw the chicks alive... but how well were they?

I posted this sad news onto Facebook and discovered that swallow nests all over fenland have been failing, with many dead young being found during this heatwave, others found on the floor having left the baking nests prematurely.

As I write, I am hoping to bring some good news too. For this morning I found another four young swallows on the floor in the stables. But these are alive and survived the whole day. The parents are coming in and feeding them on the floor. Obviously they are far more at risk of predation, though this has got to be an improvement on the prospect of being cooked alive in a clay oven nest.

A Plague of Strawberry Seed Beetles

Sometimes things do not go according to plan.

Rotten Strawberries

My strawberry plants have been looking extremely healthy with masses of young strawberries on them. Last year we had problems with them all rotting, but I weeded them out and tended to them over the winter. However, an old farmer had said that my rows were way too wide.

A few days ago I began to notice that my strawberries had something very wrong with them. Even the hard green fruits were developing brown marks on them and many were rotting way before they were anywhere near ripe.
I searched and searched the internet for the cause, but all that I could come up with was leather rot, and this only featured on American websites. It didn't completely match what I was seeing either. However, it certainly seemed to be fungal in nature, whatever it was, so I decided there could be no harm thinning the rows to let more air between the plants.
I drove the rotavator straight through the middle of the rows, up and down, picking off any damaged plants and brown fruits. I enlisted the help of Sue and the dogs, as this was quite a big job. It was quite depressing too, for most of the fruit needed taking off the plants.

All I can hope is that the plants can grow new fruits which will thrive better with increased air circulation.
If not, I may have to move the strawberry patch which would be very demoralising. I have put a lot of work into creating it and have had very, very little reward by way of strawberries. I thought they would be coming out of our ears!

A Plague of Beetles
On a separate matter, we have been absolutely inundated with ground beetles for the past couple of weeks. They are literally everywhere, even in the house. Last night Sue left a jug of water in the front room and there were 15 beetles swimming around in the morning!
As far as I was aware, ground beetles are good. They eat slug eggs among other things.

HOWEVER, curious as to whether this plague of beetles was peculiar to our farm, I went searching on the internet. First step was to identify them, which was fairly straight forward as they have clearly orange legs. So I typed into an image search orange-legged ground beetle and up came a matching picture - the strawberry seed beetle.





And here the two parts of this story come together.
It didn't take long for my search to hit on pictures of damaged strawberries with the damage exactly matching what is happening to our strawberries.

Further research reveals that this species is widespread throughout much of the world. It is in the adult stage that it is a pest of unripe seeds, anything from strawberries to grains and sugar beet. It is also an important insect for controlling other unwanted bugs, though this is of little use when it has caused so much damage itself.

For the moment the beetles seem to have largely left the strawberry bed and headed en masse into the house! Every evening they literally emerge from the woodwork and I am catching 20 to 30 before I go to bed.
It looks like, with luck, we will manage to salvage some sort of strawberry crop but I am a little concerned about future years. My best hope is that this has been a bumper year for Harpalus rufipes and that in future a more healthy balance will be restored.

For the moment I'm afraid the strawberry seed beetle will receive no mercy.

Drastically thinning the plums

Saturday 3rd June
Today I sowed the rest of my beans along with the sweetcorn, courgettes, pumpkins and celeriac. Finally virtually all of the veg beds have something in them.
I sowed more carrots and lettuce too as well as sowing my swede crop for the year.

With everything growing so well, the creeping thistles have poked their heads up in my young woodland and there are a couple of rather large patches which will get out of control if I do nothing about them. Don't get me wrong, thistles are great for wildlife and I even quite like how they look, but they are just too unruly. So I spent a half hour or so  mixing up the Grazon and spraying it liberally. The great thing about this weedkiller is that it doesn't kill the grass, it just takes out the broad-leaved plants, with a particular penchant for thistles and nettles. It's not organic so I wouldn't use it near the crops, but it is perfect used in the right place. Within 24 hours the plants will already be drooping.

Finally I got on the mower. When it works well it is great, but I have never been able to ride it in confidence. Today it broke again! I gave up.

Sunday 4th June
Job for the day was to thin the plums. Two of my trees have bumper crops this year - the Victoria plum and the Merryweather damson.
Tempting as it is to leave all the plums on the tree, the internet reassures me that this is not the best policy. The fruits need space to grow and they need air around them so they don't rot. Plum trees often suffer from branches breaking under the stress of a bumper crop of fruit - another reason to thin the young fruit. Thirdly, and I had not considered this, if the tree has put all its energies into a bumper crop of fruit it is unable to produce the fruiting buds for next year. This is why so often fruit trees go into the habit of cropping every other year.
And so I set about a drastic thinning process, leaving at most a third of the plums on each tree. It had better turn out well.








Monday 5th June
Following a dismal return from the 500 sweetcorn seeds I originally sowed, I ordered some extra seed from another company. Fortunately they were having an end of season sale, plus I receive a discount on top of this so I ended up paying less than 50% of the packet price.
But of course, while I was on their website, many other items caught my eye. In particular I discovered a good source of seed for my dyer's garden which I hope to develop next year. I also purchased some lablab beans. More on both of these later.

Tuesday 6th June
Boris needed his annual booster today so it was off to the vets over in Norfolk. Arthur came along for the trip too and I had a secret plan to take them both to the beach afterwards. But plans change. The weather was showery here, but by the time I had made the journey to Norfolk conditions were well and truly miserable. In the end we came straight back from the vets and had a lazy rest of the day.

Parsnips and Leeks allowed to Flower

Thursday 1st June
A few images from the veg patch

We never got through last year's bumper crops of parsnips and leeks

so I have left them in to flower.

They are a great attractant to predatory insects such as hoverflies.

Globe artichokes in amongst the grasses, poppies and Scorzonera flowers

The geese protect their two goslings along the edible hedge

A hoverfly doing its job

on one of the

polytunnel melon flowers

Friday 2nd June
Sue did a mega rhubarb pick again today, probably the last harvest of the year. We will leave it now to capture some energy for the plants.
I am looking forward to sampling the rhubarb and fig chutney when its ready. Meanwhile I'll have to settle for a nice bit of rhubarb crumble.

While Sue was busy with that, I put the finishing touches to the brassica netting, where I will grow the members of the cabbage family which demand a long period in the ground, cauliflowers, winter cabbages and Romanesco.

The Bean Forest

Monday 29th May
With a bout of summery weather on the cards, main job for the day was to get all the beans and peas planted outside. I rear most of them in modules to protect them from the attentions of slugs and voles. They quickly fill the little pockets of soil with roots and are soon ready to go out. I sink branches into the ground to grow them up. These branches come from winter's tree pruning and are helpfully and enthusiastically debarked by the Shetland sheep.
The young bean plants still need protection from slugs, so each gets its own cut down milk bottle or lemonade bottle as a mini cloche. This helps shelter them from the wind too and helps to harden them off.
This year I am growing Gigantes beans along with Runner Beans (I forget the variety), Borlottis and Pea Beans. All of these I use for drying. Then there are Cobra beans, my favourite for French green beans.

I do like the bean and pea patch. It adds height and interest to the garden.

In the gaps I grow sweetcorn, courgettes and dwarf beans.

Tuesday 30th May
The sheep have been crossing the electric fence with impunity, even the two little brown lambs. I began to suspect that it wasn't working properly, so today I dug out the voltage tester only to discover that there was actually no electricity running through half of the fence!

And so began the long process of tracking down the problem. First job is to walk the fence and check for any obvious breaks. With this eliminated, it gets trickier. The voltage can drop if there is too much connection with long, wet vegetation, so that by the end of the line the fence is very weak. So I walked the line, clearing vegetation and moving the fence clear. This increased the voltage slightly, but clearly wasn't the main problem.

I eventually worked out where the problem lay - in the sections of tape which link one side of the paddock to the other. What followed was several attempts to get the connection working properly. Each check necessitated a long walk back to turn the fence off at source. Thank goodness Sue was there to help.
Eventually I managed to get a current flowing all the way around the paddock where the sheep are feeding. Doubtless the lambs will charge through it a couple more times until they actually get a shock. After that they will be a bit more wary.

Wednesday 31st May
Look what started today. More in future posts.

A Sluggish Couple of Days

Sunday 28th May
Growing turnips in the polytunnel
The turnips came out of the polytunnel yesterday. I only grow these in the tunnel very early in the year, as they grow lots of leaf and soon start rotting when the weather warms up. But I do get some rather lovely turnips. Some go into the freezer as insurance in case the outdoor crop fails. This year I turned the rest into turnip masala. The recipe used up some of last year's onions and garlic which are just about hanging on as well as a tub of frozen tomatoes from the bumper year two years back.
I collected together the ingredients and set about crushing the garlic and dicing the onions. Actually, I cheated and did it in the food processor, but it still made my eyes stream.

A Visit from The Bee Man
My cooking was interrupted by a visitor. The bee man who turns up for a friendly chat once or twice a year. He is a serious bee-keeper who breeds his own queens and has a wealth of knowledge and experience to share. We chatted for quite some time until the next unexpected visitor.

A Case of Fly Strike
Our neighbour appeared at the gate seeking help with her old pet sheep which had unfortunately become a victim of fly strike. This is just about the most disgusting thing to have to deal with. Greenbottles lay their eggs on the sheep and hundreds of maggots hatch out and start eating away at the flesh. The wool starts dropping off, and is soaked with a foul-smelling liquid. Very, very quickly the sheep falls ill and if not caught quickly fly strike may well prove fatal.
This is why it is irresponsible to keep sheep if you can't check on them at least once a day. A fly struck sheep will typically be away from the flock and inactive.
The solution is to cut back the wool all around the affected area, clean it thoroughly and dab on the same solution which is applied to sheep as a spot-on application to keep flies at bay. This is a strong and harsh chemical but there are times when subtlety does not do the trick. We have only had fly strike once and it was certainly a learning experience. We managed to save that particular sheep.
I won't go into any more detail, but after an hour or so Carol Ann had gone through the same fly strike learning curve as we did last year.

A bit of our own sheep husbandry
It was then time to attend to our own sheep, as some of the lambs needed worming. While we had them all corralled, we had a bit of a move around. The fawn ewe and the two youngest lambs were to move up with the others. There would be butting and chasing for a while and mum would be distracted from attending to her lambs, so to minimise the disturbance I wanted to move Rambo and the other entire ram lamb out of the way, at least until things settled down.
We had a bit of chasing around the field while the sheep played silly buggers, but in the end they did what they were supposed to. We drenched them (sounds complicated, but just means giving them medicine orally) and I then spent an hour or so just keeping an eye on things until they settled down.

So, back to the turnip masala. I wasn't sure about it, but the genius touch was when everything got roughly mashed at the end. Suddenly the dish was transformed into an authentic Indian vegetable dish. Success!

Verti-gone?
Final job for the day was one which I had been putting off for quite a while. Our gutter was blocked and grass was growing from it, but I was unable to reach it leaning out of the upstairs window. So it was up to roof level on the ladder - which is why I had been putting it off for so long. For some reason though today my fear of heights was absent. Climbing the ladder was a cinch. I don't know why I put it off for so long.

Monday 29th May
A very early start after heavy rain during the night. At 5am I was picking slugs off the walls of the polytunnel. For yesterday I cut back the herbs which grow along the outside edge of the tunnel, so the slugs had nowhere to hide.
I stopped counting when I got to 200 slugs! Fortunately I have trained my ducks to recognise the white bucket as their treat bucket. All I have to do is to stop the slugs escaping before I get the bucket down to the ducks.
Smallholding is not always glamorous, so I leave you with an image which sums that up quite nicely.

When she started sitting we had frosts and drought

Tuesday 23rd May
I decided to kick the black and white Muscovy duck off her eggs today. She had been devotedly sat for six weeks. Muscovy incubation is a drawn out job at 35 days, but I figured that nothing was going to happen now. When I cracked open the eggs, they were in various stages of development, so at least our male is not firing blanks. I think the problem was that some of the eggs were pretty dirty and duck eggs are porous.

Stretching her legs for the first time in seven weeks

Meanwhile, the white Muscovy duck is sat tight in a different house. Hopefully she will be more successful. Ducklings are cute to have around and grow quickly into very tasty meals!
In previous years we have hatched ducklings under our trusty broody hen, Elvis, but this year she is showing no signs of wanting to sit, even when we shut her in a house with a clutch of eggs. Maybe she is too old to be dealing with a clutch of young birds now.

I gave the sheep some new grass today. This is just a simple operation of moving the electric fence posts back a little to allow access to the lush grass on the other side. In fact, there were treats all round for the sheep today as I cleared out some of last year's overwintered Swiss Chard plants to make room for this year's tomatoes.
















Wednesday 24th May
Temperatures are soaring. After a worryingly dry beginning to the year, recent weather has been just about perfect for growing with temperatures high but with significant showers every few days to keep the seedlings happy and the grass growing (and the weeds). Temperature in the polytunnel are regularly breaking 100 degrees, so watering and any significant tasks in there have to be done early morning or evening.
Most of the plants are in the polytunnel beds now and the melons, cucumbers, tomato and okra are thriving. In the next few days I'll dig the last of the new potatoes and turnips and
evict the mangetout, which is just on its way out. Waiting to jump in their graves are the peppers, chillis and aubergines.
There should be sweetcorn too, but I'm having to start a new batch after a very disappointing germination - I'll be changing supplier next year.

With the risk of frost over now and the soil warm. the next week will see me busily planting all of the tender plants into outdoor beds. They have been out in the cold frame to harden off. I have bean poles to erect and arches to build to grow my tall peas up as well as more mangetout. The few sweetcorn seedlings which did germinate will be going outside too and the outdoor tomatoes will appreciate some room to spread their roots.
There's Minipop sweetcorn too, which can be grown near the supersweet varieties since it is harvested before pollination. Fortunately 100% of these germinated, so it's nothing I'm doing wrong.

Saturday 27th May
The first day of half term. Hurray!
I took one last mangetout harvest from the poly before evicting it and planting the bed with young butternut squash plants. It won't be long before these are doing their best to take over the whole polytunnel but I will show no mercy in keeping them cut back.



A few weeks back I planted mustard green manure into the bean and pea beds. One moment the beds were spattered with small seedlings but before I knew it they were full of lush green growth. This is my first proper attempt at growing green manure. I chose carefully a crop which I would be easy to work into the soil. I also needed something which could grow quickly and be ready to rotavated before the main crop needed to be planted.
So today I let Mr Rotavator loose. He made light work of cutting swathes through the crop and turning it into the soil.


My work was cut short today though as Sue took the year's first honey off the giant colony of bees. They weren't happy about it and vented their anger on me. At the fourth time of being aggressively buzzed by a bee, I gave up and headed inside.
Sue has been waiting for the honey to be capped sufficiently to collect. She got about 30lb from the one hive which is great. Unfortunately the second hive continues to struggle. Sue has tried twice to add frames from the successful hive. If the weak one has gone queenless then the bees should have used the new brood to make a new queen, but they have failed to do so. The other explanation is that there is a queen in there somewhere but she has gone off lay. To be on the safe side, Sue has decided to split the strong hive into two. Swarm season is upon us and we could easily end up with two weakened hives.

With the warm weather we have been leaving the windows open at night which tonight resulted in numerous moths coming into the house. I am starting to get interested in moths and it is only a matter of time before I take the plunge and purchase a moth trap. But for now I am happy to photograph whatever comes into the house and then struggle to identify it. It is strange to be a total beginner.

Anyway, here's what I captured, along with tentative identifications - I love moth names, they are so eccentric.

Pale Prominent

Silver-ground Carpet

Bright-line Brown-eye

Yellow-nosed Bell

White Ermine

Composting hots up

20th May 2017
Composting hots up
I finally have heat in my compost bins! They have been just sitting there doing very little since last summer. But they got a good watering the other day and I spent a good while turning them and incorporating some of the hovered up horse manure that next door kindly let me have.
I have resolved to be a good composting boy and to turn at least one heap every week - aerating and mixing really is the way to get the bacteria going. So today I turned a steaming heap into the next bin along and filled the vacated heap with a mixture of half rotted material and horse manure. I chopped some comfrey and threw that in too for good measure.

There are three benefits of the heaps heating up. Firstly, the mass of material rots down much quicker and is ready to go on the veg beds earlier. Secondly, the heating up kills all nasties like weed seeds, roots, bugs and diseases. Thirdly, it looks like a proper gardener's compost heap!





The brassica fortress
Well that was a big job accomplished but I still had energy and enthusiasm so I moved on to the next big job, getting the brassica area set up. Brassicas (the cabbage family) get a pretty raw deal since, apparently, they are the tastiest thing on the planet and everything tries to eat them. To compound this, they need to stay in the soil for many months which gives the enemy plenty of time to find a weakness in the defences.

First of all the posts go in to hold up the scaffold netting which goes all the way round. Then the taller aluminium poles which will support the soft butterfly netting (invest in the soft as it is so much tougher that the normal stuff). The ground has already been rotavated several times and the chickens have been allowed on to scratch around. Hopefully this will minimise the number of slugs, but on this clay ground the slugs find a perfect home, taking shelter in the cracks which open up in dry weather and relishing the moisture retaining qualities in the wet. So my final defence is a liberal scattering of organic slug pellets.
When I plant the young brassica plants I will tread them in very firmly to protect them from rocking in the wind (the scaffold net helps with this too) and I will place cut-off plastic bottles over them until they grow big enough to withstand the ravages of a slug or too.
I do not use cabbage collars as many do to protect against cabbage root fly. So far I have not had a problem with this pest, but when I did use home-made collars fashioned from carpet underlay they proved an ideal daytime hideout for slugs.

And the final, final defence, is a rabbit fence around the whole area. I don't connect it to the electric fence as it sucks too much energy, but the physical barrier serves as a deterrent at least.

No pot of gold...
With late afternoon now upon us the weather changed and we had some pretty heavy showers which at one point resulted in one of the most amazing double rainbows I have ever seen, arching right over the smallholding. Unfortunately my camera gear was not quite up to scratch to capture it well.


... but a good consolation prize
I retreated to the new conservatory to watch the birds on the feeders. I was absolutely delighted to see a group of four tree sparrows fly in, especially when two of the proved to be recently fledged young birds.

Tree Sparrow at the feeders

21st May
We're not called Swallow Farm for nothing
The day started with a swallow in the house. It eventually found its way out but not before it had found some rather novel places to perch.

Off with their bits!
Most important job for today was to apply castration rings to the two new lambs. A tricky operation this, for they have an uncanny ability to breath right in and withdraw the important bits! I don't think anybody, even vets, manages to capture both balls every time, so to speak. I rather think the process is more painful in my mind than it actually is for the lamb, since it just involves stretching a rubber ring over said bits which causes them to lose their blood supply and drop off. The lambs show no distress whatsoever once they are back with their mum - well, maybe they walk a bit funny for a few minutes. This needs to happen before they are seven days old.
While we were on the sheep, I moved Rambo and the ram we 'missed' last year back in with the ewes and older lambs. After half hour of chasing around and macho behaviour all settled down. The lambs are now plenty big enough to stay away from trouble.

Poultry news
More livestock news as we sadly lost another of the turkey poults today. There is no rime nor reason to whether young turkeys live or not. They go from perfect health one minute to dead the next. But as if by magic a day old turkey chick appeared from the next which is still be sat on by the turkey hen who won't give up.
Call me hard, but young birds give up the ghost with such ease that I have come to accept it, though obviously I'd rather it didn't happen and do everything I can to make sure it doesn't. But we do lose a young bird now, my main thought is There goes a tasty meal in a few months time.

The mangel wurzel tradition continues
The afternoon was spent planting 250 young mangel wurzel plants. I raise these in modules as otherwise the rabbits and slugs get them and I end up with some very gappy rows. Hopefully the effort will be repaid in late autumn when they will supplement dwindling grass supplies for the sheep.

Mega weeding
With this job accomplished I got distracted pulling weeds. The soil is in that rare state when the seeds virtually jump out of the ground, roots and all, even deep-rooted fiends like dock and dandelion. I spent the whole evening, maybe four hours, on a mega weeding session. The slugs absolutely love to hide in amongst the weeds and under overhanging grass edges to borders, so as I weeded I collected slugs for the ducks. They were very, very appreciative. Nothing goes to waste here on the smallholding.

Enjoying the bounty
While I was doing all this, Sue was doing her farmhouse wife bit, making a selection of delicious jams from what remained in the freezer of last year's soft fruits. We now have umpteen jars of blackcurrant (& rum), redcurrant and crab apple jellies. YUMMY.

She also made a cushion as a thank you to the people who recently gave us three of their fleeces for peg looming. Meanwhile, I have collected another twelve fleeces to keep her busy!

A Hutton Alert!

Wednesday's forecast - cats and dogs

Last week we finally got some rain. Well, not just some rain but a WHOLE BUCKETLOAD. Quite possibly more in one day than we'd had in the previous two or three months.

As a result, the grass has started growing like mad (good for sheep, bad for maintenance - especially with the ride-on needing to go in for service but not likely to be even looked at for a few weeks), the weeds have gone berserk and there are slugs everywhere.
But I'm not moaning. The soil is beautiful to work, weeds practically jump out at the slightest tug and all the vegetables and flower beds are making rapid progress.

Add to that being past the last frost date (just watch what happens now!) and we really have entered a new season.







And with this came my first ever Hutton Alert on my phone. I didn't even know what a Hutton Alert was, but it came from the Potato Council so I guessed it was something like a Smith Alert, though these never come before mid-June.
There has been a problem with Smith alerts for the past two years. A Smith Period is supposed to be a period when conditions are ideal for blight to strike potatoes and tomatoes. It is, in theory, possible to take precautionary action by spraying. However, for the past two years blight has struck my potatoes way in advance of any Smith Period being notified.

So it was no surprise to learn that the rules have changed. A Smith Period is two days where the temperature stays above 10C and humidity is at least 90% for 11 hours or more on each day. The Hutton Criteria radically reduce the humidity element to 90% for 6 hours each day.

The problem is that my Maincrop potatoes have only just poked their heads through the ridges I carefully mounded up for them and already they are facing the risk of blight. I think that maybe I'd just rather not know. I don't spray anyway, as drenching the upper and underside of every leaf is totally impossible. Instead, when the weather is warm and muggy (in effect a Smith Period) I watch my potato leaves very carefully and take the tops off if blight strikes.
I guess this year I will keep an eye out when the weather is warm and slightly muggy (A Hutton Period).

Never good - the first signs of blight on potato leaves

I grow enough potatoes that even if blight strikes early, as it did last year, I still get enough spuds to last us through the year. Key to this are Second Earlies (Charlottes, Kestrels) which should still produce a decent crop before blight strikes and which store well enough through the winter.
If we get a good year then the geese and sheep do very well for potatoes too.

In addition, I grow a few First Earlies in the polytunnel, direct in the soil. In fact, just last week I harvested the first of these. I could have harvested a little earlier but I wanted a good crop so they go through till the first of the outdoor grown spuds are ready.

Lamb Surprise!

No, it's not a recipe!

I got home yesterday to find these in the top paddock.

We were very worried for this ewe. Over a month ago we brought her into the stables as she appeared to be showing a few signs of early labour. But once in the stable, all signs stopped so we let her back out again.
Since then two of the other ewes have given birth (it seems so long ago now) and our pregnant ewe has been back into the stable three times. Every time, she has settled back into a normal routine.

A sheep's cycle is just 17 days, so when that period had passed by we started to wonder what was going on. Worst case scenario would be a dead lamb inside which could well lead to very serious complications and quite likely the death of the ewe. We had now reached 31 days since the first ewe gave birth and 45 since the first possible due date. Very worrying.

I really wanted to move the sheep out of the top paddock, since four ewes and three lambs meant the grass was getting very well grazed. Last week I bit the bullet and moved the two ewes with lambs at foot down the land where they settled in very nicely. They enjoyed a munch on the hedge along the way.

We left the pregnant ewe up at the top with the non-pregnant one for company. We were getting increasingly worried for her as first the three week mark then the four week mark went by. There seemed to be no perceptible changes in her size or the appearance of her udders or back end. But at least she showed no signs of distress or illness.
We asked a few other smallholders for advice, but no one had much more to add that we didn't know. We decided to just observe for one more week before calling the vet for further advice. On top of all this, I was aware that the shearer will be coming over soon and that I didn't really want one sheep left unsheared.

The weekend was very much taken up with baby birds and with gardening. Nothing in particular seemed to be going on with the sheep.

So it was quite a shock when I arrived back from work about lunchtime yesterday and glanced into the paddock. There was our ewe and she was nuzzling a tiny lamb. It took a few moments to sink in what had happened and a few more moments for me to spot the second lamb. They were both cleaned and feeding well, but mum had not yet passed the placenta. I had only been away about three hours.

I snipped the umbilical cords to stop them dragging on the ground and sprayed them with iodine to prevent infection getting in. Then I just stood leaning on the gate and watched for most of the afternoon. I had been fearing the worst so this was very, very good news indeed.
Even better was that both sides of her udders seemed to be working well, for last year we had to call the vet out for this ewe as her udder was fine on one side but hard and hot on the udder (sorry!)
I have put the newborns inside for today, only because we have some very welcome prolonged heavy rain and I don't want them getting a chill. But tomorrow they will be back outside and hopefully bouncing around the paddock on their gangly legs.
They are both boys, so there is one more job left to do in a few days time. Blokes, cross your legs now.