The Big Day Arrives

Saturday 21st April 2018

The Big Day

The biggest day so far in my tenure as Chair of the Fenland Smallholders Club. I am trying to usher in a new era of involvement, sharing and enthusiasm. 

Today I had asked the Grow Your Own group which I founded a few years back to help me lay on a meeting all about growing your own veg. 

We started with  a game I had devised where teams had to decide which of 5 was not a potato. No team made it intact past the third round! The point of this game was to show just how many varieties there are compared to what you see in your average supermarket.

The game was a good icebreaker and was the best way I could explain to members and to the rest of the committee how I want the club to feel.

I followed this up with an activity where everybody was a vegetable (some had to be pests too). We organised ourselves into perennials, polytunnel crops and others. The others then organised themselves into families. As usual, turnips and swedes went into the root crops and the newbie veg growers were surprised to discover that they actually belong with the cabbages. Next the pests attacked. Everybody moved round one and this was enough to befuddle some of the pests. (I resisted the temptation to throw an actual net over the brassica group).

The activity was designed as a demonstation of why we rotate crops. 

Next up were the display and activity tables where people got to talk to members of the Grow Your Own group in more detail. We covered crop rotation, pests and diseases and no-dig gardening. There was a Seed swap and a seedling sale, as well as soil testing and seed planting for children.

Soil testing

Seed Swap

Starting young

All of this, plus refreshments in the form of cakes and savouries all containing vegetables. 

We finished with me showing everybody my yet to be patented seed storage system and a Veg Gardeners Question Time.

The day absolutely flew by and it didn't seem like five minutes before we were hastily packing everything away and heading back home again. The day had been a great success. Attendance had been good, especially considering the fine weather alternatives, and it was great to see quite a few new faces come along. Hopefully they were impressed enough to come back another time.

As soon as I got home I got straight into the garden. There is a month's worth of catching up to do and the forecast is back to miserable again.

What with everything else, this week's record-breaking hot weather has been a missed opportunity for me and I need to grab every moment and every opportunity to catch up.

So it was in with the Second Early Potatoes, in with the parsnip seeds, in with carrot seeds. A quick bit of rotavating while the soil was dry enough and before I knew it darkness was falling.

Flash Recovery

Finally a heatwave is on the cards.

Time to go back to work after a cold, soggy and breezy Easter holiday. Typical.

Wednesday 18th April 2018

Sue and the dogs looking after Flash

Temperatures hit 23 degrees today and are forecast for even higher tomorrow. The soil will be workable for the first time in a long time. At the same time, the grass will need cutting and the weeds will be growing.

Everything will be playing catch-up. But not me. Not only am I back at work, but I have a very big day coming up on Saturday.

For it is my first meeting as Chair of the Smallholders Club and, along with the Grow Your Own group, we have a very busy event planned. I have talks and games to prepare for and display tables to get ready, as well as food to prepare for catering.

It will take up all my evenings and the whole of Saturday.

I don't really mind, but the timing on the weather could not have been worse. Not only are my hands completely tied as soon as I could get out and making proper progress in the veg plot, but the first sunny weekend of the year is sure to keep people away from the event which is taking up all my time to organise.

After Saturday, the forecast is for thunderstorms on Sunday before a return to cold and grey again!

Enough moaning though. Life is still pretty good.

Flash has continued to worry us. He is not bouncing around like a week old lamb should be. For the first few days of his life we felt that every day we could keep him alive his chances of survival would be increasing. But he is still not strong in his legs. He totters about stiffly and struggles to get up when he has been sitting. Most of his time he spends just sitting. Last night he really struggled to stand on the straw in the stable, but this morning he was looking stronger than ever.

Thursday 19th April 2018

Scorcher!
It was 29 degrees today. Not Fahrenheit! The thermometer in the polytunnel hit 120. This brings its own problems for the delicate little seedlings in their pockets of compost.

Dentist.
This has been worrying me for quite some time so the hour long delay in the waiting room was most unwelcome. I survived, but only because they did no work today!

A Visit to the Vets
After that, we had arranged to take Flash to see the vet all the way over in Norfolk.

He started out in a cat carrier, but quickly ended up cuddled in on Sue's lap. Like us, the vet could find no obvious problems, but administered antibiotics (just for luck) and an anti-inflammatory.

It was like a miracle. Within five minutes fFash was able to hop over the step of the vets without stumbling or falling onto his face.

By the time we got him home he was trotting up and down in his pen and by the next morning he was running up and down with me and Rambutan.

Friday 20th April 2018

Work and final preparations for the meeting. Parsnip Cake and Butternut Galette.

Turkey Runaround

Monday 16th April 2018

A day of compost turning - very satisfactory.
The turkeys have a new house (really just ramshackle shelters where they can lay their eggs) and it is pleasing to see that each of the hens has now moved into her own house.

The two lambs have made friends now and Boris has discovered a new play mate in Rambutan.

Tuesday 17th April 2018
Turkey Runaround

Dry today with a strong warm breeze. Maybe finally some of the moisture will be driven from the surface of the land.

I ordered a new chicken pen on Sunday night and it arrived bright and early this morning, so I started erecting it straight away. As soon as construction is finished it will be home to the 20 commercial meat birds which are currently living in the garage.
They are growing astonishingly fast and already need more space.

This new chicken pen is part of a slight redevelopment of the old pig pen and spare veg patch. To fit the pen in, I removed some of the rickety old fence today. With the two hen turkeys sat tight in their houses, I let Silver Stag out for a bit of a wander. He doesn't go more than a few feet away from the girls as he spends all day huffing and puffing in his new role as Chief Protector. In fact he was too busy thumping his chest and ruffling his feathers to even notice the lush new nettle growth beneath his feet (turkeys are about the only animal which will effectively remove these)

I busied myself with taking down the old fence, only to look up and see that the turkey door had swung open and the two hens had decided to stretch their legs. They did find the nettles and were pecking away delightedly. I decided to leave them be as they weren't wandering far. Big Mistake.

Distracted by my work, I did not notice all three turkeys embarking on an exploration of the smallholding. By the time I did, they had a taste for freedom!

I spent the next 45minutes turkey-chasing. I think of the smallholding as the world's best gym. Yesterday's turning the compost was the muscle exercise and the reps. Today's turkey chase the aerobic exercise.

Anyway, eventually the turkeys were back where they belong. It is such a shame they can't be free range any more, but they had become too confident and started wandering too far and getting themselves into perilous situations.

Meanwhile, all was well in the sheep field.

Flash and Rambutan go it alone

Sunday 15th April 2018
A big day for the sheep
Mums and lambs were moved back outside. They are much happier in the fresh air under the open skies. They only come in for their own protection.

Flash was kept back and put out on the lawn with Rambutan. The size difference is impressive. Rambutan has grown particularly quickly and Flash is a tiny lamb.

The others settled quickly into the field with the rest of the ewes. Mums didn't really seem to notice that two of their lambs were missing. The bond is significantly less strong if the lamb is not feeding directly from mum.
In fact the lambs bleat more when I leave them than when they were separated from their mothers.

Typically there was an absolute downpour in the evening. We moved Rambutan and Flash back into the stable for safe keeping and the ewe mothers protected their lambs down in the sheep field.

The Hub - A Duck-Free Wildlife Pond

Saturday 14th April 2018
A dry day and blue skies!
Today's job was to build a hazel and willow barricade around the small wildlife pond which forms the hub of The Wheel, my veg plot design. This preformed plastic pond has followed Sue and I from our first house in London where it was the centrepiece of our 16 foot square garden. Our current plot is over 800 times that size!

I want to move the ducks into the veg plot to hoover up the slugs which live under the grass overhangs where the beds are edged. But they will trash the pond. Instead, I am building a new pond for them, more of a duck lido in fact.

So I set about cutting the stakes for my duck barrier, using hazel I had harvested. I then weaved in the willows, using basic weaving techniques.

I have to say I am very pleased with the end result.

And the ducks are so impressed with their new lido that they have not even noticed the other pond. That one can be kept a secret between me and the wild birds and the frogs and toads.

Flash News

Tuesday 10th April 2018
Most of today was spent on and off tending to Flash the ram lamb. He has been weak and has not been seen to feed from mum, even though both the other lambs are now suckling well.
He is resistant to bottle feeding too and we have had to keep him going with Lamb Boost, an energy liquid.

Flash is the little one lying by mum's tail

Ewe 0009 and her lambs seem really healthy.
She is tucking into her oats and hay.

Early evening his mouth was no longer warm inside, a sure sign that hyperthermia was setting in. This is the main cause of death in a lambs first days, though I think it is more a symptom than a cause.

Sue brought him into the house and nestled him in a blanket with a hot water bottle. I down-played his chances of survival. But by late evening we were able to put him back with his mum and brothers. If he survives, I would be surprised if we don't end up bottle feeding him.
At the moment, Flash's future hangs in the balance. We are trying to get him to feed every couple of hours and topping up with Lamb Boost. The longer we can keep him alive, the better his chances of getting through.

On a different note, the Muscovies are thoroughly enjoying the fact that the giant puddle has topped itself up again.

Lamb Triplets and Twins Arrive

Monday 9th April
You Might Want to Come Down to the Sheep Field
Main job for the day was to finish constructing the pond which I began digging out yesterday evening. This pond is purely for the ducks, who will soon be moving into the veg plot.
The weather was dull and drizzly, but I decided to ignore getting wet and carry on till I was finished.

Pond dug, liner ready

Lined with old carpet underlay.
Just a precaution as stones are rare in our soil.

In goes the water, straight from the water butt

Filling up nicely

So by midday the pond was well on its way to being finished. I had only been working on it for about six hours. It should be completed before dark... or so I thought.

It was 12:30 when I heard the sound of bleating from the sheep field. I went to investigate and here's what I found.

I phoned Sue, advising her that she might like to come down to the sheep field. While I was away, the geese decided to test the new pond. It seemed to meet with their approval.

We moved Ewe 00010 up to the stables as there was heavy rain forecast overnight. I had already set up a pen in readiness for this moment. When we got there, she promptly gave birth to lamb number three! This is unusual for Shetland sheep. 

The only other time one of our ewes gave birth to triplets we tried to adopt one onto another ewe. It didn't work out and we ended up bottle-feeding. At the time we decided that should the occasion arise again we would supplement feed. This means leaving the three lambs with the ewe, but bottle feeding all three as a top-up. Without this, mum's resources would be overstretched, especially as the lambs grow, and all four would be at risk.

But the ewes are not in tip-top condition this year. It has been a difficult year for lambing for everybody.

By the time everything had settled down it was nudging toward 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I returned to the pond, still determined to push on and try to get it finished.  I just needed to edge it with decking.

But it wasn't long before I was interrupted again. More bleating!

I phoned Sue again. "You might want to come down to the sheep field!"

For there was Ewe 0009, one of our badger-faced Shetlands, tending to a newborn pair of twin lambs. This was the first time that either of the badger-faced ewes had given birth to more than a single lamb. Both looked good and healthy. The badger-faced ewes give absolutely no hints that they are about to give birth. The lambs just appear! I am not complaining.

So five lambs in two and a half hours. 

Sue leads the ewe up to the stables using the lamb as the lure.

I was carrying the other lamb.

Each new birth was accompanied by bleating and baaing all round.

Even the rams were taking a keen interest.

By now the rain had really set in and I was glad to have got both mums and all the lambs safely into the stables. I mixed up some oats for the mums and set up a couple of hay racks. They would be hungry now.

The triplets were struggling to get milk and Sue could not get milk out of one teat. It is essential that the lambs drink in their first few hours, since the first milk contains colostrum from the ewe which transfers all her antibodies to the lambs.
The lambs were small and mum was looking a lot, lot skinnier than she was this morning.
We called a friend more experienced in teat management than us. She could come over and help but I would have to babysit her two grandchildren. Joy!

I survived an hour with a three and a five year old. I had never quite clicked what a poor message Cinderella gives girls about their aspirations in life.

The ewe's teats had cleared though one of the lambs was looking quite weak. Having said that, at any one moment any of the lambs was looking weak.
It was going to be a long night.

For the rest of the evening I busied myself in the kitchen making Chicken Tom Yam soup. One breast from the monster chickens went a long way and I have to say it tasted very nice. I cooked to the background music of a live band, for Sue had brought the Sugarbeats, the Smallholder Club's very own music group, over to the house for their practice.

Regular visits were made to check on the lambs. By now it was apparent that the weakest lamb was the last born of the triplets, one I had already named Flash due to the white streak across the top of his head. Oh, I forgot to say, we had to wait till the last lamb to get a female. All the rest are young rams, which is not the best news. Boys are always more troublesome.

Compared to the newborn lambs, Rambutan at two weeks old is looking like a giant! He had his final feed of the day at midnight. I fed some artificial colostrum to two of the triplets too, just to make sure they got enough of this vital ingredient and to keep them going through the night.
I set the alarm for 4.30am.

That was quite some day.

Is this how they moved the stones for Stonehenge?

Sunday 8th April 2018
A Friction-free Move
The ducks are moving into the veg patch and they will have a bunch of friends for a while as I shall soon be getting in a batch of Pekin ducks to raise for meat. They will all need accommodation so today’s task was to move a garden shed from the top paddock, where Rambo had been using it to hone his headbutting skills, into the veg patch. It would need some TLC too.

We managed to heave it onto a barrow cart but the soil was too wet and it just all sunk into the ground. Besides, this way we would have to pull the cart the long way round as we wouldn’t be able to take the shortcut through the gate. The whole thing was rather too unstable.

So Plan B was hastily hatched. We reverted to Stone Age technology, using some old fenceposts as rollers. This worked better but the battens that support the floor ran in the wrong direction and kept catching on each post as the shed rolled over them.

So Plan C was put into action, a cunning plan which made the most of the wet conditions. We managed to position two long decking boards under the shed and used them a bit like railway tracks. The shed slipped easily over their wet surface. Whenever we reached the end, I just tilted the shed and Sue pulled the boards further along.

cornering

In this way we quickly had the shed in the position we wanted it. It is as far away from the planned new duck pond as possible to encourage the ducks to stop off on their journey and forage for slugs.

While we did this the geese made the most of the gates being left open to wander out and discover the new pond I have put in at the back of the house. I can not leave a gate open for two seconds without the geese spotting it and making a break for it.

I rounded them up and herded them back into the stables, where they stopped briefly to admire my newly refurbished chicken house.

The toboganning sheep and other sheep adventures

Saturday 7th April 2018
Brown ram lamb has taken to the bath tub recently. Rambo is bemused.

Monster chicks, your time is up
The day started off with a bit of chicken culling. The time had come for some of the monster chicks as four of them met their maker. They have grown absolutely massive compared to the traditional breed meat birds we have been keeping. Two we jointed and two we kept whole for roasting. They were 3 and 3.4kg. Yes, kilograms, not pounds! I'll write a blog in the near future to summarise our experience of raising the monster chicks.

Fun and games with Rambutan
With Rambutan now two weeks old (how time flies) and looking strong, we decided it was time to move him and mum down to the paddock with the other ewes and last year's lambs.
The actual move was remarkably easy. Rambutan is being bottle fed, so he just followed me all the way down the land. The biggest difficulty was not tripping over him. And Ewe 0004 followed Rambutan.

There was the expected hustle and tussle when everybody met up again. This is always the most difficult time for the lamb as the ewes reacquaint themselves and sort out the pecking order. For maybe half an hour the lamb is vulnerable. Rambutan got butted over a couple of times but lambs bounce back up very effectively. However the young ram lamb was being a bit rough with him . I had considered this might happen. Luckily rams come with horns which in an emergency act as a good handle for catching hold of them. The only reason he had moved up with the ewes was because grass was in short supply in the top paddock, but now that spring is allegedly here that won't be an issue for much longer.

It was time for the older ram lamb to come back up to the top paddock with Rambo and brown ram lamb. For an hour or so he probably wished he had been gentler with Rambutan as the other too chased him around the paddock. Order was soon established though and no serious damage was done.

With that operation over and done, I headed for the veg plot where the soil was freshly worked and dry enough for me to plant my first early potatoes and my onion sets. The potatoes especially are a couple of weeks later going in than I would have liked, but sometimes in the UK you just have to bend with the weather.
I kept checking on Rambutan and was happy to see him following mum around the paddock, now separated from the rest of the flock. Everything had settled down after all the initial excitement.

I decided to take the dogs for a walk around the circuit path which passes the sheep. Boris and Arthur are fantastic farm dogs who have grown up with other animals. In a young lamb Arthur just sees the potential for another friend.
As we passed the sheep paddock, Rambutan came running over but he didn't stop at the electric fence. He carried on straight through it and started following me. The trouble with bottle feeding is that he now thinks I am his other mum.
I tried putting him back over the fence but every time he came back through. In the end I gave up and let him trot round the circuit with me and the dogs.  It must have been quite a sight! When we got back towards the farmhouse I put him over some metal hurdles to go back in with the flock and left them to it.

I briefly forgot about the sheep as somebody turned up to buy some of our turkey eggs for hatching out. I introduced them to Rambo, who turned on his charms, and we chatted about sheep and chickens and turkeys. It was at this point that the whole sheep moving plan went wrong. For our neighbour turned up on the doorstep holding Rambutan! He had become separated from mum again and was trying to get in with next door's four ram lambs.
I am not sure if he had actually got through the stock fence to next door, but they were worried about him if they took their hounds (their word, not mine) along the path, for they are not trained to be with livestock.

And so, for now, Rambutan and Ewe 0004 have returned to the back lawn. I shall have to come up with another plan!

Forcing Rhubarb

still Thursday 5th April 2018
Forcing Rhubarb
Just a quick one this.
We have lots of rhubarb plants, far too much for us to use every year. This is no bad thing though, since it means the plants are not over harvested. Rhubarb is a great plant because it basically looks after itself and is just about the first to poke its head out of the ground every year.
The advantage of perennial crops is that they are ready to go every year as soon as the sun warms the soil. They give a crop way before the other plants are even ready to go outside
The other big advantage of rhubarb is that it shades out everything else, so gives a virtually maintenance free bed.

This year I decided to try something I've never done before and force my rhubarb. This involves covering over a whole crown to deprive it of light. This causes the stems to shoot upwards and to grow pale pink, giving them a more delicate flavour than the more earthy rhubarb hit of the normal stems. It also gives a crop a couple of weeks earlier.

You can buy some very nice looking terracotta rhubarb forcers for fifty quid or more, but mine are hidden away behind the compost bins in one of the less attractive parts of the plot, so something more basic was called upon to do the job - upturned black plastic dustbins. I put a tyre on top of each to prevent them being blown over by the wind. Being black, I figured the bins would help raise the temperature inside as well as depriving the stems of light and giving them shelter from the wind.

The terracotta forcers usually have  a small hole in the top, maybe to give the rhubarb a small light source to reach for, but I decided to try my plastic bins without a hole. There was nothing to lose if it didn't work.

To cut to the chase, here are the results.

You can see the difference between the forced stems and those left to grow naturally. A very successful experiment I would conclude.

Forcing rhubarb like this does sap its energy, so I will take it easy on harvesting these two crowns any further and will choose different crowns to force next year.

Now for a rhubarb and orange crumble!

Friday 6th April
Is It Spring Yet?

I know I keep going on about it, but the weather so far this year has been pretty dreadful. Winter dragged on and Spring hasn't exactly hit the ground running.
We are now behind. Maybe as much as four weeks behind. Blossom is only just starting to appear, the soil is still wet and cold and seedlings have no stimulus to get growing.

But at least yesterday's lovely weather dried out the soil just enough to try the rotavator today. And a stiff warm breeze today continued to drive the moisture of the surface.

The sun didn't manage to appear until late afternoon, but the warm southerly breeze meant that the wet soil lifted to the top got a chance to dry out and I was able to rotavate for a second time in the evening.

Tomorrow I hope to get the new potatoes in and to plant the onion sets. Later than I would have hoped, but I'm sure everything will catch up by the end of the year.

Smelly Chicks

Thursday 5th April 2018
Smelly Chicks

With Sue due back today, a general tidy up was in order. After wrestling with the hoover for a while I headed outside.
Today was a rare one for 2018, a fine sunny day. I resisted the temptation to work the land though, hoping that today's sunshine and warm breeze would dry the soil enough to be rotavated tomorrow.
Even the polytunnel has been struggling to get warm so far this year, but today the temperature in there rose to over 90 in old money. That should kick all the seedlings into action.

The twenty chicks I brought home last week have been doing their utmost to mess out their cage and stink out the front hallway where they live. We usually keep them here for the first four weeks before moving them to larger and more airy accommodation in the garage, but I decided to speed up the process of getting them outside.
I needed to set something up where I could place the chicks while I cleaned out their cage. It needed a good scrub and a strong hose jet. So I set up the broody ring in the garage - I would need to do this anyway in a couple of weeks.
The chicks were quite happy in there. So happy in fact that I decided they can stay in there. To be on the safe side, they have an overhead heat lamp and the electric hen heat plate. That way they can choose which is most comfortable for them and if one fails the other will keep them warm enough.