Early Summer

It has been a busy last few weeks with poultry, swarms and um, other stuff which has taken up my time but I now can't think of what...

The chicks are growing well and now that the nights are milder, are in the broody coop with Beatrice, and enjoying their daily explore of the garden under her watchful eye:

Ooooh!

The chick I thought was a boy I now think is a girl, and the white 'hen' seems to have a prominent comb already. I tried to talk myself round to it just being because it's a white chick so it shows up more but it's seeming less and less convincing!

Son of Henry

I really wanted a white hen as since Peggy (Amber Star hybrid) had to be put down due to a kidney infection, all the chickens have been varying shades of brown. Ho hum, I'm sure he'll be a handsome chap like his dad tho so I'll keep him as a replacement. The other two 'Welsummer' chicks (either the hens were running with another cockerel and retained his semen for longer than I'd anticipated, or Henry is not a pure Welsummer) are orangey-brown and have smaller combs so fingers crossed. I am pretty sure the two Buff Sussex bantams are pullets though, which would be brilliant as I need to replace the two taken by rats; I still feel pretty sad about that incident to be honest.

In other news, we've rescued a baby bunny from nextdoor's cat - it sadly didn't make it but it was a little poppet:

Ketchup, the young bunny

Clearly it wasn't a victim of my cat who is now on a diet due to his sedentary lifestyle - thankfully the rat problem seems to have lessened now it's getting on to summertime and the spring traps I bought have caught a few.

My allotment has been a bit neglected as I've been so busy elsewhere but a session with the girls saw off most of the burgeoning willowherb. The slugs have had a wonderful time as I'm the only person who doesn't use pellets, but I was delighted to see that the sheet of corrugated iron I left in a sunny spot has encouraged a large and expert slug-eater:

A warty friend

As Amber and Rose were with me, it had to be named, so meet Todd the Toad. I'm really hoping I might get slow-worms as I love them! I'm not sure if hedgehogs frequent the area; I hardly ever see them these days. I read an interesting article in Permaculture Mag about slug control: as usual, the more the ecology is fiddled with, the more problems you have. So, if you do everything to encourage natural predators the balance will be restored. Using pellets or even nematodes discourages the birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians from coming in, hence the problems the minute you don't use any control, or miss a bit. Utilising slugs and snails as food for beneficial animals means the predators will patrol the area looking for food on a regular basis and do a far more efficient job with none of the negative side effects. However, I would like to fence off my plot so I can take my ace slug hit squad up there periodically for a sweep:

Be afraid, be very afraid

I've not had much time for knitting recently but I have picked up some art - a timely and excellent birthday present from a like-minded friend has inspired me to pick up my pencil and paper and I'm loving it, to the point where I see something and my first thought is to want to draw it rather than photograph it. I'm only getting proper time to indulge about once a week but I'm hoping to start a sketchbook as well as galloping through A3 printer paper for my practise exercises, and a trip to Tate Modern beckons...

New Chickens

Well, the Smallholder's Show at Ardingly is always a favourite of mine, and this year I was in the unusual and fortunate position of actually needing some more chickens! After the sad loss of Emu to a recurrence of his foot infection, and another to the inevitable attentions of the fox, I had genuine spare capacity. I was wondering if the poultry gods would be against me and leave me with nothing suitable but thankfully, they were smiling on me.

I already have a trio of Buff Sussex bantams from which I sell hatching eggs, but I was after another set so that I could potentially breed from them myself with the opportunity to mix up the offspring to enable further crossing. In the last building with poultry for sale, there was a pair of Buff Sussexes, and although they looked a bit scrappy thanks to an unhelpful last-minute moult decision two weeks previously, the hen was a good weight and looked bright and chirpy. Her mate had much more black on his nape, and more marmalade-y saddle feathers than my existing Sussex boy so I am pleased with the contrast. I took their ticket to the sale desk, brandishing my cash...

...when of course I was stopped in my tracks on the way by the sight of a pair of Rhode Island bantams in a pen further down. I've never seen them before, and although one of my laying hens is a Rhodey, I didn't know you could get a bantam version. They were the most gorgeous chocolate brown, and stood calmly in their cage. A bargain too at £20. But! - I didn't have room for another pair, and that would bring my cockerel tally up to five, which makes letting each set have a run outside in the garden each day a bit of a logistical challenge. Anyway, after much discussion and a cup of tea, I decided that I would regret not having them (of course!) so I came away with two boxes and a big smile on my face.

Robert and Cora, the Rhode

Island Red bantams

I am so pleased with them. They now have their own secure coop with run in the fennel bed, which also seals off a gap in the hedge where the fox has been known to hide: the dog discovered one waiting there yesterday, although the fox ended up with a snarling spaniel chasing it halfway down the field instead of an easy meal. The other two bantams have also settled in - I just need them to start laying some eggs now so they can earn their keep!

Emu

Last year I inherited a chick from my ex-husband' step-daughter (!) and a lone chick is a sorry thing, so of course I bought it some friends of the same age. Emu is one of them, and he's had a run of foot infections which thankfully seem to have cleared up after a second, heftier dose of antibiotics. I figured that part of the he problem was the coop he was in; it's a lovely one from Flyte So Fancy but it's a bit small for him, but he's been in the broody coop during his treatment, which really is too small for him:

So, armed with these plans for the Basic Backyard Coop, I headed off with lots of enthusiasm and a little trepidation to the timber merchant and Wickes.

The weather's not been great and the garden is a mud bath so I had to construct the coop indoors but it was ok as the guys at the woodyard had sawn up the main bits and I had my dad's workbench and a vaguely sharp saw. Here it is in the lounge:

As with all flat surfaces in my house, it immediately took on the role of Extra Table, even though the dog clearly thinks it's some box of torture or kennel of some description judging by the look on his face.

I then painted it a tasteful shade of Herb Green and put it in position:

Here is a picture of the inside:

I have actually replaced the perch with a free-standing spare one from another coop but the basic layout is the same. Hopefully Emu will work out where to sit so that he doesn't squash his tail feathers...they are a bit thick like that. I'm hoping that as it doesn't have a ramp up into the coop that Emu's joints will cope a little better. 

So, today Amber helped my build the run and I reunited the cockerel with his two (probably rather confused) hens who have been in with Simba for the last 3 weeks. They didn't seem to mind too much though and were soon happily scratching and Emu was bok-bokking manfully and strutting around proudly on his fully-recovered legs:

They did go near the coop eventually! It's a bit Heath Robinson but then everything I make always is, and I have now upgraded from string to galvanised wire to hold everything together which can only mean I'm improving.

And here is my best attempt at a pic of them all in their new home:

What was it someone said about never working with children or animals?

New Kid on the Block

As I mentioned in a previous post, Henry my cockerel has gone to live with a friend of mine, and in his place we have Bruno the Barnevelder. He's enormous! I trying to see if I can use him as an excuse to invest in yet another Flyte So Fancy creation - I'm thinking Gypsy Caravan ;-) - but he is very handsome:

He's also a total gentleman which is a pleasant surprise after Henry's rampant libido. The hens seem very settled around him which is nice as his presence means the older ones don't pick on the babes.

The ducklings continue to be exquisitely cute and are getting really big. I might get the ducks a paddling pool as they love scudding under the water in their seed tray. We had a fox in the garden again yesterday but luckily Blossom spends her time on red alert and kicked off with the most frantic clucking and I hot-footed it out in to the garden and saw it running off down through the field.

My lupins have put on the most spectacular show and the bees are back in the garden now that the oil seed rape has finished flowering. I've set up a bait hive in case they swarm again when I'm out, but I've now got 3 colonies doing well - the small swarm I collected has laying workers so it won't survive but they are happy enough so I will let them fizzle out on their own. My roses have suffered with aphid attacks but I've been rubbing the little blighters off each evening so hopefully the blooms won't be too affected. My veg table is really productive too and we've enjoyed fresh salad every (well, I've enjoyed it, the children have eaten it) but I found Speckledy Emily devouring the lettuces this morning having learnt it was a simple hop and a flap to get up there. Sigh, it was nice while it lasted...

The girls have been enjoying the sunshine and have spent hours in the garden building tents and playing with sticks. Amber drew and typed some beautiful labels for my plant stall and they seem to have an endless capacity for making up stories. Tristan has been busy with his studies and generally keeping a low profile. I procured some 1970's sun loungers off Freecycle and Amber sits on hers with Hazel the chicken for ages:

Ahh!

A Garden Full of Bees

I had a phone call yesterday from the lady whose bees I look after; they'd swarmed. It was a dreary, drizzly, murky day so I hopped in the car with a box and a beesuit and went to collect them. The cluster of bees was beautifully situated on an overhanging branch, about head height, along a path :-) couldn't be better. So although bees are very rarely aggressive when they swarm as they've nothing to defend, Ann's are a feisty lot so I did put on my suit and after a sharp tap on the branch, into the box they went. I wrapped them in a sheet just in case as there were a few stragglers - a couple of whom decided to negotiate their way out of the folds of material and buzz ominously around the car as I was driving home.

There were a lot of bees as I put them in to a hive in my garden, but despite the rain they all flew around orientating themselves to their new home. A good job done.

Or so I thought. I noticed this morning that there were a lot of bees around the other 2 hives: not just at the entrance but also trying to get in to the vents and the floor and buzzing along the joins between the hive boxes looking for gaps. Little whatsits were trying to rob my hives!! So, back on with the beesuit and gloves, and armed with a roll of parcel tape and the tiniest, most useless pair of scissors we own, I set about reducing the size of the entrances to the hives so that the guard bees had a smaller gap to defend from their cheeky upstart new neighbours. Trying to unwrap parcel tape, cut parcel tape with Christmas cracker-quality scissors and stick parcel tape on to wood all whilst wearing rubber gloves and in slightly breezy conditions - well, I'm glad nobody was filming that particular exercise in cack-handedness. Or indeed recording; my language had deteriorated somewhat by this stage. And I couldn't seem to retain in my head that there was no point in trying to sever the tape with my teeth: I was wearing a veil. Anyway, the new bees seem to have calmed down now and left the others alone. The tape's still on the entrances which they don't really mind, although you can almost hear the tutting as the bees return, laden with pollen, and have to queue up at the doorway.

My new run arrived today (yes, another one!) as I thought the ducks needed more room, especially with the prospect of babies. It's really good and I feel much happier about them being in there. Rose helped me build it:

Isn't it great? It's the large freestanding lawn run from Flyte So Fancy - I have been so impressed with their other stuff and this is no exception. John and Jean and any future family will be safe and secure in there, and I can fit their big tub of water in too.

I must go and look for Mary the Adventurous Hen who has been gone for a couple of hours which she does frequently. Off she goes, all on her own in the more-than-chicken-high wheat crop behind the house. I did find myself having a fleeting, subconscious thought that I should text her......

It's Been a While....

...partly because I have run out of room in my online photo album so can't post pics without deleting previous ones or purchasing album space, and my laptop has been donated to my son and my old pc won't speak to my camera. Consequently, uploading pictures and getting them on to my blog is a bit of a palava. I'll try and sort something out though. Things have been busy here: I find spring such an energising time of year but I'm actually trying to slow down a bit. I used to make my cup of tea in bleary-eyed fashion, crawl back to bed and resurface once the life-giving caffeine had gently woken me up. Now, I have got in to the unhealthy habit of putting the kettle on, feeling obliged to go and feed the hens and then take the tea outside and start wondering what I can get on with in the garden. Yes! I know! Madness!!

The children are going to their dad's tomorrow morning until Tuesday afternoon so I am looking forward to a bit of peace and quiet. Camilla has been round which is nice for the girls, and Amber has had her friend Emily to stay too. Tristan had his regulation time with Joel last week so the inevitable bickering has been at a manageable level. I have banned the words "I'm bored" with threats of double work when we get back to homeschooling if they chunter about not having anything to do during the break. Tristan is starting French GCSE and hopefully history if I can understand what set books I need to get. I took a special trip up to Foyles in London to have a decent peruse but got completely lost so gave up. I did get a really good insect field guide, a biodynamic calendar, a bee book called "Queen of the Sun" which is a lovely anthology of  articles, pictures and poems from a bee-friendly perspective. Oh, and a great Eleanor of Aquitaine bio by Douglas Boyd which I am really enjoying. So. er, yes, not a great result on the textbook front but I'm well stocked up. Things with their dad are ok; I'm letting the CSA do the running around for me! Well, I say running...I think the Alps are moving more quickly but hey, I wouldn't want to do their job.

The garden is looking full of promise though, and this morning we are finally getting some rain. Drizzle actually, but it's better than nothing. It's not been too bad with the hosepipe ban as I have the duck's bathtub water to decant over the border (which yes, I lug 5 watering-can-loads of water to) and I've been prioritising my new plants so it's all looking pretty green as I've got mainly perennials.

The chickens are all doing well and enjoying the dry weather. They still haven't touched the dust-bath station I installed, but are finding plenty of other places; in my row of potatoes, a pothole they've excavated in a patch of bare earth in the lawn, under the bikes which kicks dust up all over the chains, that sort of thing. Blossom the chick has gone broody, and at the risk of sounding like I advocate teenage motherhood, she's been so out of sorts and hormonal I felt it better to let her sit and see if she stays rather than force her out of it. She's in the spare rabbit hutch in my potting shed so it's nice and quiet, and she has got a selection of nextdoor's eggs under her. My neighbours lost Dorothy, a favourite hen and have a few of her eggs left. There are some others too, mainly Pekin bantams and Polish and some other fancy fowl - they're a bit more adventurous than me.

The call ducks are also fit and healthy, and are right at this moment enjoying the dampness. John the drake is extremely full of the joys and keeps grabbing the chicks and trying to mate them. I did think he was just chasing them but no, having observed him from the upstairs window as I shouted directions to Amber in the garden, he definitely has more libidinous things in mind. They have got a bit wise to him now and give him a good pecking which is a bit dangerous as they could do him some real damage. Not that he seems frightfully aware of that. It certainly doesn't seem to be putting him off. Jean, the duck, did go broody too and [extraordinarily] tempted though I was, I decided not to let her incubate :-( she is very young and ducks are less easy to find homes for than hens. I'll see if it happens next year and let her have a go then.

I'm knitting/crocheting a tea cosy at the moment - it's a variant of the Spring Explosion Tea Cozy from Crochet With Raymond, which looks like this:

I'm doing a fruit 'n' veg one though, and so far it's looking great. I've also discovered the Martha Stewart website which has lots of ideas, so have been churning out strawberry pincushions (from the Sewing Projects) section, and yesterday Kate came over with her machine and we gave it a clean up whilst drinking tea and chatting. Very pleasant :-)

Happy Easter to you all.

More Thoughts on Bees

It's the last day of half term and we spent some time in the garden, and we did some gentle homeschool. I also spent a bit of time organising my beehives. Here are some pictures:



The amaryllis has flowered

I made up a medicinal pot of feverfew and chamomile

I planted baby cacti in a 50:50 mix of molehill
and coarse sand

I have given this National hive a brood and a super, and have
put the deeper brood frames in the super so the bees have a
lot more uninterrupted space to make comb

There is another 3-4" below the bottom bar of the brood frame

I have taken out (or not bothered putting in) the strips of foundation. Foundation is hexagonally-stamped beeswax that the bees then extend out to make honeycomb. However it has been manufactured to have a slightly wider diameter than the bees would naturally build, and this has led people to suggest that it has allowed the varroa mite more room to wriggle around and get attached to the bee. Hence advocates of natural beekeeping try to let bees build their own comb if possible. It also allows the bees to produce drone comb, as the foundation is worker bee size.

A National is still not an ideal environment for bees - in the wild they would occupy a space that would fit in to a man-made beehive, but they don't cope well with corners. They build a round nest in a cylindrical tree, so us providing them with rectangular frames in a square box means the corners get cold and unpoliced as the bees really don't understand that they are there. In the winter they can end up dying of starvation even if there are full frames of honey at the edges of the hive. Bees are incredibly sophisticated insects and highly programmed but this does not equate to being able to think! The lack of hollow trees has been detrimental to our wild bee population in the same way as it has to our owls and other tree-nesting birds, and I feel this should be the emphasis for beekeeping in the future: providing them with a safe place to live rather than purely honey production.

I have given the bees some of last year's honey comb to feed on, but as you can see,
it has granulated and the bees are finding it hard work and leaving the sugar crystals behind.
I have provided them with extra water so they can dilute it; it granulates
due to cold or because of the chemical makeup of the nectar it came from.

This lady is enjoying tucking in to a comb of liquid honey

Lined up at the bee bar

It has been lovely to spend some time in the garden and be around the hens, bees and plants. 

A Sock, a Shawl and some Houseplants

The snow still hasn't melted and frankly I'm rather bored of it now, especially as I've been walking up the footpath/Olympic luge run twice a day which now has slippery muddy patches as well as the slippery icy patches. I've had to separate the hens again as despite giving them an enormous run (the large ark, extension run plus small ark), Henry kept picking on the chicks, and I find it so disconcerting to hear them squawking. So, the chicks and Ida now have the small ark and the extra run, and the 4 older chickens have the big ark. I can't let them out for long as there's not much to do in the garden with the snow on the ground, so they end up on the verge outside, or - their favourite place - across the road in to the garden where my white call ducks met their fate :-/...honestly. So, I have decided to take the opportunity to keep them shut in for most of the day and give them their Flubenvet-spiked mash so they actually eat it, otherwise I can't get any wormer down them. The ducks have a herbal pellet which is added to their food on a monthly basis but I can't rely on the hens sharing the food out quite so equably as Mr and Mrs Duck. Anyway, they all seem ok and there are enough hens in each coop to keep each other warm when they roost.

I've suffered a bit of pain in my wrist from all my knitting! Oops. So, I've not done so much recently, although I've done the first bit of colour work on the second fairisle sock:

I am also crocheting a cobweb scarf/wrap in the green Kidsilk Haze yarn - I made a shawl for my mum and couldn't resist making one for me! It's a bit of a trawl and rather a boring stitch but it looks good and is lovely and springy:

I've also decided on a project for my Sissinghurst granny squares, but I've a bit more to do on that before I can take a proper picture:

I spent some time in the garden yesterday as I'd had the foresight to bring my sack of compost in overnight to defrost it. I had lots of spiderplant babies in dishes of water, and they now have roots. I've potted them up in to Nutella jars and tins with grit and sand at the bottom for drainage. I love golden syrup tins too so the ivy went in there:

I have a new book about biodynamic gardening so I'm going to try and get my head around that this weekend! I sowed sweet peas in large yogurt pots and pricked out some Cosmos seedlings, as well as some lupins from an old seed packet, which I now realise are the rather boring yellow ones but not all of them germinated. I'm longing for some sunshine and spring warmth. I always get so desperate to have plants I always sow everything far too early so it gets all leggy or damps off, but I can't resist. I have about 20 hollyhocks in the coldframe which are looking brilliant, and I have sweet peas in there too, and at least when the snow has gone I should have some crocuses and snowdrops to enjoy :-)

Transformation

The forecasters were right! We have had snow! The hens weren't sure:

The dog loves it though - he's the tiny dot between the two trees in this photo:

So as the children are with their father this weekend, I've got myself a big blanket, the February socks, the sweet pea socks, my half-finished crocheted wrap, 3 books which require concentration and the box set of Life on Mars which we watched 4 episodes of last night. Oh, and a really big tub of chocolate digestives...think I'm all set ;-)

February...

...is upon us and Nicky and I have cast on the socks for this month's challenge:

They are a going to be a fairisle design and are knitting up quickly, always good! I've also been sorting out my beehives as a result of the beekeeping event I went to, and have removed all the beeswax from the frames and melted it down. I'm hoping to be able to use some of it for home-made lotions this summer. I had some strips of foundation which I rolled around wicks, although I also dunked my wicking in the molten wax to make it longer lasting.

I bought Amber some new wellingtons as she only has a pair of canvas shoes that she bought in the sale at Primark for £5 so I didn't really regard them as sufficiently robust footwear for our part of the country. She's in adult sizes so the Barbour wellies weren't cheap but the Dunlop ones are so uncomfortable, and I figured she can wash her new ones and wear them with jeans; Glastonbury chic.

The chicks are becoming very tame which is lovely:

This is Hazel, who became Wilbur for a bit but is now back to being Hazel. She/he isn't a cockerel...or at least Henry doesn't seem to think so :-/ The chicks are in with the older hens now to keep them warm when roosting, although Pippa found a new place to lay an egg - the house attached to the rabbits' outside run, although they weren't in it at the time. Never a dull moment when collecting eggs.

Unfortunately I lost my white call ducks to an unfortunate incident involving a neighbour's dog (it wasn't really the dog's fault), so I am very sad about that. I still have the mallards though, who don't seem to mind the sub zero temperatures and icebergs in their tub:

Snow is forecast for the weekend which I am going to use as an excuse to stay in bed. I can't ever recall being warm or having any greenery in the garden at this time of year; it all seems a distant memory and I keep getting emails about seeds and sweet pea plug plants...it makes me long for summer. My crocuses are poking up in the lawn and borders and I always wish I'd planted more - I could do with having great swathes of them, and so could my bees!

New Year Part II

Having had a pleasant weekend, where we went to see Sherlock at the cinema (and I whimpered and gulped my way throughout the 4 minute trailer for Warhorse), today was the start of our 'term', for want of a better expression. I spent the morning with the girls: I sent Amber off to research large fowl, hybrids and bantams, and Rose and I looked at different types of flowers as part of her floristry training. Then I set Rosie to work making a collage of flower types while Amber showed me her findings about Cochins, Rosecombs and Amber Stars. She then helped me squirt Henry's legs as he has scaly leg...he wasn't best pleased.

R makes good use of my old copies of
Gardeners' World

He loathes being cuddled

Tristan spent the morning doing his own thing, but after lunch and a bit of enforced quiet time so I had a half hour break from "Mum!-Mum?-Mum!?-Mum!!" I did some of T's Biology GCSE textbook with him. It was all about obesity and cholesterol and hypertension but after a discussion which ended up with talking about the economic and environmental implications of industrial fishing techniques, we managed to answer the extremely dull revision questions where the emphasis was 'this is really boring but you've just got to learn it for the exam' - arghghghgh!! Anyway, as long as I've got through to him that packet meals and processed food are not a good way to eat for a whole load of reasons, I'll be happy! I am thinking more and more that their education needs to revolve around awareness and sustainability (in everything) rather than working towards unrealistic and unsustainable goals and achievements. I heard a radio programme where they were pointing out that we always want better for our children, but perhaps encouraging them to aim for attainable and fulfilling is a better approach.

The second gumboot sock is going well; I'm on to the cabling now. I won't post a picture as, reassuringly, it looks exactly like the other one :-)

The chicks have learnt to go out into the field - rather a dubious skill but it does them good to forage. The white ducks have found the hole in the fence too actually, they definitely have more wanderlust than the mallards. As the chicks are roosting with the big hens now, I Poultry Shield-ed the other ark so the bunbuns will be able to go back in there once the grass starts growing again. I have decided against getting any more hybrids for now, until I'm sure whether the chicks are boys or gals. My friend Joss has suggested she borrows Henry if the chicks are all female so she can incubate some eggs...that would be quite a holiday for him - sort of Club 18-30 for poultry.

Handsome Henry

Preening call ducks

I have been keeping my eggshells and cooking them if I've got space in the oven, or in the residual heat after something has finished, as I want to try them as a slug deterrent. Baking them makes them easier to crush and also renders them less desirable for Mr and Mrs Rat and all their millions of babies.

I've sprinkled them over everything in my cold frame...

We have high pressure over us at the moment which is lovely as it is finally dry. My house is like a sponge and clings on to every scrap of moisture so it can cultivate some more mould, so apologies to all those farmers in East Anglia who are still struggling with drought but frankly I can cope with a lot of things if it ain't raining! I even hung my duvet cover out to dry today; it's not exactly crispy but it's taken the worst off and means I can put it straight in the airing cupboard rather than having it festoon my bedroom.

An evening of knitting and reading my digital version of HomeFarmer magazine awaits...