Spring is coming...

Today we have done our second lot of essential garden maintenance this year. Last weekend the bees were checked on - they are all still with us (touch wood) and guzzling their fondant (homemade recipe now perfected and coming soon to this blog!). I have been clearing out the dead stuff to make way for the new stuff, and in the process it was impossible to miss the signs of approaching spring...

^ Chicken sunbathing

^ the ducks going crazy and twittervated. The other day they were even trying (and failing) to fly. Bless them.

^ Some himalayan Viburnum coming into beautiful flower.

^ Catkins on the hazel tree and a blue sky ^^

^ The first crocuses...

^ ...and the first snowdrops.

Compost & Other Such Things

Yesterday we were cleaning out the animals, when it became clear the compost heap needed to be emptied a bit. There followed a fair bit of digging and removing half of the compost in readyness to put it on the raised beds next weekend. Last year we had a bit of a problem because the heap was smelly, a sure sign that we were getting the mixture a bit wrong. However I was reallly happy to find that now it has rotted down to the most beautiful loamy mixture and doesn't smell at all. It's beautiful, and absolutely crawling with life! Hopefully the grass snake will be back this year...

Recipe for excellent compost

copious quantities of each of the following:

- vegetable peelings etc

- paper, cardboard, and straw/wood shavings from cleaning out the animals

- animal droppings

- dead leaves

- worms, woodlice, etc, who should come of their own accord

allow to mix and stew. Serve on raised beds, dug in or as a mulch, and therein plant vegetables, fruits, flowers... Delicious!

The animals very much enjoyed the ordered chaos of rearranging the compost...particularly the ducks, who were slurping up every worm they could get their hands on.

And the good news is that despite a couple of days of wet weather spring is definitely here! The daffodils are finally out, having been late for St. David's Day :( ...there are nearly always bees in the park near my college collecting stunningly bright orange crocus pollen... and best of all, this week saw the first clumps of frog spawn!

Long Time No See!

Well, this weekend I have finally found some time to catch up on the blog! I've missed it a lot but things have been extremely busy, and now that I'm at college I'm afraid homework and coursework have to come first! I haven't had much time to do much gardening etc. and the bees are all in bed for the winter...just as well, as we have had a really cold snap and almost a month of snow! Our village was on the news with some of the heaviest snowfall in the south, and oddly enough my Mum visited Toronto recently and for once we had more snow than they did! It has been absolute chaos, roads blocked, lorries jack-knifing...we've had nearly a foot of snow and everything has come to a standstill. Schools have been closed, and even when they're open some entrances have to be blocked off because of huge, dangerous icicles...it does have some benefits though: everywhere looks so beautiful in the snow, and when you can't get your car out of the drive it means you have to walk everywhere...good for our health (provided you don't slip and break something, of course) and the environment. Although I have to say I'm slightly relieved now it's thawed! We spent 8 1/2 hours in a traffic jam when we went to get our Christmas tree, and although there was a great spirit of comradeship among all the stranded travelers, I'd rather not repeat the experience. And there's even a luscious hint of spring in the air today.

^ The village early one morning, in the snow

^ Our Christmas this year. Peeling sprouts, our tree, and chocolate pudding and syllabub with Christmas dinner!

^ Up until last February when we had snow, I had never seen icicles. The past few weeks they've been everywhere!

Anyway, as I have mentioned, things are rather quiet here in terms of gardening at the moment, although recently Dad and I did harvest and blanche our celery crop, by washing it, plunging into boiling water, cooling in ice cold water, and then freezing. I grew enough celery to last us 6 months this year (21 plants) so I'm looking forawrd to using it all in soups, chilli, stews...all the warming food you need when it's cold outside.

The animals are all doing really well. The ducks and chickens had been moulting in the autumn, which made them look rather scrawny, but they're now resplendant in their plumage. None of them have really enjoyed the wather recently, although the ducks are enjoying the mud now that it's thawing. Willow however loved the snow and took a lot of persuading to get back in the hutch every evening. And we now have a cat called Lucas, a stray that sheltered in the greenhouse at work after the storm and who has become part of the family. He'll probably go back and live in the greenhouse but we have been taking care of him at home recently. I'm not really a cat person at all - there are way too many of them in the UK, they kill the wildlife and think of all the energy that goes into producing cat food, not to mention the fact that what goes in and out of them absolutely honks - but I have to admit that it's great fun having a cuddly, fluffy animal running around the house. We keep him well away from the other animals however.... Alfie the tortoise is still hibernating in the fridge but we will wake him up sometime in the coming fortnight.

Anyway, something that I have been doing lots of at the moment is reading. It's one of the most enjoyable things you can do on a cold winter night, I find, and it's definitely useful for my Literature AS level too. A new string to the blog that I am adding for winter is a reading list - books I have read, am reading or want to read. Sorry to keep adding more and more things! But I need something to do apart from building new frames when the bees are in bed (and my English teachers are shouting at me).

Anyway, the subject of my course is First World War literature, and I am getting more and more interested in history, so this year so far I have read:

• The Accrington Pals - a play by Peter Whelan.
• Birdsong - a novel by Sebastian Faulks.
• Up The Line To Death - selected war poetry
• The Runes - non-fiction by Horil Svensson. I got a set of runestones for Christmas. I'm not sure if I believe in all the "mumbo jumbo" around things like this but the history of it all is so interesting and the runes provide a different viewpoint on life, so I am finding out more.
• All Quiet On The Western Front - a novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

My favourite of these have to be All Quiet On The Western Front and Up The Line To Death. Up The Line was written during WW1, by people who could actually hear shell fire etc. while they were scribbling down the poems. The anthology features work by the greats such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and my personal favourite Isaac Rosenberg. It's so interesting because it takes you from the beginning of the war, when the poets all believed the jingoistic propaganda going around and that they'd all be home by Christmas, through to the work that describes horrific individual episodes in unflinching detail. I love Sassoon's work becuase it just drips sarcasm, but Isaac Rosenberg is my favourite. I love his poetry but even more I just can't believe how unfair it was that a talented, pacifist but poor, wheezy and short lad from the East End had his life cut short on April Fool's Day 1918. And he wasn't tall enough to be a medic, only for cannon fodder. Poor bloke.

All Quiet is fantastic because it was written in the 20's by someone on the other side - a German veteran. It's an amazing book about the power of the human spirit, and reminds me that there was suffering on both sides - when you study the English literature, that is always going on about the Hun and the Bosch, it's easy to forget that the opposing troops didn't have it any better. I also love it because it was banned and burned by the Nazi's in the 30's - a sure sign of a good philosophy. It's written from the first person too so you really feel like you're there, and the detail...the reported stories of men continuing to attack when both their feet had been blown off, or crawling back to safety holding their intestines in with one hand, and the inimitable Katchinsky...it's a really short book, it only took me a day to read, but it's one of the best books I've ever read.

Birdsong is one of my set texts, and I didn't enjoy it quite as much for several reasons, but it's still an amazing book that I would really recommend.

At the moment I'm reading:

• A Small Sound of the Trumpet - non-fiction by Margaret Wade Labarge - all about women's roles in the middle ages. Really interesting and shows that there were powerful and influential women even in a society dominated by men and religion. And my village's castle is mentioned twice - I had never realised that the old pile of flint down the road was so important!
• The Rune Primer - non-fiction by Sweyn Plowright
• Mslexia issue 44 - women's writing magazine, absolutely inspirational. I have already had work rejected by them, which made me feel like a proper writer, haha! Poetry, short stories, flash fiction, articles...if you love literature, you'll love this, no matter what your gender or background.

And I'm planning to read (for the time being. The list gets longer every day):

• Goodbye to All That - memoir by Robert Graves
• Regeneration - novel by Pat Barker
• Life Class - novel by Pat Barker
• The Middle Parts of Fortune - novel by Frederic Manning
• Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man - memoir by Siegfried Sassoon

Nice to be back blogging and hopefully the next post will be along much quicker!

Poultry Problems and Tortoise Trouble

A brief blog about animal care and the problems we've had so far this year!

We keep a range of animals, mostly for fun. If they make eggs or honey that's a bonus! Our menagerie consists of 3 chickens, 2 ducks, 1 budgie, 2 rabbits, 1 tortoise, assorted fish, wildlife and of course our bees. Most of our animals are free to wander around our garden which I think makes for a very happy life.

Earlier this year though our tortoise, whose name is Alfie, was losing weight and being very inactive. He'd stay burried in his sleeping box all day and wouldn't eat at all, even when offered his favourite, dandylions, and treats that he wouldn't normally have, such as strawberries. We took him to the vet who told us to keep him warm and give him plenty of baths in nice warm water, but this didn't seem to make any difference. We trimmed his beak (it overgrows) to make sure that he actually was able to eat, and fussed over him daily, to no avail. It looked like he was going to die.

However, for a few months now, Alfie has perked up. The reason is, I believe, simple: tortoises just aren't designed to weather our cold climate here in the UK. The weather just wasn't warm enough to induce him to move around or eat, and his heat lamp could only do so much. My advice, if you find yourself in a similar situation, is to take your tortoise to the vet, and if nothing seems to be the problem, give him baths at least twice a day in hand hot water, leave food out for him just in case, and just give him all the love and care you can. Hibernate him well in the winter as this keeps his body clock ticking over, and keep an eye on his weight just in case. But apart from that, just make sure he rebuilds his strength over the summer and keep him otherwise healthy. Alfie perked up as soon as the sun started shining. He now eats every day and is often allowed out in the garden where he chases the chickens.

Now then, this week I spotted something really concerning. One of our ducks seemed to have broken a toe. She was sitting very still and determined to keep her foot off the floor, but when the chickens came a bullied her and she had to move off, she was limping really badly. Pops and I examined her closer and it seemed that one of her toes had broken - it was bent out of shape. The picture doesn't really show it, but it was pretty clearly snapped.

We had no idea how she'd done it or what to do, so Mum emailed the breeder, Nicki Janaway from the Warrawee Duck Farm, for advice. Nicki said that as long as she was eating, drinking and preening we shouldn't worry and should just leave her. Sure enough, within a day, she was on the mend, and limping much less. I think just the act of walking clicked the bone back into place. So, if your duck has a similar problem, just make sure she's taking care of herself, keep an eye on her, but don't worry too much.

And finally a problem with one of our chickens (yes, we named them. The chook in question is Cleopatra). Cleo, unlike her sisters, has two stumps on her legs which we assume are the remains of the spurs that I guess her ancestors had. For a while now she's had a lump on her leg. We think she may have damaged her spur stump and it may have got infected. At any rate, it looks as if it went haywire when it tried to heal herself as she now has a large lump on her leg. It doesn't seem to affect her very much - she's still top of the pecking order and bullies the other two a fair bit! But obviously we are concerned that it may get worse and seriously damage her health and happiness, so we've been trying to make her better.

I expect that other people (with more sense and money, I expect) would have killed her or got the vet to chop it off but unfortunately we can't bring ourselves to do the former and we can't afford to do the latter. We've been treated her leg therefore with surgical spirit and antiseptics. They seem to do the trick . We treat her every day and the lump began to crack off and the skin began to start healing not long ago. Thankfully because we've been doing it every day for a while she seems to get quite comfy and stays absolutely calm throughout her treatment.

Last night however we went outside to treat her and discovered that she was pouring blood. The lump must have ruptured, got snagged on something or just cracked off a bit more. Anyway, we bandaged it up (and no, we didn't pull the lump off. It was pretty loose and she was healing in some places, but I think we would have just made it worse doing that). We managed to stem the flow it seemed, and she still seemed completely unflustered! However we were worried that her health might have declined and that she might be dead by morning.

I'm pleased to report that Cleo seems fine so far. She's been limping a bit today - whether that's because of the lump or having a huge bandage round her leg I don't know, but she's still been bullying the other two and seemed well enough to try and eat my courgette plants! We're not out of the woods yet, but our plan is to keep the bandage on for a few days to give her time to heal. Eventually the lump will break off and the skin will heal. We'll keep treating to make sure the infection doesn't come back. So she seems to be doing OK, so far, I'll post again to let you know how she progresses.

Update

I've got a bit behind this week, so excuse me for racing through things so unthoroughly!

Last weekend we didn't go to the Smallholder's Show at Builth Wells like we did last year. Instead we stayed local and went to an open day at Sparsholt Agricultural College. It was a totally different experience, but very interesting! Whereas the show at Builth naturally focuses on small-scale producers, at Sparsholt we got to experience mechanised milking, aquaculture, forestry...all sorts. I can't say it's the sort of farming/gardening/self-sufficiency type thing I'm interested in, but it really gave you an insight into how commercial farmers operate - interesting, but also kind of sad when you think about all the stuff they're up against today!

Piglets in the agriculture section of Sparsholt.

The last of our overwintering crops has been harvested now. The carrots, although knobbly, were spectacular. And the tops make good animal fodder!

Recently I've also looked at spinning waste fibres. I took some loose fibres from some fraying fabric scraps in my stash, and tried carding them with some silk waste and merino wool. The resulting rolag was very light, with polyester and lurex threads giving it a lovely shimmer. The lurex didn't stay in the spun yarn so well, but I plied the yarn with black cotton thread to create a wiggly yarn, and this seems to make them more secure.

Friday saw me cooking - quite a rarity! I made Good Food magazine's Moroccan chickpea soup (here's a link: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1499/moroccan-chickpea-soup ) although I added a carrot, half a red pepper, harissa, cayenne pepper and a bit more lemon. Came out brilliantly, definitely one to add to my repertoire!

Pops and I also made some delicious chocolate truffle swirl ice cream - basically the most chocolatey ice cream you've ever eaten with ripples of even chocolatier stuff thrown in! Mixing the cream into the chocolate custard made lovely swirling wood-grain patterns.

On Saturday Dad and I took our neighbour Jayne to an apiary meeting with our association's swarm coordinator, Keith. It was a fantastic day - absolutely baking, with the bees working hard. It was a fantastic day for the newbies, and really nice to see so many people turn up! It was great for us too, though. We've been beekeeping three years now, but the advice on queen rearing from some more experienced beekeepers was very much needed!

As far as the bees are concerned, things seem to be going quite well. The hive we had to artificial swarm at our main apiary is a bit shaky - we've reunited most of the splits back together, but none of them seem to have a queen. We're going to let them try and re-queen themselves. They have a strong population so things aren't desperate. But I'm glad we've got some new queens on order! The split we did at our other apiary has been very successful. The artificial swarm has already filled half a super with honey! We have now have three strong nucs too, made up from splits. We've seen the queen in one, and she looks like she's mated, though she hasn't started to lay yet, and the other two we haven't seen the queen, though it looks as though they're there. All three are very strong colonies however, and so there will be no harm in waiting a while before coming to a conclusion on the state of the queens.

The weekend also saw us take a canoe trip on the canal. We took a bucket to collect elderflowers with, but they were only just coming out - we were just a week early! Oh well, better than going too late! We'll go again next week and hopefully come back with enough for wine, sparkling wine and cordial. One of the recipes we'll be using only requires 1 pint of flowers to make 1 gallon of wine, so hopefully a little will go a long way!

We also let our tortoise, Alfie, romp around the garden for the first time. He's been off his food a bit lately, but with the warmer weather seems to be perking up. The other animals are curious but a bit nervous about the strange "moving rock", except for Willow, who bounded straight up to him, sniffed him a bit, and promptly rubbed him with her chin (or chins) to mark him as hers. Sweet!

Alfie stalks the ducks.

Yesterday we visited my grandparents in Hertfordshire. It was really good fun - my Grandpa and I swapped tomato seedlings, so I now have 6 more tomato plants to find room for! They're a variety called Roma. I haven't looked it up yet,

Sorry, I had to break off there when an enormous hornet flew in through the window and buzzed around my head! She's gone now but unfortunately she lives to fight another day and chomp her way through bee after bee...I got one spray in, but she looked distinctly unfussed about it. Bummer.

Anyway, my Grandpa and I swapped tomato seedlings, and my sister and I picked his strange salad leaves...I think they were chinese veg - definitely some pak choi in there, maybe mizuna, but I'm not much of an expert. My dad and I also got to look around his workshop, where he used to do wood carving. He can't do it any more because the wood dust affects his lungs, but it's an absolute Aladin's cave, with all sorts of tools, papers and blocks of beautiful wood in there. At a few of the shows we've been to this year, there's been people green wood working, which I find very intriguing - just as well I have a Grandpa who knows all about wood!

Green wood work demonstration at Sparsholt.

Our neighbours across the road from us recently noticed a bumblebee nest right by their front door and asked us to remove it for them (I think the husband expected us to spray them with something nasty, but luckily the wife if very fond of wildlife and a lot more understanding!) so on Saturday that's what we did. I stood back and let Dad do the work, but I needn't have worried; even when he had found the nest and was digging them out, the bees were weirdly calm!

This pic is a bit blurry; it shows the queen. Large abdomen full of eggs.

Bumble bee brood; much bigger than honey bee brood and in clumps.

We rehomed them in a large plastic pot, lined with straw, and placed that on the site of where their underground nest had been. One night this week, when all the flyers will be home, we'll remove it to our apiary, which is nice and wild, and where the farmer is very wildlife-conscious.

I leave you with pictures of the garden as it is at the moment.

Feeling crafty...

Recently I seem to have lost interest in my archaeology course (although I shall persevere) and have been indulging my fibre fetish instead.

Here are some felty things I have made since getting my massive box of wool tops.

Also, a couple of months ago, Bob Flowerdew wrote an article for KG mag about alternatives for plastic baler twine, one of which was strips of phormium leaves. I just happen to have a garden full of phormium, so I tried this out and tied up some loose shoots on the espalier apple trees. It worked, coz the stuff it really strong!

After that though I thought about using phormium for other things, and so I tried weaving it...here's the result of my second attempt.

The garden is looking lovely. I love it. The front garden (which is mostly flowery stuff, but with herbs and veggies and fruit squeezed in) is looking particularly lovely. It is a complete unorganised mess, but is so colourful that I can't help but love it.

Here are some piggies that we saw today, down at the farm shop. I have no idea what breed (Oxford sandy and blacks, perhaps? I don't pretend to know anything about pigs) they are, but they were gorgeous. There were 11 little piglets in total, all trotting around in a whopping great pack...until it got too hot, and everyone lay down for a wallow.

The Tomatillo That Isn't A Tomatillo

I am sorry, I have misled you.

I've written on here before that I am growing a tomatillo, but I was wrong. Same family, different species, though.



I'd been a bit suspicious as I had seen tomatillo seed packets going round garden centres and the thing on the front looked nothing like the thing I'm growing in the green house. Whereas the seed packet tomatillos looked small and bushy my one was a huge brutish monster already pressed against the greenhouse ceiling, and much taller than my mother and even my father by now. (The picture shows it when it was small and sweet...now it is reaching for the skies).

So after a little research I have discovered that what I am growing is actually Physalis peruviana, the Cape gooseberry, rather than Physalis philadelphica, the tomatillo. Same family, different species.

I am slightly nervous now becuase even though my plant still hasn't show any signs of flowers, let alone fruit, I have read that they are poisonous when unripe, and that there are reports that unripe ones can even kill cattle. Picking them when unripe is just the sort of mistake that I would be likely to make, so I must be careful.

Everything else is going fine. There's been so much going on though that blogging about it just seemed like too much trouble. Suffice to say the following:

• We now have four full sized hives on the go, having gone and caught a swarm
• We now have a nucleus on the go
• Two lovely new Hawaiian cross queens on the go

• Daughter of the Grumpiest Queen Known To Man in the nuc
• Having been to a disease recognition day with our regional bee inspector, my father is now the fount of all knowledge when it comes to bee diseases
• We now have a small hive beetle trap to put into one of our hives, making us a tester hive (can't remember the jargony word...tester will do)
• Mad rabbit number 2 has escpaed twice over the past week, and has decided to make a warren in my celery bed twice as well. I have no idea how she gets in, what with all my netting, staples and bamboo palisade. She may have to be locked up for good. Or roasted

Yes, she looks the picture of innocence here, but wait till her double chin is covered in the results of hours of hard work!!

• Garden otherwise alright, millions of pea pods fattening up!

• First courgette harvest! Small but succulent...

• Went to Wales, spent a day out at the Gower peninsula...absolutely gorgeous!!
• Chickens no longer broody. A brief spell in the broody coop (well, ok, it's a puppy cage really, but it worked) set them straight
• We have at least one newt living in our pond!!!

Ahhh. It's a good life.