Women, ducks and chicken

It's International Women's Day and while I was letting the birds out this morning I thought back to the first IWD celebrations that I remember taking part in, all the way back in 1986, over 30 years ago. I was thinking about how much life has changed, how many differing roles I've had in that time and yet, hopefully, I am still true to myself. I thought about some of the amazing women that I've met, that I've been inspired by, watched (and as best I can supported) struggle through adversities and still hold everything together. And I thought about another woman, one who has inspired me the most throughout my whole life, my sister, who if she wasn't my sister, I would choose to have as a close friend.

Over the last year or so I have met a group of adventurous, bold, brave and inspiring women who have chosen to live a life not too dissimilar to ours. Some are pig farmers, others keep sheep, most have poultry and some focus on plant crops, but all of them have a great sense of humour and a level of grit and determination that has allowed them to thrive in their smallholding lives. Happy International Women's Day to every woman everywhere.

Back to our smallholding.

Yesterday we took a trip out to Stroud in the Cotswolds to buy a secondhand incubator. It's the same as the one we use now, a Brinsea Octagon 20. It will allow us to incubate two sets of eggs at the same time, which means that we can hatch some ducks. 

As if the ducks knew our plans, this morning I found three eggs in the duck house, so all of our girls are now laying. I'll leave it a few days for the new layers to settle into a rhythm and then I'll check for fertility by putting a few eggs into an incubator and candling them after a week to see whether there are tiny embryos developing inside the eggs. As soon as I am sure that they are fertile, I will pop a batch of duck eggs into the incubator to hatch. We have one girl that is smaller and noisier than the others and I think she is a Cherry Valley bird rather than an Aylesbury (although I purchased the hatching eggs as Aylesbury), I don't really want to breed from her, so I will select the larger eggs laid by the other two for hatching and keep the smaller bird's slightly smaller eggs for eating.

Once we have had the first hatch of ducklings of the year (and I've got over the sheer joy and excitement) I will be able to offer hatching eggs for sale secure in the knowledge that they produce good birds. We will grow the hatched ducklings on, keeping a couple of the girls to increase our flock and depending on numbers, sell the other ducks and dispatch the drakes for our freezer. And we will repeat the process throughout spring and early summer to give us a small income and a well stocked freezer giving us some food security for the rest of the year.

We are now getting lots of chickens eggs each day, actually we have way more eggs than I know what to do with. The daily egg count is now in the region of 18 eggs and however much Mr J and I like eggs, even we couldn't eat that many. So I need to find a suitable way to sell some eggs locally. To that end, today I am going to put the feelers out a little more and see if there is a market in the next village for some fresh eggs from chickens that are raised on organic principles. 

I thought that I might do a weekly delivery of eggs to folks who have already ordered them. I would put an honesty box at the end of the lane, but I don't think that there is a safe place for cars to pull over to buy them and the last thing I want to do is cause an accident. I will put a sign out on our lane to show that we have eggs for sale at the farm gate, but securing a regular order of eggs is much more sensible. In an area of lots of smallholdings and farms, selling eggs is not necessarily as easy as it might be, but I hope that there are some local folks who would prefer that their food is raised organically and would like to have our eggs.

Delivering the eggs to the local village would also limit the number of vehicles coming on the smallholding. I am still trying to restrict movements to reduce the risk of the spread of avian flu, although I've put a deep strip of straw drenched in disinfectant in front of our gate which, hopefully, would kill of any potentially harmful microbes from tyres as they drive through it. There's a fine line between suitably cautious preventative measures and utter paranoia about others coming on to the premises. I choose to stay on the suitably cautious side of the line.

I was pleased to see yesterday, that this article in Country Smallholding was published online. I made a contribution to it by sharing my thoughts and ideas with Kim, who wrote the article and by being a case study. You can read it here.

I now need to head outside and tackle some fencing issues, but first I think it must be time for a cuppa!

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I also post vlogs daily (almost). You can find my YouTube channel here.

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A Day Off

On Sunday I woke up to find not only had it rained all night, but that the weather report said it was going to rain all day too. It's winter, what did I expect? Well, so far the winter has been very mild, a couple of storms, quite a lot of fog and a few frosty mornings followed by days that haven't defrosted the crisp whiteness, but nothing really wintery. On days when it's simply too soggy to spend much time outside, I find it is better to resign myself to a day indoors or to find things to do under cover. 

Since Thursday evening we have had the joy of new chicks in the house and I moved five of them into the nursery pen in the chicken condo on Saturday afternoon. You can see how I prepared the nursery pen on my vlog The Chicken Nursery

Early on Sunday morning I assessed the three youngest chicks that were still in the incubator and came to the sad conclusion that one was struggling beyond hope. It was unable to put any weight on one leg and each time it tried to stand upright, it fell forward, banging it's beak. So I did the kindest thing that I could do and put it out of its misery. 

Then I took the two chicks that remained in the incubator to the nursery pen to join the other chicks. So we have seven chicks and last night as Mr J and I watched them exploring their small secure cage, we saw that the little Appenzeller Sptixhauben chick possibly has splayed legs, we decided to wait another 24 hours and observe whether it really does have the problem of splayed legs or whether it was just trying to 'find its feet'.

Being the last Sunday of the month, a local fish and chip shop had its gluten free food session and as it's a while since we had some, Mr J and I chose to have a lunch that wasn't prepared in our own kitchen. So we sat in the van, balanced the packages of hot food on our knees and ate chips and onion rings while looking out at the not-so-scenic view of the back of a supermarket, all the while the rain poured down from the sky. There was a time when I would have wanted a beautiful view to look at while I ate, but nowadays I am happy just to be with Mr J and to enjoy the simple pleasure of someone else having prepared the food.

Following that we drove the few miles to my sister's home and spent a couple of hours catching up on all of each household's news, drinking tea, sharing laughter. I love my sister, not only because she is family, but because she's such a nice person. If she wasn't family, I'd choose to have her as a close friend. Her husband is equally great to spend time with. Both of them are grounded, humble, smart and caring, they are generous, adventurous and witty, all in all, they are good eggs!

When Mr J mentioned that we ought to head home to put the animals to bed, I realised that for the first time in over 12 months I had switched off from homesteading so completely that I had forgotten that we had a time constraint and needed to be back before dusk.

So despite having done some chores in the morning and evening, I felt as though I'd had a day off. This morning (Monday) I have woken feeling relaxed, happy and raring to go again, but before I start the morning chores, I think it's time for a cuppa!

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Abundance and Fruits of the Forage Jam recipe

As   we head towards the end of the first summer on our smallholding, the rhythm of my days is changing. Although I am up at around five each morning, I am no longer out in the garden right away because it's still dark. So for the first hour I'm now reading, watching and researching instead of doing that in the midday heat.

I've been gathering as much food as I can, to eat fresh and also to preserve. I have frozen kilos of mirabelles, fat juicy plums, elderberries, blackberries from the hedgerows, sliced runner beans, broad beans, chunky rainbow chard stems and mangetout.

In  the piggery I've stored the garlic bulbs and the onions will join them once they have ripened. Yet to come are the apples, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and a myriad of other vegetables. Some crops will stay in the ground over winter and should give us freshly picked vegetables throughout the winter and early spring.

By  sheer good fortune, my neighbours have a glut in some crops that either have failed in our kitchen garden or we haven't very much of and we have a glut of crops that haven't done too well in their garden. Being the sensible bunnies that we are, we have started to swap the excesses meaning that both families now have a wider selection of foods to eat now and to store for the winter.

Yesterday evening our neighbour dropped by with a carrier bag filled with plums which were a swap for runner beans that they have been having for the last few weeks. 

They've also said that I can help myself to windfall cooking apples which I am delighted about as I have been foraging blackberries from the hedgerows and can now make blackberry and apple pie filling to freeze. If there are enough cooking apples I will also make some blackberry and apple jam or jelly. The apples on our young trees are eating apples and there are not very many of them as yet because the trees are only four or five years old.

The success of some vegetables has inspired me for next year. I will plant many more beetroot (Boltardy) which have been very sweet and flavoursome this year, to make wine from next year. In the area between the perennial flower border and the vegetable garden I had planned to have cut flowers and herbs, but I will now have fruit instead. I will plant some fruit trees, underplanted with currant bushes, fruit canes and strawberry plants together with some complementary herbs. Some mint in a pot buried in the ground to go with the strawberries, some sweet cicely to help take the edge off the rhubarb, some licquorice roots, tarragon to go with the raspberries.

This afternoon I have made some of my favourite mixed fruit jam, which I'm calling 'Fruits of the Forage' Jam.

Fruits of the Forage Jam

Ingredients

3lbs of foraged fruit (I used 1lb cored windfall apples and 2lbs of stoned plums, blackberries and elderberries)
Juice of 1 Lemon
2lbs unrefined granulated sugar
1 glass red wine (optional)
7 fluid oz boiling water
1tblspn ground cinnamon
1tblspn ground ginger
2 dried cloves (ground in pestle and mortar)
1/2 tspn grated nutmeg

Method

Wash jam jars and put in heated oven to sterilise and put lids in a pan of boiling water, boil for 10 minutes to sterilise and leave in water until ready to use.

Wash and prepare the fruit, squeeze lemon juice over the fruit and put in a heavy based large pan with the glass of wine and boiling water. 

Cook until the fruit is soft stirring regularly to prevent it sticking to the pan. 

Add cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. 

Stir in the sugar until dissolved.

Cook rapidly stirring to prevent sticking until setting point.

Remove jars from oven and leave to cool a little.

Spoon or ladle the jam into the jars (be careful because the jars will be hot).

Wipe the outside of the jars if necessary to remove any spilt jam, but avoid putting your cloth into the jar.

Using tongs, remove the lids one at a time from the pan of water and seal jars.

Once the jam has cooled in the jars, remember to label them to help avoid confusion later.

Use a deep pan to avoid splashes

Ready to put jam into jars

Use tongs to remove lids from hot water

Don't forget to label your Fruits of the Forage Jam