Although the weather has turned colder, the work in the garden continues. Not at such a speedy pace, but we have achieved quite a lot in the last month.
The tree surgeons have done a splendid job, taking out five spindly sycamores at the back of the piggeries and one rather beautiful sycamore which unfortunately was going against the front wall of one piggery. We have kept the huge trees on the right of the photo and most of those on the left.
I've continue to be surprised at the difference it makes, with a new sense of space and openess.
And it creates an ideal space for some of the chickens to live in. We plan to move the Australorps to this area so that they can clear away the weeds and gorge themselves on the grubs and bugs that have been living here relatively undisturbed.
At the start of the week was the Supermoon. It was overcast and cloudy as the moon first rose, but as it got higher in the sky the cloud cover was less and I took this photo of the moon over the sycamore trees and barn. I was rather pleased that I managed to include the lights of the Severn Bridge at the bottom of the photo.
Inside the house, the latest chicks to hatch are doing well. The smallest one is a little Jersey Giant that is about two-thirds the size of these two. It had an issue with its umbilical cord when it hatched and I imagine that as it has survived a week, it will make it to maturity. But, I'm not holding my breath, these little chicks are vulnerable and their immune systems aren't fully formed yet, so there is every chance that the smallest, weakest one may succomb to infection. Usually by a week old I would have transferred them to the nursery pen in the stable, but as they were a very late hatch, I'm going to keep them in the warmth of the house for an additional week or so to give them more time to grow some feathers and get stronger.
Today two new Jersey Giant pullets arrive on the smallholding. They are coming from the breeder that we have had hatching eggs from, the girls are surplus to his requirements and very much wanted here, so it's a win-win situation. These girls will join our tiny flock of white Jersey Giants to help us increase the flock next year and to offer hatching eggs for sale.
Jersey Giants are lovely birds with docile, gentle temperaments and although very big, they have a grace to them. They were bred to be large meat birds, similar in size to turkeys but without all the gobbling noisiness. I now have two bloodlines of white Jersey Giants which means that their offspring should be strong and healthy (and we hope happy) birds.
My friend Kayt mentioned that she would be happy to have more chickens and I know that her girls also live in a large open space, so I asked her whether she wanted some of the hyline girls that we have here. They are producing far more eggs than we need for the kitchen and if we aren't careful, we will end up with too many birds and far too many eggs. So on Sunday she is going to have half a dozen of the layers that we have here to add to her flock. I know that her birds have stopped laying at the moment, so I'm sure she will welcome the eggs that our girls are laying.
I have started to think about ways to sell our surplus eggs, vegetables and fruit and to that end, today I will be researching and start approaching local food outlets and also finding out whether I need to register as a food business, take out specific insurance etc. if we find somewhere to sell the surpluses. As there isn't a huge amount of produce to sell, it may not be economically viable, so today's research will be to find all of that information to be able to make an informed decision.
And before I start the research I think it must be time for a cuppa!
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This week I am being the guest tweeter on SmallholdersUK account on Twitter. Each week a different smallholder is featured, celebrating the diversity of smallholders' lives and this week I am taking a turn at sharing my plastic beads of experience (it feels like I haven't advanced to pearls of wisdom yet). I didn't have a grand plan of what I was going to write about, but I did make some notes of subjects I knew I wanted to include.
I am surprised at how much additional energy I have used up in tweeting throughout the day, how tired I am in the evening and how quickly I'm getting off to sleep. Sadly though, I am still waking up at silly o'clock in the morning and lying in bed wondering if it's too early to get up. This morning that process of waking, staring at the ceiling, getting over hot, then too cold, dropping back to sleep and waking up again started at 1.25 am. So by 5 am I gave up and made my way downstairs and, as I often do when it's too early to start rumbling around outside, I put the television on.
I spend quite a lot of time reading and researching. YouTube has become my go-to learning resource as I can find so many really helpful vlogs and films. Obviously I don't take the word of just one person who's posted a film on the internet, I make sure that I watch several (or lots) of films about any particular subject. The more that one certain topic is covered in the same way, the more I can trust it to be likely to be true. But in the end, there's nothing quite like first hand experience.
The experience has once again been of making compost, raised beds, preserving food for the late autumn and winter and putting in a new fence.
On Monday Mr J banged some fence posts into the ground in the duck enclosure so that we could start to section off part of it for the ducklings to use. The posts were recycled ones from my sister's home. She had replaced her fencing and these posts were of no use to her any more. My brother in law had kindly cut points on the bottom of each post to make getting them into the ground more easily.
I then stapled chicken wire to the posts and used heavy duty ground staples to secure it along the base.
We hung a gate that I had found lying around on the other side of the of paddock (there have been some very useful bits and pieces that I've found that were left by the previous owners).
We moved the two ducklings from their outside nursery pen into the new enclosure and watched as they revelled in the additional space that they suddenly had. Frederick was less than impressed at having two new neighbours, but over the last couple of days he has calmed down and now seems more miffed than cross.
The vegetable garden is filling out even more as the squashes make a last ditch attempt to produce their fruit before the days get cold. The purple sprouting broccoli(on the left) is an early variety, I hope that it will withstand the howling autumn and winter winds and flower early next year.
Mr J and I created the next raised bed late on Tuesday afternoon when the strongest heat of the day had passed. I had put down a layer of cardboard in the morning and we covered it in topsoil and then in composted wood chippings.
I will plant this up today with some purple curly kale seedlings and rainbow chard seeds (because the chickens like the leaves and we like the stems).
I was delighted to find that the compost pile made in early July is now a deep brown colour and although it's still quite soggy and I think I may move it to around the base of some fruit trees and cover it in composted wood chippings to help feed the fruit trees which have been working so hard to produce lots of apples. I've made another compost heap using chicken manure and wood shavings given to us by our neighbours, grass clippings, kitchen waste (uncooked fruit and vegetable waste), spent brewery grain and straw. I also turned the drier materials from the previous compost heap into the new one. The last heap is starting to rot down, I can still see the individual components but the centre is going brown and I will top the new heap with the partly decomposed material to add microbes to it.
I've made several trips into the field that borders our smallholding to pick blackberries. I've been careful to walk on the scrubby edges of the field to avoid damaging the clover crop that the farmer has growing there. The field is buzzing with the sound of our neighbours' bees, so hopefully there will be some delicious clover honey available later in the year.
I have also been gathering windfall apples from my neighbours' garden. They have invited me to collect as many as I like as they feel overrun with cooking apples. Their cider apples are also ripe and they will be pressing them in the next week or so. I like it that the neighbours have a surplus to different crops to us and that they make different products to us. We are starting to swap surpluses and produce which gives both of us a wider choice of food.
I have now ordered some bare-rooted fruit trees and more hedging trees to complete the hedge planting from The Woodland Trust, who have a Welsh Farm Tree Pack scheme, which enables those who farm in Wales to buy trees to create more woodland at a reduced price. They also offer help to other parts of the UK. You can find out more information here.
It's time to put the kettle on.
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