Pallet fence for the vegetable garden

Back at the start of December I finished creating the pallet fence along one side of the vegetable garden (read about it here).

And just four days later took it apart again to use the pallets to build the front of the chicken palace because the Avian Flu Prevention Zone measures were enforced.

Last Tuesday, we managed to collect some more pallets from the local business that we buy the pallets from and yesterday I decided to rebuild the fence around the vegetable garden.

The weather was glorious yesterday, it was frosty start but the sun threw a deep pink colour across the smallholding making the frost twinkle. After I had done the morning chores and Mr J had gone to work, I carried the pallets to the annual vegetable garden, put them into place ensuring that I had a pallet at right angles to the fence between each fence pallet and tied them together. 

To go around a corkscrew willow tree that is slap bang in the middle of the fence line, I used a double length pallet so that I didn't need to put a cross brace where the tree is planted.

I was so pleased to have some fresh air and sunshine that when I went back inside I opened the patio door and the ground floor windows to air the house. 

To celebrate the winter sunshine and that so many of the chickens have come into lay, either back into lay or laying for the first time, I decided to have an egg salad for lunch. Both the smaller chickens that we hatched at the end of July last year that are a cross between the bantam cockerel we had for a short while and either Jack or Diesel (I can't remember which of them) have started laying this week. Two of the Jersey Giant girls have started laying, one of the Australorp chickens (we call her Mrs O) has been laying for around two weeks. A couple of the Cream Legbar girls starting laying again last week, which is fabulous as I had got to the point of thinking that they would never lay again. So we are now collecting around 9 - 12 eggs a day and I expect this to rise as the light levels increase and the days get longer.

I get a huge amount of satisfaction from being able to go to the garden and gather food for our meals and yesterday while a couple of eggs were cooking, I collected some salad leaves from the greenhouse and some lamb's lettuce (corn salad) and spring onions from the vegetable garden.

The rest of the day I was busied myself with cleaning out the chicken house in the field (that is currently home to our meat bird). I was somewhat alarmed to discover that there is red mite in the house, so I cleaned it out as much as I could and sprinkled diatomaceous earth (DE) all around the corners, the perch supports and all the usual hiding spots for red mite. After I had put fresh sawdust in the henhouse, I sprinkled some more DE over the sawdust in the areas that I know the bird sits. Hopefully that will prevent him being bitten by the mites and it will kill them off. Once he has been dispatched, Mr J and I will take the house apart and treat all of the wood including in the joint sections that I can't reach by puffing and sprinkling the DE while the house it together.

Having dealt with the red mite situation as much as I can right now, I went inside, peeled off my outer clothing and put it straight into the washing machine so that I didn't transfer the mite from the house in the field to the other henhouses. I have seen no evidence of mite in the other houses, so wanted to take as many precautions as possible to prevent the spread.

Clean clothing on, I headed back outside just in time to greet our friend the tree surgeon who had arrived with a large trailer load of wood chippings. These comprise mostly of hedging plants and have a fairly high leylandii content, so I don't want that to go onto the garden soil, but these chippings are ideal for use on the pathways in the vegetable garden. The pathways have a weed suppressing membrane over the ground and chippings over the membrane. The chippings will break down over the next couple of years and then I will add it to the soil and then I can put down new chippings on the pathways.

This arrangement with the tree surgeon seems ideal. For his customers who want the waste wood cleared away from their property, he needs to either store the chippings, take them to a tip (which has a cost implication for him) or he can deliver them to someone who can make use of them (me!). I now have a long term source of wood chippings and once the pathways are all covered, I can leave the heaps of chippings in situ for a year or so to let it break down before adding it to the garden. When he delivers chippings that do not have a leylandii in them I can make wood chip heaps in the chicken fields and let them scratch through the chippings (which they love to do), turning them (which they are very good at doing), adding their manure (which they do naturally) and helping it to break down quickly.

It was a very satisfying day and exhausted, I fell asleep on the sofa by 9pm. If you'd like to see my day on today's vlog you can find it here or click on the video below.

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Tons of wood chips in the garden

After months of searching I have finally found a tree surgeon who is happy to give us some wood chippings and this week we took delivery of the first trailer load. It was mostly newly chipped wood, so we used it to cover the weed suppressing membrane in the area between the perennial border and the kitchen garden.

Much to my delight Mr J commented that it is like walking through on forest floor and that is exactly what I was aiming for. Over time I will remove the weed suppressing membrane and replace it with cardboard, but for the next year at least the membrane will stay in place.

As Tom the tree surgeon had contacted me to say that some more chippings would be arriving on Saturday, I wanted to clear the first pile before the next load arrived. It is probably the only time that I will race to clear one before next arrives, but when the first load arrived I asked them to dump it on the grass near the driveway and now more was arriving I really wanted it dumped nearer the back of the same grassy area, so I needed to make access for the trailer to put it at the back.

I can't overstate how grateful I am for this gift of wood chippings, there is no way we could afford to go out and buy enough bark or wood chippings to cover the pathways and now they are covered with just the cost of our energy and effort. I know that I've done too much and pushed myself too hard to get the chippings onto the pathways and that in the next couple of days I will need to take some seriously long breaks and rest more than I'd really like to. But it is worth it as they look fabulous.

The second load to arrive was very exciting, it has some more recently chipped wood in places but most of the load is very well composted wood chippings. So now we have a pile of rich black fine crumbly compost to add to the topsoil and to mulch the vegetable beds with. As time goes on and we get more loads of chippings I will create the rest of the raised beds and cover the pathways with the most recently chipped material.

I've already used some shredded leaves and chippings in the latest compost heap to combine with the spent brewery grain, straw and chicken house waste. The relentless compost making continues and sometimes I get bored of thinking about it, but as soon as I start the next heap I get a burst of renewed vigour and interest. It is after all, the stuff that will help to feed us in coming years, so for that alone I know it is worth continuing to create as much as I can.

Over the next few days I will move some of the semi-composted wood chippings to the chickens' field and give each group of chickens several wheelbarrow loads to scratch through and work on. I will put it in the 'circle of love' that is now on each side of the field. Next year, each circle will be fenced off from the chickens and a new circle made for them to turn over. In the fenced off area I will grow crops that the chickens like to eat and it will form a part of their diet in the winter months when the pickings of green matter in the field isn't as rich as it is now.

Today has been a rainy day, but first thing this morning I spent a couple of hours in the garden before breakfast and before the rain started. I transplanted the last of the leeks into the newest raised bed and popped others into spaces in several of the other beds. I lifted a few weeds, the annuals went into the compost bins and the perennials into a garden sack.
Then I picked some runner beans and headed indoors for most of the day. 

Using my trusty 1960s Spong's bean slicer I prepared the beans for the freezer. Whilst we would prefer to eat them fresh rather than frozen, I want to make sure that we have some beans for the dinner table in the autumn and winter months.

Much of each day seems to have been taking up with watching the birds. I lose great chunks of the day just watching them busying themselves. The little chicks are now five, six and seven days old and have started growing wing feathers and a few now have tiny little tail feathers. They are light on their feet although not entirely accurate as yet, there is quite a lot falling over, but they pick themselves up again immediately and try again. 

Neither Mr J nor I had been prepared for how endearing ducklings are. They have had their first dabble (and dibble) in water. We set a paint roller tray in their pen and part filled it with water and it didn't take very long for them to find their way into it. As they dibble in the water with their tiny bills, they make bubbles and then chase the bubbles. It's delightful to watch them playing for a few minutes at a time before we take the water out again. We didn't spend too much time with them for the first few days so that they didn't imprint on us as that can cause problems later on. It's been hard not to spend hours watching them, but we have stayed away so hopefully they don't think of us as parents and have identified with each other as fellow beings.

Mr J now has a part time job, so for a part of each week it will just be me working on our smallholding, but he will also have plenty of time for being at home, pottering outside with me on a variety of projects and creating his radio shows (you can find out more about these on his blog page here).

I am sure that over the next few days I will get back into the rhythm of blog writing on a more regular basis again. The arrival of the baby birds spread out over four days consumed my attention last week, but I am now getting into a steady routine with cleaning their living space, topping up their food and water. I think that for this year we have (probably) hatched our last batch of chicks, but we are going to incubate one more batch of duck eggs in the hope that we have a few more ducks. Several people have asked whether we have ducks available and it seems to make sense to have some to offer.

As I type, Mr J is closing the hen houses making the birds secure for the night and encouraging the ducks to go to bed. It is time to put my feet up, watch a bit of telly and, as always, have a cuppa!

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