Year One photo tour Animals

We lost our beloved cat Archie shortly after we moved here and haven't found another cat to fill his galumphing boots as yet. But we did find a lot of other animals over the year.

 Bluebell, Jack and Diesel were the first to arrive.

   And Jack has laid some huge eggs over the year (read about this huge egg here)

   The six Crested Cream Legbar girls arrived in February.

 And Laddie joined us a few weeks later, sadly he didn't survive very long, but it was long enough to fertilise a couple of eggs, which we hatched.

 And Big Red was hatched on 3rd May together with Little White, our first white Jersey Giant. (read about the hatching here). She was a beautiful chick, who grew into a beautiful chicken and we were very excited to be able to sample her first egg.

 At twenty-three weeks old she started crowing and we had to accept that she was not a she at all, but a robust and good natured cockerel.

 By twelve to fourteen weeks old Big Red was already a very promising cockerel, over the rest of the year he has grown into a large, happy and healthy boy.

 Our next batch of eggs gave us two more Jersey Giants, an Australorp and hybrid cross.

These four chicks have now grown into lovely birds, the Australorp is almost at point of lay and the Jersey Giants appear to be a hen and cockerel, but I'm not going to be sure that the hen is a hen until it starts laying.

This splendid looking bantam cockerel came to stay for a while, he arrived with scaly leg mite which we treated until his legs were clear and he fathered four little chicks, two with Jack and two with Diesel. The two Diesel chicks are sweet little white girls with the occasional black splash feathers who have joined the flock as potential layers, although I don't expect them to start laying before spring. The cockerel went to live with our friend Helen when we got a replacement for Laddie the Cream Legbar cockerel. 

His replacement was Jarvis who looked splendid, but the girls didn't take a shine to him and he was quite rough with them. They did, however, like one of the younger cockerels that we got at the same time as Jarvis. So Jarvis was dispatched and the Cream Legbar girls now live happily with Squeaky and Poo, who so far haven't fought over the ladies and seem to co-exist with relative harmony.

I continued to buy in hatching eggs.

   And the Dirty Dozen were hatched at the end of July. Eight Australorp chicks and four hybrids (the bantam's offspring).

 At eight weeks old, we separated the Australorps into their own enclosure. It looks like we may have one female and seven males. So together with the Australorp female from the previous hatch, we should be able to breed our own birds next year.

 

At the same time as raising new chickens, we also got ducks and raised ducklings.

 Frederick and Mrs Warne arrived in mid Spring, a young pair who had bonded well and she was already laying eggs almost daily. I added a couple of her eggs to the incubator and our first two ducklings stole our hearts.

 

  At around ten weeks old the ducklings joined their parents in the main duck field and have integrated well. 

The next batch of eggs were bought in from two different sources so that there is an introduction of new genes into the flock. From those eggs we hatched five ducklings which are seem happy and healthy and are now almost ready to join the flock. Once we have established which of the young birds that have hatched this year are male, we will select the one or two that we want to keep for breeding and dispatch any other males.

 As I type, I have one more batch of eggs in the incubator. It's very late in the year to be raising birds, but we will keep the young chicks under the cover of the stable until they are fully feathered and ready to venture outside in the winter cool.

Looking back over the first year on our smallholding, we have achieved so much, learnt so much and laughed so much. We still have much to do, much to learn and hopefully much, much more to laugh about.

I've written further blogs looking at the vegetable garden and permanent planting areas . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

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Year One photo tour Vegetable Garden

Little and often gets a job done! While many days I feel like I haven't done very much, the cumulative effect of the small tasks quickly build into big changes. This was the paddock as we moved in.

The deep green grass on the right has become the shrubberies, the large area on the left has become a perennial border, vegetable garden, the start of a food forest and the chickens' fields.

To celebrate the progress that's been made during our first year, I thought I'd share some of the photos that we've taken over the course of the year.

The first night in our new home

The first of many compost bays. I was delighted in early May to discover that I had made good quality compost in just a little over three weeks (read about my 3 week compost here)

In early Spring I started making the annual vegetable garden.

  I remember feeling a little daunted by the amount of work it would be to create all the raised beds that I wanted.

 But I found ways to create raised beds that didn't need us to use wooden edging. (read about my super-quick raised beds here)

  This bed was made deeper by inserting spare pieces of wood around the edge, including a couple of drawer fronts so that parsnips would have a deeper root run.

   I've used old pallets to start making a fence around the annual vegetable garden, the pallet fence also provides me with compost bays.

   We've created 17 of the 22 beds that should provide us with a wide variety of vegetables throughout the year. 20 are for annual vegetables and two for perennials, globe artichoke and asparagus.

And I think it turned out pretty well. I've written further blogs looking at our animals and permanent planting areas . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

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Impulse purchase

 On Saturday I spotted a small advert on a Farmers' Ads page on Facebook and made a vague enquiry, but as I didn't hear back from the seller, I dismissed the idea. Then yesterday, just as it was getting dark, I had a response to my query. 

The advert was for Hyline chickens that had come to the end of their 'commercially productive' life and were due to be despatched. I've seen lots of information about charities that rehome birds that have been living in miserable conditions, but these were different, these were free-range birds and so should have been in reasonably good condition. Or at least as good as can be expected for birds living in large numbers together.

Anyway, Mr J was out for the day and not due home for a couple of hours, so I raced round to my neighbours' house and asked whether they fancied a drive out to collect a few chickens before they got shipped off during the night. I knew that this wasn't as cheeky a request as it might sound as they were hoping to get a few more chickens and had recently missed out on a rehoming day. Without blinking, she said yes and went to get her car keys. 

I returned home to leave Mr J a note and to lock up the house, grabbing a chicken crate for the birds to travel back to their new homes and my purse. I'd been to the village where the farm is about a year ago and knew my way there. Or so I thought!

Having carefully given my neighbour the correct directions for the first half an hour along country lanes, I messed up for the last two miles and took us to, well I don't know where, but it wasn't the village we needed to be in. Luckily she had a Sat Nav and we did a rather long loop but found the farm.

It's a long time since I was on a poultry farm and had forgotten the very distinct aroma of a large number of birds altogether in one place. We went into the barn buildings and I went with the farmer into the barn where the birds were all gathered. Wow, the ammonia made my eyes water and I fought that horrid retching reflex that was going on in my throat. When I got over the initial impact I took at good look around me. Thousands of birds, all wandering around talking to each other! There were no cages, they were free to roam around the barn as they liked. And they liked, it was a constantly moving mass of feathered friends. 

We selected birds that looked large and healthy with deep red combs (there were a lot to choose from) and put them into the chicken crate. We paid the farmer £1.50 per bird and left feeling pleased with our trip out. My neighbour was going to have four (until we got there and then she said she'd take six) and I was going to have half a dozen, but somehow we ended up with 13 in the crate. I guess both the farmer and I mis-counted, twice. When we got back Mr J was home and he had put our chickens and ducks to bed and made sure that they were safely locked into their houses. 

My neighbour's husband helped me get their birds out of the crate, just the four that they had agreed with each other to have (which meant that we were going to have two extra chickens). I wasn't quite sure how Mr J was going to take suddenly having nine new birds arrive on our smallholding, totally unplanned, but worse undiscussed. Of course, he was fine and helped me to prepare the empty birdhouse that the Cream Legbar chickens had recently been moved out of. In the dark, with the use of our trusty head torches, we transferred the birds into the house. They were deeply asleep by this time and getting the slightly stupified birds out of crate was not easy in the dark.

This morning the new girls were a little wary of coming out of the house to explore their new environment, but my mid afternoon they seemed much more settled and had laid six lovely large eggs. I'm not expecting as many eggs tomorrow as those eggs laid today were already being formed yesterday. Tomorrow and the day after's egg count will be a better indication of how well they have settled in.

Over the course of the day I have picked up each hen, inspected it for mites and lice, checked their feet and eyes and they all look healthy and sturdy. Hopefully in a couple of days the smell that is still on their feathers will dissipate and they will be able to join the main flock.

I'm sure that it will take them a few days to get used to their new diet and new routine. Although they had access to the field, I'm not sure that they had all ventured outside very much. Their feed will have changed as we give our birds only organic feed, organic corn and fresh vegetables from our organic garden. Today they have had cider apple vinegar and garlic in their water and tomorrow I'll add the same and offer them a little plain live yoghurt. They will be dusted lightly with diatomacous earth (which is already in the henhouse), have the feathers trimmed on one wing (to reduce the chances of them flying over the low fence around the chicken field) and be fitted with a coloured plastic ring, which will help us identify them quickly and easily.

Our boys have been highly curious about the new arrivals and have spent much of the day staring through the fencing at the Hyline girls and trying to impress them with their vocal dexterity and scratchy dancing. The new girls don't look terribly impressed with their efforts, but I expect in a few days, like all our other girls, they will think that Big Red is just splendid.

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Covering up

What a blessing it has felt to have such mild weather at the end of October. I have spent a part of each day this week in the garden, some days more than others, but I've enjoyed every moment that I've been outside.

A local tradesman has been applying rendering to the external wall of our bathroom this week. When we bought the house the previous owners were going to put cladding on the small extension, but as it would have been the only part of the house with cladding on it, we asked them to leave it as blockwork and agreed that we'd get it rendered. Moving in during the stormy winter months, it didn't get done for the first few months, but we were keen not to let it sit exposed to the rain and wind for a second winter. So a couple of weeks ago, I got several quotes for the job and the local plasterer completed the job this today. And it looks great!

What surprised me about the rendering task was the difference in the quotes that I received. I asked four local tradesmen for a quote for the job, each was given the same information about what we wanted done, but the quotes were wildly varying. Three of the quotes were for over £800 and the last quote was for a little over £310. Needless to say, I declined the higher quotes and saved us well over £500. Normally at this point, I would rant about why tradespeople feel it's okay to charge so much for a job when clearly it can be done for less than half the price, but I guess I must be mellowing as I don't want to waste my energy getting cross about it.

Outside I have continued to move wood chippings into the young Food Forest to cover the pathways and build up layers on the planted areas. 

 The planting beds have now had the weed suppressing membrane cut away from them, cardboard placed on the ground and composted wood chippings and topsoil put on top of the cardboard. 

 I've placed wood around the edges of two of the beds which should rot down over the next few years, but in the meantime will provide some definition and support for the wood chippings as I build up the depth of the beds.

 I also placed some sticks in the body of this planting bed, they will add to the compost in time, but it was a useful way to dispose of some of the larger twigs and sticks that we have lying around.

Then the fruit and herb plants were planted. I had intended to leave the membrane down for a couple of years and then lift it around the plants that have been planted through the membrane, but I changed my mind and decided that doing this process now would stop the plants from being disturbed after they have put down a good root system. The Food Forest area is now about 30 feet by 70 feet and I'm very pleased with how it is beginning to look.

I've started to plant the trees that we bought last week. I've put in two cherries, a plum and three apple trees and have decided where the others will be planted. The soil is so poor and the ground highly compacted, so digging the hole for each tree is taking far longer than I'd like it to. I've also discovered two self-sown plum trees, one of which I think is a mirabelle (because of where it is growing). I'm using RootGrow mycorrhizal granules on the roots in the hope that this will help the trees settle into their new places more rapidly. The trees that are planted through the membrane and have chippings around them won't have to compete with weeds, but those planted into the other parts of the paddock are at risk of being swamped by clover, thistles or stinging nettles. So I have placed cardboard around them and covered it in a deep layer of wood chippings (taking care that it isn't touching the stem).

I've also continued to build up the layers of material on the most recent raised bed in the vegetable garden. Today I have added a layer of composted straw and brewery grains which have spent the summer in a compost bay with some summer squash growing on the heap. They aren't completely rotted down yet as I can still see some of the grains and the straw, but they are mostly decomposed and can continue to break down on the raised bed. The last layer to go on to the raised bed will be some topsoil, but the heap of topsoil got very wet in the rain last week and I've found it very heavy to move, so the final layer will have to be moved little by little as I have energy or will have to wait until Mr J can help me.

Elsewhere on the smallholding, the young chickens and ducks continue to grow but the chickens have all but stopped laying. Diesel is still laying around five eggs per week, Jack stopped laying some weeks ago and is now in full moult and starting to look rather sad for herself. The Cream Legbars have also stopped laying and are just starting to moult. For the winter period we have moved the Cream Legbars back into the main chicken field so that they can sleep in the large shed with the rest of the birds. This has two advantages, that more bodies in the shed will help keep it warmer and that there will be fewer houses for me to muck out. 

The Australorps will stay in their own section of the field until they are less in number. We currently have one female and six young males in the Australorp field and over the next couple of weeks Mr J and I will decide which two we will keep for breeding and the others will be our meat birds for the next couple of months. The young female and two males will either join the flock in the main field or we will move them, together with the older female Australorp to a new site on the smallholding.

Next week we are due to have some leggy trees cut down and removed from behind the piggeries, which will give us another area that the chickens could move into. I am quite keen to let the Australorps run through the area behind the piggeries because they have proved to be excellent at clearing weeds and scrubland. In the meantime, I will spend a little time over the next few days clearing some of the debris that is behind the piggeries. I haven't really done very much in that area since we moved in and there is plenty of rubbish that needs to be taken away from the back piggery before any chickens live there. 

I am looking forward to a weekend of pottering in the garden and with luck we will have another evening like today, when I can sit outside with a cuppa and watch the sun go down.

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Plants, trees and leaves

 We are heading towards the end of our first year on the smallholding and we are taking stock of what we've achieved in the last twelve months and thinking about what we want to do over the next year.

This week I've been planting the plants, rooted cuttings, bulbs and trees that we've been given, bought or propagated so that none are sitting in pots outside the greenhouse unless that's where they will be for the next couple of years. I have a few tree seeds in pots that can stay by the greenhouse where it is light but sheltered until they are large enough to plant into their permanent positions. There are also several pots and bags of plants that I've put there with the intention of getting them into the ground, but as yet they haven't made it into the borders or field.

Several of the perennials that need to go into the perennial border have been put into a raised vegetable bed that otherwise would be empty of a crop over the winter. I've heeled in some perennials that I've divided and that I've been given and will scatter some buckwheat seeds in too, to be a green manure and ground cover over the winter. Then in early spring when I've weeded the perennial border, I will add the new plants in spaces between the existing clumps.

The perennial border has had little or no attention from me this year, other than to appreciate everything that has flowered in it, including the weeds! I've been delighted with the show of colour that we've had throughout most of the spring and summer, even the feverfew-daisy type weeds have added a welcome splash of white and yellow. The border has had different types of grains growing in it, these are from the wild bird feed that the previous owners put out for the local birdlife and as my focus has been on setting up the vegetable garden, I've left the grains to grow, enjoying the structural element that they have added to the border.

 As I started to clear some of the pernicious weeds from the border earlier this week, I noticed that the seed heads from those grains and also the herbs that I've planted look very much like a firework display hovering above the rest of the plant growth. The dill and fennel seeds with their umbilical like seed heads and the millet and oat plants offer different shapes and sounds as the wind moves through them. I take such pleasure in these simple moments of observation and appreciation and I'm glad that this pleasure hasn't lessened over the years.

I'm still gathering crops from around the smallholding to store for use over the autumn and winter. The apple trees that were here when we moved in have had varying degrees of sucess. One hasn't produced any fruit at all, but then I can't remember it having any blossom on it either. One has produced some fruit but the whole tree has black spot and the fruits do too. The third apple tree has produced some nice fruit which I have gathered and stored in the barn and the last tree's fruit is still not quite ready to pick. When I try to twist the apples from their branches, they do not come away easily which means that they are not ripe enough quite yet, but they look fabulous. The six new apple trees which we bought earlier in the week are unlikely to produce any fruit next year, but in a couple of years time we should, I hope, have an abundant harvest of apples.

The huge sycamore trees that grow to the side and back of the piggeries are starting to lose their leaves in the early autumn breezes. Yesterday I started to rake them into large piles with the intention of using them to create leaf mould or adding them to the food forest to improve the soil structure there. I filled a large green compost bin with them, pressing them down to fit in as many as I could. When that was filled I started to pile them up on the ground. After half an hour of raking and piling I had still only partially cleared an area about forty feet by six feet and there was an awful lot more to go! The trees look like they have hardly lost any leaves and yet the ground is starting to get covered with dried crunchy leaves. I can only imagine how deep the layer of leaves will be once the trees have shed all of them.

I think the best approach to the leaf collecting will be to take the wheelbarrow to the area and fill that a few times, taking the leaves to the food forest area and the rest can go into a compost bin or be piled up on the vegetable beds to rot down over the next few months. Last year, by the time we had moved in and I felt up to wandering around outside, the leaves were soggy and I didn't have the energy to rake up most of them. I cleared a small pathway to the chicken field, but left the rest to rot where they landed, this year I hope to gather the majority of them to help improve the condition of the soil in other productive areas of the garden.

My daughter and grandson number two came to visit on Thursday and we spent a delightful couple of hours chatting, laughing and putting the world to right. She is coming back again on Monday with both my grandsons and I'll be asking grandson number one to gather some leaves with me and then we can choose some with which to make an autumn collage.

Today there is a distinct chill in the air and although the autumn sun is trying to shine, I'm finding it hard to spend much time outside doing gentle chores before I need to come back in for a cuppa.

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