Year One part 3 Permanent Planting

   The Shrubberies were put in early in the year to make a colourful welcome as we drive along the lane into our yard.

 Our friend Jane gave us several shrubs and others were lifted from the area next to the piggeries and stables.

  I planted the perennial shrubs along the length of the border and have added a few more since. 

 After a few months of growing the long shrubbery has filled out and has given us some colour every month. Some of the plants in the shrubbery have uses in addition to looking attractive. The buddleia has attacted many butterflies and other pollinators as have all the flowers on the shrubs. I've harvested the lavender flowers, dried them and I will use them to make lavender bags, lavender sugar and to refresh the pot pourri in our home. The roses will produce rosehips which I will add to the rosehips gathered from the hedgerows and other sources (read about rosehips from my sister's home here).The fushia bush should provide us with berries, although as yet it hasn't produced very much and having never tried fushia, I'm keen to find out whether the berries from this particular hardy bush are sweet or have a bitter aftertaste.

The short shrubbery is still only half completed but is already starting to look good.

 We brought with us several pots of raspberry plants that had been lifted from Mr J's parents' home, together with shrubs, herbaceous plants and a couple of small trees.

Jane helped me to dig the turf from the area that would become the herbaceous border (actually Jane lifted the most of it) and we planted it with the plants that she had given to us and some that we had brought from our previous house. Over the year I haven't weeded the area anywhere near as much as was needed and as a result we've had a display of weed and wild flowers amongst the cultivated perennial plants.

The Food Forest

I decided that creating a permanent planting area filled with edible plants and supporting plants would be a good use of a large space. The more I explored the ideas behind permaculture and the way to use the land in harmony with nature, the more I realised it fits exactly with our thinking and a food forest should work really on this site.

I've had to make some compromises with how to start the food forest, but I'm happy with how it is coming along. Wood chippings have been poured onto the area and composted wood chippings used to make planting beds. It was a bit tougher than just pouring wood chippings, because finding a source of wood chippings took me several months. My budget for the garden is close to zero and it was important to find a free source of materials, but luckily I have now found a local tree surgeon who brings a trailer load of chipped wood on a reasonably regular basis. It gets dumped in the front garden and I then move it one wheelbarrow load at a time to the place I want it. 

 We made a small wildlife pond using a butyl liner that was already on the smallholding when we moved in. It's not very pretty, but as the planting around the edges grow, it should hide the liner and attract beneficial wildlife.

We've recently bought 17 fruit trees which I am in the process of planting and below them I've put fruit shrubs like currants and raspberries (lots and lots of autumn fruiting raspberries), herbs and ground cover plants like strawberries. I've been researching perennial vegetables to include in this area and in the meantime, for the next couple of years at least, I will use some of the food forest area to grow annual vegetables that will act as good ground cover (like some of the squashes I'd like to grow).

 It will take a few years for the food forest to establish and there will always be some maintenance tasks to do there, but it should be more productive in relation to the effort put in as time goes on. 

Hedges and boundaries 

There is very little hedging around the boundary and whilst that gives us fabulous views across the adjacent land, it also gives us no protection from the wind that whistles across the area from the Severn Estuary.

In early spring, Jane helped us to plant a hedge around the east and south sides of smallholding. It is mixed native hedging, that will be good for wildlife, pollinators and food and although still very small, it has started to fill out over the year and I'd imagine that by their fifth year, the hedge plants will be around shoulder high and knitted together to form a thick wind shelter and a good place for birds and other wildlife to live. I used weed supressing membrane and planted through it in an effort to slow down the invasive weeds coming through the stock fencing that surrounds the smallholding. 

I've put up some wind break fabric on the stock fencing to reduce the impact of the wind on the plants in the garden and as some relief for the chickens who were getting blown around by the wind. Much of the winter and spring brought winds of 30 to 40 mph and a few times it reached up to 60mph, which, if you are a small chicken (or a large human) is pretty miserable to be in.

We still need to plant some hedging along the west boundary and I've ordered some more native hedging to put in the ground later in the year together with some elderberry trees that we can lift from below our trees. I'm also going to add some fast growing trees like eucalyptus which I'll keep cut back so that they are large bushes rather than tall trees.

Now that we have divided up the paddock and are happy with the area designated for the chickens, we've put in a more permanent fence. I've started to plant some fruit canes along the fence that can be supported by it, offer more protection for the chickens, look attractive and be productive.

I've written further blogs looking at the vegetable garden and our animals . 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 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!

 If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

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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!

 If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.

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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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