July Update

We have one broody hen sitting on eggs for the last week. I have marked them but I am finding it difficult to remove the additional eggs that the other hens are laying in her box. 

She doesn't appreciate my interference!

Last week we forgot to close the door on the hen house. A fox came and climbed the stairs and pulled four hens from their perch. Hubby was so annoyed in the morning! We have decided to change the design of the stairs to make it fox proof. It is inevitable that we will forget to close the hen door once in a while. 

The mart is held on Wednesdays in our local town, I will go there tomorrow and buy more pullets to replace these. Our egg supply is getting worryingly low!

We started to harvest the new potatoes in the veg garden as we need them. I made a lovely seafood chowder yesterday using our veg and herbs from the garden, fish that we caught last month and our new potatoes . It tasted so good and didn't last long.

I have started to harvest the soft fruits before the birds get every last one. They are busy pecking the young apples and pears from the trees and doing all sorts of damage. 

I checked the mating nuc on Friday. The queen cells where due to hatch on Thursday. Every cell was hatched in the four chambers and I could hear but not find the virgin queens. They make a strange high pitched sound that has a pattern similar to hens clocking. I even found that the workers behaved very different. They all were wiggle dancing on the frames and making a strong hiss sound while being very calm and gentle.

I will leave them alone for the next two weeks as they seem to be doing well. At that stage I will be looking out for eggs and a chance to mark the queens. The weather is promising for successful mating flights.

The cow was ai'ed about five weeks ago. I had marked in my diary when she was due to come into heat again. I was pleased when this date had passed with no signs of heat. A few days later I noticed that for a few hours, the bullocks showed interest in her and a couple tried to mount her although she wouldn't stand. This passed as quickly as it came.

She could be pregnant and that was a false heat! We will have her scanned in the next few weeks to confirm, but the vet tells me that it is typical for a cow to have a 'break through heat' in early pregnancy. 

A typical heat for her lasts about three days. A day coming into heat, a half day at standing heat and a day coming out. Fingers crossed she took to the Angus straw.

We are going to England at the end of the month to holiday and visit friends for four days. I can really see the disadvantage of having so many animals as it can be difficult to get someone reliable to look after them. Especially if you have a cow in milk!

In the future it will suit us better to holiday during the winter when the cow is dry and the farm is sleeping!

Comings and goings...

I have two new young horses arriving this weekend. They are very well bred warm-bloods full brothers, a yearling and a two year old.

I sold my aged competition horse and I am working on the children's 128cm jumping pony. I am schooling him myself and will be bringing him to shows shortly to put SJI points on him. He will be ridden by a child at the shows.

The plan is to bring him on for our children to compete him at newcomers next year.

The gardens are awash with beautiful colours. The fruit trees are swelling with fruit and young potato plants push through the soil. The rhubarb needs harvesting and the chickens are still free to scratch out the vegetable beds unfortunately. They just keep escaping!!

The pigs are massive and enjoying the extra space of the cow yard. They have redecorated using the hose pipe and pallets ;-)

They are due to go to the freezer in ten days.

The bees are flying well every day and are bringing back plenty of pollen. I should have a virgin queen around now, from the hive that I removed the queen from. It is great mating flight weather and the other hives had plenty of capped drone cells last week.

Fingers crossed that she mates well and avoids the recently arrived swallows!

April's Fool News

 

Winter is well behind us now. The bees are very busy foraging these days. I have seen them out flying as early as 9am these past few days, which is usual for this time of year. Their new site is more sheltered and faces east into the morning sun, it is warming up the hive earlier than the previous site and therefore they can fly earlier in the day.

I need to do my first open hive inspection of the year this week. I might do it tomorrow if the weather stays good. I have one queen to mark and I need to add on another brood box to the other hive. I will also add some frames with no foundation so as to allow the bees to draw their own comb. I have a bee meeting to attend tonight, the meeting will focus on making splits and establishing nucs.

I am eager for Hubby to start on a perone inspired hive design. I would like to experiment that different hive types and get more into natural beekeeping. 

 

 

Most of the over wintered veg is starting to bolt to seed. That includes turnips, winter salads, kale, cabbages, leeks, beetroot, carrots etc. I need to start using them up now before they get too tough and stringy. Although the pigs would only be too happy to help!

 

Our pigs are doing great. They have put on a lot of weight since the arrival of amber, the cow. The milk is doing them well and they are thriving. The male unnamed pig will go to the freezer this month. His female friend is pregnant, hopefully, and so we will expect a litter of piglets during the summer. Hubby is very fond of her and wishes to keep her as his breeding sow.

 

Hubby started work on the new hen 'apartment' last weekend. He hopes to finish it by this weekend. We are both sick of hen poo on the doorstep each and every morning!

The plan is to move them from the stable and free ranging, to the  new hen house in the orchard. Hubby will mesh the fencing and clip their feathers to hopefully keep them restricted to the quarter acre that is the orchard. They will still have plenty of space but wont be able to get into the yard to poop on everything and lay eggs in random places that only the dogs seem to know about.

On the downside, they make a good living by cleaning up after the pigs, pony and cow. They also spend a lot of their time scratching out worms in the dung heap. They barely cost us anything to feed at the moment, so we will have to feed them more!

The design of the hen house is as follows. There are four nesting boxes on the side that can be accessed from the fence. This should make collecting eggs a very easy job, sorry dogs! The main body has various branches for perching and the floor is slatted, there are 1-2 inch spacing between the floor boards to allow for easy cleaning. Most of the poo should fall through, but I imagine I will need to sweep it out once or twice a month. Either way it should be easy to manage.

They will have a ladder up to access the door. I hope that this will make it fox/dog proof. We don't intend to lock them in at night. We will just do as we are currently doing, allowing them to fly over the stable door when it gets dark, knowing that the stable is fox proof. 

We will use the rain water from the roof to fill a shallow paddle pond that Hubby has yet to install, that will be the water sorted. I hope that I or the children will only need to collect eggs and feed the hens, from the fence once a day. Although I am sure that there will be regular escapes.

Planting willow cuttings

I set about planting willow cuttings today ( thanks Kate ).  They were partially soaking in water since I got them last week. It was well time to get them planted.

These are a mixture of basket making varieties. I planted them around the bees and along a fence line.

I am hoping they will give the bees more shelter and encourage them to fly higher in the orchard. 

As they grow, we hope to weave them into fedges, a living willow hedge/fence.

We will use the winter pruning rods for basket making.

A few more signs of life in the garden. The rhubarb has awoken as have many flowering bulbs around the garden. The daffodils and tulips are pushing up through the cold soil. There are lambs in the surrounding fields, it is spring!

I have made a start to clearing out the veg beds. The pigs are reaping the rewards of turnips, kale, radishes and cabbages that have been damaged by recent storms. 

One pigs is to go to the butcher shortly, and the other is to remain as our breeding sow. 

I need to get the veg beds cleared out and add compost to them. Maybe try and heat up the soil using plastic sheeting. There is no polytunnel for this season. It will not be worth our while to replace the plastic on it after the storms. 

My to-do list is very long. February is alway a very panicked month, as I try to get ahead of the weeding, planting, beekeeping etc.

The hens need to move back into their moveable coop. I am getting no eggs and are having to buy them. But the dogs are well feed and have a great shine from all the extra protein. I want eggs!!! We also need to replace the hens that we lost last month. 

The bees need plenty of attention from now on. I need to check their food stores every week as now is the time for them to starve, as the queen starts to lay. This puts a great deal of pressure on the colony. 

We need to buy a new cow. I miss raw jersey milk so much!!

Although I feel pressured, I am very excited for spring. The winter is a very inactive period, and I long for its rest by autumn.

 But now, I long for activity, longer days, sunshine and sandals. 

 

Making Sauerkraut

We have plenty of veg still growing in the garden and I need to be more disciplined about making use of it all.

I am considering reducing the size of our veg garden for next spring, which might mean less work but greater efficiency with the space.

We currently have a great deal of onions in storage that need using. They are strong and I find that I avoid them due to the crying they invoke. 

We have lots of cabbages that need to be used and beetroot and turnip that are coming ready in mass numbers. Little may be more when it come to our veg garden!

It is hard to get around to everything and I hate to see waste, although the pigs enjoy the wheelbarrows coming!

I decided this week to try sauerkraut, to use up some cabbages and in the pursuit of healthy fermented veg to help my family's gut flora.

I got out my bible of health - Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, and looked up the sauerkraut recipe on page 92.

Ingredients:

1 cabbage

1 tbsp caraway seeds

1 tbsp sea salt

4 tbsp whey

I washed the cabbage and shredded it into a bowl. 

I added the salt, whey from yogurt but omitted the caraway seed as I didn't have them.

I used my hand to massage the cabbage mixture together and help release the juices.

I placed an over turned bowl on top and left it in the warm kitchen to start to ferment.

The recipe says to leave it like this for three days and then place in the fridge for use.

Fingers crossed!

Addition:

I later packed the sauerkraut into a kilner jar and topped it up with whey, as I had it spare from straining yogurt to make Greek yogurt. 

November and the garden is still producing

When I think of a veg garden in November, I think of a dormant garden with very little on offer. 

But this is far from true. On my walk through the garden today, I found there was a great deal to choose from even in this cold month.

Outdoors there is the choice of :

Radishes

Leeks

Lettuces

Cabbages

Turnips

Carrots

Parsnips

Beetroot

Artichokes

Peas

So I brought in a large head of cabbage for dinner, to be served with slow cooked home produced pork, and a half bucket of artichokes.

The veg beds needs a good tidying up, but it will have to wait till February. We will dig up all the beds and add manure to then then. Also we need to recover the polytunnel in spring before we start seed beds. 

The pigs enjoyed the veg waste that I throw into their sty this morning. Nothing goes to waste. I am finding that with the recent heavy rain, there is no need to clean out the sty at all. 

The fall (slope) runs to the manure heap and the rain is washing away all waste perfectly, and the roof gutter fills up their water regularly. They are very very low maintenance. I did question our wisdom in over wintering pigs but I am pleased so far. 

I like winter to be quiet and indoors. Who wants to be outdoors in cold wet weather? Not me!

I prefer to be indoors by the fire. Trying out new recipes from loved cook books and trying my hand at various craft projects. Or simply put, taking it easy!

It was such a nice day today that the bees were flying. There won't be many more days like this one. I didn't see any activity from the rehomed nuc. I don't expect them to survive winter as they failed to requeen.

Over the next month or two, we hope to finish off the cow yard, to have it ready for a new cow in the new year. Fingers crossed xxx

 

Onion Marmalade

I have been meaning to make onion marmalade since harvesting the onions a couple of months ago. 

I love onion marmalade and I think it goes so well with a good cheese and salad especially when served toasted on ciabatta bread. Yummy!

 

We harvested a few hundred onions and as the weather turns damp and cold, I fear many of our stored onions will start to rot. We have stored as much as possible indoors and the remaining are stored in the shed. But it is time to start using those in the shed and what better way than onion marmalade. I only finished the last jar of last years marmalade recently. It stored very well and tasted amazing even after a year.

So I got out my favourite recipe books and read through them and then decided not to follow them at all!

I sweated the onions with butter on the range for nearly an hour.

Once it was very soft and starting to brown, I added brown sugar and red wine vinegar to taste. I let it gently simmer for another hour, stirring occasionally until it had reduced down nicely.

While hot, I put it into clean jars and sealed the lid. If the vacuum is good then the seal should pop down, then I'll know it will keep well. Otherwise I will need to put them into a water bath to heat/sterilise the jars again. 

This is the first of many batches to be started this week.

 I can only manage to do small batches at a time. Home grown onions are much stronger and they make me cry and cry! Although it does clear the children from the kitchen and give me a break for a while ;-)

Jerusalem Artichokes

These knobbly root tubers are a perennial  plant. They are very easy to grow and are high yielding. 

Once you plant them, they will emerge each year and can spread like a weed if you are not careful. It can be difficult to remove them from your garden unless you are careful to remove each and every tuber. 

They are similar to potatoes in their uses in the kitchen but are supposed to be healthier, but I can't remember why!

They are related to the sunflower. They provide beautiful tall plants during the summer that die back after hard frost. They can grow to ten plus feet. 

They are very hardy and do not suffer much from pests and disease, they need little to no maintenance. You can harvest them as you need them after the first frost, the remainder will overwinter happily in the soil until they are required.

This is our first year to harvest them. We planted three tubers that we bought at a farmers market last year. They are difficult to find here and I haven't seen them since for sell.

Those three tubers have produced a large yield. We have harvested a large buckets worth of them so far. The rest we will leave for deeper winter. 

I set aside 20-30 small tubers that I have planted along a wall to provide shelter and privacy.

They seem like a wonderful veg that it surprises me that more people don't grow them. Do you?  

What's good in the veg garden?

I took a walk in the veg garden today to stock up the larder for dinner.

The veg garden is currently neglected and the polytunnel is still badly torn since the storm. As ugly as it currently is to my eye, it is still very productive. Hence why there are no photos of it ;-)

You can't beat good soil!

I made a root vegetable roast using artichokes, young beetroot, parsnips and carrots served along side slowed cooked veal. A hundred percent home produced meal. 

I will use the radishes, peas and beet tops for salad later. 

I am very pleased with the artichokes. This is the first time we have grown them. They are heavy yielding and so easy to grow.

The chickens have slowed down their egg production from six to three eggs roughly a day. I have two roosters that are running around free that I need to catch and despatch (put in the pot) one of these days. 

The new pigs have settled in and are becoming more friendly now. We still can not rub them but they now come out from hiding at feeding time. 

The bees are flying most days and the queens has started to slow down/stop laying in preparation for winter. 

The fire is lit everyday in the range now. The warmth is very comforting in the kitchen and I love having a kettle always on the boil available for brews and a hot plate available for cooking.

A walk in the garden...

The blackberries are ripe, if not a little overripe. The small birds are feasting on these early morning and on the sunflower heads.

I caught a photo of a bumble bee sheltering from the soft Irish drizzle.

The ivy is starting to come into flower. The last of the nectar flows for the year. I spotted a wasp visiting while I was hanging out the third load of laundry.

Our garden is full of butterfly's. Newly emerged, at least they can't eat the cabbages anymore. 

There is still a lot of seed for saving. I have saved a couple kgs of mixed flower seed so far. I give much of it away to friends , friends that I'm sure will make use of it.