the accidental smallholder :: diary archives

Homer's Odyssey Part 3

Our two week holiday at home has certainly helped Homer. He's more relaxed and confident and YES! he goes outside! Not for long, mind, a few minutes is enough then he heads back indoors, exhausted.

It's been very sunny and warm while we've been off and he's been happy toasting his bones at the french doors or the front door, if it is left open.

He then progressed to sitting outside on the back doorstep, sniffing the air and surveying the territory. Finally, he braved a walk round the yard, a sniffy examination of the car and a roll about in the dust.

Today, he and I were lying on the doormat with the front door open, catching a few rays, when he upped and sauntered out the front door like he'd always done it. He sat on the doorstep, watching the chickens dust bathing, then wandered round for a closer look. He was probably out for less than 5 minutes but he seemed completely relaxed.

He's now curled up in his bed, sound asleep, worn out by his exertions. He's such a sweetie.

New photos

The garden is starting to come into its fullest bloom and is becoming more photogenic, so I've taken a few pictures and added them to the gallery.

High contrast style

This morning I got an email from a reader who was struggling with the black text of the site on the green background. I can see why - looking more closely myself it isn't the easiest combination to read.

As a temporary measure I've written a quick style switcher which provides a higher contrast background, does away with the graphical headings and the background images. Use the 'high contrast' link in the left column to turn it on, and 'normal' to turn it off. Something more elegant will follow, plus a print style to pretty up those printed pages and save on that hideously overpriced ink.

Pig articles

I finally got around to adding the pig articles to the site. Next up will be some more vegetable growing guides. We're going to add a book review section soon, if anyone wants to contribute please let us know.

Late May sowing

Sown today:

• Butternut Squash
• Sugar Snap Pea Norli
• Pea Greenshaft
• Runner Bean Painted Lady
• Runner Bean Scarlet Flame
• Carrot Autumn King
• Carrot Parabel
• Carrot Cubic

That's about it for this year. We've got fennel and mangels to sow tomorrow, then it'll just be salad and spring onions and some green manures once harvest starts.

Holiday veg update

We've been on holiday the past 2 weeks which explains the lack of entries here (counter-intuitive I know, but we've been busy!). The veg garden has had a good bit of attention, this week I've planted out leeks, sweetcorn, beetroot, sprouting brocolli, 3 varieties of cabbage and a couple of courgette plants. The brassicas are under fleece this year for the first time. In previous years they've been ruined by aphids, so we're going for the barrier method this time around to see if we can defeat them.

Early spuds are well up, the mains showing well too. The Douce Provence early peas are flowering, but are a little stunted with the effects of the damned weevils. Next year it's raised beds all round for the peas. I'm late sowing runner beans, fennel and mangels (for Smokey and the pigs) but all will go in tomorrow.

Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines are doing well in the greenhouse, and the lettuces and spring onions continue to be a source of fresh food from the garden for us. The soft fruit bed looks fantastic this year, with raspberries and strawberries both covered in flowers, the blackcurrants heavy with fruit and the gooseberries almost sawfly free. The only slight disappointment is the blackberry which has much less growth than it did last year at this time. I think it's being shaded by one of the blackcurrant bushes, so that one will be hoiked out next year to give the blackberry a bit more light.

At the moment it looks like being a reasonable year for the productive garden - as ever next year will be better!

Eglu

A nice article on the BBC about the Eglu - a hen run designed for urban settings, sold complete with 2 hens. The correspondent is quite positive about the eglu and her experience with it. It looks ideal for anyone with a bit of grass and the curiousity to try hen keeping for themselves.

Plans are nothing, planning is everything

So said some famous military man, I forget who, but it's a sound observation. On Sunday we had about 2 1/2 tonne of screened soil sitting on our drive and nowhere to put it. It was the leftovers of the 3 tonne I had ordered to fill in the pond to make the bog garden - okay, so I overestimated just a tad how much we'd need!

What to do? Well, we had a quick review of what was what and decided to restrict the pig rotation to the two westerly pens (more a back-and-forth than a rotation then), and keep the third, east-most pen for a permanent vegetable garden. Going a step further we decided it would be a good use of the available space to remove the fence separating the east-most pen and the existing vegetable garden, and to extend the raised veg beds to the full length of the new-to-be-united vegetable garden. This will have a number of benefits - the pig ark never needs to be moved again, since it sits on the fence line between the two pens and has a door into each pen; I'll need to do a lot less digging each year; and we'll have a lot more space to grow vegetables, all in permanent raised beds.

So Monday I ordered the 91 metres of 2x8 inch board needed for the job, and a variety of other timber for the courtyard garden we're also building this week. Yesterday I started the deconstruction of the fence, enough to get a single bed extended (the rest will be done in the autumn) and got to digging the margins for the boards. Last night the timber arrived, so today I made the new bed which is now full of about 2 tonne of the screened soil, a good bit of compost and some well-rotted manure, which the hens have already done a pretty good job of incorporating into the somewhat sterile soil. The rest of the soil will be used in the courtyard and for filling in a few dips and divots around the field.

Laminitis

Smokey is on a diet. He and Wallace, his grazing buddy, have been moved to a "restricted intake" paddock. Calling it a "starvation paddock" is now non PC.

Horses can contract a disease called laminitis which is an inflammation of the sensitive laminae in the foot. It can be caused by a number of things including high intakes of sweet spring grass. There is no cure and in severe cases, horses may be destroyed. If a horse gets it, it recurs and has to be carefully managed for the rest of the horse's life. So prevention certainly beats cure.

While being overweight doesn't cause laminitis, it can predispose a horse to it. I spoke with my farrier last night and he told me he's never seem so many new cases. Even horses like Thoroughbreds that you wouldn't expect to get laminitis are contracting it. In discussion with other farriers and vets, the theory seems to be that horses put on a lot of condition last summer because of the good weater, the good weather meant there was a lot of good hay made so horses fed well over the winter, and the grass is abundant again this spring. The combination has lead to the increase in outbreaks of the disease. The horse welfare organisations are very concerned about the number of overweight horses and the health and welfare considerations arising from this. We're killing our horses with kindness.

Smokey and Wallace are both native breeds, a Highland Pony and a Welsh Cob respectively. They have been bred to live on hill and heather, not lush former cattle pasture. Consequently, they pile on condition (that's fat to non-horsey people) in summer. I did quite well getting condition off Smokey over the winter, but he is putting it back on. I weight him weekly, using a big pair of scales (joke. I use a weight tape).

So both are on a diet, partly as a precaution against laminitis and partly because, as with all of us, too much "condition" is a bad thing. The aim is to get him to about 550kg and condition score 3. I'll keep you posted!

Games and activities for pigs

Today the pigs got a new toy! It's called a "Snak a Ball". It's actually a horse toy, but the pigs haven't read the box and seem to like it. Basically, it's a big red ball that you fill with pig nuts. As the pigs roll it around, the pig nuts fall out and get eaten.

They're really getting the hang of it. If they'd had it a couple of weeks ago they might have made Sven's squad. The dogs think it's pretty neat too. It we had a third dog, they could play three a side. They won't let Dan play because he's not good enough and eats too many of the nuts.

It keeps them happy and I'm sure the exercise will do them good.

Progress report

Well, the pond has been cleared out, filled with soil and now awaits planting as a bog garden. We bought four plants at a plant sale on Saturday - they look a bit lost so we'll get more tomorrow. I'm going for Astilbe, Hosta, Iris and Primula, with a small acer to add dappled shade. Not sure how the acer will do, but I'll move it if it isn't happy. Actually, it was abit of an impulse buy and the more I think about it, the more I regret it.

The trellis for the courtyard garden is purchased, as are the fence posts. There's no further progress there, but the holidays are yet young!

My father-in-law made me two planters out of old wood, to exactly cover two man hole covers. They're now planted with Livingstone daisies / runner beans and Busy Lizzies / peas respectively. I intended to put lettuces in too but they're not ready to plant out yet.

I've taken before photos, so if the after is OK, I'll post the pictures too.

Then there were ten

Well, our poorly hen didn't make it through last night. We think it was a physical defect that did for her rather than sickness or disease - she had no symptoms of illness, no discharge, no visible parasites.

It's always a bit sad when one of our animals dies, and even more so when it's one we planned on having into its old age (unlike the pigs for example).

Poorly chook

One of our hens is a bit under the weather at the moment. Rosemary noticed it was a bit listless yesterday lunchtime, and said she'd be surprised if it lasted the night - it was a bit huddled and not terribly active so she isolated it in the old ark. When I got home from work it was still alive, and quite bright-eyed. Later in the evening she (the hen) produced a very large egg, and seemed to perk up, but we kept her by herself overnight.

This morning I found that she had laid a soft-shelled egg, and again seemed reasonably chipper. So we've marked her, and have left the end off of the ark so that she can rejoin the flock if she wants to. Fingers crossed she'll be okay and that it was a temporary egg problem, but if it persists we'll consider the common advice in these cases which is to cull the bird.

Victorian Fair

There is going to be a Victorian Fair in Alloa on 22nd and 23rd May to make the 150th anniversary of the new burgh of Alloa. The event will be based around the historic Alloa Tower.

Dan will be on the Clackmannanshire Horticultural Society stand on the 23rd, dressed as a Victorian gardener. Or at least how we think a Victorian gardener should look.

I am honoured to have been invited to be one of the judges of the best stall and best child's costume. Those that know about these things say it's a poisoned chalice, but I'm looking forward to it. I shall have to get a suitable costume...

If the weather's good, it should be a good weekend. Maybe we'll see you there!

The flower garden

We do have a small flower garden. It's my responsibility so tends to get attention in fits and starts.

The weather has been somewhat changeable today, with sun interspersed with quite heavy showers. We're on holiday in a week, so I'm making gardening plans. I'm good at the planning.

Basically, there are two beds and a lawn and a pond. I use the term lawn loosely. It's the grass inside the fence as opposed to the grass outside the fence. We did have a wildflower meadow, but it was too scruffy even for me, so it's sort of gone.

The smaller bed is supposed to be blues and yellows. Part of the problem is that I hate waste so find it really difficult to throw any plants out. There is a rose in the bed "Happy Child", which sums up my daughter and was gift. The rose isn't "right" but I can't get rid of it. The other part of the problem is that the hens have their dust bath in the bed. Or they did until today. I've planted some new plants, bitten the bullet and taken out some that were past their best and netted the bed. I hope it's only temporary until the plants establish.

The larger bed is... well, sort of pinks and purples with a little bit of white. A few weeks ago it looked really scruffy but it's filling out now and will probably look OK for the summer. Dan's parents gave us three old chimney pots which I plated with trailing fuchsia today.

So, two big plans for the holidays. In 2001, I think, we made a pond. It wasn't quite right so in 2003, it got a makeover. In 2004, it developed a leak. So, the plan is to puncture the lining, let it empty, clean it out and fill it with topsoil and make a bog garden. Today it seems like a really good idea.

The other big plan is for the slabbed area on the west of the house. It's kind of, well, just a slabbed area at the moment, but I have a plan to make it into a small courtyard garden, in green and white. I see white clematis, hostas, a scented philadelphus, pots of white lilies, maybe a white climbing rose. I see a divorce. Only joking!

We've loads of non digital photos of the garden that I'll get Dan to put in the gallery, sort of before and after. Well, before and during, really.

Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?

Not to London to look at the Queen, we assume. Cass disappeared for a couple of days this week. I was really worrie, imagining the worst. However, he's back and hungry. I suspect he got shut in somewhere. He's SO nosey.

Homer has been OUTSIDE. Not very far; only on to the doorstep. And not for very long, but out nevertheless. He's becoming much more laid back about the dogs. I think his mentor, Copper, has wised him up on how to deal with canines.

Cass and Copper seem to be getting along better. Both were curled up on our bed yesterday. That would have been unthinkable even a week ago. In fact, Copper would barely stay in the same room as Cass. Actually, she used to scarper before he chased her.

Copper's on a diet. She has a huge appetite for one so small, so she hoovers up anything the other cats leave. Cass is used to kind of adlib feeding, so doesn't really recognise mealtimes. But now we have to have mealtmes and anything left gets lifted. Cass has to have wee fly meals when he comes in. I've even started weighing Copper's food. Fifty grammes isn't very much!

Gallery additions

I've added a load of photos to the gallery - 22 in all. Should keep the wife happy for another few days...

Mice or weevils?

Something has been eating our broad bean and pea seedlings. It's not a problem we've ever had before in the raised beds, and the only damage this year is happening in the new veg patch where the pigs were last year - the sugar snaps in the raised beds are unaffected.

I was convinced it was mice or some other small mammal - I've found many under stones and in overgrown areas of the garden before, and Cas certainly leaves the remains of enough around the place to know there is a fair population. But tonight Rosemary saw a bit in Scottish Farmer which says that incidence of pea and bean weevil is on the increase.

Now, this could be a cynical reaction but I'm not swayed. The source of the report? The insecticide product manager at a large agro-chem company....

If anyone can positively identify the culprit I'd been very grateful.

Weekend update

It's been a busy few days, and an update here is overdue. A quick summary of activity:

Sown in the greenhouse: Catnep, sweetcorn, tarragon, more hungarian hot wax & sweet nardello (a bit late but we'll see how they do), sprouting brocolli (red spear & Spike), cabbages (vertus, savoy best of all & Holsteiner Platter), Courgette Defender.

Sown outside: Parnsip Tender & True, Carrots Parabel & Cubic, Peas (Greenshaft & Sugar Snap Norli), spuds Desiree. The early spuds are starting to show now.

Lots more to do tomorrow, when hopefully the rest of the spuds will get planted.

Have potted on tomatoes and peppers, and Rosemary planted out a load of lettuce. Most of the fruit trees are in blossom, ranging from bright white on the Morello cherry to a deep rose pink on one of the apples.

Pigs are doing well, they had a can and a half of Guiness and a pint of yoghurt tonight for a treat, both went down very well, if a little messily...