Spring green and cows

We’ve had a very very dry month and it hasn’t help the grass grow. It is just as well that the nice hay man gave us a couple of free bales at the end of the winter as that has kept the horses fed.

We’ve had a little sprinkle of rain and the grass leapt in to action immediately as you can see here with the cows coming up for their spent brewing grain snack.

Nathalie is always at the back bless her, she seems a little slow witted, but isn’t really.

Venus is 7 months pregnant (gestation is 9 months).

She does normally have quite a round belly, but I think she is showing it a bit (the calf will be on her right side and her rumen is on the left).

Swarm!

We knew the bees were going to swarm as they were making new queen cells. But then when Doug set off to perform some swarm control measures, he  couldn’t find the queen. Her location was critical to allow us to fake them in to thinking they had already swarmed and not doing it.

Doug was strimming near the hives this afternoon and noticed they had swarmed. We followed them and they settled in a holly tree not far away.

I held a cardboard box under them and Doug snipped the branches off in to the box.

Then we knocked them out of the box in to our spare hive (which is there basically for this purpose). 

Then we put all the frames back in, and put the lid on and watched for a while to see that bees were heading in to the hive rather than away from it - suggesting the queen is in the hive as they all seek her out.

This is a bee sending out pheromones so all the other bees can find where they are...

Honey Cookie Recipe

 This makes a lot of cookies. I divide in to 3 and make 1/3 now and freeze the rest in 2 lumps to use later...

250g butter

150 light brown sugar

250g honey 

250g plain flour

400g rolled oats

1tsp baking powder

1tsp salt

Melt butter honey and sugar together (don’t overheat).

Add the flour, oats, salt and baking powder and stir till combined

Freeze 2/3rds of the mix and make the rest in to cookie shapes on a baking tray (with some baking paper)

Cook at 170°C for about 15 mins or until lightly browned.

Lots of chicks

 I haven’t managed to count them and I haven’t removed and counted the unhatched eggs yet, but there are 30 to 35 of them all running around in a small brooder. I need to find something bigger quickly!

I wasn’t planning on hatching so many at once, as in some ways smaller numbers are easier to look after (less poo all at once!). But we have decided to put them in a separate covered cage when they get a bit bigger so it is better if they are all the same age rather than done in several hatches.

I also bought a new and bigger incubator (it was a return so special price else I would have got the smaller one). I sold one of the two we had, so we still have two and there are duck eggs in the other one at the moment (they went in on the 6th so should hatch the 4th of May)

The hatch rate on our eggs was good, but on the ones we got by post, not so good - all that shaking around isn’t good for them, also I wonder if the chickens they came from were older than ours which reduces viability a bit...

The ones we got by post are special because you can tell male and female apart as soon as they hatch.

This is a male (paler, less distinct ‘humbug’ appearance and pale dot on head)

This one is female

All the black and yellow ones (some with a little ginger) come from our chickens.

We have HONEY

 We got the bees just about 2 years ago and we just harvested our first honey!

We got off to a bad start when the swarms we bought weren’t as strong as they should have been. Bad luck with the guy we chose to buy from. Annoying!

There has also been a steep learning curve and we’ve only learnt a fraction of what we need so far! Thank goodness for the internet!

The honey spinner is FANTASTIC! It was really easy to extract the honey without damaging the wax, which is great because it saves the bees the effort of making more wax next time (wax takes a lot of resources to make that could go in to making honey when they don’t need to make more...)

It wasn’t all capped, but we decided to go for it anyway as we need to now move on to some swarm control measures before the main nectar flow, and we didn’t want to miss our first chance of honey!

Beautiful!

I made crumpets in celebration!

Might be get more ducks?

A couple of weeks ago, we put a few runner duck eggs under Olga, but she seems too heavy for them and they have been breaking, looks like none will make it to hatch unfortunately. So we got some more, and now a chicken is sitting on some with a few in the incubator too.

We’ve never tried incubating duck eggs before and it is meant to be more difficult than chickens. Hopefully a few will make it at least. Runner ducks are an egg breed but we hope the spare males will be a nice size for two!

The chicken decided to go broody in the box where most of the chickens want to lay. Historically this has caused issues when we want them to brood the eggs as they get pushed off them and some get pushed out the nest and broken and bad things like that. They also don’t take well to being moved we have found, so I have put a cage round her with food and water and moved the nest box along for the others. She has 8 eggs in there, go chicken!

All looks a bit heath robinson, but hopefully it will work for them all!

There are 8 in the incubator too. I’m hand turning for the first 10 days as I have read it has better results (the eggs move continually when automatically turned, and sporadically for hand turned may be the difference - or it may be myth!)

Mega mowing

We are still preparing the area on top of this bank to be a bit more area for growing veg as well as more space for the ducks. You can see one of the new beds there prepared with cardboard and then horse poo on top ready for squash when they plants are ready.

 

Growth in the veg garden

It’s very difficult providing veg throughout the year. You keep having to weed and plant and tend.

We have kale and not much else through the winter, some new stuff is just coming in, but not in large quantities.

We had 3 sugar snap peas each in the bibimbap on Sunday. Hopefully there will be more soon! Also flowers from the kale that has heroically seen us through the winter. Like purple sprouting broccoli! Also some pea flowers and shoots that got weeded by mistake!

The broad beans are just coming through. We ate a couple ‘mange toute’, with luck there will be more soob.

We had the one bean each with steak and roast potato and some kale flower

Also planted new kale to see us through next winter. It’s so hard to plan ahead and make sure their will be veg later even when not much now.

Peas not quite there yet

Spinach that overwintered and was just starting to bolt. I need to plant some more...

3 mange tout each (with lamb and roast potato for easter). More coming soon

More potato planted

Happy Birthday Poppy

Tree being with groovy hair!

Just in to the neighbours field at the top of our land, seen today on a nice birthday walk before a birthday bone and a birthday nap.

 

Lucky the cockerel and his romantic ways

None of our other cockerels have done this. This guy is son of the one we had before, but was hatched at a friends. Their cockerel does this and he learnt it.

He is picking up a grub and putting it down again while making a funny call which means ‘come here ladies for this tasty snack’. Eventually one of them takes him up on the offer. Cute huh?

Clearing more land for the sheep

 Doug has been heroically batting first the trees then the brambles for EVER, on this patch of land below the house.

It is now mostly clear ready to plant grass, clover and some wildflowers. The brambles are starting to regrow, but we hope the sheep will eat the shoots, otherwise some more strimming needed soon.

This is a big fire with branches from various trees that had to be cut through plus lots of pine needles

This is lots of strimmed then dried brambles raked into rows then burnt

Setting it all alight

Happy Easter!

 They rose really slowly and I thought they weren’t going to come out well, but then they came good!

Happy Easter.