Far Lands

. . . the turkey was resting, the veg was about to go on. The table was set, the fire blazing, and Sarah (and our guests) wanted a drink. I was about to go and shower but thought I would just empty a kitchen bin into the dustbin. I went outside; the dustbin is close to a bird table and as I approached I noticed a squirrel clinging to the bag of nuts on the bird table. It was a golden opportunity and I popped back into the house. I had never hit anything with my gun, and I did not think I would be more than momentarily delayed. I returned outside; the squirrel was still nibbling. I cracked the gun, and loaded a pellet; the squirrel did not move. I took aim. And fired. Still, the squirrel did not move. Then, as if in slow motion, the squirrel peeled off backwards and dropped to the floor. I could not believe it. Head shot. But now I was in trouble. No way was the squirrel going in the dustbin; this was free food. So, I did a speedy skinning and gutting, washed the meat we

. . . is to name your turkey. Best name this year was Farage followed by Loki Bottomface . Of course, plucking and gutting are only half the story. Still to come are trussing, stuffing, and cooking. And then eating! Bon Appetit and Happy Christmas! J&Sx

There are really only two options. Either get drunk at the office Xmas party (either yours or someone else's; probably about the only time when gate-crashers are welcomed), or . . . . . . get digging.  And as I don't have an office to have an Xmas party, the decision is made. Traditionally, the digging jobs at this time of year are unpacking the goodies in the compost heap, and spreading those goodies into and digging over the vegetable beds. I am currently burrowing around in two different heaps; one the result of our garden waste and the other the horse manure pile. Both are dark black, and stuffed with wire worms. We steam together. I am also digging a new cordon bed - removing the rocks and roots, then inverting the turfs about a foot down and back-filling with a soil / compost mix - which is a messy affair in all this rain. But the thought of a succulent Katy , or the Beauty of Bath or even a Belle de Boskoop is spurring me on.

. . . well a dusting anyway. If only the chickens could speak! It did not seem to phase them too much. They are beginning to lay properly now, the eggs not so small and with less double-yokers which apparently is very usual when hens first start laying. Two more are still to start laying and we know which two they are. It's very obvious - they are still pristine white. The reason is that Flash (our sole remaining rooster) has his wicked way with the rest (including a poor bantam) and in the process puts his muddy claws  over their backs and squashes them down into the mud. I think that when the hens start laying, their hormones have changed and their smell changes and Flash gets interested. Up until then he leaves them alone, and they stay very white.

. . . the taste of medlar fruit? This year we had 2 fruit on our tree (2 more than last year so that is progress). The advice is not to pick them until they have suffered a frost and their decay has started! So, we picked them after the first frost, and then waited a further ten days for the fruit to blett - ie rot further. This way they transform from hard, inedible fruit into something . . . well, at least edible. The rotting fruit look fairly disgusting but Sarah was game, so I opened one up and scooped out some of the flesh with a teaspoon. It was brown and gooey, like well-rotten apple or pureed baby food. I went first - obviously, the court jester to the Queen - and took a mouthful. Quite tasty, sweet. The Queen tried some. 'Tastes like baked apple, but sweeter.' She'd nailed it; that's why she's the Queen.

No, not our first frost (which hopefully is making some headway into our slug population, but I doubt it). The first eggs from our chicks! Hurrah. They are now 20 weeks old so it is not before time. They laid 2 on Sunday and 2 more yesterday. Not to be outdone the white bantam is also now laying. And, surprisingly, in terms of size she is matching the Sussex hens. All the eggs are very small, but hopefully the hens are just trying things out . . . without wanting to get any more graphic. Meanwhile, and possibly fearing that they are not the centre of attention, the 3 remaining roosters are fighting. One was bloody this morning, so it looks like that my plucking fingers will see action later this week.

The extended Summer and the mild Autumn this year is blinding us to the fact that Winter is approaching. I was reminded of this in the garden yesterday. I was chopping up a few logs when I began to hear a tremendous squawking.  I immediately thought that Flash, our now giant-sized rooster was impressing himself yet again on one of the hens (our poor bantams!) But no, it was not one of our hens. The racket grew far louder, and I realised it was overhead. I looked up, and there it was. Two or three arrows of what I think were Canada Geese. Chattering away as they flew to their Winter lodgings. Winter is coming. But that's a good thing. Seasons are part of us, at least part of living in the UK. The natural world needs them, and I would argue we need them too. Every day is different, even if only slightly - the sun sets slightly earlier, the wind blows from a different direction, the air temperature is colder. Every day is fresh. Every day has possibility.

Our chicks to chickens experiment is not going so well. We started with 12 chicks, and they are now 18 weeks old. We have still not had a single egg, and we have only got 5 hens when they do eventually start laying. They are BIG and they eat a lot! 2 of the males are in the freezer and 2 more will join them today. But just in terms of food, the chickens are now worth over £10 each. The plan is to keep one rooster - the biggest one who we have called Flash (NB this morning he woke Sarah at 3.30am so time might even be called on him) - and for the other roosters (3 more after today) to climb into the freezer over the next few weeks. Flash will then give us the possibility of hatching our own chicks; if we do that we might try and sex them as one-day-olds - even if we are not that successful, it will be better than each egg becoming more valuable than a Faberge one.

(ie more than just potentially being a global blog.) Two examples if you need convincing:- I have just harvested our scorzonera. It's a Russian root vegetable also known as black salsify, black oyster plant, serpent root, or viper's herb. I expected it to be really spicy and requiring a really long boil. Not suitable for Sarah's more refined palate. But no; a quick boil turns the root into an interesting supplement to potatoes; it has the texture of a parsnip but a more interesting taste; very slightly spicy. (It's meant to be long and thin like a parsnip, not the tangle of witch hair that mine is.) And, secondly . . . . . . if you checkout my blog 188 (The postwoman delivers the mail) you will find a comment from shivabizconn who runs a cultural retreat in Hyderabad, India (see w ww.incrediblelands.com/index.html . ) Shiva, thanks for reading!

Just had a week's walking holiday in Majorca. We were in the mountainous North West; the main crop  - it seemed like 99% - were olives. We saw very few vegetable plots, but one we did see belonged to Michael Douglas (see photo). He wasn't hoeing his beans, however, when we we walked past. There were also plenty of lemon and orange trees but few on common ground, and there were few opportunities for foraging. However, (and more than making up for the lack of foraging) we did come across a dragon's lair . . .

(NB My loyal reader(s) know(s) that the turkey house is made from 2 recycled front doors, and includes a working letter box.) The turkeys are growing up - getting bigger (fatter) and older. Old enough it seems to have pen friends, or maybe they are simply cutting out coupons in the back of the Radio Times? Maybe even trying to lobby the Queen to issue some sort of Royal Pardon and a stay of execution. We will never know for sure - after checking their post, they ate it!

I should define my terms. When I say cheap , I mean free, and not simply going to Aldi rather than Tesco or M&S. When I say peppers I mean bell peppers, and not one of my addictions, chili peppers. Achocha . It is a member of the Curcubit family which includes squash and cucumbers; tastes something like a cucumber crossed with a bell pepper. Grown, apparently, by the Incas in South America. You can use them as a substitute for bell peppers eg slice them up and use in stir fries etc. The great thing is that they grow prolifically - see photos - and I can say we are self-sufficient in peppers (well, kind of). And we are collecting seeds from our crop, so if anyone wants any . . . (NB That's a pear in photo bottom right.)

It is still very early days for our orchard - this year our harvest will consist of 3 pears and a handful of hazelnuts. But the hazelnuts are good ones - cobs and filberts, from a Webb's Prize Cob and a White Filbert respectively. And, what's more, we have beaten the squirrels to them. The squirrels seem to have concentrated on the plum tree (original, not in our new orchard) and many of the surrounding sycamores have bits of plum sitting on their more horizontal branches.  Of course, as John Seymour memorably wrote, it is OK to lose crops to marauders such as squirrels and pheasants . . . as long as you eat them . The freezer now has a fair bit of (plum-fattened) squirrel-meat in it. 

. . . the turkeys are here! I collected the poults (4) at the weekend. All girls aged 12 weeks, and all have Christmas Day appointments in the local area (one with the vicar). The fun and games - entertaining the neighbours and passing walkers - is about to start as no doubt I will be chasing them around their paddock with a broom at bedtime. Why they don't roost like the chickens, I am not sure. Meanwhile the chickens are developing fast, and eating a lot. I am a bit concerned about the male / female ratio as I think we have 7 boys. The freezer is going to be full!

The chicks are now 8 weeks, and we decided to introduce the bantams to them and back into the main chicken house. We hoped to time it just right when they are all about the same size, but we now wonder whether we left it a bit late. Lots of squabbling and pecking as the pecking order gets established. Watching the bantams look after each other (the black one putting her wing over the white one who was being badly pecked, and later patrolling the nesting box while the white one laid an egg) it is easy to anthromorphise them. We now have external nesting boxes – not a casual DIY operation, so I hope they appreciate it.

(See blog 161 for the original post.) They all took - 14 out of 14 - amazingly. So much better than the T bud grafts where I was getting less than 10%. Photo shows the grafted saplings in general; the tallest one on the R is Katy. The scions were about 3 buds long, and the growing saplings have sprouted 1, 2 or 3 shoots. This suggests how I might use them. For step overs (1 tier espaliers grown about 40 cm horizontally from the ground, both left and right), then 2 shoots are ideal. At this stage they can be tied to canes in a Y shape. The Y shape is a Jupiter on an MM106, destined for a step over For cordons or bush trees, then 1 bud is all that is needed; and both of these can be tied vertically. Extra buds are pruned to 3 leaves above the basal cluster.

We tried the hot box experiment again this year. Hundreds of baby melons, but we gritted our teeth and thinned them to 7 (the books advise less, but a couple of them were hiding for a while). The hot box, for anyone who was not reading last year, is an old cold water tank, insulated on the outside, and then filled in January with layers of fresh horse dung and leaf mulch, finally topped up with 6 inches of topsoil. Almost forgot - we had coq au vin at the weekend:-

Not much, but a little. A few weeks ago when I dumped the entire hive at the bottom of the garden trying to get rid of the laying workers, I nicked a frame of honey. Not a huge frame, not one that was unwieldy through the quantity of oozing honey. But a small frame, and one that consisted of some pollen too (which you can also eat). We chopped it up in the kitchen - both of us prefer comb honey, and we certainly did not have enough to extract. Which is lucky as it is mostly comb, and not much honey. However, it is very tasty, and eating it is spurring me on to keep persevering with the hive.

It's been all change this week. We moved the chicks from our boiler room into the chicken house. A bit of a relief because they were beginning to stink! The plan is for them to have a week in the chicken house, then a week in the house and the run. Hopefully, they will be then ready for the big wide world.   Meanwhile the chickens are having a holiday in the turkey house (complete with temporary nesting box) - this has confused them somewhat, like Victorian factory-workers wondering what to do at the seaside. In two weeks the bantams will join the chicks, and the warrens will become coq-au-vin. The turkey house has made us think of Christmas - I phoned the breeder, and arranged to pick up the poults in about a month. So, orders for Christmas Day now being taken! Inspecting the bees this week was not so much fun. No sign of the Queen (green spot, number 19). Nor any brood. Just a few Queen cells with grubs in them. Not sure what the grubs are  - drones from laying wor

Last week I helped out on the NFG (Northern Fruit Group) stand at the Tatton show. We were displaying an impressive selection of soft fruit. Far less impressive was my answering of the many questions from the people looking at the fruit. After being quizzed by seven consecutive people on figs I wondered whether I should have taken a hip flask. I quickly realised that the only things I knew lots about were strawberries and gooseberries. Unlike school exams however, copying from the next person was not just allowed but expected, and by the end of the day I knew quite a lot more than at the start. One question I had no trouble with was, 'My parents apple tree died last year, and my father died soon afterwards. Do you think the two things are connected?' I told her that 'I did not believe in that kind of thing.' When I later related the story to my mother-in-law she came up with would have been a far better reply:- 'Did he fall off the tree?'

My cousin got in touch to say that his rabbit was called 'Bertie' and that . . .  'We stayed in an Edinburgh hotel en route to Skye and while surreptitiously transporting Bertie up via a lift ( we weren't sure of hotel procedure for rabbits in rooms) we bumped into rappers NWA. As you can imagine they were a bit surprised....' I caught a squirrel and with the help of Fernley-Hughstall I skinned and gutted it. Fried up the offal (heart, liver, kidneys) for one supper and then slow-cooked the rest of it. Sternly-Whittinghall writes that it is tastier than rabbit, but I would need to eat a few more (my plan) to decide.   Chicks are getting bigger - we have built them an extension and added a roosting bar. The picking season has arrived - starting with a fab crop of blackcurrants.  All go!

A few years back my cousin visited us on his way North, and he brought with him his rabbit. His house-rabbit. I could hardly believe it; he was going on a two week holiday to Skye and taking his rabbit with him. I ribbed him mercilessly at the time, and regularly ever since. I will now have to stop. First, I would like to say sorry to him. (A public apology - all the rage with Chief Constables at the moment.) Sorry. I should probably add that at the weekend we took our dozen chicks to our friends in Northumberland. We would have missed them otherwise.

And that's nothing to do with Le Tour which we went to see on Holme Moss on Sunday (along with 60 000 other people). One of our chickens has died (old-age), but the chicks are all looking good. Sarah was very reluctant to go to work yesterday after a weekend of looking after them. Outside, our fruit cage is bursting with potential, and attractive not just to us but to marauders including squirrels, mice (1-0) and a rat (which I also caught). The crows have been scared off by Loiuse - who could blame them? I inspected the bees (ten days after giving them a new queen, courtesy of Royal Mail) and it was fantastic to see that not only she was alive, but laying eggs. I could see brood and sealed brood which is really fantastic. And lucky. Touch wood now that they don't get that swarmy feeling . . . Three wasp nests to date - photo shows the remains of one from the hawthorn hedge (4 stings in total when I was cutting the hedge), and I have also dealt with one in the loft

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Having all sorts of problems with our bees. It all went well for about a month, the Queen laying well and the colony growing in size. But then I found some Queen cells (new Queens being developed) which meant that a swarm was likely. Mistake 1 : I squashed the Queen cells (I should have split the colony into two parts (as the bees were trying to do) and have 2 colonies. I thought it was the right thing to do but the bees then did swarm (Sarah saw them go) which meant we lost the Queen and half the bees. Mistake 2 : I squashed the remaining Queen cells as I did not want any more swarms. A VERY bad mistake as I now had a colony without a Queen and without the chance of a new Queen being hatched. Mistake 3:  I went away on holiday for 2 weeks. The solution (if I had been quick and not sunning myself on hol) was to introduce a new mated Queen (bought from another beekeeper). But I was not, so when I got back from holiday I had the problem of laying workers . Some of the worker bees h

Problem 1 when we got back from holiday was that we were getting no eggs. And our chickens seemed to be hoovering up every last morsel off food. The explanation was crows. During our absence, they seemed to have multiplied and become very bold. Twice I have seen one go into the house, and emerge with an egg in its beak. At times we had a dozen crows wandering in and out of the chicken-house. Our first idea was to reduce the front door size - down to an opening about 7 inches by 5 inches, complete with strings hanging down with bottle tops attached. The chickens found their new door a bit odd, but the crows kept marching in. The solution has been a two-pronged approach - a scarecrow (Louise) (apparently the crows are put off by the round head and its pinkish hue (old tights!)), and by changing the entrance to the RHS through both the run door, so that any thief has to walk through the run, and then into the chicken-house through the side-door. So much for solving problem 1.

Even happy homesteaders need a holiday . . . we are just back from the Alps. A week's wild camping, and then a week in a gite. Pictures show us clambering up to one snowy col, and camping next to a triangular picnic table. In our first week we climbed the equivalent of Everest from sea-level - we spent most of the second week lying down. Coming home was no so great, but that's next week's story . . .

One of our chickens has been very unwell - not eating, and not coming out of the chicken-house much. Often she just sits somewhere dark with her head on the ground. The end seemed nigh. Sarah did a lot internet research and diagnosed the chicken's problem as being egg-bound; she was hunched and producing nasty faeces. So with a pair of rubber gloves, and a little KY jelly, we inspected. I say 'we' - team operation: Sarah was in charge, and I wore the gloves! But nothing - we were expecting at least a couple of eggs. Clean as a whistle. Hence, my latest theory of Munchausen's.

The whip and tongue grafts that I did in March are starting to grow. Rather amazingly I seem to have had about a 95% success rate. There is only one that is yet to sprout properly, and I am still hopeful. This first photo shows a scion that I took from my favourite wilding tree (in Reading), and which I have called The Big Purple (the apples are large purple globes, and the flesh has swathes of red / purple). However, my guru at the NFG (Northern Fruit Group) told me that I cannot count my chickens (to grab a metaphor from just over the fence) until next year. However, there is nothing like a bit of success to spur me on . . . I have started digging another tree nursery!

Well, kind of. They now have a run (fox, badger and jumbo-jet detritus proof) and a door from their house leading into it. So, they can put themselves to bed, get up when they want, and generally run their own lives a bit more. We like it because we can now go away for a night or two and not have to bother a neighbour, or leave them cooped up without any outside space. It's only for a night or two, because longer than that and they decide to try an egg or two themselves!

Living on the Pennine Way, we decided to walk the first 3 days of it. Made it to Sarah's cousin in Keighley - 56 miles, we think (second photo shows our wild camp on the first night - only 3C in the tent, freezing outside, but a beautiful morning). Meanwhile, back on the smallholding nothing was on hold, and everything needed doing on Monday afternoon - grass, chickens, bees, potting on and planting out. We decided to inspect the bees; Sarah now has a suit and with the added pressure of one bee finding a hole in mine, we opened the hive up. They are doing OK - we found the Queen, don't think we have any Queen cells (which suggest they might swarm) and the colony is growing in numbers.