Beginning with B

It started with the chiff chaff. It always starts with the chiff chaff. Followed by the cawing of the jackdaws carrying down the chimney and echoing through the fire place into the front room as they once again set about stuffing twigs, moss and general detritus down the chimney pot for their nest. Last week David heard the reeling song of the grasshopper warbler. A few days ago, as the sun shone strong and warm, I saw my first orange tip and red admiral butterflies. The white and buff tailed bumblebees are so abundant and busy that you have to be alert to the buzzing for fear of a head on collision. A pair of mistle thrush regularly have a noisy chest off with the magpies residing a few trees away, while another pair have set up home hidden in the tangled depths of ivy enveloping one of the ash trees in the corner of the sheep field. Their new neighbours appear to be the wheatears, but a more reliable identification with binoculars is required, instead of an "is it, isn't it" identification through two pairs of squinting, ageing eyes. I know the swallows have returned down the road at Pennant, but so far no sign of them here at Banceithin. I'm watching. I'm waiting. For swallows. For housemartins. For the cuckoo. For a lamb.

Lambing has been the usual waiting game, although this year the twin technologies of scanning and crayon have at least narrowed our watch and wait window to a workable two weeks as opposed to the long drawn out six weeks of lambings past. There is a pronounced path across the field in a diagonal line from the gate by the house to the stile in the corner. To and fro. Checking. Feeding. Watering. Last Friday, Babette did her usual trick of slipping out twins early, unseen and unaided, presenting us with two licked clean lambs at the morning feed. A ram lamb - Bobby. A ewe lamb - Betty. Babette, Bobby & Betty. A lovely family trio. 

 

The ram had clearly been having a good day because within the hour, in the time it took me to go back to the house for a quick breakfast and return to check Babette, Babs popped out a single and immediately set to work cleaning her up. Usually when the umbilical cord breaks as the lamb leaves the ewe, the "tail" left at the lamb's navel is short, about 2 inches or so, or if it's longer the ewe might nibble it shorter. Babs, however, left her new born with a two foot long, dark red, slippery monster of a "tail", as thick as a finger at the navel. Standing for the first time within minutes of birth is miracle enough, so to expect this lamb to do that with an umbilical snake tripping her up at each attempt was too much. Tap, tap, tappity tap on the internet forums ...... carefully tear it away at the correct length was the advice. Yikes! A smallholder is never too experienced to face another new experience! Pinching the cord tightly closed with one hand, David pulled away the rest of the snake. Yuk. That felt instinctively wrong. But a quick spray of iodine, back to mum, and she's up and suckling straight away. A bonnie wee ewe lamb with floppy ears. Bonnie. The miracle of life.

Blood sucking dinner plate

Imagine if you had a dinner plate attached to your body. Wherever you go, the dinner plate goes too. Even when you're sleeping. Imagine if that dinner plate was a blood sucking dinner plate, feeding on you to keep itself alive. Imagine if that dinner plate made you weak, susceptible to infection, left you with deformed legs, unable to leave the house. Imagine if there was absolutely nothing you could do to get rid of the dinner plate or stop the rest of your family being overcome by yet more blood sucking dinner plates.

Welcome to the world of the honey bee and it's parasitic sidekick the Varroa mite, or Varroa Destructor to give it its full and graphically apt name.

I have done many unpleasant things to my colonies over the years in my battle against Varroa infestations. Today I added to that list. Let me introduce you to "The Vaporiser". No, not another Marvel comics character dragged onto the big screen in yet another excruciating performance by Nicholas Cage. This is a tool. Oh, so not that different then (snigger). As I was saying, this is a tool designed to vaporise crystals of oxalic acid within a closed up hive, the vapours rising up and permeating the hive, then re-crystalising on the hive surfaces, including on the bees, and including on the mites that are on the bees. Why it is fatal to the mites, but not to the bees, is beyond my knowledge and quite frankly, if it works, I don't care. Many beekeepers have been treating their hives this way for a number of seasons now, so I trust those who have gone before and am arriving late to the vaporising party. Fashionably late, naturally, and with glitter and sequins (okay, no glitter or sequins, more grubby fleece and mucky wellies).

 

There were the usual mishaps to be expected when using a new toy. Like forgetting to close the hive entrances earlier in the day and trying to coax errant sluggish bees back into the hive so I could gas them. Like not realising the jump starter was already powering the vaporiser and accidentally scorching the instructions for use (thankfully still legible, if a little crispy in places). Like not totally sealing the hive and running away, nose in jacket, from the wisps of toxic oxalic vapour curling up out through the gaps. 

Take note, this is a live action blog written by a fool and not a painstakingly researched how to guide written by an expert.

Tomorrow I shall count the bodies of dead mites fallen from the bodies of my beloved bees and dance a merry jig. Take that you pesky Varroa mites! 

Superhighway

An amazing thing happened today. It has probably happened here many times in the last five years but I have never witnessed it. The difference of five minutes forwards or backwards and I would not have witnessed it at all.

It was a hot, humid day. In anticipation of the forecast rain storm due to arrive tonight, I headed out to the cut flower patch to collect a bunch of sweet peas and calendula for the kitchen, and cut some helichrysum (also known as straw flowers or everlasting flowers) to dry, fully expecting to wake up tomorrow to a battered patch and forlorn flowers. As usual, on arrival at the plot, I got distracted, and a five minute task became a 30 minute potter. Everything changed in that time. The temperature dropped. The sky darkened. The wind picked up. You could feel the storm in the air. My trug full of flowers, I left the plot. Like losing the plot but without the anger issues.

Part way across the field I realised I had company. A lot of company. I was standing in a bee superhighway. Bees to my left, my right, below me, above me, and if I didn't get out of the way soon there was going to be a collision. I crouched down. A steady stream of my honey bees, some flying high, some flying low, some zipping along at high speed, others taking a more waivering path, but all flying very definitely along the same route, from the same direction in the neighbouring field, to the same destination in our field, namely the apiary. It was as though a bell had rung, calling all workers home, urgently, no shilly-shallying along the way, do not pass Go, do not collect any pollen on the way. Even ducked down I was at risk of getting a face full of bees, so I lay on my back, watching them fly over me, hundreds of them. They knew a storm was coming and bees hate rain. I could see the full pollen bags on some, predominately a whitish colour. Perhaps my girls had found themselves a patch of late summer heather and had been working it en masse in the afternoon sunshine, all available foragers called up, all leave cancelled.

Gradually the numbers died down. The stream became a trickle. Bucking the trend a lone bee headed back in the other direction. What was she thinking? Sent out to find missing workers? Determined to hit her daily foraging target whatever the weather? Did she make it home?

David returned from feeding the pigs to see me lying in the middle of the field, and assumed I had fallen over, as though that is a regular occurrence, as if I am prone to random tumbles. I explained the reason for my position, so he joined me and together we watched the last of the field workers head home as the first rain drops began to fall.

Odd Job, Bodge Job

Dry days have been hard to come by of late, so when Mother Nature deigns to hold off on the wet stuff for a succession of days, it's foolish not to take advantage of the opportunity to tick a few outdoor jobs off the list. Not every job can be a big job, but completing a selection of little jobs in and amongst some general pottering can be just as satisfying.

David's odd jobs tend to involve hammers, nails, a drill and assorted cuts of wood.

First, he built a chicken shelter. Having moved the chicken house away from rattus rattus and having increased the flock from four to eight, there was no longer sufficient space under the house to accommodate all the girls on rainy, sleety, haily, windy days. When free ranging they have access to a myriad of shelters; picnic benches, bushes, vehicles, trailer, wood shed, boiler room (if SOMEONE leaves the door open), but options are limited when they are confined to their run. If you've seen David's pig ark and sheep shed constructions, you'll instantly recognise the inspiration behind the chicken shelter design. David works to a very flexible design, easily scaled up or, in this case, down, depending on your sheltering needs. I'm calling the new chicken shelter the Bunker. Being low to the ground it calls to mind entrances to underground hurricane and air raid shelters.

The Bunker has inspired me to name the last of our new flock yet to be named. Dorothy. Hurricane, twister, over the rainbow, you see where I'm going .....

Back to David's handiwork. Some further rummagings in his wood stocks later, and the rotten boards of the raised veg beds were fixed. More hammering and drilling and the new compost bins rose up from the ground as if by magic. Give him tools and a pile of pallets and he's an odd job genius!

My odd jobs tend to involve paint brushes and procrastination. Whilst David hammered and constructed, all I managed to do was think about getting up a ladder to re-paint the top floor window surround (it was stripped of its expensive face lift by a particularly aggressive, perfectly angled hail storm), decide it was too cold to go that high up, and instead paint the pallets of the de-constructed and re-constructed chessboard ....

Oh yes, and I also painted the outline of some utensils. As you do. Don't ask. Just another crazy idea born of too much time trawling the internet on rainy days.

However, not every job that day was successful. Nest box checking and moving proved surprising tricky for the simplest job on the list.

  

The robin box just would not budge from its nailed in position too high up the tree. Hammer failed, screwdriver failed. Just one more pull was a pull too far. As I watched David fall backwards off the ladder, hammer still in hand, the world slowed down, giving me sufficient time to register the fact that he was falling, consider the outcome should he hit the ground, wonder if I should intervene to try to break his fall, and ultimately do nothing but watch gravity do what it does. Fortunately, things were moving faster in David's world, and so was his brain. As his feet left the ladder he had the good sense to inject a little impetus and so turn his fall into a leap, landing unsteadily but safely, hammer still in hand. We decided that was sufficient drama for one day and went inside for tea and cake.  The robin box remains in its position too high up the tree.

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From Poly to Plate

It was Hallow'een. I was in the mood to be amazed. I was feeling ropey after a turbulent night arguing with a dodgy prawn (or at least that's what I thought it was at the time, though it subsequently turned out to be one of it's more deadly relatives, the winter virus). Feeling weak and feeble and very sorry for myself, I was gazing blankly through the window watching leaves fall outside in the garden of my parent's house. I needed something amazing to happen to lift me up out of my funk. Water and glucose energy tablets weren't doing it for me. 

A red admiral butterfly fluttered by. That was pretty amazing for the time of year. But having read an article in the morning paper about the many sightings of the red admiral throughout October, my amazement was somewhat diminished. Unfair to the butterfly. Blame the media. A large dragonfly made its staccato flight left to right across my view through the window. That was definitely an amazing thing to happen on Hallow'een. And all the more amazing for not being an event my morning newspaper had told me to expect. 

I realised that I wasn't seeing the bigger picture (clearly my inner philosopher is roused from her slumber by a dose of the runs and a morning spent in sporadic prayer to the porcelain God). My self-indulgent, woe is me, entertain me, dance for me, state of mind was clouding my vision. Everything I saw through the window that morning was amazing. It's amazing that nature in myriad forms was out there to be seen and, dicky tummy aside, that I was there at that point in time in that spot to see it. The more you look, the more you see. A white-tailed bumble bee was foraging in the begonia. A common carder bee emerged from the trailing lobelia. The bees were still flying - amazing! The flowers were still flowering - amazing! And then I started to think about tomatoes. I had my phone in my hand and I happen to have a lot of photos of tomatoes on my phone, so that wasn't as great a leap of imagination as you might think. I'm sure that every smallholder has a photo gallery consisting mainly of fruit, vegetables, animals or food in varying stages of growth or consumption, but it's possible that this condition is specific to me. But back to the tomato .....

We grow tomatoes in our polytunnel every year. Each plant starts its life in March as a small seed. It's no bigger than a piece of fluff from a belly button. We give it a bed of damp, organic, peat-free compost and a warm spot on top of the biomass boiler. Three, sometimes four or five days later a seedling appears, its head bowed down by the seed case that it wears like a tiny crash helmet. The temptation to free the cotelydon leaves from this burden is great, but we leave the seedling to bear the weight so it can grow strong and healthy in its own time as nature intended. Before too long we have a whole tray of seedlings, a mini-forest on our kitchen windowsill. The three inch tall seedlings are lovingly pricked out, held aloft by the lightest possible touch on their delicate first true leaves, and with a few words of encouragement and some apologies for the disturbance, each is eased gently into its own little pot. It's at this point that failure to label each pot can be disasterous. How else will you know pre-fruiting whether your plant is a Matina or a Saint Pierre, or a Zuckertraube or a Costoluto. Examining plants for minute differences in leaf shape is no substitute for good labelling.

 

Every spare windowsill is now home to tomato plant. We allocate responsibility between us to ensure that at least one person remembers to tend the plants in each room. At this point we have to hope that the point at which the plants hit 6 inches tall and their roots fill the pot, corresponds with a warming of the weather. We check the forecast daily, trying to assess the risk of late frost, as even in the polytunnel the plants can take a potentially fatal knock-back if the temperature plummets overnight, but once they're settled in their final growing site the real magic begins. Manure, water, stinky comfrey tea, warmth and sunshine are the fairy dust. The plants grow, and grow, and grow some more, until that tiny seed is a four foot high plant laden with trusses of tomatoes, a cascade of green, yellow, orange and red. Now that's amazing!

 

 

And do you know what's more amazing? The smell of a bowl of warm freshly picked tomatoes. Bury your nose in it and breath deeply. Everyone says this, but it's true, it's a bowl of sunshine, sunshine that can be sliced, drizzled with oil, sprinkled with basil and munched for summer lunch, or roasted, mushed and stashed away for a taste of summer on a rainy November day like today.

 

Health & Safety at Work

Ignoring stress related illnesses and discounting entirely the debate on the health risks associated with excessive use of a mobile phone, my life as a desk-bound corporate slave was low risk. Most injuries were self-inflicted and consisted mainly of bruising to the head from bashing it against either the brick wall or the glass ceiling (I'm speaking metaphorically of course, I didn't work in a tiny, glass-lidded brick box).

Bruising still occurs on a regular basis in my new life (actually, it's been five years, but who's counting), but then I've always bruised easily, just ask my older brother. The Top 3 causes nowadays tend to be lack of co-ordination while man-handing a full wheelbarrow, miscalulating how many logs I can carry at once and generally bumbling my way around misjudging corners and angles. Spatial awareness is not and never has been one of my greatest strengths. However, I now have to contend with a myriad of hazards. It's not the obvious smallholding hazards that cause me problems - I know to keep my distance from a moving chainsaw, I know not to stand behind a tractor that has rusted, nearly non-existent wing mirrors, and I know that angry bees sting when you blow smoke in their eyes, kill their sisters and steal their honey. It's the small, seemingly insignificant until they get you hazards that really mess me up.

Let's start with the courgette. An easy to grow vegetable with a tendency to triple in size overnight but no obvious health risks unless you try to swallow one whole. Think again! Reach in to harvest your supper at your peril. The stems and leaves can be seriously spiky, and this year we appear to have grown the spikiest spiky variety in all of spikydom.

The criss-cross scratch pattern on my lower right arm is testimony to the damage a courgette can inflict. But these wounds are nothing in comparison with the hogweed burn. Mum, if you're reading this look way now....

Yes, that's my upper right arm. Yes I know you warned me about hogweed. Yes, I'm an idiot. And yes, I was hiding the scars under long sleeves when I saw you for lunch last week!

Like many people I knew to keep away from the highly toxic giant hogweed and I'd taken some care to check that the 2 metre high plants lurking out the back near my washing line were definitely common hogweed. What I didn't know then but certainly know now is that for some people, and in some circumstances, the common hogweed has similarly toxic sap. Something to do with furocoumarins. Not a new Chelsea FC player but the substance in hogweed sap that causes sensitization of the skin. Although not every common hogweed plant produces these, and when a plant does it's only in small amounts, the sap is photosensitive, meaning that strong sunlight on the sap on the skin can cause burning. There's no warning though because it's not until the next day, or the day after, that the burns really start to appear and to blister. Having failed to make the connection with my hogweed clearing activities, there were a couple of days when I variously thought I had contracted a serious skin disease, developed a nasty case of eczema or had become so absent-minded that I was burning myself while cooking without noticing (the latter being the most worrying possibility). By the time common hogweed came in to the frame, I was so relieved to have alighted on an answer that the scaring on my arms felt like a small price to pay for an afternoon of garden clearing stupidity in the sunshine.

Next on my hazards hit list is the nettle. An obvious candidate, but not for an obvious reason. Anyone who spent their childhood running and rummaging in the countryside is well aware of the dangers of the nettle, the sting of nettle rash and the magic properties of the dock leaf. What you might not be aware of is that the nettle has a revenge reflex. Once cut or pulled the plant remains a danger, so you bundle the cuttings and lift them oh so carefully into the wheel barrow. The bulk of the cuttings deliberately wave around to ensure that your attention is firmly on their whereabouts. This is a cunning ploy to distract you from the fact that one of their number is still on the ground, lying in wait. You take a step back, catch one end under your foot, flicking the other end upwards and into contact with the nearest patch of unprotected skin. Never fails. Of course, by this point you've already dug up all the docks.

If you've ever been trodden on by the trotter of a 90 kg pig, had the toe of your welly nibbled by a curious pig, or met an over-amorous sexual active boy pig, then you know that pig keeping can be a hazardous activity. Again, these are the obvious risks. Racing across the well rotivated ground of a pig run is tricky, especially if your ground is stony so the surface is littered with unearthed trip hazard boulders. I could walk the distance between gate and trough but that increases the risk of the aforementioned trotter trampling and toe nibbling, plus if I don't get to the trough before Mary, Mungo and Midge it gets really difficult to pour the nuts into the trough without interference and the longer you take to get the nuts in the trough the greater the levels of salivation and the greater the risk of being salivated on. Much to my embarrassment (although to my knowledge only the sheep and Teri saw it happen), I have also learned that it is hazardous to back away from the trough after feeding as it is highly likely to lead to you ending up on your bum in a strategically placed pig crater. Those pigs sure can dig!

There's no end to the hazards a smallholder faces on a day to day basis: hot jam splash-back; the sheep hurdle finger guillotine; precarious Jenga-style log stacking; the hungry chicken who really, really wants your sandwich/biscuit/crisps; bird box bumble bee nests; pickling vinegar fumes; the burp of a tipped over ewe; wasps in the raspberry bushes..... I could go on but I'm afraid the insurance company might be reading this.

There's been a murder

I've always defended the magpie, jay and their corvid brethren. Yes, they steal and yes, they munch on the odd baby bird or two, but their plumage is magnificent and as a nation of avid meat-eaters (which very few of us catch and kill ourselves), who are we to pass judgement on the corvid's roll in the avian food chain.

Having said all that, I shall now proceed to pass judgement on certain aspects of their behaviour....

Sharing the premises with a recently fledged family of six magpies and one of four jays is like living next door to a family of juvenile delinquents. First, there's the noise, that clack, clack, clacking laughing call. The one benefit of this racket is that it gives away of the location of the latest act of mischief:

- the woodshed, where they harangued the swallow family on a daily basis right up until the day the four chicks fledged (I've run the length of the top field on more than one occasion trying to get to the shed before the magpies get to the nest);

- the fruit patch, where they compete with the jays to see who can grab the most redcurrants in one snatch through the net (so much so that the weight of all those corvids proved to the the last straw for the rotting wooden post holding up the netting);

- the sheep field, where they take it in turns to hop on and off the back of a sheep like kids on a playground roundabout;

and worst of all

- under the horse chestnut trees, where poor old Charlie was attacked mid-toilet. Did they mistake his hunched black and white form for an over-sized enemy magpie? The poor cat hasn't run so fast since the onset of arthritis in his back legs. When I finally caught up with him he was at the top of the stairs in the house, wide eyed and panting like a dog, with a messy back end and a chunk of fur (complete with a small patch of skin) missing from his side. 

When these asbo magpies are not assaulting ageing cats, they're snacking on the chickens' layers pellets (which might account for the high number of family members), stealing WHOLE fat balls from the bird feeder (serves me right for snapping off and losing  the lid) or dodging between snuffling snouts to snaffle pig nuts from the trough. Funnily enough, every member of the family is big and glossy! 

I have yet to catch anyone in the act, but I'm pretty sure it's a magpie with a talent for thievery and a nosey beak who plucks the white seed label from the end of the rows of seedlings in the veg plot, gives each label a good pecking, then tosses it aside. Right now I can't tell my purple sprouting from my tat soi or my leaf beet from my beetroot. Brazen, totally brazen!

Dave stands at the bedroom window, air rifle in hand, pretending to take pot shots as a magpie swoops from left to right heading for the chicken run. But that's all it is, pretending. Like the moles who pepper the lawn with mud mountains, the squirrels who strip bark from the sycamore and the housemartins who drop poop on the path, we put up with these little nuisances because life wouldn't be the same without them.

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Here's an interesting fact - the collective noun for the magpie is not a murder. I assumed that perhaps the same collective noun would apply for all the corvids. Hence the blog title. Silly me. It seems a number of birds merit a collective noun all of their own. For the magpie it's a "conventicle", which my online dictionary tells me means "secret or unlawful religious meeting, typically of nonconformists". That pleases me immensely. However, I find the concept of "a herd of wrens" rather perplexing. 

http://www.britishbirdlovers.co.uk/articles/collective-nouns-for-birds

Mad as a Box of Bees

"There's quite a few bees in the wood shed", said Dave one morning.

It's not unusual for this to happen. Every year a keen foraging bee will sniff out my stack of super boxes (the bit of the hive where the bees store their honey and where I steal it from) and invite a few of her sisters along for a robbing party. If there's so much as a drop of honey clinging to the frames in the super boxes the bees will find it. However, on this occasion as soon as I got within six feet of the wood shed I knew that this was no robbing party, but an illegal rave. A peak under the lid at the top of the stack confirmed my suspicions that Dave's "quite a few bees" was a full on swarm!

Obviously, given my far from perfect track record as a beekeeper, my first thought was that my own colony, purchased for the princely (or should that be queenly?) sum of £150 just  two weeks earlier had done a bunk while my back was turned. Bees do that sort of thing. Just because they can. But no, for once I was in possession of someone else's bees instead of the other way round. The scout who found my stack of super boxes will surely be nominated for "Scout of the Year" at the annual colony awards, for not only did she find them a home, but a fully furnished show home with a well stocked pantry. At the latest they could only have moved in three days earlier, but the ever efficient worker bees must have been hard at it from the off, cleaning up the mess of the previous occupants, making the cells nice and shiny, getting their queen popping out eggs to order. Unfortunately for them, this show home was spoken for and I was the white suited busy body coming to evict them. Unfortunately for me, this was one of the hottest days of the summer yet and after two hours in a beekeeping suit I was as hot and bothered as the bees, and probably just a little bit stinkier. It was worth the effort though - now the colony has a new home in my apiary and I have a new colony in my apiary. Everyone's a winner. Except for the lost flying bees. You can move a colony, but you can't re-program the internal navigation system of the bees quite so easily. For the next few days Dave would report "bees in the wood shed again", "there are still bees in the wood shed", "how much longer will there be bees in my wood shed". Each evening, as the temperature fell, lost, hungry, docile flying bees would form a small cluster on the hive parts I'd deliberately left for them to sniff out. So each evening I carried said hive part to the apiary, whispered a few words of encouragement, carefully brushed the bees back into their hive, then pressed my ear to its side to listen for the sound of the homecoming party.

I love having bees again. I really must make more effort to stop accidentally killing them.

The bugs are back in town!

There are good bugs and there are bad bugs.

We like good bugs so much we've built a hotel for them. Another masterpiece from the whittler's work bench. No pets allowed, but bugs welcomed! A range of accommodation is available - if you like a round room we can offer smooth walled pipes, hogweed stems for those who prefer rougher spikier decor, or for something more rustic try a log hole, but if your taste runs to modern but functional, try a brick. Booking facilities for this latest accommodation offering will soon be available n our website. Book early to avoid disappointment.

A good night's sleep is guaranteed, but with neighbours of the inquisitive poultry variety there's a high risk of being breakfast the next morning rather than having breakfast.

Meanwhile, in the bad bug camp, the baddest bad bug in the entire bad bug kingdom is back with a vengeance. This menace is invisible at first, lulling you into a false sense of security while its nibbles remain miniscule. You watch, you wait, you take pleasure in seeing your fruit bushes go from flower to budding fruit. All seems well. Then BAM! Overnight each caterpillar-like sawfly larva has grown in size ten-fold, its nibbles now clearly visible munchings on a vast scale, clusters of voracious little beasties devour every single precious leaf on your gooseberry bushes and every scrap of green on your redcurrant bushes.

Three years on the trot we've suffered the injustice of the sawfly larva attack and seen our fruit bushes stripped of all foliage. One year we tried companion planting with flowers said to deter these larvae, but by the time the seeds germinated I'd forgotten they'd been sown at all and suspecting an infestation of previously unidentified weeds, promptly plucked out every single seedling. First failure. Another year we tried replacing the top 2 inches of soil (the winter home of larvae to be) with a layer of fresh mulch, with no visible reduction in subsequent larvae hatchings. Second failure. Daily sprays of Soil Association approved "Bug Clear" didn't appear to clear a single bug. Third failure. And before you ask, no the chickens aren't interested. Fourth failure. Finally, in a last ditch attempt to save our four year old gooseberry plants, we dug them up last winter and relocated them at the other end of the field. How foolish of me to think I could fool the all seeing, all sniffing, sawfly with such a simple trick. Fifth failure. Now its back to the good old fashioned chemical-free but rarely effective pest control technique of spraying with warm soapy water. 

Before...

I'm determined not to be defeated. This is now one woman's fight to save her dreams of gooseberry fool and summer fruit pavlova. Every day I pull on my Marigold gloves, get down on hands and knees, inspect each plant leaf by leaf, and shake, flick and squidge the little b*****s to death. Small ones turn to slime. Big ones pop. Stuff the bad karma, I'm on a mission. I look down from above to find the larvae peeping out from underneath. I rummage in the middle to catch the larvae inching their way up the central stem. I look up from below to spot the larvae silhouetted against the sky. As a parting shot I stomp on the bodies of larvae strewn around the base of each bush just in case anything still has sufficient wriggle power to make it back to the mother ship.

... during ...

... after.

Hour upon hour passes in this way, and I have a "dot to dot" pattern of midge bites up my arms and around my face and neck to show for it, but I fear all is in vain as when I return the next day a million more have hatched and the bushes have become more and more skeletal. So long gooseberry jam, farewell redcurrant jelly.

Changing Seasons

September began with these happy facts:

- Wales has endured its third wettest summer since records began in 1910.

- For sunshine it is expected to be the country's second dullest.

- Across the UK experts claim it will be the wettest summer in 100 years, and the second wettest on record.

Am I wrong in reading this as meaning that Wales was not as wet this summer as other parts of the UK? Well that has to be good news. Of course, the fly in the ointment is that is also means that at some time in the last 100 years Wales had two summers even wetter than this summer. I sure am glad that I missed out on those!

Last week the BBC weather boffins claimed that climate change will make Britain like Madeira by the 2060s. At first I drifted off into dreams of living in a lemon and almond scented country made of sponge cake. Then the geography part of my brain woke up, sneered at the greedy food part and reminded me that Madeira is in fact an island not just a tasty cake that goes well with a nice cup of tea. So instead I got excited at the prospect of converting the pig field into a pineapple grove, buying a panama hat, and swanning around squeezing exotic fruit saying “yes” in a Mr Del Monte style. Then came the crushing disappointment when it out turned out said boffins were spouting a load of greenhouse gas. You can’t trust anyone these, not even the BBC.

The only true signs of changing climate or even just changing season are those I see before me. Sadly “Dave’s Nature Notebook” has scant records for 2012 so there are few facts to cross-check against the initial enthusiasm of the 2011 records. All I can say for certain is that the housemartins arrived at least two weeks later this year and are still here, that the barn owls failed to rear any chicks after successfully raising four to fledging last year, that the honey harvest was 15lbs instead of 35lbs, that the carrots are like babies of babies of baby carrots ….

… that the beetroots are like marbles, and that the slugs are just as slimy but twice as fat as last year!

The traditional signs of summer turning to autumn are already there to be seen – blackberries ripening; mushrooms springing up across the field; horse chestnut leaves turning from green to burnt orange. The somewhat less traditional signs are there too – getting a tad too chilly to wear pyjamas for the early morning animal feeding chores; shouty, egg laying, “I want out” chickens waking me at 7 a.m. instead of 6 a.m.; loading six logs in the wheelbarrow for Bertha’s breakfast instead of four; washing going from wet to dry to damp again if “someone” forgets to bring it in after tea; the sundowner “I’ve been really busy, honest I have, I deserve it” beer gradually getting earlier and earlier. But despite all this, Mother Nature is having another roll of the dice and has been throwing out summer days willy-nilly. The bees and butterflies are supping greedily and drunkenly on the late nectar flow like wedding guests at a free bar. Brush past the flowering herbs and you risk a face full of buzzing and fluttering. Inhale too sharply in surprise and you get a mouthful too!

Our third summer season may be drawing to a close, but it’s onwards and upwards here at Banceithin. In just nine days time work begins on phase one of the Boardwalk Project. The wood has been bought. The woodsman has been booked. The brambles have been cleared and grown back. There’s no going back. Unless it rains. The plan is to start with a ground level platform between the trees by the stream, over which the hammock will swing. Hammock?! Are you crazy? After the summer we’ve just had? Hey, who said that lazy summer days have to be in July or August. I’m happy to swing in the breeze any day of the year. Isn’t that what blankets were invented for? Next to the hammock platform, just a hop, skip and a few ladder rungs up will be not one, but two hideaway decks in the trees. Pour a glass of wine, grab a book and disappear amongst the leaves for some quiet contemplation.  

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Why the long absence? I could tell you that I bagged myself a six figure book deal and have been beavering away on my first novel. But I’d be lying. Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been on an all expenses paid trip of a lifetime to Africa? No, I wouldn’t either. How about if I said I’d spent the last two months trapped under something heavy? If a weight of rainwater counts then that would be closer to the mark! The truth is even more mundane. I simply blinked and the past two and a half months slipped passed me in a drizzly damp blur.

As you may have gathered it’s been a bit wet here lately. It’s been a bit wet everywhere lately. It’s still a bit wet here. It’s still a bit wet everywhere. Summer, schmummer ….. mustn’t grumble though (grumble, grumble), as compared to some of our fellow Cardies we’ve come through the worst of it unscathed. While others in the north of the county were watching their caravans bob about like giant buoys or scrabbling to save belongings from the raging torrent in their living rooms, all we lost was some stones from the drive. Not easily deterred, our guests at the time braved the overflowing stream to head out for dinner – this was what greeted them at the bottom of the drive ….

… but when you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to eat, even if it means swimming to the restaurant!

The pigs take a similar approach, though their trip to the trough is more of a bog snorkel than a swim. The pen is so thick with liquid mud in places that I’m considering setting up Dave in a tent with his guitar, rigging up a bar in the pig ark, and calling it a festival. 

Desperate times called for desperate measures. We stole a patch of field from Babs, Margo and Myfanwy to give Larry, Pip and Mo a daily break from the mudfest. A few harsh lessons were learnt when snouts met electric fence, and Teri rediscovered what happens when fur meets 12 volts, but the conclusion of this sophisticated scientific experiment is that sheep have better memories than dogs as Babs, Margo and Myfanwy have steer well clear of the new pop-up boundary and were in need of no shocking reminders. Electrocution aside, judging by the high levels of bum cheek slapping, side to side tail wagging going on the pen extension has been a source of great pleasure. In two weeks, our trio of porcine rotivators turned this ….

 

into this ….

 

The boys are serious rootlers and clod tossers. Everyday the lower wire of the electric fence has to be dug out from under piles of sodden mud clods and strips of turf. Available for hire for garden clearing at the price of a box of stale cakes per pig per hour.

Other headline news from the frontline of smallholding:

Black Rock shock as six become two

Hera turned all Ray Mears on us, insisting on spending nights under the stars, which went pear-shaped for her and dinner-shaped for Foxy Loxy. Six became five. Two days later, to celebrate Athena’s miraculous recovery from her egg bound hell, we captured her in a fishing net and packed her off to market with Aphrodite and Hestia. Five became two. Blodwen and Branwen kept their distance and eyed us warily for a while, but the bullied soon became the bullies when the new pullets on the block turned up …

   

– Dilys (perfect) & Deryn (bird) the Calder Rangers and Eira (snow) & Enid (spirit) the Speckledys.

Sheep lose coats and dignity on road trip

On a miraculously sunny day in June we packed Babs, Margo and Myfanwy into the trailer for a mini-road trip to visit the mobile shearing unit. The speed and ease with which I write those words is inversely proportional to the speed and ease with which the described act happened. Obviously we had to go through the usual Benny Hill style sheep chasing shenanigans. It’s harder to fool a sheep than you think. Once at the shearing unit our girls were on the receiving end of some rough handed man handling – those shearers have no truck with sheep tomfoolery, it’s grab, tip, shear, grab tip, shear. Zippity zap and the coats were gone, exposing three rather round tummies and rumbling my secret treat feeding regime. Whoopsie.

Queen goes missing, colony at risk

Where do I begin with the bees……. two steps forward, six mile jog backwards. This has been the summer from hell for my colonies. I had three colonies in March, down to two in April, down to one in May, up to two in June. Lack of sun means lack of nectar flow. Too much rain means too little foraging. My one achievement was to do my first artificial swarm. The glow of satisfaction soon became the fug of despair when the old queen absconded anyway, probably flicking a V sign in my direction as she departed. A few phone calls later and a new mated queen and entourage arrived in a travelling cage packed in a jiffy bag labelled “URGENT – LIVE BEES INSIDE”. I bet the postman loved delivering that package. So now I have two colonies, each with a new queen. Sit tight, wait for the sun, hope for the best, try to make the remaining few jars of last years honey last until August 2013.

Accident prone cat saves local veterinary clinic from financial ruin

Not content with scaring me silly with his brush with death by poisoning, Charlie decided to go for a hat-trick of “bad things”. One morning he’s fine, the next afternoon he’s hobbling along on three legs, the fourth being a puffy club foot of a paw. Suspected broken leg, vet talks of feline orthopaedics and metal pins, flashing pound signs in his eyes. We fork out for anti-inflammatory drugs and x-rays. Turns out it was a bad sprain and Charlie is under vet’s orders to rest up for a few weeks. So what does he do? Heads out and comes home with a big bloody hole in his neck. Back to the vet. More fur shaved off, gaping hole is cleaned and stapled (yes, STAPLED!) closed. He can’t walk. He has metal staples in his neck. Charlie has transformed into “Frankenhobble”.  Vet’s bill arrives. Sharp intake of breath. Reach for cheque book. Take big swig of wine.

Philippa’s Project List

So for those of you that know Philippa, she is an exceptionally well organised individual. You could even say she even has a touch of the OCD’s. (I say this without fear of reprisal knowing that her favourite job would be working in a library cataloguing books).Those of you who know me, know that I’m not very organised, and will get round to stuff at some point. Without Philippa’s love of lists however, I’m sure we would drift along here and not get half of the things done that we have. Philippa’s to-do list is an ever morphing creature, which one day can be replicated on the back of a stamp. The next day you would need a ream of that old style dot matrix printer paper that goes on forever. I have learned how to handle this beast recently, and I have come to the decision that if I wait long enough, the list will naturally evolve, with some of the more undesirable jobs disappearing altogether. This technique can only last for so long, and eventually I can identify the jobs that Philippa definitely wants doing from the jobs which were entered following a sudden rush of enthusiasm following reading some article, or seeing someone's comparable business.

One job she has been elbowing me about for over 6 months now is to build a mini jetty at our pond, so guests can do some pond dipping without getting their feet wet. Today was the day when I finally got round to it.

About two months ago I managed to acquire a few lengths of old board walk. The original plan was to build a bridge across the pond, but that scheme died a death immediately as I found that the maximum working wellington boot distance from the bank was 12 inches. So I reverted back to the mini jetty idea

Philippa practicing her forward twist dive with two and a half pike from the 0.5 metre board.

With this job complete however, I am aware that the beast that is rebuilding the clay oven looms ever larger, and I fear that I have no defence from that particular task!

The White Ghosts

I was unreasonably annoyed when nest cam had to be removed from the bird box. I was unreasonably pessimistic when Dave cobbled together am emergency owl box cam as compensation for lost blue tit chick viewing opportunities. More fool me as owl box cam has been an outrageous success. We’ve been privileged to watch the barn owl chicks develop from being a mere twinkle in Mr Barn Owl’s eye, to the gawky, greedy, screechy teenagers they are now. 

Who needs the sharks and Nazis of Channel 5, or the pregnant teenagers and streetwise superheros of BBC 3, when each evening we can flick to the Owl Channel for live action from our own treetops!  There’s mystery – is that one egg, two eggs, three eggs or, oh my God, I think there’s four eggs. Romance – Mr Barn Owl brings furry edible gifts to Mrs Barn Owl. Sex – Mrs Barn Owl lets Mr Barn Owl get jiggy in return for said furry edible gifts. Comedy – how many fluffy owl chick faces can you fit in a 20 cm diameter hole. Suspense – will the fourth owlet ever get fed or will his bigger greedier siblings starve him to death. Dance – stretch the wing to the left, stretch the leg to the right, bob up & down, turn your head upside down. Horror – rodents swallowed whole or ripped to shreds on a nightly basis. High drama – owlets falling backwards off branches, owlets getting wedged between branch and box, and owlets clinging to ledges by just a beak and a claw. All this and more every night on the Owl Channel.

 

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The eldest owlet must be at least nine or ten weeks old as it's flying well. By eleven weeks an owlet should have made his first prey capture and perhaps started to disperse. Ours are clearly not so keen on the dispersal idea. If they hang around much longer, mum and dad will start chasing them away. Better to jump than be pushed (especially when you live above a house of inquisitive chickens), but any day now we’ll flick over to Owl Channel to find nothing but an empty box. The time will come when our four intrepid owls must make their own way in the world. What a sad day that will be, not just by the fact of their leaving, but by the even sadder fact that the first-year survival rate for juvenile barn owls is as low as 25%, so statistically only one of the four is likely to live to see his 1st birthday. So if you’re driving around at night, spare a thought for all those dispersing barn owls, slow down, and watch out for those beautiful white ghosts.

What big eyes you have!

I take back what I said about pesky foreign imports. Or at least I redirect the insult from the nest cam to the Japanese made TV. Turns out that nest cam was in perfect working order. Hats off to the import company who took it back, replaced it without question, and probably put our names on the blacklist of numpty luddites not fit to own gadgets. Although we now had a working nest cam in our possession, it was way too late in the nesting process for us to set it up again. Mrs Blue Tit would be none too happy with a ham fisted human lifting the lid on her house, rummaging around in her nest & leaving her with the beady eye of Big Brother watching as she pops out an egg or two or ten.

Dave came up with a cunning plan to turn the bumble house into a weather-proof camera box (don’t worry, no bumble bees were evicted as the box has only ever housed slugs, spiders & the occasional mouse), cobble together some supports from his ever expanding collection of random bits of wood that may come in handy one day (a true Welsh farmer in the making), and erect the contraption on the tree opposite our owl box.

We’d long ago given up hope of our resident barn owl finding himself a mate this year. He screeched himself hoarse but we’d only ever seen him on his own, so assumed his dulcet tones were not doing it for the females, or worse, that the harsh winter had been too much for all his fellow barn owls. Owl cam proved us wrong. Mrs Barn Owl was in residence. We were even treated to grainy footage of what looked like a spot of owl loving!

Owl cam has no lights and makes no noise, but I’m sure the owls somehow know that they’re being watched. During the day all that can been seen is the sleeping form of huddled up owl, with the occasional wave of the wing or twitch of an eye if the chickens are being particularly shouty about their egg laying. Come nightfall though, Mr Barn Owl starts playing peek-a-boo with the camera….

… before clambering over Mrs Barn Owl and exiting to bag himself a vole snack, leaving Mrs Barn Owl behind.

Yesterday Mrs Barn Owl also left the box for a very short while. Owl cam picked up the shadowy form of the treasure she’d been guarding. Yes, the owl loving has borne fruit and we think there are at least two eggs in the box. We’re bemused as to why she has chosen to lay so near the entrance and our hearts sink every time we see Mr Magpie hovering near the box. He has his own family to look after up in the ash tree behind the house and I fear he has plans to feed them an owl egg omelette. Don’t panic, magpie scaring patrol will now be part of the daily rounds and fingers crossed we’ll have news of owlet hatchings to report very soon.

Swapping Sindy for Spring

This year I am experiencing my first spring. There have been other springs in my life, obviously. I am knocking 40 afterall. The operative word is “experiencing”. As a child I was too busy planning Sindy’s weekly wedding to Action Man to notice the passing seasons. As a teenager my attention was diverted by the contents of “Smash Hits” and “Just Seventeen” magazines and the big questions in life, such as is Boy George really a boy or is he in fact a girl. In the student years spring was all about study and beer, beer and study, and too much time spent in a below ground radio station. There then followed a seamless transition to London, long hours, office walls and a computer screen, when spring was little more than a tree in a pavement surrounded by dog s**t passed en route to a tube or train station. Even the move out of London to a house with a garden didn’t bring spring any closer to me – it just meant more to do in the garden and less time to do it in – spring was a restorative glass (bottle?!) of wine in front of the TV and the occasional glimpse of Bill Oddie on a sofa with Kate Humble rambling on about birds and badgers. Last year, my first spring here in West Wales, wasn’t really any different as my world consisted solely of paint, polyfilla and soft furnishings. This year, however, everything is different. This year I have time. More of it and moving through it at a slower pace. This year I have the inclination. Perhaps it comes with the onset of middle age and watching too many episodes of River Cottage or perhaps it was always there, hidden away, biding its time until all those other distractions fell away. And this year I have the location. Slowly but surely our little patch of West Wales is emerging from building work and neglect and taking on a life of its own.

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Did we always have so many dog violets and primroses in the hedgerows along our lane? Was there always garlic mustard growing just about everywhere? Have gorse flowers always smelled of Hawaiian Tropic sun cream? And who knew that blackthorn has flowers before leaves but hawthorn has leaves before flowers? It’s a tricksy thing is nature.

Spring highlight so far is the blue tit nesting in nest cam box.

Spring lowlight so far is nest cam breaking down just as nest building gets interesting.

There were tears and tantrums but to no avail. Our resident blue tit had done her best to take out the camera by pecking at the cables in the box, risking mild electrocution in the process, but she needn’t have bothered as the simple fact is that the camera’s a dud. Return to sender! Just for once I thought I’d be watching my own footage instead of nest watching vicariously through Packham, Humble & Co. Damn and blast those pesky foreign made imports.

3……2……..1………Germination!

First let me apologise to any regular readers about the recent tardiness and lack of blog updates. I completely blame the evil that is ‘Chirper’, ‘Tweeter’ or whatever it is. Since Philippa immersed herself in the 142 character world, it seems the blogosphere has taken a back seat. I made an announcement today, over some rather yummy cheese on toast, that I would take on the baton of the Banceithin blog, and log the progress of our first full operational year.

Bertha the boiler has again been busy providing the warmth to start germinating our first seeds that are destined for the poly tunnel.

Chili’s and toms

The window sills are awash with new young plants. We have loads of tomatoes, Matina as our main crop, Favorita as our cherry variety, Sparta as our bush tomatoes and a couple of Italian plum (San Marzano, Costoluto Fiorentina) which Philippa is in charge of. I have assumed responsibility for herbs after criticising Philippa for the lack of parsley and coriander last year. You can imagine the conversation, with the words “…well you can b***** well do it this year!” ending the discussion abruptly.

Mmm, tasty parsley…..now that wasn’t that hard was it :-)

POND WATCH

I love my pond, it’s official. The plants I pulled out from the ditch and transplanted into the new pond have actually flowered and it seems that they are Water Crowsfoot and are oxygenators. In terms of bugs I’ve spotted two types of water boatmen, pond skaters, snails, tiny beetles, and my favourite, the whirligig beetle. This iridescent beetle whizzes around in circles on the surface. The tadpoles have all hatched and are swimming around happily, but they need to keep away from the water boatmen, who apparently are quite partial to a little wriggler.

Philippa and I are continuing with our volunteering work. I’ve started working at a different RSPB reserve, and very excitingly it is going to be the venue for this years Spring Watch, but as it’s not official yet I’ll have to keep the site secret. I have been asked to help during the time the team are there. I am hoping for the role of Miss Humble’s cushion plumper, but expect I’ll be asked to man the shop to handle the influx of Humble and Packham spotters.