Reflecting

No not a volcano and mountains, but
a rather large black cloud moving in

A comment by Karen last week on this blog made me think. She said our preparation is like a military exercise, which in some ways it is and in some ways it isn't. We know there is a specific sequence of events that has to happen before we can do a job and that gets refined each year - well sometimes it does, sometimes we forget what we did and have to relearn every year. As far as the alpaca clean out is concerned we work on the principle that we need a clean house at this time of year for several reasons, firstly it is close to the time of the birth of the cria and we need a clean place for them to be born in; secondly we shear the alpacas in their respective sheds, as it is a familiar environment, and there is nothing worse than kneeling down somewhere that is not too clean; thirdly to keep the pest numbers down - over winter heat is generated by the rotting manure, which is supposed to be good for the animals and once it freezes there is no shifting it anyway and neither does it create a problem of smell, this time of the year it is different though; fourthly if the bedding layer got much higher we wouldn't be able to get in there comfortably. So as soon as we get a dry enough day to use the tractor and trailer we move into cleaning mode and get in there and get the job done.

If you look carefully, there is smoke coming from the
greenhouse in the foreground. It was 6C this evening

Seed and potato planting is another of those jobs and is also very weather dependent. We know there are usually dry spells in the spring followed by wet and showery weather, so we have to move fast to get the seeds in while we can and in so doing also taking advantage of the wet weather to water in our seeds. We also know from experience that there can be quite a prolonged dry spell in May or June and so getting the seeds in and growing well before then is quite crucial. A lot of the time it actually feels more instinctive than planned, but when we see our neighbours doing the same thing then we know we have really just attuned ourselves to the natural cycle of things around here. It took a little time to get used to, as the season is longer in the UK where we learnt the craft of growing vegetables. Having to wait until late April, May or even early June seems far too long, but the longer days and warmer summers usually make up for the shorter season.

Yey! Cherry blossom

There was a bit of excitement this week, I heard a commotion one day as I sat in the greenhouse sifting compost. It was severe enough to make me run outside to find out what was causing it. What I saw was our rather elderly and portly big white chicken, we aptly call Big Bird, flying across the pond - no mean feat for a bird of her size and age, especially when she spends most of her time very slowly sauntering along with a distinct limp these days. A fox was also heading in her direction. With nothing I could immediately find to throw at the fox I just ran and hoped it would see me and scarper - which fortunately it did.

A rather ragged looking tail now. He looks a bit bedraggled
here as it has been a miserably wet day

The poor scared chickens were all gathered around one cockerel regardless of which batch it was from, meanwhile the other cockerel was trying to be brave and warn everyone. I couldn't get hold of Ian as he was strimming and couldn't hear his phone and so I spent the next half hour trying to coax the chickens from the chicken house back into their place to shut them in safe and sound. Unfortunately one of the chickens was really freaked out and I didn't dare pick her up as I knew the cockerel would not be happy.  The other batch of chickens went into their ark no problem, but I had to go and get Ian to coax the cockerel in as he wasn't going anywhere near me and my attempt to catch him with the net, whilst successful was not fruitful in the end as he escaped from it, before I could get hold of him. Ian found a few of his tail feathers a couple of days later and so we think the fox must have nearly got him – no wonder he was a bit freaked out.

Asparagus is starting to come through, but only one plant
is showing signs, which is a bit worrying

On our way home we saw that fox again, a fallow deer and a stork in a field and it made us think - how many other places would you see those within a short space of time on our way home from “work”? The variety of small birds is not huge around us, probably due to the harsh winters but we definitely do have swallows, siskins, wagtails, blackbird, chaffinches, bullfinches and I think some type of warbler. What we do see on a regular basis, which is a bit more unusal are ospreys, eagles, storks and cranes. Today we saw some white egrets on our way home from town after a visit to the dentist.

I tried taking a picture of the baby chicks but they weren't
cooperating. You can see the two black ones can't you?
From left to right, grey, black, mottled white, black, white.
No? I can't see them very well either. Maybe another day

Whilst on the subject of dentists, as you may have gathered we have finally found a dentist that speaks English and works within a reasonable distance. She isn’t the cheapest dentist around (either that or the prices have gone up recently), but at least I can call her myself and make an appointment. The other good news is that it only took one injection and it didn’t hurt whilst she administered it from some weird gadget that counted down to us in English. She laughed and said it was an English-speaking machine and could translate for us. I wish! The bad news is that one tooth will have to be extracted at a later date, one tooth had a hole that was so deep she had to do root canal treatment and I still have one tooth that needs a filling. So that means two more trips to see her and she booked us in for the hygienist the next time.

Mr. Tellus has been enjoying his yearly
outing to see the ladies. Well one in
particular. We are fairly certain the
younger alpaca we tried to mate last
year is not pregnant and so trying
again this year. We will only mate her,
the older ladies can have a rest from
producing. Tellus and Estelle though
only seemed interested for two days, so
 will try again in a few days time.

Ian had a late evening phone call this week with a request to transport a horse for a friend. It is the first time that our horsebox, has actually been used to transport a horse. It has been used to transport a cow, sheep and alpacas in terms of animals; it has also been used to transport furniture, hay, the two wheel tractor, rotavator and wood, so it is quite a novelty to use it for what it has been intended to for. Ian was quite pleased that the horse even left us with a present of some manure, but it did stink the greenhouse out when he put it on one of the beds. It has now been dug in and so doesn’t smell so much.

One we didn't part with

We said goodbye to twenty of our chicks this week, nine of the little ones and eleven of the bigger ones. We kept all the pretty looking ones – so much for selecting for meat birds or good laying birds. We thought it would be interesting though to see how they turn out, as some of them are so black I wasn’t able to take a photo of them in the dim light of home. Oddly enough there weren’t any brown ones, even though we do have about three good brown layers. Another twenty are on to incubate for another request for new stock.

Various salad type leaves in the greenhouse

Bill a regular commenter on here recently listed all the seeds he has sown on his farm on his blog, so I thought I would have a go at my list. I haven't put all the varieties, because some are seed we have kept or been given and I cannot be 100% certain of the variety. Ian is much better at keeping records than I am but he doesn't do much in the way of seed planting - unless it is en masse.

Vegetables
Carrots, Leeks,, Parsnip Kale, Short beans x 4 (red, stripey, spotted, black), Climbing beans x3, Turnip, Broad beans, Swede - 3 (rutabaga for my American friends), Beetroot, Cabbage x3,  Chinese cabbage,  Scorzonera, Carrots x2 (more later), Kohlrabi, Chicory x2, Celtuce, Onions -at least 3 varieties, Rainbow chard, Garlic, Welsh onion, Calabrese, Chenopodium giganteum



For the Greenhouse
Spinach, Peppers x3, Chick peas, Spring onion, Sweetcorn, Cape gooseberry, Rocket, Lettuce (outside too), Radish (outside too), Tokoyo Bekana, Peas, Tomatoes x 20, Mizuna, Sesame


Herbs and Flowers
Sage, Coriander (cilantro), Basil, Marigolds, Dill, Basil x6, Fenugreek, Cress, Mustard, Winter purslane, Spicy shrub, Parsley x2, Bergamot, Peppermint, Lavender, Marshmallow, Nigella

Field types

Wheat - April awned (small bed of these), Oats - hulless (again  a small bed of these), Buckwheat, Clover, Beans (brown and beige), Sunflowers

Estelle, Tellus' lady friend. She badly needs her teeth
cutting, but hopefully the remedy the
tooth-a-matic (what a name!) is on its way.

The twenty varieties of tomatoes does not necessarily mean many of each, honest, it is just people give us the odd one and we add them to the varieties grown. Some are even named by the people who gave us them because we lost the names along the way. I think we will start to drop some of the varieties this next year though. The clover will be in for a few years to improve the soil in a particularly sandy area, so it will be cut to mulch it into the ground. At home I have also started on the squashes and cucumbers – there is no point in starting them too early because of the risk of frosts if they are planted out too early.

Snowdrop has been showing signs of discomfort just lately
and so we hope those are signs of an imminent arrival

On a positive note Ian's mother's house has now had an offer put on it that has been accepted. Not sure how long the process will take now though before it is finally sold. I know it always seems to take an inordinately long time in the UK.

Chickens can't swim

Our sheep have been given new quarters, over the hill and
far away. Well not quite, but far enough away to not hear
them so often now. Ian went to see them yesterday and they
had their heads hung low, like naughty children, he was
sure they would be saying "we're sorry can we come back
now?" They can't come back, they have a job to do of
eating grass and weeds. That side of the hill needs a
chomping down and so our biomowers are at work.

Our chickens have been causing Ian some consternation just recently and their wanderings are getting further. Ian was none too chuffed, as we say, when he found them scratching around in the patches that he had seeded with grass. That stuff ain't cheap! As soon as they start their wandering ways they get locked up in their shed now. Don't worry, there is plenty of room and more than many barn raised chickens get that you will find laying eggs for the supermarkets. We would still like to let them out though, as they are good for keeping the insect population down, especially ticks and our cats are getting plagued by them at the moment. Obviously our cats are not wandering in areas where the chickens have been. We have been trying to think of as many possible solutions as possible to give them more freedom, but the type of freedom we can cope with and the type of freedom where we are not going to lose our crops or the alpacas their grass. The Jury is still out on that one.

Good job we put some trees within their field enclosure.
We're too soft on them 

A rather splendid blue beetle. Not sure of its proper name

There are supposed to be three cockerels at the moment in the chicken house, but of course one has the upper hand and won't let the other two in, so they wander around at night. The little brown cockerel was for the pot, we just wanted him a little bigger though, only now we are not sure if he has been well and truly chased off by the larger cockerel that is second in line to the throne of top cockerel. Oh the shenanigans of the chicken community. The brown cockerel went missing for a day but turned up again yesterday afternoon, we had wondered if he had become fox food or osprey food. He was quite close to the road and so I went to herd him back in the direction of the chicken house, well he went high tailing further along the road side of our land, until I climbed down the steep bank onto the road and shooed him away from that side. Finally he went in the right direction, squawking his little head off in indignation. He then went towards the pond and I watched with hilarity and disbelief as he tried to walk on the grass that is growing in the pond after last year's dry spell. It is the closest I've seen to a chicken trying to impersonate a duck taking off from water. I gather he didn't know that chickens can't swim! Now he thinks he's a sheep, as that is where he seems to have taken up residence, well the last time we saw him he had.

I do know what this is though! A dragonfly nymph. These
wonderful creatures eat mosquito larvae and so are a very
welcome sight in our ponds. This one was caught in the
bucket but we made sure it went back

And so the cutting season begins. Ian was cutting down
the dandelions before they go to seed. 

For those who have followed this blog for years forgive me for repeating myself on the planting front. farm life/gardening life is kind of the same every year and kind of not. Key crops are markers for the year such as potatoes. They are all in now and I think we beat the neighbours to it - one of the advantages to not having fixed jobs. I woke up on Friday morning and said to Ian, since it is supposed to rain later on today and for the next few days shall we get the potatoes in in the morning? Fortunately we did and before the rain to water them in. Our drought has well and truly finished now, as it has rained most days since last week and the ground is getting sticky. We managed to get those potatoes in after a day (well afternoon really) where the ground had had a chance to dry a bit and judging by the forecasts it would have been nearly another week later before we got another chance. The spring barley we had sown is starting to sprout as well as onions already planted. The last of the onion bulbs have gone in now too, another marker crop. We have also started on planting the tomatoes into the greenhouse and so it is looking less like a store house cum chicken refuge and more like a greenhouse again, especially as that meant the little chicks had to move outside now.

We have a lot of dandelions and so a lot of cutting. This is
the first of three particularly bad weed infestations. The
next is cow parsley, then ground elder. Once they have
finished flowering, Ian will let the grass grow longer

Err where are we? And why are we so high up?

Scramble!

Well you will put your head there! (No chicks were hurt in
the production of this blog)

Cherry blossom, nicely off set against the manure heap.
Well it is a farm!

I have decided to offer to teach Sociology online with an organisation called Northstar Worldwide this next academic year. Feels really weird as a previous science student, as I must admit to looking down on the "soft" sciences. But as one of my lecturers noted recently, sometimes scientists end up researching such a narrow field that their studies have little impact on the rest of society and the whole point of the so called "soft" sciences is to have an impact on society in someway. He also noted that sometimes it is much more difficult to ensure getting good results, much easier than my test-tube chemistry and that was difficult enough at times. I have actually been working for this organisation for ten years now, firstly as the net nanny and now as senior online community facilitator, which is the posh title for being the person responsible for the student cafe monitoring by ensuring the young lass who took my place has somewhere to go if problems arise and also just to check in every now and again. I have other roles of course but that is the main one at the moment. Oh yes! And just in case you are wondering if I am qualified to teach Sociology after all that, is yes I am, as my more recent qualifications and research these days is Sociology based in one way or another.

Asparagus is coming through. I reckon by next week asparagus
will be on the menu

Plum blossom. The first time this tree has flowered in the
number of years we have had it.

We finalised some paperwork for our barn and greenhouse-this last week, or at least I think we have! We often just feel like we have finished something and then we get told there is another step. We just seem to keep shunting paperwork around in the process - keeps someone busy I suppose. We also started shunting paperwork around to get planning permission for the house to be built out on the land. We decided though to go for the maximum period possible and opted for planning permission to be over 8 years. We found out in the process though that our architect is now working at the council offices, instead of the older lady I fell out with a couple of years ago. At least she is capable of drawing up plans herself, which you would think all architects should be able to do.

My office for today

For my friend Roger. The autumn
raspberries he gave us

I was reading my friend Mavis' blog "Give us a clue" and it reminded me of a conversation that Ian related to me. A while ago he met someone at the car inspection centre who then came out to see our alpacas. He was also interested in sheep and so Ian arranged to take him to the nearby Christian camp who also raise sheep. It turns out he knew one of the guys there and they got chatting. Somewhere in the ensuing conversation it was related to Ian that word in our village is that Ian is a pastor. Who his congregation to pastor would be is a bit of a mystery, well in the normal traditional way of thinking. In the course of our lives though, we do chat with folks about life and faith, although not so much these days. Life on the farm means not much time to chat and much work to do, but it is a season and quieter times will come again. Times to reflect on life and faith once more. So who are we? Who do others say we are? Sometimes that is a fascinating question to ask and sometimes that is scary.

Quiz time. What do you think this is?