Chickens tonight

Hi all, we're on chickens tonight - Exchequer Leghorns to be precise, a breed profile.

These are one of the breeds that we bought from the auction last September time.  I was attracted to their stunning plumage, their upright and proud strut and general all-round handsomeness!

Just to remind you here's what mine look like -

Tom, with Barbara and Margo

Now Tom is a lively cockerel, loud with a look at me attitude, which is typical of the breed.  He is my wake-up call at 5am, regular as clockwork, regardless of whether it's light or not!

The breed is reported to be a productive egg layer (although I haven't seen any signs of it yet, but the hens were quite young when they came to us last year), usually about five eggs laid per week, but not a meat breed, being quite light in body frame.

The cockerel has a large comb, as you can see from the photo above, and the females should flop over, this is normal.  They are active birds, happy to roam about the paddock next to the house, and because of their light bodyweight can run at a fair speed!

Unfortunately having read up on them, they are not a maternal bird, so I shall have to invest in an incubator if breeding is going to be successful.  They can also be quite aloof, as I've found out, often running away even when the red hens come running towards me.  I do believe they have got friendlier over the months though. 

I often catch myself watching them more than the other breeds, their feather patterns are mesmerising and they are such a proud show off, of a breed.

Apparently they are not a breed for the faint hearted, but I enjoy having this trio of show-offs around, they make the place feel special!

Look at that stunning plumage, the black shines irridesant green when the sun shines on it.

If anyone knows of any Exchequer Leghorn breeders out there - I'd appreciate them letting me know, as I haven't stumbled across anyone else who has them yet.  They might not suit everyone, but I love them.

A new venture for 2014

Now I've been mentioning that we are going into new ventures this year, and I can now reveal what one of them is!  Cut Flowers.

You already know that we have planted daffodil bulbs which will be part of the new enterprise, but I have decided to go into doing flowers for the cut flower trade.  I have spent numerous hours researching which cut flowers to grow, spent hours in the library and then trawled through various seed catalogues, (never a wasted moment spent there I find!), to see what's available and I still haven't got an indefinite list - there's so much choice!

I don't know if you've watched the Great British Garden Revival TV programme, an excellent series on all aspects of gardening, that are sorrowfully in decline, but they covered the decline in the UK cut flower trade in some depth.  Apparently people are wanting British home grown cut flowers now as well as home grown veg and meat.  This wasn't where the idea came from, but it did convince me that it was a good idea.

Part of this new venture is also to install some herbaceous beds in the garden, currently the garden looks like this -

This is the view from the patio, this morning, the back door is behind me.

So you can see I have rather a blank canvas.  The fence down the side of the veg patch is in the process of being replaced with some more closeboarding like is already in place.  I'd like to put in several large borders, especially down the long side along the fence line (see bottom picture).  This will enable me to have perennials from which to collect more cutting material as well as from annuals in the veg patch.

If you have any ideas on design etc, they would be gratefully received, as I'm no garden designer!

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 7
Sales -  1/2 doz eggs £0.90
Expenses - Nil

Hate saying goodbye

It came round to that time yesterday when we said goodbye to two good friends - the pigs went off to the abattoir.  I don't know about you but I hate it when you have to do it.

We discussed keeping the two girls for breeding, as they were such wonderful natured pigs, but we didn't think that a pig breeding operation would be viable as there are so many other people doing it and pig feed being so expensive, so off they went.

Loading was easy.  We backed the trailer up to their compound and I scattered pig nuts down the ramp. Having not fed them that morning, they were hungry, so just scoffed nuts all the way up the ramp until they were in!

And Yes, these are the same pigs we bought in July - see the post from last July when we first brought them home!

Ear tags next -

Ear tagger machine with tag loaded

Both tagged - lets hope they stay in until they get to the abattoir!

And then they were off -

Michael exchanged the tractor for a 4x4 once out of the muddy field and that was it.  The butcher told me he would be sorting them out on Monday, so probably by the end of next week/beginning of the following week I shall be collecting a whole heap of lovely home-grown, tasty pork - can't wait!

Still harvesting potatoes

And No I don't mean the ones from the bags in the shed!

I went into the polytunnel over the weekend to have a check on how my micro-greens were doing and found potatoes growing.  We always grow our first earlies in the polytunnel, just so we can beat everyone else to it and start harvesting delicious new potatoes early.  That time of year when you're desperate for summer food, and new potatoes covered in lashings of herb butter - delish!

The potatoes I found were just ones that had been left over from the 2013 harvest but not wanting to let them go to waste I stuck in my fork and this is what I came out with.

The evidence!

The haul!

And extremely delicious they were too.

Stats today - 

Eggs produced = 7

Sales - 1 dozen eggs - £2.00

Expenses - Nil

Movement Ramblings!

Had to laugh earlier, as whilst reading the latest edition of Country Smallholding magazine, February edition, I came across an article about new movement regulations for sheep and goats.

From April 2014 sheep and goat owners will be able to record movements electronically.  The article also says that the new system will provide on online flock/herd register for owners to use, all voluntarily. All on and off movements will be recorded against an owner's register.  Paper copies of movements will also be able to be printed as these will need to go with the livestock

Don't fret, for all those pen and paper fanatics, you will still be able to use the carbonated forms as is currently the case.  This is only the case for England and all current registered keepers will be informed in due course.

This is great news, for me anyway being a bit of a computer geek (according to my husband!), not having to worry if I've got the right form, always the case here as we don't buy and sell that many livestock that often.  So good news if this simplifies the system for all involved.

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 4

Sales - Nil
Expenses - Nil

TB Testing time

Now if you have cattle, and I know not many of you do, then you have to go through the action of TB testing.  It's all organised through DEFRA, as you have to notify them when you start keeping cattle.  Your local vet is put in charge of the testing with no charge to yourselves.

Interval's of testing depend on where you are in the country, more prevalent areas are done every six months; we are lucky here in that our testing interval is every 48 months.

The test itself is relatively simple.  Two areas on the cow's neck are shaved of hair, which are then injected; one area with a small amount of bovine TB and the other with a small area of avian TB.  This was done on Monday.  72 hours pass before the vet re-visits to check the tests.  If either of the areas have raised lumps then the animal is considered a reactor to TB and has to be transported to a specific DEFRA site to be euthanaised for which the owner is compensated at near market value.

East Anglia is not that prevalent in TB thankfully and so it was with great relief that on the vet re-visit today, no reaction was found.  Phew!

Red - our Dexter cow, showing the two shaved patches on the side of her neck

Stats today - 

Eggs produced = 4

Sales - 1 & 1/2 dozen eggs £2.70

Expenses - £38.49 Seed potatoes, seeds, garden sundry items

Stats

Just realised I haven't given you the sales stats for a few months, so here you go -

October 2013

12 doz eggs	21.6
12 & 1/2 Kg Tomatoes	12.5
2 x cucumber	1
2 bags Bramley apples	2
2 bags Plums	2
4 bags Onions	4
3 Pumpkins	4.5
2 Cabbages	1.4
	49

November 2013

6 doz eggs		10.9
1 bag sticks		1.5
7 bags potatoes		7
		19.4

December 2013

13.5 doz eggs		24.8
4 bags potatoes		4
1 bag sticks		1.5
		30.3

Remainder of Greenhouse and other expenses = £227.25

Oct, Nov & Dec Sales = £98.70

Still left to pay off = £128.55, phew it's getting there!  But we've soon got the seed order to buy!  Oh well here's to an excellent 2014 season.

Movement books

Now I don't know about you, but I find that the movement book and the vet & med book is one of those jobs that gets left behind somewhat, and then when you need the thing for whatever reason, it's practically years out of date.

So having a very important vet visit today (more on that in another post), I thought I had better check that the things were up to date.  It used to be that if you had a visit from the vet, especially the vets from the Ministry (MAFF, in the old days), they went through all this type of paperwork religiously, and having had it drilled into me at college about it's importance (my old college mates will back me up on this!) I set about the task.

Thankfully it wasn't far out of date, so the task wasn't so onerous.  But it did get me thinking, is this just a job that is completely outdated and a waste of time?  I understand the need for keeping medical records, for meat withdrawal purposes etc, but if you're like us here and don't use that many medicines unless absolutely necessary - welfare grounds etc, then you don't run the risk of tainting the meat before eating it.  But the movement book seems rather a waste of time these days.  Pigs are all done online now; cattle can be, but still need paperwork to follow them wherever they go; sheep are still followed by bits of paper, but even now they have electronic tags in their ears, although I wish someone would devise one that actually stayed in! The system is not foolproof by any means, cattle movements, like visiting the bull, means that the passport has to go with them, but then you have nothing at all to identify that the animal belongs to you, it's all done on trust.  I do believe the whole system needs a complete overhaul, surely it can't be that difficult to identify each animal and follow its passage through life, can it?  Should we go back to tattooing?  At least that was permanent, ear tags never are!  Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Stats today

Eggs produced = 2 (!)

Sales - Nil
Expenses - Nil

Daffodils & Poo!

Evening all!  Thought I'd give you an update on one of our new ventures.

Remember me telling you we had decided to grow some Daffodils?  Well Michael had been reading up on the subject and said we needed to feed them, make them grow healthy and strong, with lots of flowers!  So we need poo and lots of it.  Enter bags of Kayal poo (my horse).  Collected from the stables in the trailer on the back of the tractor and we set about emptying the bags.

Obviously we had help, in the end we got so that we stopped scattering it about and let the 'unpaid' help do that for us, well, it's what they do best!

Keep going Michael, nearly there!

Thanks girls, you're doing a fine job!

Well that's about half way down the lines of bulbs, and would you believe it, we ran out of poo!  A whole trailer load of the stuff and we were short by about half a dozen bags!  Oh well, still plenty more to go at down at the stables - guess what we're doing next weekend too!

There's plenty more where they came from, and recyclable too, will refill over the next few months!

Stats today - 

Eggs produced = 4

Sales - Nil

Expenses - Nil

Microgreens

Well, Happy New Year to you all, and as you can see I'm back in blog land again.  It's good to be back with you all.

Plans are afoot for this year, extra enterprises are to be ventured into with the view of making a bit more out of what we have, fingers crossed - all will be come clear in due course.

Having read the November edition of 'Grow It', magazine, (a fab magazine for all things growable!), and absorbed the article on microgreens, I decided to do a trial.  So out came the seed box and I sorted through to see what I'd got that would be microgreen-able.

Now I'm never one to follow rules too rigidly and with an empty polytunnel I decided to plant a row of each of my seeds and see what happens.  Hopefully something will grow that is harvestable, if nothing grows, well I haven't lost much apart from my time; these were all seed packets we had anyway.

So I sowed the following, one row of each -
Parsley - French plain leaf
Basil - Sweet Genovese
Chives
Broccoli - Romanesco
Cabbage - Xmas Drumhead
Kale - Dwarf green curled
Savoy Cabbage - Winter King
Radish - French breakfast
Beetroot - Boltardy
Peas
Landcress
Lettuce - Arctic King
Rocket
Tatsoi
(the last four packets were free with a previous edition of Grow It magazine)

So I'm hoping this will make a fabulous mix of greens and I'll keep you posted on their progress.  If all they do is get to the seedling stage and survive the winter giving me some delicious spring greens to eat I shall be delighted, but am hoping for the microgreen stage instead.

Stats today -

Eggs produced = 4

Sales -
Nil

Expenses -
Nil