Decisions, decisions

Shade is always welcome

So aiming for a minimum of one entry per month, I had better write something on here.  The lambs are growing and are now off the bottle. They have a fair space of grass to graze on which includes some trees for shade and, although we have had a few escape attempts, they seem pretty content. They are Easy care by name and seem so by nature.

The chickens are growing with two more batches hatched out. In addition to our one Light Sussex cross female with two Light Sussex males (urgh), we have hatched out another Light Sussex cross female who looks very much like the Legbar that was the cross, a maran which is possibly a female and a donated Old English Game bantam which is looking like a male. His future is very much open to debate as he is only bantam we have and might need a step stall to mate with the females in the rest of the flock. He was donated to us as a solo successful hatching that was lonely and in need of company. Then we moved onto Araucanas. We purchased six hatching eggs from a stand at the Suffolk Show but were still a little disappointed that only two successfully hatched. That gave me an idea to hatch a second batch of Araucanas from eBay, then whatever we get from the first and second batch wouldn’t be related and we could breed from them.

Treacle the maran chick, possibly female with
Toffee the legbar chick under the heater

The whole debate about what to do with the male chickens rattles on as our two Light Sussex males get close to maturity. We had a cockerel and the novelty soon wore off as he became increasingly aggressive towards us until he was finally dispatched and processed for the freezer. Should the next two meet with the same fate? Do we need a cockerel in the hen house? The girls will lay eggs regardless, but the two eggs that we hatched both were successful and were females so having a cockerel on site gives you a good chance of hatching out healthy chicks. Decisions, decisions.

 

One of the raised beds in the poly tunnel

In the poly tunnel we had added several more beds with the additional problem of what to fill them with. The first one was filled with garden soil, which is fine but we are limited to how much spare soil we have. The next two were filled with 2 tonnes of expensive compost purchased over the internet. Then a casual conversation with a friend resulted in several tonnes of well-aged manure being deposited on the drive for a fraction of the cost of the expensive internet stuff. It needed some sifting to remove various foreign bodies – glass, brick, plastic, an arrow, a pair of broken sunglasses, a child’s toy, wood and metal. It then had to wheel-barrowed around the house to the poly tunnel to fill up another three raised beds. As fast as that was happening, I was planting out all the seedlings that had germinated and been potted on and on in anticipation of some growing space.

Produce from the poly tunnel

The watering system has been a god send and the hosepipe which has been annexed to it easily caters for any plants which have been placed outside.  Life is good with daily harvests from the tunnel. We have had so far: strawberries, potatoes, lettuce, chard, beetroot, onions, spring onions, radishes, courgettes, rocket and herbs. Thoughts turn to what to grow afterwards and some pre-planning is required to get sowing so that they plants are ready to fill up spaces as they occur. According to the many books we have on the subject of growing in a poly tunnel, we should be able grow something it all year round if we plan ahead. We might not use all the beds during the winter allowing for the rest to be reinvigorated ready for next year whilst just growing things in the central beds.

We are still learning lessons about spacings and pests but with the weather warm and a slight breeze, if we get too hot, sitting in the tunnel with the overhead sprayers on is very pleasant indeed.