Monthly Archives: April 2016

A mystery solved…

13 Replies

We’ve been using a lot of fat balls in the bird feeders over the last few weeks, but we’ve hardly see a bird on them. Even if we had it’s normally blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits, and they aren’t exactly big birds or voracious feeders.

Starlings will eat them but we haven’t had any around recently and the only other bird I’ve seen on their was a blackbird, which didn’t stay long and obviously didn’t feel comfortable.

Now, I haven’t been able to photograph the offenders because they are wary of humans sneaking up, but I can tell you that we have discovered the cause – jackdaws!

We have a lot of jackdaws about, and I do like them, but they are a nuisance when helping themselves to the food of the free range pigs and poultry. At the moment they are gathering to eat the debris from lambing – some of it spilt food and some of it considerably less wholesome.

As a child I used to watch them for hours, as they nested in a hollow tree in the garden, always hoping I might end up rescuing an abandoned juvenile and teach it to talk. It never happened.

However, if they are going to add acrobatic fat ball theft to their many scavenging activities I may have to start reviewing my attitude.

Second mystery of the day is the black spot in the pictures I took. I thought the first one I noticed was a blurred jackdaw as one flew past just as I pressed the button, but it appeared on others. Then I decided that it must be dirt on the lens, but after the application of sophisticated cleaning techniques (my handkerchief) it didn’t go. I then used spit and a handkerchief. Still no result.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

(That whirring sound you hear is generations of lens designers and proper photographers spinning in their graves.)  I know I’m supposed to use proper cleaning equipment, it’s just that I never seem to have it when I need it. But I do always have a handkerchief…

The internet provided the likely answer – dust on the sensor. All I need to do is dismantle the camera (you can find details of how to do that on the internet too), clean the sensor and put it all back together.

Plastic, electronics, small screws, me, big fingers, screwdriver…

What could possibly go wrong?

In the top picture you can’t see the spot because it is hidden by the hedge, but that isn’t a technique you can use all the time.

(Mostly written on Thursday, finished on Friday)

 

 

 

 

 

In a queue to cue Kew

8 Replies

I’m not entirely sure what sort of day I have had. It started with a bacon baguette from Greggs (tasted great but did the diet n favours) and moved on to the previously described birdsong. After that is plunged, also as detailed in the last post. After that, with a migraine (fortunately not mine), unplanned visitors, post-it notes (don’t you just hate it when someone puts a snide post-it on something and leaves you to find it?), rain, wind and a variety of small but time consuming triviality, I just don’t know what happened to the day.

All I know was that after the first post it was lunchtime and then the taxi arrived.

We have managed to plant the new wildflower bed, which is now the subject of a diary under the Projects tab.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

You might be able to get some idea of the wind from looking at the hair in the photos, after that it became even windier and we decided that it was time to see what happened when boiling water is poured on the dried leaves of camellia sinensis.

 

More parcels!

4 Replies

As I took things out of the car this morning Julia unlocked the centre and called across to me. I wasn’t able to hear her because of the noise from singing birds and bleating sheep. That’s not a bad start to the day.

What she was trying to tell me was that we have had another parcel delivery. We now have our Open Farm Sunday posters and volunteer badges, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand it’s good to have the resources, but on the other it’s a wake up call. We now have two months to go and I haven’t started getting ready yet. I’m doing the poultry display in the education tent, the Scarecrow Competition, helping with Breadfest and, as of yesterday, designing the traditional fete games for Men in Sheds to build. Thinking of it, I’m not actually sure why I’m writing this instead of getting on with my other jobs.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The new posters and badges

Of course, things never run smoothly and within minutes I was on toilet duty. The farm is concentrating on lambing and nothing else gets done, not even emptying the toilets. I will spare you more details. Let’s just say my day failed to live up to its early promise.

At least it didn’t get any worse.

On a more appetising note, yesterday’s group session went well – with 18 children plus carers having a great day out in the fresh air and making pizza. There’s an inevitability about making pizza when you come here. Actually, 17 of them had  a great day out, one spent most of the time asking when they could go home and why the day couldn’t have been organised at a theme park. There’s something about teenage girls that doesn’t work well with a day on the farm. We had some eggs left over, as you can see.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

 

Rain, robins and roosters

4 Replies

The Met Office misled me. I was expecting passing showers, but instead we had a prolonged hammering from hail.

Despite this we did manage to get some of the Kew seeds planted.

More lambs today, but no photos in case any of my you start to suffer from cuteness fatigue. I’ll post more on Wednesday. You will have to make do with a picture of a robin singing in the barn. No, I’ve never seen one singing inside either, but as the front is open it’s easy to get in and out.

The final batch of ewes were due to start lambing today, but let’s face it, when do sheep ever do what they are supposed to do? It doesn’t matter, because we’re still knee deep in lambs from the main group, and have plenty more still to come as some of them are showing no urgency about giving birth.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The poultry emerged after the rain, as did the sun, so it ended on a positive note.

PS: Yes, I do realise that the title is both inaccurate (rain) and Americanised (rooster) but Hail, robins and cockerels just didn’t sound so good. Oh, and I just realised there was only one robin…

I like parcels

9 Replies

It was busy on the lane today. First  we startled a charm of goldfinches, then we had to pull over for the farm telehandler and finally for a post office van as it left the farm.

We already had one parcel, which was delivered to the house on Friday, and there was another waiting for us in the centre. It’s just like Christmas, though I’m not sure that I’d have asked Santa for a pamphlet of sausage recipes or a large poster of pork joints.

It’s a very nice pamphlet, with some mouth-watering pictures and a foreword reminding us about British Sausage Week. I could remain lost in the pamphlet and website for ages – they even have a page on sausage etiquette. I don’t know about you, but my mind is going through a number of possibilities at this point…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The other parcel has our wild flower kits from Kew, including guides, markers, seeds and bee houses. It’s a good scheme and we are going to be using it as one of our main activities – from preparing the beds to reporting on the flowers and the insects they attract. I’m making a new page for projects with a sub-page for Growing Wild. As usual, because I haven’t made a new page for some months, I’ve been struggling to remember how to do it. Fortunately it came back to me.

The group has had a busy morning helping with lambing, collecting eggs, recapturing one of the Light Sussex (which had escaped notice on Friday when we rounded up the other escapees) and looking at the Nottingham Peregrines via the web link.

This afternoon we will be putting new bedding in the poultry so they are clean and fresh for our visitors tomorrow, and planting seeds.

 

Butterfly Diary

8 Replies

First butterfly this year: Small White on Sunday 20th March – Bulwell Forest Golf Club. I was in the car on my way to TESCO.

First butterfly on the farm: Peacock and Brimstone – both spotted by Julia on Friday 1st April during a farm walk.

I saw a Peacock this morning too.

I’m very bad at recording things but I do know Peacocks are the first butterflies we normally see and that I took a picture of one on a crocus last year, indicating that it was a month earlier than this sighting, though last year was warmer and I’d actually seen a Small Tortoiseshell in Peterborough the day before the Peacock on the farm.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Sorry about the poor photo of the Brimstone – we don’t see them often and I don’t always have my camera with me when we do see them.

Tell me what you eat

2 Replies

Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.

I’m at work today, seeing someone about a booking. I quite like working on Sundays as it’s peaceful and I can get a lot done. Apart from walking round showing our facilities, I’ve caught up with emails, sent photos to people, done some invoicing and seen what is happening out there in the wordpress universe. As usual I have found there is more information out there than I can comfortably absorb.

That reminded me I wanted to look up a quotation from Brillat-Savarin. The quotation was duly found.

“You first parents of the human race…who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?”

It seems simpler, and less funny, than when I heard it on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago, and with the mention of truffles (I swear they had been chestnuts on the radio) it’s a lot less useful for marketing the Christmas turkeys.

Fortunately I did find the quote I used in the first line of this post, so it wasn’t a wasted visit.

So, what does my eating tell you about me?

Well, I had sausage, beans and chips last night, so I’m not a gourmet. The night before that we had vegetable curry with flatbreads. That tells you I’m too lazy to cook rice, and (as the sausages establish me as a non-vegetarian) that I’m too tight to buy meat for every meal. And then we come to today’s lunch – Stilton cheese in croissants. That may mean that I appreciate good cheese and have a sophisticated taste in baked goods.

Or it may merely tell you that I still have a child at home who ate all the cheddar and bread and didn’t tell me I needed to buy more. I say “child” – he was 23 this week but while he’s raiding the fridge he’ll always be a child to me.

I should be grateful to him, because it was a rather fine combination, even though it was born from lack of choice. It is one I’m eager to repeat and a search is now on for an appropriate relish to go with it. TESCO Finest Chilli Relish is my current favourite and seems to work well with everything I’ve tried it with. I may look for something slightly more traditional, maybe something with pears or figs.

The customary food blog photograph of Stilton and croissants is, you may notice, missing. As usual with my attempts at food blogging my appetite suppressed my photographic urges and the resulting plate of croissant crumbs didn’t really do the subject justice.

Greedy, lazy, tight. If Brillat-Savarin is right I really need to alter my diet.

Anyone for truffle sandwiches on sourdough?

 

End of week report

14 Replies

It’s been a mixed week, featuring activity and idleness in equal parts. Julia and the group provided the activity whilst I did my bit by providing a large helping of idleness. I’m tempted to refer to it as sloth, having been doing some reading about the seven deadly sins, but that just makes me smile at the thought of a sloth.

(As she reads this Julia will be rolling her eyes and repeating the favourite saying of wives all over the world. Yes, it’s true. Men never really grow up.)

Julia and the group have set seeds, planted bedding, moved sheep, assisted in lambing and done various other things. As I write this she is feeding poultry after a day of wrestling with EU forms and speaking to people about their forthcoming visits to the farm.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

We also called at a Care Home yesterday and did a session on herbs. It generally went well, because the smell of herbs seems to perk people up, and we are now organising a day out on the farm for the residents. It will be interesting, as a number of them are from farming backgrounds and I’m sure we’ll get some stories out of them.

Me? I’ve typed a bit (though not enough to keep up with the blog routine) and written a grant application. After that I was left with the feeling that I’d been battered round the head with a book of management doublespeak and it has taken two days for my brain to return to normal.

Other than that I have wasted time, procrastinated and searched Wikipedia for a variety of subjects, including pre-war football and the Spanish Civil War. The first was sparked by the purchase of a biography of Herbert Chapman from a discount bookshop and I’m not sure why I started with the second. I think it was because I looked up the origins of detective fiction, which led to books set in Southwold (though I don’t recall how) and thence to George Orwell.

That’s the magic of the internet.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Note: We have just found out how the chickens escaped – the Community Payback team were asked if they could help move the chickens and misinterpreted this as “let them out”. Easy mistake to make if you live in a town and have never kept chickens I suppose.

 

Trials and Tribulations

6 Replies

Sorry for the lack of communication this week, it’s been one of those weeks. Whether I can accurately describe it as hectic, or whether I should just put it down to lack of application is one of those grey areas. There has certainly been plenty happening, but I have also spent a lot of my spare time in displacement activities.

I was going to rectify this as soon as we arrived on the farm this morning but the flock of chickens that came to look at us as we unlocked the centre indicated that all was not well.

They are supposed to be on the field by the vegetable plot. I sometimes wonder if we are a little tactless in putting them so close to the carrots and potatoes that will accompany them to whatever afterlife a chicken may have, but what they don’t know won’t worry them. The same goes for feeding apple pulp to the pigs after we have been juicing.

We’re not sure what had happened but it looks like someone has opened the doors and just let them out. One of them has a badly fitting bolt that needs leaning on to make it shut, and if it needs me to lean on it then you can be sure that no flapping chicken or gust of wind has accidentally opened it. Even if that had happened, what is the chance of the second coop opening too?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It’s either kids, the provisional wing of the Chicken Liberation Front or an egg collector with no common sense.

I hope they don’t do it again as we’re still in mourning over Nelson the white(ish) cockerel.  About a week ago I mentioned how the farmyard flock seemed to lead a charmed life regarding predators. Two days later we arrived to find a cloud of pale feathers and a distinct lack of cockerel. Looks like a fox caught him out. The main picture shows him from his good side – he was blind in the other eye, hence the name, and possibly why he didn’t see the fox in time.

Anyway, after some gentle persuasion most of them pottered back into the coops and the rest were safely locked away after some scrambling that looked like the training scene from Rocky.