Spanner in the works

That time of year again when blog posts become scarce. All the usually gardening and poultry tasks to be attended to, plus the allotment and bees to see to. Been thrown some curved balls by the weather too to deal with. There’s quite a bit of other “stuff” going on too round here at the moment just to keep us on our toes.

Last week when I checked the bees I took my guru along (after sales service he called it). Hive full of bees all looking very happy and healthy, brood, egs, feed, pollen, queen etc. No signs of swarming.

Today when I checked – hive full of bees, starting to bring in some honey, pollen, capped brood, erm, no queen (not unusual – she goes for flights and sometimes just has too many attendants to spot her), but wait, no eggs either. Bugger.

A quick call to the guru confirmed what I suspected – leave the hive alone for 2 weeks and they’ll rear a new queen. Bit of a pain as it’ll set the hive back about a month and I was hoping to make a second colony with a controlled swarm, but they’ve already started raising there new monarch and with no eggs in the hive she’s unlikely to swarm, so fingers crossed.

All part of the learning curve.

I told you so

…but I still don’t believe it!!!

It’s a bit cooler today (and very windy) but still nice and sunny, so I decided to sort the compost out. Having worked up a nice “glow” decanting 1 cubic metre of ready to use compost into bags (for dryer storage and easier transportation), I made a start turning the half-done cubic metre into the newly vacated bay.

About a foot down, out the corner of my eye, I saw the dog looking quizically through the fence at the chooks (collies have a perculiar way of looking that means you can actually see the cogs turning). It took a while to register in my own head, but sure enough there were 3 chooks also looking quizical (a permanent state for a chook), but not at the dog. Being quite good at maths puzzles at school, I joined the dotted lines – followed the line of sight of the dog, and that of the chooks, to see where they’d cross.

X marked the spot right enough – chook number 4. Where? In the bloody veg beds of course!!!

I still can’t work out how she got there (tunnel I suspect – the request for an exercise horse should have been a clue!), but she obviously knew she wasn’t suppose to be there, as when I opened the (6 foot high) gate, she shot out. All 4 chooks then retired for a dust bath under the tree – no doubt to compare notes.

Whoever thinks chickens have very small brains are so wrong!

Finished at last

[Well, nearly there, but "Nearly finished at last" didn't sound as good]

Having started work on the re-arranging of the veg beds late last year, I’m please to report significant progress.

I started with 3 beds – 4ft x 12ft and then work commenced:

Work started, with the bed on the right already dug out

By day 3, I’d already reached this stage:

All beds dug into one large one, with post in place and fencing started.

Then rain stopped play… along with snow, heavy frost, more snow, more rain, more frost, a holiday, oh yes, and that other little thing called work.

But, with recent good weather and a renewed spirit from the holiday, we now have this:

And from another angle:

There’s a bit too much exposed soil there for my liking, but hopefully that will be rectified this weekend by the addition of some mulch and manure and some plants – I have broad beans up and ready to go in.

The chooks didn’t seem over impressed, but were happy to watch and snack on the freshly dug weeds – though I’m sure I caught them furtling away at a plan to break IN to the new Fort Knox

A bit of rearranging

4 years ago when we moved here I created some veg beds in the garden. Since then, life has changed a lot (something I’ve only really realised very recently) and they’re no longer fit for purpose.

For example, we got a dog, so the whole area was fenced to keep it dog free. Then I took an allotment style agreement with a local landowner so I could grow more veg than I had space for at home. Then I decided that was taking all my time and I was neglecting the garden, so I decided to bring it all back “in-house”. But now we have chickens – who free-range in the veg growing area -  this year’s crops had to be truss up like Fort Knox. In other words crops were planted then heavily protected from the beaked foragers which meant they were impossible to properly weed without a major Bear Grylls-style expedition. That said, the chooks did appear to have great fun sitting on top of Fort Knox, crowing loudly and playing the chicken version of I’m the King of the Castle!

So, I’ve had a bit of a rethink, and now the 3 beds are becoming one. The “veg bed” will have internal paths, so i can still practice a part no-dig, part layer mulch and part “regular” gardening arrangement (as that appears to be working well for me) and the whole area will be fenced to prevent raiding parties – I have large fowl who shy away from the tiresome exercise of flying.

So, that’s the plan – watch this space…

A new Beaufort?

While out walking the mutt this morning, I was assulted by the weather.

As well as getting snowed on I was getting buffeted around by the wind, which got me thinking about the Beaufort Scale. As I was trying to remember the visual clues to wind speed (Force 0 = smoke rises vertically, Force 1= smoke drifts, Force 2 = leaves rustle etc) I emerged from behind the (unknown) shelter of a copse to be nearly blown off my feet.

This got me thinking, maybe there should be a modernisation of the Beaufort Scale? Something “people in the steet” could relate to (yes, dumbing down if you like, but it could be fun and kept me amused almost all the way home). For example, at what force do trousers get plastered to your legs? So here are a few suggestions, along with appropriate action plans:

Force 4 – long hair annoyingly tickles your nose – tie hair back
Force 7 – trousers are plastered to your legs – don’t wear baggy pants
Force 8 – small dogs take off – hold tight to lead and pretend you have a kite
Force 10 – people blown off their feet – acquire large dog, lay flat on ground and use dog as an anchor

It’s incomplete, but a start.