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Hens prefer wild camping

hens sleeping out

Our hens have all the creature comforts we can provide. There are three state of the art plastic hen houses with automatic door openers that open and close at dawn and dusk. Inside, there are purpose built roosting bars or individual boxes packed with fresh sawdust. Each hen can choose its own sleeping arrangements to its personal taste. These are kept clean and mite free and provide protection from wind, rain, snow and all the varieties of weather that South West Scotland can throw at them.

However, this is not good enough for Clippy, Mrs Mills Junior (MMJ) and Salt. They have decided it’s far more comfortable, or exciting, or both, to sleep rough. Clippy started it all. She has always been borderline feral, much prefers the great outdoors. She’s also the current matriarch and has been sleeping out on and off for a while now. MMJ and Salt have recently joined her. Poor old Cherokee (the cockerel) must be wondering where they all go at bed time.

We shall keep an eye on them and expect that, as in previous years, once the cold, wet weather sets in and all the leaf cover has gone, they may decide the warm, dry shelter of a hen coop is the best bet.

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Sheep unsure about new steps

sheep friendly path and steps

Some time back, we connected our hill paddocks with the orchard next to our house. We like having the sheep close by. It’s what we call the ‘lambing paddock’, mainly because we built a lambing shed there. Really, it should be the ‘orchard paddock’ as it is home to our apple trees, all protected from sheep nibbling.

sheep friendly steps
sheep friendly steps

One problem with this path is that, at the paddock end, it’s quite a high step up. We did put down some bricks and hard core to make it easier for the sheep, but over time they have dislodged said bricks and scattered the hard core. Nicole recently noticed that some of them were struggling to get up. Short legs and a barrel shaped tummy can do that for you.

So, this week, after fencing off the damp corner (to the right) and planting it with trees, I started on building them a step. Using large, stable concrete blocks, I worked out an arrangement that would allow them to step up easily. I poured concrete into the gaps and topped it off with road scalpings. A rough surface will stop it getting too slippery in the icy winter days.

Of course, just as I was finishing the pouring in of the concrete, the sheep came down to see what I was up to. I had to turn them back before 76 hooves tore the new steps apart. Sheep hurdles were hastily erected to give the concrete time to dry.

Today, I led the sheep down so they could have a look. Selene, the flock matriarch took one look and turned round to head back up the path. She doesn’t like anything new, that one. It was left to Yogi, her granddaughter to make the leap. She took a couple of sniffs, then wandered up happily, wondering what all the fuss was about. Once she was up, the rest followed, each showing different levels of suspicion and hesitation.

Selene has, since, been observed standing at the gate studying the new structure intently. We’re wondering if the sheep might be in the lambing paddock for a while, at least till Selene decides the steps are no longer ‘new’.

Selene sees new steps for the first time
Selene sees new steps for the first time
Selene turns away from new steps
Selene turns away from new steps

 

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Tree planting underway

planting trees - small area

Every year we have been here, we have planted more trees as part of our goal to rewild large areas of our smallholding. Earlier this year, we created a new wildlife corridor and this winter, our task will be to fill it with (more) trees. This involved a lot of fencing, mainly to stop the sheep from eating all the young trees. They are very partial to anything that’s not grass, our sheep. One small corner was missed out in the big fencing operation. It is nestled between the path the sheep use to come off the hills into the orchard paddocks, the orchard paddock itself and a large area of wildlife corridor. This corner is damp and bramble infested. This week, I fenced it off. In time, we can remove a fence (you can see the tired old posts in the picture above, and it will become integrated with the wildlife corridor.  It is now filled it with willow, pine, alder and rowan trees. All of these, except the rowans, were sourced from along our track where numerous trees have self seeded with the seeming intention of blocking a drainage ditch.

planting trees - small areaThe rowans were also self seeded but in a dark corner next to a mature tree, not an ideal spot for them at all, really. Now they have exposure to sunlight as well as plenty of water.

The picture to the right is the small area in question and, if you look closely, you might be able to spot the odd tree. Not easy, some are quite small and, of course, the green leaves blend in nicely with the grass.

We are looking forward to these trees growing swiftly in the coming years and providing a little more cover for local wildlife.

 

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Another Brick in the Wall (part 11)

Regular readers of our blog may be aware of the ongoing repairs to our stone dykes. They appear to have been neglected for some time and so it’s something we’re trying to rectify.

stone dyke ready for rebuildThe latest repair was the wall next to our access track. Something had knocked down a section and it looked a bit of a mess. As seems to be the case with a lot of the damaged areas, it had to be taken down to ground level in order to be rebuilt properly. It has been something of a puzzle for me, but much of the stone in the centre of the wall seems to disappear leading to the dyke to collapse in on itself. What this means is that I have to ferry in a fair few small stones. Luckily, we have a pile of them in the corner of a field.

stone dyke by track 3 - in progressOnce the damaged bit has been taken down and the stones carefully laid out, the fun part starts, the rebuild. Using home made ‘A-frames’ and string to make sure it’s straight, I spend many a happy hour working out which stone best goes where. I try to get the heavy ones near the bottom for obvious reasons, though that’s not always possible meaning I have the occasional heavy lifting moment.

stone dyke by track 5 - complete
Repairs complete

Luckily, with fallen down bits like this, there are usually enough stones for the rebuild. This time, however, I was about 10 stones short so I had to forage for them, finding some good ones in our nearby burn.

Once complete, I try to take a few minutes to admire what I’ve done, but the next job is usually already calling. Either that or my back is screaming in protest and demanding I stretch it back into shape.

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Harvest Time

onions with leaves bent

It has been a good year for the veggies. The new polytunnel produced plenty of salad and tomatoes are ripening thick and fast. Outdoors, everything we planted has grown well. We’re not sure if it is down to the amazing, hot summer or all our preparation, probably a bit of both. The soil, this year, has certainly been the best we’ve had, courtesy of a large annual covering with mulch.

As a rule, we try to grow vegetables that are harvested when needed. This includes carrots which remain quite happy in their purpose built box, turnips that will survive outdoors through the winter and beetroot which can also be left in the ground till needed (hungry mice notwithstanding). Summer crops such as spinach and chard are picked as and when needed.

onions dryingTwo vegetable that do need harvesting are the onions and the cabbage. The onions are huge this year, some the size of grapefruits, and we are delighted with that. We have been waiting for the leaves to bend over as they reach maturity signalling they are ready to harvest. All those that had done so were harvested a week or so ago. The rest I gave a helping hand by bending the leaves (as shown in the above picture).

The harvested onions have their roots trimmed (carefully avoiding nestling worms) and are dried on the Auchenstroan designed and patented onion drying rack (a pallet raised on two chairs). onion stringsOnce dry, they are strung in the traditional way and hung ready for use. We reckon we’ll have at least 10 onion strings this year which is pretty good going.

Once harvested, the preparation for next year starts with a layer of cardboard to suppress the weeds. It’s called the ‘no dig’ method and I’m fine with that, believe you me.

covered in cardboardOnce the cardboard is laid, I’ll cover it in mulch, a mixture of composted sheep poo and home made garden compost. It will be laid 10-15cm thick, the thicker the better as the soil really benefits from it.

The cabbage has grown well and today I harvested the first, it was the size of a football and weighed over 3Kg. There’s not much you can do with cabbage other than eat it or make coleslaw, so we are, for the first time, making sauerkraut. The first batch was prepared today. The cabbage was chopped, shredded in our tiny vegetable shredding machine and then mixed with salt and herbs in a bucket. It all went to plan and I was amazed at how much it all shrinks as the salt does its work.

making sauerkrautThe feeling pleased with myself lasted only till I realised it needs about 6 weeks of fermentation to get the best flavour. Having only two suitable buckets and around 10 cabbages presented a conundrum. So, this week kas now been designated sauerkraut week and I will spend the days shredding cabbages and building up one large bucket of fermenting sauerkraut.

At the same time, I’ll be keeping an eye on the tomatoes and making sauce or soup as and when I have to. Also needing watching are the apples, it was this time last year that cider vinegar production got underway.

While all that is going on, Nicole has been harvesting blackberries, pulling out nettles and cutting back brambles. And, of course, we’re both working, Nicole making rugs and me editing my book (now that it’s back from the editor) and also working on my dry stone dyke course.

Never a dull moment.

 

 

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Wildlife Corridor

We have planted a lot of trees here and those planted a few years back are finally starting to establish and grow taller than me. But what was missing was connecting the various patches of woodland. So, we devised a wildlife corridor that will connect woods to the north of the house all the way to the new planted woodland that runs along the southern edge.

It will start with a hedge that will be planted this autumn. This will have the added benefit of screening off a cottage. The fencing is in place (to keep the sheep from eating it), just need to wait for hedge planting season.

band of treesPart two is a band of trees at the end of the lambing paddock. These were panted in May, a last gasp order that was despatched just before the end of season deadline. Unfortunately, the dry weather caught us out and about half the trees lost all their leaves. We have been watering them daily (with water from a natural pond) and all but three have recovered, though one is still in intensive care as it is not enjoying its daily baking by our unusually hot and persistent summer.

recovering tree
Recovering tree

The ones that are recovering are showing new growth at the base and will be watered daily till we are absolutely sure they are established.

Part three runs along what we call the ‘marshy bottom’ field. It’s where water overflows from the pond mentioned above on it’s way to our wee loch. It’s damp and treacherous and we had a constant fear that one of the sheep would get into difficulties. Normally, wouldn’t go there but every now and then, tups from the neighbouring appear in the field the other side of the marsh and they are a huge temption to our girls.

marshy bottom woodland
marshy bottom woodland

This has now been fenced off and planted with about 40 trees, mostly ash seedlings from the ash tree next to our house which, touch wood, seems to be unaffected by ash dieback. The plan is, in late autumn, to transplant a number of self seeded willow and alder trees that are in inappropriate locations into this area and transform it into a vibrant woodland.

thriving transplanted trees
thriving transplanted trees

We did move two quite large trees, over 4m tall, and they are thriving. You can just about make them out in the photo to the right. The bank is quite damp (north facing) and so was perfect for them.

The next part is a small area next to a stone dyke (where we filled in an unused gate) and about 30 trees are thriving there, no tree guards as we built a fence that should keep the deer out.

Finally, there’s a small area where we store our firewood, the stuff that needs a visit from the chainsaw to convert it into logs. That too will be populated with transplated trees.

From there, it meets up with the trees border ing our wee loch. Overall, it will form a ‘U’ all around our patch. The west side is commercial forest, not much we can do about that!

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Water solutions

At Auchenstroan, we seem either to have too much water or too little. With this long, hot, dry summer stretching out over months, it’s definitely the latter and memories of having to install drainage are fading fast.

Since we moved here, we have installed sheep troughs fed by natural springs (water system and water system extended) so that the sheep now have water troughs in every field. However, during the summer, these springs dry up and even two tanks containing around 2,200 litres last only a few weeks. So, sometimes we have had to top them up. This used to involve filling a bowser and towing it up with the tractor. Now, we have a pipe that connects the top tank to a pump (housed in the upside down old water tank – see right). This in turn is linked to two bowsers. At the moment, these are filled by pumping water from the river, but the plan is to install a rainwater capture system on our large shed and fill them from that.

You can see the pipe snaking its way up (to the sheeps’ tanks) in the photo. There is also a pipe snaking its way down and this, when completed, will link to the rainwater harvesting system we have for our veggie plot. This will mean we can top that up if it too runs out.

And finally, just to make life a a tiny bit bit easier, we found a really useful gizmo, a watering timer. It opens a valve letting water through for a set time. We had coils of soak hose sitting around doing nothing, so have installed that in the polytunnel and it now waters itself each day for an hour. It saves us a lot of time.

Now, all we need is a solution for our domestic water supply which seems to be drying up too. But that’s another story…

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New Sheep Paddock Proves a Hit

new paddock with sheep

One of the things we have puzzled over since moving here was what to do with a large expanse of grass that sat between our house and two neighbouring cottages. It need constant mowing to keep on top of it but was never really used for anything except the odd game of ball with the dogs. This spring, we decided to transform it into an additional sheep paddock. As well as offering some extra spring grass, it’s close to the winter feeding stations so will provide more space for the sheep to spread out between meals of hay. It has to be said, the sheep tend to hang around the ay feeders most winter days rather than heading off into the fields, so it can get a bit muddy.

new paddockIt needed quite a bit of fencing as we also planned a hedge along the border with one of the cottages and that beeded two fences, one for the border and one to keep the hedge safe from the sheep, who are more than partial to a bit of twig and leaf. It’s also quite a large area and, all in all, took about 100m of fencing to complete. This time, we employed a contractor to help thump the posts in as the ground here is pretty stony and unforgiving. He brought a digger with a post thumping attachment so that helped a lot.

new paddock gateWe also installed a wooden gate so that it looks more rustic. This needs to be hen proofed to keep our hens off next door’s veggie patch, but that’s another story.

Anyway, it took me a few days to get all the fence netting installed and Nicole a few days to transplant the daffodils (they’re poisonous to sheep), remove foxgloves (also poisonous) and clear the few brambles that were also eyeing the area up.

That all done, it was ready for the sheep. Serendipitously, they were waiting the other side of the gate so all we had to to was open it. As soon as they saw the gap leading to virgin grass, they were straight through and enjoyed a few hours of happy grazing. We all enjoyed some time, the sheep exploring and staring at new sites (next door’s barn) and us sitting with them, enjoying their company. Later, we ushered them back out, unable to leave the gate open till we have made it hen-proof.

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More Trees planted

trees planted

Since moving here, we have been slowly expanding the woodland coverage. The goal is to create an area that can be coppiced thus providing a supply of wood and also a haven for wildlife. In the late autumn, we took delivery of around 400 trees (bare root) and quickly heeled them in to protect the roots. I got around 30 planted and then the first snow hit. From then, the ground remained pretty much frozen right through till February making planting impossible. On the few days the ground was soft, the forecast was for more freezing weather so planting would have been unwise.

tree planting in progressFinally, the ground thawed and the forecast looked warmer (above freezing anyway), so I got going. I was somewhat surprised to find that many of the baby trees were budding and some were even coming into leaf. I had to get them in more quickly than I had thought. Easier said than done, the ground is quite rocky and each stake needed a pilot hole drilled. For that, it was heavy hammer and chisel. It meant each tree took around 5 minutes to plant.

Also, each needed a tall deer guard as deer are regular visitors here. Even with deer guards, the deer can still sometimes get at and nibble away the young shoots.

trees plantedIt took the best part of a week before they were all in. Of course, the next in line of the recent batch of storms immediately blew some over. As well as rocky, the ground is very soft in places, so the fallen saplings had to be rescued and their stakes made firmer.

We are looking forward to watching them grow over the coming years.

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Autumn Harvest

As they days shorten and the night draws in, the autumn harvest is coming to a close. The onions are all tied up in onion strings. We had a much better crop this year, netting them off helped stop the birds digging them up. As ever, those grown from seed soon caught up with the onion sets so maybe we’ll just sow seeds in future.

autumn homebrewThe last apples are clinging to our neighbour’s apple tree. Those on the ground are being hoovered up by blackbirds or whisked away in the beaks of crows. Our apples are all picked, and have found their way into the freezer (for future apple crumbles) or the brewing room where cider and cider vinegar production is underway.

It has not been that warm but fermentation has continued, albeit a little slowly.

turnips
turnips

We still have a few winter crops left, plenty of beetroot and turnips sit petiently in the ground awaiting their turn to be made into soup. The nematodes did their work and slug damage has been minimal. The mice or moles have, however, been helping themselves to the beetroot. Fortunately, this year they are large so there’s plenty left for us.

The carrot box did brilliantly and there are only one or two carrots left so one job this winter will be to build a second box. It has been a long time since I have managed to grow perfectly shaped carrots.

The only crop not doing so well are the brussell sprouts. Seemingly strong and healthy plants are producing few sprouts. We’ve been racking our brains on this one though general consensus seems to be stress (they’d fallen over) and nitrogen deficiency (though healthy leaves would contradict this). So, not too much green veg for the winter motnhs.

Preparation for next year is well underway with lots of mulching.