Last year, extended our veggie patch to give us plenty of room to grow our favourite vegetables. This year, we had the greenhouse ready and also, over the winter I had laid power to it and installed a heater. This was more a frost guard than anything, but it kept the greenhouse a bit warmer than the outside.
Outside, the veggie patch was fully mulched and ready. It looks really god covered in mulch, no weeds (for now).
greenhouse planted
We were all set and in March we started planting. Everything that had indoor/March on the label was planted and put in the greenhouse. This worked, sort of. The tomatoes decided it was still too cold and never showed. It was the same for the basil. In fact, only really the carrots and brussel sprouts got going.
Outdoors, we planted onion sets. Then the heavy rains came and flooded that area covering all the onion sets in water. Disaster, though in the end, about half grew.
Not to worry, we did a second planting and bit by bit, built up some small vegetable plants. The spring was relatively mild and so we started to plant out some of the hardier crops.
veggie patch netted
Now, we fed the birds all winter so how did they repay us? By digging up the mulch to look for worms and in so doing, scattering said vegetables everywhere! Most annoying. Luckily, I had a length of blue pipe tucked away behind a shed and we bought some netting. We put back all the uprooted plants and installed said netting. This helped, a bit. It included butterfly proof netting for the brassicas and turnips (last year we had to pick off multitudes of caterpillars on a daily basis).
By now, I’d planted a third set of onions as all the ones grown from seed had simply vanished. Thankfully, the look good and strong.
But still, our veggies were still under attack. We laid out some organic slug pellets. No change. In fact we have lost almost all the brassicas, three quarters of the turnips, half the spinach, all the direct seeded carrots and most of the beetroot. Emergency second and third seedlings are planted and awaiting their turn. The plan is to pot them up and make sure they are strong before planting them out.
Next year, we’ll do what we should have done this year. We’ll put hens in the veggie patch and give them access to unplanted beds. That should take care of the slug population we suspect of causing the damage. At least, we hope so.
I think I have mentioned before that we have quite a lot of stone dykes here and in areas, they are bit run down. With all the other jobs (firewood, sheep handling area, veggies etc), there hasn’t been much time to do any repairs. However, over the winter I was actually paid to fix someone’s wall. It was a neighbour of one of Nicole’s clients and a few metres of wall in their garden had collapsed in a storm. We had a similar collapse here, as it happens.
Anyway, while it’s not really part of my plans to become a professional stone dyker, I said OK and took on the job. It was a bit tricky as the front of the wall was an ornamental flower bed, so I couldn’t stomp about in my size 10 boots. But the wall was built on a slope and most of the stones were on the other side so I worked mainly from there.
It wasn’t too bad a job as most of the stones were small, so you can work quite quickly. It was all done in a couple of mornings and I was quite pleased with the result. The client was too – always a good thing.
collapsed stone dyke
Having done that, there was the collapsed wall bordering our hen run to look at. Again, this was built on a slope and it looked like the wall had been gradually tipping over over the years. Also, all the stones were piled all over the wall and took a few hours to move out of the way. It was a right mess.
stone dyke repaired
These stones were a bit bigger, so it took a couple of days to rebuild this section. It just takes a bit longer to get the bigger stones all to fit together within the lines of the wall. And believe me, you only want to lift them once, so you spend a lot of time figuring out what will go where. Nevertheless, I got there in the end and am quite pleased with the result. I did have a few stones left over which was a bit of a worry. That said, the same thing happened on the course and the instructors just shrugged that off saying that it happens.
My current project is a slightly bigger challenge. There is a gap in the wall at the top of our largest field. It’s the border between our patch and forestry land. In the past, there has been a livestock handling area the other side and we suspect a previous owner of our patch knocked through the wall so they could “annex” this. Not sure why, it’s full of bracken (poisonous to livestock), hard to get to and far from any power source. That said, it looks like it hasn’t been used for years, decades even, as it’s all a bit run down.
stone dyke restoration – laying the base
Anyway, there is a small stock fence across this gap and it is about to fall down. So we decided it would be better to restore the wall. It will look better and be safer for the sheep. It should also slow the spread of bracken into our field.
The main problem is that the original stones have largely vanished. There were a few in our field and so I retrieved those. We also have a pile accumulated from the gate opening we put into another wall a while back. I have been bringing those up in a trailer. Unfortunately, the terrain is too dodgy for the tractor – the front loader would have been very helpful for moving and lifting the larger ones. So I have to use the quad bike and muscle power. All the shifting is done by hand, lifting them into the trailer one end and then out again the other end.
stone dyke restore – 2nd layer of stones
The remaining stones I am sourcing from the surrounding area. There are quite a few lying around on the ground. The main problem is that they are, on average, a good 50m away. So it’s a lot of carrying which takes up a lot of time and effort. They are also all quite big (it’s hard to tell from the picture). The larger ones get rolled. Luckily, I am rolling them downhill.
progress!
The other problem is the midges – it’s perfect terrain for them. As a rule, they don’t bother me too much (got used to them as a kid), but when you are working in one area, they get into your ears and eyes and are really annoying. So it was midge nets on. Luckily, the wind generally picks up during the day and they hate the wind.
finished
All in all it took 5 days. Most of the time was spent locating and carrying stones. My back is complaining a bit now. Day 4 had its dramas. I had my first wasp sting since I was a kid. I was picking up a stone and something flew straight at my face and stung me. I’d only just taken my midgie net off! It came back for further attempts but I kept knocking it away – the repeat attacks suggest wasp (didn’t actually see it). Having dealt with that, I then contrived to slip while carrying a large rock. As I flew sideways like a falling tree, the rock landed on my knee, painful but thankfully no real damage done. At that point I took a break and put some ice on it and had a cup of tea.
Anyway, on the fifth day the weather was a bit kinder. Dry, windy enough to blow the midgies away and sunny. The gap is filled and the sheep are much safer. And I’m off to run a bath.
Our heating runs mainly on wood. We do have an oil boiler as backup, but we prefer to use the wood burner which also acts as a central heating boiler. However, it has taken me a couple of years to work out how much wood we need and more importantly, when to have it cut by. Too late and it hasn’t dried out properly. Burning wet wood is not a good idea! So, basically, we need next winter’s wood in the sheds by the end of May!
lots of wood
With that in mind, I have been out gathering wood for what seems like months now. The winter storms had taken down a few trees which was one source. One of Nicole’s gardening client kindly offered us the remnants of a fallen ash tree. It was by the side of the road on a blind corner which made recovery a wee bit tricky, but we handled that by being out at dawn on a Sunday morning when few people were about.
Also, a neighbour wanted his woodland coppiced, so myself and our neighbours have been sorting that out (we share the wood as payment). That was quite a lot of work as it’s one thing bringing a tree down and another extracting the wood. We more or less carried the wood out by hand.
wood chopped
I also coppiced our willow woodland. Like Hazel, willow really benefits from coppicing and we are expecting an explosion of new growth now. Many trees had fallen and so I took out all the fallen trees and dodgy branches. Those too were all carried out by hand.
The final source of firewood is a lorry load of tree trunks (larch) that we and two neighbours bought together a while back. We have a sort of community scheme for sawing that up which kind of works, and sometimes kind of doesn’t.
Anyway, the net result of all this activity is a huge pile of tree trunks awaiting processing plus what seemed like a huge pile of logs waiting to be chopped to size and stored for firewood. Thankfully, we (neighbours) also share a log splitter and the above picture is the pile after most had been split and some stored. I still use an axe from time to time, especially with the hardwood – I quite like chopping wood the old fashioned way. But, it’s a lot of wood to chop! It is one of those things, a huge pile of logs on the ground seems to melt into a tiny space in the shed, yet when burnt they disappear so quickly.
Nevertheless, I think we now have enough wood stored for next winter. So, now on with sourcing the following winter’s wood – it’s never ending….
Shearing time is nearly upon us. Last year, we were slightly embarrassed at not being as ready as we thought. In previous years, the shearer had turned up with some shears and we had found ourselves trying to root out a large piece of sheet wood for them to shear on. We thought we were ready last year as we had built the lambing shed with power and also had ready an 8x4ft sheet of plywood.
sheep handling area
But last year, the shearers turned up with a fully equipped shearing station on a trailer. We hadn’t penned the sheep up as we were expecting a gentle progression, but with two of them shearing away, they rattled through them so fast we had trouble getting the sheep to them fast enough.
We also have a general issue when it comes to vaccinations – we have plenty of hurdles and can set up temporary pens, but we really needed something a bit more robust. Preferably, it should be made of stock fence as that might help avoid injuries such what happened to Ymogen earlier this year (Ymogen’s story).
So, our new handling area was born. It combines the lambing shed with three pens. It’s important to have the shed involved as sheep must be sheared dry. If there’s a chance of rain the night before shearing, we can now keep the sheep dry in the shed. I’ve also installed a water trough in there fed from the water butt, so they’d have plenty to drink if confined to the shed.
sheep handling area treatment pen
The smallest of the pens is where we can treat individual sheep. There’s enough room for two of us and a sheep to move around plus a wooden bar for hanging buckets on (keeping nuts and medication out of range of prying mouths).
The remaining area is split into two, using hurdles as gates, so it can be one large pen or two smaller pens. Using hurdles means we can also pack them away when not in use so the area doesn’t look cluttered.
One other job was protecting the fruit trees. Last time the sheep were in here, the temptation was just too much and a few trees had their bark nibbled. So, each tree now has a little cage surrounding it. Given each tree has 4 posts, that was a lot work knocking those in. The multitude of subterranean rocks didn’t help, so some of the posts are not quite straight. But the main thing is, the trees are safe now.
And we’re looking forward to shearing next month when we should be well prepared.
Last Friday morning, Nicole noticed that Ymogen, one of last years lambs, had a problem with her jaw. The lower palette seemed to be all askew. We called out the vet and she confirmed it was a bad break. When an animal is in mortal peril, vets kind of have this look on their face, and our vet had that look. The prognosis was not good.
Ymogen – Sunday
We are not sure how it happened, but we suspect she had put her head into a gap in the hurdles and then been hit from behind by another sheep. We had been doing routine vaccinations the day before and sometimes had been using sheep nuts to lure them into a pen. She may have been trying to reach the sheep nuts through the hurdles. Sheep nuts are both a blessing and a curse. You can use them to train sheep (like dogs and dog treats). But the possibility of getting sheep nuts can cause a little but too excitement. And for some of the sheep, their way of saying “give us a bit of space” is to jump onto the rear end of the poor sheep that’s in the way.
Ymogen Tuesday – at hay rack
Anyway, the vet gave her a painkiller and some antibiotics and we retired to ponder what to do.
Inspiration came via one of our neighbours. She keeps guinea pigs and offered us some chopped hay. Well, we have a shed full of the stuff and plenty pairs of scissors, so we got to work. I say “we”, but in reality, Nicole created a masterpiece of a meal for injured lambs, a mix of chopped hay, grass, brussel sprouts, a bit of liquid life aid and the key ingredient, shredded turnip (swedes to non Scots). Luckily for us, we have grown loads more turnips than we can eat.
For the first couple of days, Ymogen licked some of it up. However, she kept trying to eat grass or hay from the feeders and when she couldn’t, she would just go and stand somewhere with her head down. It’s kind of heartbreaking to watch.
Ymogen Thursday head in bucket (no pen!)
Anyway, come Monday, Nicole was off to work. Mid morning, I set off with a few handfuls of “magic mix”. Ymogen was still a bit wary of coming into a pen, so it was not that easy. She needed to be in a pen to keep the other sheep out more than anything. In order to tempt her to eat the mix, we sprinkle some ground sheep nuts on the top. The smell attracts a lot of unwanted attention from the others.
I couldn’t quite get her into the pen, so I started feeding her with her standing half in, half out. I was able to keep the others at bay and they soon lost interest. Amazingly, she scoffed the lot and then looked at me, like Dickens’ Oliver, and asked for more.
So I sent an update to Nicole (with freezing fingers) and trotted back to the house to make a second helping. She scoffed all of that too.
Ymogen Thursday – looking happy
It has now been just under a week. Ymogen is not out of the woods by any means. The injury is to bone and cartilage so could take weeks to heal. At least Ymogen has the advantage of being young (about 10 months old). She is on 5 feeds a day now. She is often waiting by the pen and now trots happily in. She happily eats from a bucket (making a it easier on us). She is cudding which is a great sign.
She is still on her medication, antibiotics and painkiller jags (jabs to non Scots), every 2-3 days.
Every now and then, a story pops up somewhere about dogs and sheep. It’s pretty much always bad news, sheep have been killed by someone’s pet dog. In fact, the biggest threat to sheep is the domestic dog. It happens round here sometimes too. To be honest, one of the reasons I gave up working as a dog behavioural therapist was that I got fed up with dog owners’ unshakeable belief that their pooches could do no wrong.
Anyway, our dogs have been conditioned to respect sheep. George is an Anatolian Shepherd and his breed was created to guard livestock. Haribo is a collie and should be inclined to round them up, but has never shown any inclination to do so.
George and Ursi
George is actually very good with the sheep. Given the chance he will groom them, licking their faces and ears and even their backsides. He particularly likes a messy sheep’s bottom! Haribo tends to give them a bit of a wide berth. I think he got butted a while back (before the sheep had got to know him), but he’s getting a bit more confident with them now.
One of our ewes, Ursi, now seeks George out whenever he’s over there. They have developed quite a strong friendship and it’s lovely to see, It is George and Ursi shown in the picture.
So it shows, dogs and sheep can go together. If the dog owners know what they are doing.
That said, when we take our dogs for walks in other places, we always have them on leads around others’ livestock. George and Haribo may be fine with our sheep, but our sheep don’t run away from them. Dogs are hunters and if something runs, they will instinctively go after it and all the training is forgotten in an instant.
I have never forgotten a moment when I was a teenager in Edinburgh. I was heading to the bus stop and passed a huge St Bernard sitting in a driveway. It watched me walk past with rapt attention. Everything was fine until I saw my bus coming and had to break into a run. As I ran to the bus stop, I heard a noise behind me and turned to see said St Bernard hurtling after me. I stopped and swore at it (basically challenged it in dog speak) and it froze mid stride. I slunk round the corner, sprinted and just caught my bus. I looked out the window and the St Bernard was still standing there, mid stride, looking mildly puzzled.
Any dog, no matter how well trained, has a very strong chase reflex.
Well, what can I say – February had some unusually warm weather with bright, warm sunny days. It was lovely, even if it was a sign of underlying climate change. We took full advantage including getting in some early seed sowing. We now have brassicas and turnips germinating in the greenhouse. This is helped by the fact that I laid in an electric cable and installed a small tube heater to keep the frost at bay. And those warm February days did turn pretty chilly at night.
The next thing that happened was that suddenly, there were frogs everywhere. The frog chorus met at the pond and started singing their hearts out. Driving up the track at night suddenly became an exercise in frog spotting followed by evasive manoeuvres (or Nicole getting out of the car and helping them to safety). We think we have done quite well because there are no flat frogs on the track. That said, the herons are back. I suppose it’s an early spring feast for them.
The question is, were they a bit early? Because, after the warm spell, storm Freya hit. Torrential rain, wind and it all turned a bit chilly. I don’t think the frogs minded the rain so much. The sheep and hens are not impressed though. The area around the sheep field shelter and feeders has become something of a quagmire. Good job they have a patio! That said, one of the great things here is that they can trundle up the hill where the ground is remarkably solid. They can escape the mud and they do, happily grazing (the grass is growing already) and cudding and generally just being sheep.
Storm Freya continues to wag her tail at us as I write this, but inbetween the rain and blustery winds, we are at least getting moments of sunshine.
And after writing this, I’ll be off to plant more seeds.
It has been a much better winter, so far, than last year.Our neighbour did remind me that we had not had the beast from the east by this time last year, but we had had plenty of snow. This year, in contrast, it has almost been spring like on occasions.
For us, this means we can get on with various outdoor tasks. Nicole has been busy making felted rugs (read more here), as well as getting the garden ready for the spring. Not to mention mucking out the sheep shelter.
hazel copse underway
My tasks tend to be more on the structural side. One of the things we get through a lot of here is wood. Our heating runs on it. Our predecessors bought lorry loads of wood along with our two neighbours and cut it up together, something we have carried on with since we moved here. But with all this land, I thought we should grow our own. We have plenty willow, but it’s quite hard to access. I will be trimming some of that next week. But, in the meantime, I have started a 5 year plan to plant hazel. 50 trees a year. The first 50 went in last week (you can see them in the top picture). In 5 or 6 years, they should be ready to harvest.
Hazel actually benefits from being cut back, it’s a classic “copse” tree. It grows back really quickly. So, with 50 a year, we should be able to harvest enough wood for the winter while , at the same time, remaining carbon neutral.
Continuing with the wood theme, in the winter storms, a willow tree did blow down near the front of the house. We were lucky in that it do no damage to anything.
I finally got round to chopping it up in January. A useful supply of logs for next winter. Many thanks to Nicole’s uncle Kurt (visiting from Switzerland) who helped me stack them.
from fallen willow tree
freshly cut logs
I am also continuing my background task of repairing stone dykes. We have a lot of stone dykes here and a few need attention. This is particularly true of those near the road. My goal is to repair them so far as I can. Sadly, on one corner, the previous owners allowed the walls to be trashed by a tree felling company and I can’t get at the stones as they are buried under branches.
stone dyke blown over
Nevertheless, I shall plug away. Those same storms cause a part of the stone dyke bordering our hen run to collapse. I hadn’t heard of storms taking down walls before, but it also happened to a friend of one of Nicole’s gardening clients. I know this because she commissioned me to repair it, my first real stone dyke job for which I got paid.
stone dyke repaired
Anyway, our chicken run wall was tilting a bit so took a bit of careful rebuilding. I am quite pleased with the result. This is especially so because the stones are quite large and it can be hard to get them to align properly. On the course, it was mostly small stones – dead easy.
I reckon I spend 4 times as long pondering which stone to use next as I do actually putting them in place.
Anyway, it’s quite satisfying work, especially on a nice, spring like winter day.
Compared to last year, this winter has been a lot easier. And much of that is down to the weather. This time last year we were up to our knees in snow. And when it wasn’t freezing or snowing, we were up to our knees in mud.
This winter has been almost balmy by comparison. Some days even felt like spring. Still a bit of mud, can’t really avoid it in winter, but not as bad as we’ve known. But it is so much easier walking around on frozen rather then muddy ground.
Still, this week the snow finally arrived. Not much, but enough to make a fine coating everywhere. Not quite winter wonderland, but quite scenic nonetheless. We get some quite spectacular mornings.
It reminds me of the old rhyme
red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in morning, shepherd’s warning
However, sunrises such as the one in the photo don’t seem to be the harbinger of bad weather here, thankfully.
The dogs love the cold weather, except when they’re having their photo taken. But walking round, they are playful and have a great time rolling in the snow.
The sheep, well I think they just put up with it. That said, they are still out and about foraging even when the snow is pouring out of the sky.
And, this morning apparently, they got into quite a playful mood when Nicole was over photographing them. She took the picture below which is pretty good I must say.
With winter upon us, we need to provide winter feed for our sheep. We buy in organic hay in large bales. This means it needs to be transported over to the feeders and the easiest way is in large bags. Fill one of those, pop it onto the trailer and whizz it across with the quad bike.
The fun starts when we come to transfer the hay from the bag into the feeders. In essence, it means dragging the bag to the feeder and then moving the hay across in clumps. The sheep are quite partial to standing on the slabs we laid and so it can get a bit crowded. It can be tricky moving them out of the way to get to the feeders. .
lambs in hay bag
For the lambs, this just takes too long. So, a few of them have decided it’s much quicker, and much more fun just to eat the hay straight from the bag. Sounds easy, but the bag is taller than they are, so it needs a little spring up on the back legs to get the front legs over the edge and firmly planted into the hay.
Sometimes, when it’s just too exciting, a whole jump takes the lamb right into the bag. Thus, “Who’s that in my bag” has become Nicole’s new mantra.
But still, our veggies were still under attack. We laid out some organic slug pellets. No change. In fact we have lost almost all the brassicas, three quarters of the turnips, half the spinach, all the direct seeded carrots and most of the beetroot. Emergency second and third seedlings are planted and awaiting their turn. The plan is to pot them up and make sure they are strong before planting them out.
