Of Fickle Men and Champagne

Our rooster, William the Conqueror has fallen head over heels in love with the new Marans girls and pretty much abandoned his former regular 'girl-fiends', the Sussex Ponte 'Lovely Girls'. He spends all day with the Marans showing them where to scratch, dust-bathing with them and following them or leading them about. He tries to chat them up into going 'back to my place' in the evening but he has not yet cracked that one and by about 7:30 pm he gives up and goes 'indoors' leaving them to their final hour of wandering till they eventually go to roost in their own house (the former goose-box).

We think he must then dream about them all night and can't wait to find them again in the morning. As I open the pop-hole, he's right there inside and shoots out like an Exocet missile, runs up the cattle race and starts strutting about and crowing near the goose box. As I open the goose box pop-hole, and the Marans wander out to greet the day he sprints over and generally 'nails' one of them within feet of the pop hole. He seems very happy and doesn't appear to give a fig at the 'hard-to-get' antics or down-right vamping by the Lovely Girls trying to get him back. We have to admit to a rather shameful sympathy with him there - we are completely impressed by these Marans who lay one egg each EVERY day, so more eggs, in fact. than all the lovely girls between them (who often score zero, or one; all be it, Broody Betty is currently on broody leave).

The LGs are, you will recall, very sporadic at present; they miss too many days, or lay from height (Lucy Long-Drop), or they lay eggs with only part of the shell, or they lay among the nettles in the woods. They are, in short a frustrating pain in the butt and if you asked us now we would describe them as rubbish 'layers'. Mentor Anne tells us that as 'hatchery hybrids' the Sussex Ponte is designed to lay around 300 eggs a year but under indoor hatchery conditions where everything is controlled - day length, light levels, humidity and definitely nutrition. Furthermore they'd be bred to perform for about 18 months at peak lay before being culled out, exhausted in commercial egg-laying terms. Here they are out in all weathers and real day lengths and eating all manner of protein in scratch in the fields, sometimes ignoring the feed we give them, certainly being choosy and picky around the 'layers pellets' even though these are now Pedigree Foods's finest organic. So, realistically, when the 'Young Ones' (the "8-ball" as they are now known) come of age and decide to be females, they may replace some of the Lovely Girls in our laying flock. We will probably not do Sussex Pontes again and I'd do my best to dissuade anyone who suggested they might. If young Pontes in their prime can be out-layed under a free-range system by 5 year old Marans, then pure-bred are the girls for me and we hope that the Jersey Giants and Buff Orpingtons in the 8-ball don't let us down.

As we come into July, the elder trees in our hedges are all coming into full blossom and with the sun shining warmly our thoughts turned to elder-flower cordial and elder-flower champagne. Liz made the cordial last year and we loved it. As well as using it as cordial you can freeze it in plastic milk bottles for later use and/or freeze it in ice cube trays to be dropped into a glass of chilled sparkling water. The champagne we have enjoyed at Anne's place and we know it is also made by Carolyn so while I went and collected a bag full of 'fully open' flower heads Liz surfed up a recipe and dug out the wine making gear to give it a good sloosh out with Milton's fluid.

Both these recipes use just the flowers, water and juice and zest of lemons (Liz threw a lime in too as we had one) as well as sugar. The advice is that the champagne would get going on the naturally occurring yeasts in the flowers but you can supplement with bakers yeast if it is a bit slow to get going. You can either use swing-lid 'Grolsch' style bottles, or even plastic fizzy drink bottles though you are advised to release the pressure a few times during the in-bottle ferment as it can all get a bit lively otherwise.

In the sunshine too, I decided to have a little tinker with hay making. We have grass, sunshine and breeze, and the local merchants are still out of hay following the spring fodder crisis, so I am very low on bedding for baby rabbits and for layers nest boxes. I scythed down a load of grass and spread it thinly over a couple of my chicken-wire rabbit-run panels  which I leant up at 45 degrees on the orchard fence. It was drying quite well but then, wouldn't you know it? lashed down with rain all night. That's great for the water-butts, but not ideal for the hay making. Never mind. If it gets ruined I have plenty more grass and there will be many more sunny days - next week is forecast to be a hot one.

In the rabbit department, Ginny's and Padfoot's little gangs of babies are now a month old and almost permanently out of the boxes and eating the grass in the runs, so we assume they are nearly weaned. We have not seen any nursing lately. This means it is time for a nice job - that of getting the babies used to handling. If we are to sell any of these as pet rabbits then they need to meet the customers as calm, friendly, cuddly bunnies, not wriggling terrified scaredy-cats, so the plan is to go and handle as many of them as you can catch each day.

There are currently 12 babies to do this to, 7 with Ginny and 5 with Padfoot. Goldie has another 7 on line but they are a bit young yet at under 3 weeks and not out on the grass yet. I seem to be over run in Facebook by friends who are volunteering to come here and hug a bunny!

Meanwhile, finally some good news on the red algal bloom in the big pond. It seems to be dropping out at last, the water clearing so that we can now see the planters on the bottom. The algae themselves seem to fall like dust onto the rubber liner and then are rippled up like a miniature version of beach-sand ripples into rice-grain sized ridges, presumably by the wave action in the pond. Fascinating.