Two (webbed) Footsteps Forward and One Back

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post comes a mainly duck-based one to catch us right up to schedule. Regular readers will know that we are running a small campaign to get back into ducks after recent losses to fox (and one of the terriers). We are also converting to some new varieties. The 'old school' Khaki Campbells from 2016/7 are now gone following our cull of the (2) aggressive drakes. That had left us with 3, then 2 youngsters hatched from our own eggs, the final eggs laid before the last female went extinct at the hands of the fox (13th May).

Delphinium

I had bought a Mum and 5 half-grown 'Appleyard' ducklings on 11th June. Readers may recall that these got landed into the long grass of the 'Hubbard Pen' and that although we knew they were settling in well, I had been unable to photograph them for you. They are real 'scaredy cats' and raced for cover as soon as a human appeared. Pictures of baby ducks in grass taller than they are is not really a thing.

"Rambling Rector" does his thing over the barn wall.

We knew they'd grow up eventually and want to come out and explore. We played the waiting game. In mid June, I 'ran out of breath', Elizabeth took over the stock and carried on with the feeding and schmoozing. She'd seen the two surviving Khaki's looking in at the newcomers through the chicken wire. It was looking good. We would let the Appleyards out free ranging when we were both there to supervise.

Mum Appleyard leads a first explore

Yesterday, I was just on a patrol, armed with a camera thinking I might get a pic of the 'Apps' around their new fruit-barrel drinker when I was confused to find a group of 6 ducks at the big pond. They must have squeezed out at the bottom corner of the gate and, by the time I saw them, they'd have met the Khakis and all seemed to be serene.

Pleasingly, there was not a sudden mass panic at the sight of me. The group gathered close round Mumma in that upright, vigilant stance that nervous ducks have. I sneaked a few pics, then quietly retreated to a distance to observe and texted Elizabeth. Not much point causing the big frightened upset rounding them all back up; we decided to bide our time till evening when they might just take themselves all off to bed. That was that for the pm, the joy of watching your new ducks explore the big pond, supervised by Mum and alongside the 2 Khakis.

New 6 meet old 2.

My 'backward step' of the title? Yes. It all went a bit downhill for a while, but not badly except for in the case of one Khaki. Elizabeth was home, I'd gone for a nap. I was getting up again when I may have (can't swear) heard an odd strangled squawk  out the back somewhere but Liz had heard nothing.

The only picture I have of all 8 ducks on the pond

It was a good hour later at the start of evening rounds, when she spotted that there was only one Khaki. The alarm went up and we searched far and wide but of the other bird there was no sign. We guess one more to the fox, returning on a day light raid 6 weeks after the last strike. 

Duck pond and blue sky

The evening was a bit of a mix of being sure that Brer Fox would not come back for a 2nd bird in the same day. This fox has not done that (yet). But at the same time, not wanting to risk him getting in amongst the new ones on their first day of free ranging. Long story short, it all ended well and everybody was safe for the night.

Not much else going on unless you want to hear of our continuing, decidedly non Irish heatwave which is now doing silly 30ºC stuff up in our corner. A friend has amusingly put up on  Twitter a couple of pics of her lane. She got hit by the bad snow when the 'Beast' struck over there in the East so her post has "The worst snow in 72 years and the hottest temps in 42 years, less than 4 months apart!"

Enough for this one. Wish us luck on keeping these ducks safe and enjoy the sunshine.

Fending Feathered Friends off Fruit

Red currant bush stripped of all fruit from ground to the
height an adult turkey hen can reach.

There is a technique which is a big part of gardening which you won't find so described in any gardening book - "Savannah-ing". This is our word for what is probably called 'raising the skirts'. When we get a shrub, bush or tree up to a decent height we prefer to clear the ground tight around it and cut away all the shaggy, leafless bottom branches to let a bit of light in under it so that its shape resembles one of the trees or thorn bushes in the African Savannah (or trees in a 'Capability Brown' landscape) and has a browse line. Up to now we have had to do this ourselves with secateurs and the hand fork.

No saw-fly this year but the turkeys did a good job of
stripping these goose-gogs of their leaves.

Step forward the adult turkeys, Tom and (particularly) Barbara who turn out to be quite keen to do this themselves especially on any fruit bushes they come across. We have a row of them in the Kitchen Garden which regular readers may know we call the "Jam and Chutney Hedge" (aka Jam and Jerusalem Hedge) and we have never had a problem before with chickens, but we now have red currant bushes stripped of all fruit below a couple of feet in height while the fruits were still green.

Well protected strawberries.

The gooseberry bushes are all below 2 feet at the moment, so they have lost all their fruit (while still hard and immature) and most of their leaves, like the worst kind of saw-fly attack. The poor little fig tree is also fruitless. We do not want to fence this whole area off again (and anyway, turkeys are great fliers and wall-jumpers), so we are looking at letting these bushes grow into a "standard" shape - the lollipop format used for roses, to see if we can get them to do all their fruit up above turkey height. Meanwhile we fenced the birds completely out of the strawberry bed when we caught the turkey parading around and, again, pecking at hard green fruit. We then caught her pushing her head and neck so far through the 2 inch chicken wire to reach more fruit, that she was bulging the fence, so we had to add another 'layer' of fence. Thus protected, the fruits are now ripening and we were able to taste our first strawberries today.

Tree protection against geese. 

The geese, meanwhile, give us a rather different problem in the orchard. Geese are stronger, tougher birds with toothed beaks and an obsessive nature. They will try a few pecks at the young bark of your new fruit trees and if they find it tears or breaks, they will keep at it, returning to it like a terrier with a stick, worrying it so that the hole gets bigger and bigger. Quickly they will ring-bark the tree. We have tried plastic spiral tree guards which are cheap and work for a while but eventually they become brittle or the tree grows enough to burst the spirals open, exposing bits of bark which is still young enough to be interesting to geese.

We got some fruit through to 'ripe'!

Some of our trees are in full sized sheep guards from the first year, when it was sheep we were fending off. (Sheep are a whole different story, as their damage is browsing as well as leaning heavily on the tree and rubbing to try to relieve an itch). Our best solution for the rest and one which, were I writing the book on keeping fruit trees safe from geese I would describe, is a cylinder of 1" weld-mesh (aviary mesh). The stuff we use is 90 cm (yes, sorry about the mixed units) tall which is taller than a goose at full stretch and the one inch mesh is too small for a goose to get even a beak through. The stuff lasts for ever and certainly for longer than it takes the bark within to become too old and gnarly for geese at which point you could still take it off and use the collar for another young tree. This stuff may be expensive but these are just bits left over from when I was building rabbit runs many moons ago.

One of the new Guineas (left) and a 6 week old turkey (r)

In other bird news, a few pics of the kindergarten. Turkeys #1 and #2 (Christmas and Noel?) are now 6 weeks old and starting to tower over the new Guinea Fowl. They are also starting to out-grow the rabbit run they are in and look keen to get out amongst it, free ranging. We will probably let this happen in another week or so when we feel a bit more confident that they will not fall prey to the young cat 'Soldier'. Turkeys #3 and #4 ('Janus' and 'Hugh' apologies to any Terry Wogan fans. Don't ask) are now 2 weeks old and starting to outgrow their first brooder-crate, so we need to scrounge a couple more big potato-crisp boxes and move them on a stage, but they have to stay under heat for the first 4 weeks.

OneChick is now 8 weeks old.

'OneChick' (as we have named the chick of 'Hen with One Chick') is now 8 weeks old and has started becoming independent from Mum. You do still see them together but you also see the chick just mingling with the rest of the flock and both of these now sleep in the main coop, Mum having decided of her own accord to move house from her little nest next to the camping toilet about a week ago. She looks to us like a hen, which is good news, she can be our replacement for the Sussex Ponte we lost recently.

The two chicks at 3 weeks old.

The two chicks of 'Hen and Two' are now 3 weeks old exactly. They look well and healthy and seem to be thriving. They are feathering up well. The buff-coloured one looks like he/she may be another pure-bred Buff Orpington but the white one is probably either a Sussex Ponte hybrid or even a Hubbard cross. We kept 2 hens out of one of the batches of Hubbards (a red and a white, the 2013 birds) to see how they would end up and be egg-layers. They are definitely part of the gang and are regularly 'trodden' by our roosters. Time will tell.

Examining an old frame of ivy honey now being cleaned
by bees in the swarm box. 

Finally, in the bees dept, we have had a good amount of interest in the swarm box so that I wondered if a colony had actually moved in. I needed to examine the box for queen and new brood; if we found these the colony would need moving from the swarm box to the new hive before they got too well established (and started to build their own comb in the box). Well, no worries in fact (and a bit of disappointment; I would have quite liked a 2nd colony). There were 100+ bees in the box and it was busy but these are just 'robber' bees exploiting an undefended source of stored honey. I don't think they are my bees - the flight path is straight south away from the box, not nipping across the 30 feet to our hive. They are there in force cutting away the cappings on the honey comb and nibbling all the solid honey out. I should be left, in a few weeks with some nice clean 'drawn' comb which I can re-use if ever I do get a second colony. That may well be next year by now, the swarm season seem to be over. Never say never, of course; these ladies can swarm as late as October if they are desperate enough.

Tunneling (3) Beds and Paths

With the cover of the poly tunnel finished and the door and frame built on the western end I can trim off excess plastic and start to think about what to do inside. Ultimately we may do a weed proof membrane and raised beds with planks around, but for now we have decided to do this season with a temporary layout of paths laid with sheet corrugated iron (of which we have plenty) and the soil merely ridged up into beds as in the allotment. We may obtain duck-board walkways for the paths, being more attractive and less likely to inflict cuts. We have laid this out in the intended layout of 2 side beds and a central bed with a stone 'floor' as you step inside to avoid us having to wade about in mud.

The soil has already been dug over, so we know it is a bit of a dog's breakfast of stones, old peat turf, clay and buried stoloniferous grass. As I shovel and rake the ground into beds I am getting a chance to haul out the stones and peat turfs and to break up the bigger lumps of clay. I am getting quite a nice tilth in which the tomatoes should do OK. We are also relieved that the relentless North East winds have only flexed the structure around, puffing the panels in and out and slackening it to a degree, not done any damage. This is good news and we hope means that it will survive a few of those Atlantic storms that come at us from the NW and SW. It is also much much warmer than being out exposed to the NE blasts and the boggy eastern end is drying out superbly. We are very optimistic. We have also been donated some strawberry plants by Mentor Anne (Thank You, Anne!) to kick off our planting. These are in the central bed - you can just see them to the right of the wheel barrow in the 2nd picture.

Outside of the tunnel, meanwhile, the NE wind and cold weather have stopped any Spring like growth in its tracks. Expanding fruit tree buds are the same as they were a week ago. It's not so much that we have hard frosts and we have only had the light dusting of snow seen in this picture, but it is cold over all and growth is on hold. My potatoes and artichokes, planted in sunny enthusiasm on St Patrick's Bank Holiday Monday are hunkered down below ground. Tulips in tubs and Granny's bonnets in the big pots in the yard stopped expanding and the half open show of daffs stopped at the half open stage.

Still, the NE wind will not blow for ever and when it stops everything is well set up to start moving again. Tradition has it that you must get your early potatoes in by St Patrick's and the rest in by Good Friday. Going into St P's I was not at all sure I'd get my earlies in, but we got there in the end. Now going into Easter I am looking at my main crop, the blight resistant Hungarian variety, Sarpo Mira, chitting happily in the Tígín and thinking it would be unkind to plant them into my cold soil. Maybe we will get another warm burst and I will get the chance.

So, there you have it for this post. Liz has been baking again today thanks to another part of Anne's generous gift - a dozen free range, organic eggs. We have a honey and ginger cake, a fruit loaf, plain scones and cheese scones. The range is burning with a good fierce red glow and we have that 'all is safely gathered in' feeling. I leave you with a nice picture of William the Conqueror just because he is such a magnificent lad.