Introducing a new duck (From Smallholder)

Introducing a new duck

11:26am Tuesday 12th January 2010 in

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The snow and ice are thawing today although we have been forecast more cold weather and a possibility of some more snow. But for yesterday and today, there is definitely a slow thaw and I feel as though I am waking from a long sleep. I’ve been looking round the smallholding this morning and my first venture was into the greenhouse. I’ve hardly dared open the door except to refill the greenhouse heater and relight it. Despite a fairly robust greenhouse heater (purchased for £2 from a local car boot), some of the plants do not look that good especially where they have touched the glass. I should have moved everything into the middle. Apart from the Coriander, the other herbs look really well which was my aim for this year – to have fresh herbs for cooking all year round.

The biggest regret I have is that I did not for reasons that I am still trying to fathom, bring in all my lovely Fuchsias which were in flower when the first pre-Christmas snow arrived. As a result I am sure I have lost the lot and as I have carefully taken these through every winter, I am very angry with myself and very upset at the loss of such beautiful old friends. This spring I am going to make and sell some hanging baskets and I am going to make sure that all the plants I use are annuals so that I can never do this again to such lovely plants. I did bring most of the geraniums in but again left the ones in the window boxes and they are now long gone. On a brighter note, there are bulbs poking up their green spears in the window boxes and in the borders. I don’t have extensive flower gardens, partly because the free range poultry are not a good mix with border plants whatever anyone might tell you! I do have a lot of baskets and boxes that are up high out of the way of sharp beaks. It’s because these have looked so good in the last two years that I am going to take the plunge and make some to sell. In smallholding you have to learn to do what you are good at as well as what you think you want to do, and for some reason I am very good at hanging baskets – better than at growing vegetables which is a dreadful admission. I will leave the veg garden to my partner apart from my greenhouse veg, and concentrate on getting a bit of money from my flower. I might do some edible flower baskets and some herb ones as well. At the weekend we had a new addition to our holding. A friend brought me a big white drake as his companion had unexpectedly died. My Abacot Ranger trio is much more nervous than I had thought and when I let them out I thought they were going to run straight through the orchard and into the field behind us and keep going. This drake is enormously friendly and used to sit on his previous owner’s lap. I hope he is going to give the Ranger’s some confidence. I put him in and typical ducks – they all quacked at each other, rubbed beaks and quickly settled down. You would not get that reaction with hens, especially some breeds of hen. There would be fighting and blood and noise. I have to watch them carefully though because ducks get very rampant in the spring and I do not want him being a nuisance to the extent he causes damage to the females though big white drakes are less amorous than the light breeds. I’m going to look for a couple of big white ducks to go with him – he is a commercial breed so it shouldn’t be too hard. He is not an Aylesbury duck – most people think all large white ducks are Aylesburys but actually they are very rare. You can tell an Aylesbury by the box like shape and the pink bill. This drake has a bright orange beak showing his Pekin and commercial origins.

I continue to feed the birds obsessively and yesterday an entire grown up family of moor hens came and picked about on my bird feeding area. I shall be taking part in the Big Garden Birdwatch 30th and 31st January – more details in January Smallholder magazine and on the RSPB website. We get farmland birds come to our feeding area as well at this time of the year. I also took a bucket of wheat down to the ponies’ field and threw it deep into the hedge (where they couldn’t get it) so that the birds out in the arable fields had something too. My best buy has been apples and pears from a well known local supermarket cheap shelf – at 20p a pack these have been sliced and put out for the grateful black birds.

My biggest concern is my bees – nothing I can do at the moment but hope I fed them enough in autumn and early winter. Meanwhile I need to renew my membership to our local bee keeping club and hope they run a course for intermediate beekeeping so I can improve my knowledge.

Liz Wright is reading Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbons – a moving account of crafting in the early 1900s and a very good story and Raising Goat’s written by Smallholder writer Felicity Stockwell and published by the Good Life Press.

Liz is going to Straw Bear at Whittlesey this weekend (16/17 January) – an agricultural tradition that dates back in time. Check out www.strawbear.org.uk 12/01/2010