Smallholder blog, Smallholer editor has her say
Share your views on smallholding with others. Send your pictures, video, news and views by texting PKNEWS 80360
Posted at 9:32am Sunday 11th April 2010
Protecting your poultry
Today did not start well when I looked out of the window and saw a pile of white feathers in the field heading towards the hedge. Yep, the fox had visited and pulled off the door of our hen house. I’m very obsessive about the hens and these light evenings mark the end of our social life for the summer – if you don’t come to us and sit outside on our smallholding on a summer’s evening, then you don’t see us until winter, because I always need to be back to shut the poultry in at dusk. This particular house was an ex garden shed with a solid door and three catches so this has taken me by surprise. They must have worried at the bottom of the door until it eventually pulled the catches off as the door is actually broken. I find this distressing and also it’s my view that it’s always the owner’s fault so that’s me and I should have realised that the door was getting older. I’ve never had this happen before though, we are obsessive about strengthening wire and putting things against doors so this must have been a particularly determined fox or even more than one. And we also didn’t hear anything - normally if there’s a fox about we are woken by cockerel’s crowing. The foxes, once in, helped themselves to what was in effect a larder for them. Some people will tell you foxes kill for fun, that is utter rubbish. Foxes are wild animals without human emotions. They do go into a killing frenzy when in a hen house because in the wild they would expect to catch a single bird, take it away, eat it and come back for another which is what they do if they take them during the day when the birds are completely free range. In a hen house they are confused by the number of birds on offer and being unsure what to do they just kill the lot. That’s why it’s so important to ensure the doors are closed dusk until dawn and that they are secure…..
Posted at 1:50pm Thursday 8th April 2010
Smallholder shows I have known!
As I compiled the now huge annual listings diary for 2010, it brought back memories of time spent at agricultural shows up and down the country over the years. Even as I typed some of the show names I could either feel the heat of a long summer day or the squelch of mud and that strange feeling of wearing waterproofs in a warm but wet summer. There was the show where we almost lost the Smallholder stand to a gale force wind and we quaked in our bed and breakfast, hoping it would still be there in the morning. Then the famous wet shows where you end up buying another pair of wellies at the show because you really didn’t think it could rain as hard in August so you didn’t bring any with you. There are shows which are remembered for winning rosettes, not so successful shows where I took a pony who fidgeted all day and tried to kick the judge, shows where my chicken eggs won first prize against professionals and that embarrassing show where my cake was so outclassed in the cake class that it didn’t even get cut by the judge. Last year I won a cup at our local horticultural show with my herbs but also experienced the wettest weekend of the year at a native pony show where we discovered, too late, that we hadn’t taken enough gas to boil the tea kettle. As the show diary moves into Autumn, I can feel the nights drawing in, the autumn shows where you leave in the dusk and its chilly when you get home. By December we are at the two big poultry shows of the year and I can almost hear the crowing and the cackling in the big sheds in the week before Christmas. Hang on a minute…… I want to have summer first. I hope you get as much pleasure from reading and using the diary as I did compiling it and do let us know of any events we have not included, particularly smallholder club events.
Posted at 7:42pm Monday 8th March 2010
First day of (almost) spring?
Or so I thought. Sunday 7 March was officially a sunny day and here at least in East Anglia it was almost warm if you stood in the sun around midday. Today was more of a disappointment. As I fed the animals this morning I noticed that the dear hens had pulled up a daffodil bulb (don’t let anyone tell you that gardening and free range hens mix – only if you have very large well established plants). I went to push it back in the ground by poking my fingers into the earth and nearly broke them. It was as hard as rock and fully frozen and remained so all day long. No wonder the grass looks depressed and the buds are only promising (but not delivering) to come out.
Posted at 9:47am Friday 26th February 2010
A hard winter for smallholders
What a long cold winter it has been – and in some places, still continuing. My snowdrops have been very late this year and didn’t even emerge as green spikes until mid February – and I don’t blame them.
Posted at 5:02pm Tuesday 16th February 2010
Wartime growing and spring on the smallholding
Spent Sunday in my greenhouse trying to work out what had survived the winter and what hadn’t. Bit difficult in some cases so have given some plants a “second chance”. Very glad to see that the mint that I bought from the supermarket cheap shelf has flourished and is happily spreading as are the plug herb collection I was sent to try. This was mainly thanks to the £2.00 greenhouse heater purchased from the local boot sale which looked really clunky and old fashioned but turns out to be vastly superior to the modern one which was no match for the frost.
Posted at 8:11pm Saturday 30th January 2010
Not more frost!
Casual readers to my blog will think I am obsessed with the weather. They’re right. I am. I think all smallholders are extremely weather conscious bordering on obsessed. The weather dictates so much what you are going to do or perhaps more accurately, how you are going to do it.
Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here.
Recent Entries
Keep up to date with Liz Wright's blogs
