Due to the need to return to full time employment, I have little to post on this formerly fabulous blog…..

In the interests of helping other like minded people, I will leave the blog available. That way you can all look at my pretty pictures and laugh at my mistakes!

In the unlikely event of something interesting happening thats worthy of a mention, I will certainly post it for all to see.

Other fantabulous Smallholding/downshifting advice and chat can be had on the Selfsufficientish.com forum, where I make the occasional appearance.

Thanks to all who stumble by here in the meantime.

I have just bought a Howies t-shirt from good old eBay. The seller had thoughtfully copied the following extract from the Howies website. It makes quite shocking reading:

100% cotton. 73% true

The average 100% cotton T-shirt contains only 73% cotton. The rest is
made up of chemicals and resins that were used to grow and make it.
Yet, we all think cotton is one of the most natural things around. The
truth is, it’s not as nice as we’d all like to think.

Indeed, cotton is the world’s most sprayed crop. It uses over a quarter
of all insecticides used today (see list below). The way they grow it
isn’t good for the farmer’s health, the water table’s health, the
factory worker’s health, the river’s health and eventually the sea’s
health.

That’s why we use organic cotton. It costs us 30% more than normal
cotton. It means our products cost a little more, but we think it’s
worth it. After all, you wear your T-shirt next to your skin for 10
hours a day. (Just think how Nicorettes work).

The average cotton crop is sprayed 8-10 times a season. Indeed, it
takes 17 teaspoons of chemical fertilizers to raise the 9 ounces of
cotton needed to make a T-shirt.

The most common pesticides used are: Chlorphynfos (causes brain and
foetal damage, impotence and sterility), Cyanazine (causes birth
defects and cancer), Dicofol (causes cancer, reproductive damage and
tumours), Ethephon (causes mutations) Fluometuron (causes blood and
spleen disorders), Metam Sodium (causes birth defects, foetal damage,
mutation), Methyl Parathion (causes birth defects, foetal damage,
reproductive damage and destroys immune system), MSMA (causes tumours)

Nailed (causes cancer, reproductive damage and tumours), Profenofos
(causes eye damage and skin irritation), Prometryn (causes bone morrow,
kidney, liver and testicular damage), Propargite (causes cancer, foetal
and eye damage, mutation and tumours), Sodium Chlorate (causes kidney
damage), Tribufos (causes cancer and tumours), and Trifluralin (causes
cancer, foetal damage and mutation).

In America last year, farmers applied 53 million pounds of toxic
pesticides to cotton fields. Out of the world’s total insecticide
usage, 25% is used just to farm cotton.

And, if that isn’t enough, once the cotton has been grown it is dyed
using toxic dyes. Then, to prevent it from creasing, it is finished
with formaldehyde. Common sense says that can’t be right. Go organic.

It’s not only our broody Black Rock that has been busy sitting on her nest. On the way up to the field yesterday, I noticed several Swallows swooping low over the barley field. It was forecast rain and this pushed the newly hatched midges down low. The Swallows were having a field day hoovering them up.

As I got nearer the big hen house, I spotted a Swallow flying in through the wire mesh that I replaced the glass windows with to ensure there was enough ventilation for the hens. Now I am in the hen house every day and have never noticed a Swallow in there, not flying through the window.

A quick inspection revealed a nest in a corner though and it was full of chicks! I only had my phone with me but thankfully it takes reasonable pictures. As soon as the red pre-flash light thingy lit up, all the beaks opened up!

The chicks were obviously getting well fed! The midgies were in abundance and were shortly followed by an abundance of rain. The garden was really needing the rain and my newly planted out Purple Sprouted Broccoli got well watered in.

On the way back from the tunnel, I managed a shot of 3 Swallows perched on the wire fence. I almost said parents of the chicks there, but presumably on two of them could be!

Sunday saw the arrival of two Sasso chicks from our own eggs which have been cooking under a broody Black Rock. Black Rocks are no way renowned for their broodyness, but this one was determined. Vicious really. Although I knew she was leaving the nest, I never actually saw her. The food and water were going down though and there was a wee dust bath in the broody run so she must have been. I turfed her off the nest a couple of times but she was pecking me furiously each time – grabbing the skin on the back of my hand!

Sunday also saw preparations to load the three Berkshire Boars ready to take to the abattoir on Monday.

I actually start the journey on Sunday night – they need to be at the abattoir very early in the morning and loading pigs at 5am is a no-go. They want to be sleeping at that time just as much as I do. We loaded them late on sunday evening, making a temporary race with electric fencing down though the garden, past the house to a pen at the stock trailer made with wooden gates. The pigs did not get their breakfast on Sunday morning so they were very keen to follow a shaken feed bucket down through the race to the pen. Once penned at the bottom of the trailer ramp, the bucket of feed was empited in the trailer and they scampered up the ramp and scoffed the lot.

My parents live 4 miles from the abattoir and it can take between 1 and 2 hours to get there depending on the traffic. 2 hours in the morning, annoying commuters who get stuck behind a slow Land Rover and heavy trailer or an hour and a quarter late on Sunday evening when the road was almost empty. Once at my parents, the pigs get a bucket of fresh water and they bed down in the straw in the trailer.

At 7am my Dad and I then drove the pigs to the abattoir and I was a bit worried because there was no sign of lairageman (the guy who books the animals in) and there were no other pigs in the holding pens. I definitely booked them in for the 16th! I did find Neil the lairageman and he said I was first in and there were 50 other pigs coming later in the morning. I have never actually seen the deed done at the abattoir, but in looking for Neil, I did get to stick my head through the door of death so at least I now know exactly how they are killed.

The pigs were unloaded easily and penned ready for the event. Paperwork was completed and then it was back to my parents for some breakfast. Afterwards, the stock trailer was scrubbed and disinfected ready to be returned to the farmer from whom I borrow it, but I needed to stop at the butcher to agree how they would cut the (by now dead) pigs up. Hopefully the meat will be ready to collect from the butcher early next week.

After returning the trailer and picking up some chick cumb feed for the new Sasso chicks, I went up to inspect the broody pen. There was Mum sitting in the sun all fluffed up with her brood underneath her. I lifted the lid off the broody box to clear out the old egg shells and was dismayed to see two intact eggs and three dead chicks. Mum had abandoned the nest with the early hatched chicks and left eggs which were hatching/still to hatch and by the time I got back from the abattoir they were stone cold.

I laid the dead chicks on a car tyre in the veg beds which have marrows, squashes and courgettes growing in them and started to clear the broody box out and make a new nest for the Mum and chicks. I turned round and spotted a ‘dead’ chick with it’s beak open! It was still alive, but only just. I think the warmth of the sun on the car tyre had given it a boost so I cupped it in my hands and made my way to the garage and one handedly rigged up my heat lamp. By the time I had managed this, the chick was coming round and breathing well. After a couple of hours under the heat lamp its down feathers were almost dry and it looked quite perky. At 10pm I slipped it under the broody and have her a lecture about leaving her bairns. She looked all apologetic and shoved the chick under her breast along with it’s siblings.

All seems to be well today – the abandoned chick is looking healthy – well I say that because I cannot tell it apart from it’s sibilings!

I must apologise for the lack of posts. I have been battling on with the house garden and working lots in town. Sadly posts will become few and far between – I have been offered a full time post with one of my clients and I start back full time employment on 1st July!

It was quite clear that the ground we have been renting is not suited to growing veg on a suitable scale, albeit, not one handed. Perhaps if I had help things might have been easier, but the soil is very heavy clay and prone to being waterlogged. Last spring we lost 5,000 plants in the wet summer.

I intend to discuss with our field landlord irritating the lease in the autumn. We shall downsize the hen flock and relocate them to the house garden. The big hen house will also be relocated to the garden and be returned to it’s original role as a shed. I am still undecided about the future of the big tunnel. I guess I could arrange to leave it erected. We still have a 30ft by 10ft tunnel in the house garden in addition to 2 standard greenhouses and a lean-to affair. Currently I feel we should sell the tunnel, except the polythene (which would be almost impossible to reuse on that tunnel if it was relocated anyway) and use it to recover the wee tunnel and save the spare for cloches and the like.

There is still just under an acre of garden at the house so there’s plenty to keep us occupied in the evenings and weekends. The 3 pigs have cleared a good area and this is currently planted up with cabbages, tatties and squashes. I rotovated the last bit and it will get peas and leeks planted in it over the next couple of weeks. There’s also about 200 bedding plants waiting to be planted out in the main garden!

I don’t plan to shut the blog down. Not at the moment anyway. There’s still loads of veggie stuff going on, albeit for our own consumption. I also have a broody hen sitting on some fertile eggs. The three Berkshire pigs go to slaughter in 2 weeks so there should be something interesting to report from time to time.