Rural Life

Broad Bean progress

Last year I showed a photo of a rather nice but empty raised bed that allegedly had broad beans sown in it.  Today I update the world on the progress of my broad beans!

These were sown in October last year, in a raised bed that had played host to our failed tomato crop, plus the rather better sweet peppers and hugely successful aubergines.  I added a bit of compost, but the thinking behind sowing the beans in this bed was that their roots would put back some much needed nitrogen into the soil.  The seed was second generation saved Aquadulce Claudia - ideal for over-wintering.

Most of the beans were up by early December, but we lost a couple of plants during the very cold snaps we had in December and January (overnight temperatures of about -10 degrees).  However as I sowed 2 beans per station, it seems the gaps have been filled and the double rows look very full and healthy, though no sign of flowers yet.  I mention that, as I was checking my diary for this time last year, and this month has not been as exceptional as I thought.  Last year we had temperatures up around 16 degrees in February and the apricot is out at about the same time, so the bean flowers are a bit later than last year.

The beans are still covered to protect them from the dangers of cat bottoms, but another spurt of growth and they will have to come off.  Anyway, this is what my October sown broad beans look like now!

Ducks reprieved

The saga of the ducks is finally over.  We found a new home for the 5 ducks living in our currently vacant hen run.  We found the same home for four more ducks that were living in a cellar waiting for the chop - they were delivered to us by hand and upside down on Friday lunchtime.

John helped to build a rather nice duck house at their new home - photos to follow at some stage - and on Saturday we were able to get them to their new home.  This is a meadow with a small winter pond (variously called the overflow or the frog pond), a goat house, three goats and a duck house.

It was really heart-warming to see the ducks start to behave like ducks finally after being terrified and cramped in our hen run.  In the meadow, they can roam as a flock, sun themselves, take a dip in the pond or the drainage streams round the sides, nibble the grass, rootle for insects and slugs and acorns and even try out flying.  They don't get high off the ground as they are too portly and not really designed for flying (see previous comments of mine on selective breeding).

So here are the 9 Donalds in their new home - what a happy ending!

Visiting ducks

One of the things we like about our life here is never really knowing what the day will bring.  Yesterday it brought us 5 ducks, today it brought us another 4.  I hope that tomorrow will see the ducks go to their new home, but that depends on John getting a duck house built.

The ducks were bought in a job lot of 35 birds fattened for slaughter, but the purchaser ran out of freezer space so, kept a few ducks alive while he worked out what to do.  He got permission to park 5 in our chicken run, while working out what to do.  We found a purchaser for all the remaining live ducks, and I think it is fair to say that they have won a reprieve and a life of luxury once they get to their new home.

My one worry is that like our old chickens, these are utility hybrids with unhelpful characteristics bred in.  They are white with blue eyes, pinkish bills and a certain inertia to them - quite cute, but not as much fun as a chicken.  They probably taste good too, but we will never know!

Goat friendly weather

We have just finished a month of goat sitting, as Nanny, Lucy and Bessie's owners had to be away.  It was the first January we have spent with goats, so there was quite a learning curve and I have spent a lot of time looking up goat care related web sites. 

For information, the UK ones seem a bit precious and useless to me.  Any site that recommends you regularly keep an eye on the body temperature of your animals with use of a rectal thermometer, and doesn't then qualify that a bit, seems odd to me.  Particularly as there are a lot of people out there that keep goats as pets, and not as a breeding herd.  I wonder (purely as an aside) if the goat herds of the deserts of the near and middle East keep such a thermometer with them for regular inspections....

Anyway, the girls made it very clear to us over the month that good winter goat weather is nice, sunny days and no harm if it gets a bit crisp and cold at night (even -10 degrees C is quite alright thank you).  What really gets a goat's goat is wet, dank, windy weather, when your hay seems to soak up and attract ever more water and your deep litter bed in the goat shed gets a bit ripe and wet as well.  Fortunately the girls have had more of the former weather recently, and welcomed their owners with a merry skip and then begged embarrassingly for food.