Rural Life

Nearly Broad Bean time!

Late April and the broad beans are in full flower.  In fact they are even starting to set, so provided the baby beans don't get too badly attacked by a cat pretending to be a Raptor from Jurassic Park, it shouldn't be too long before some are ready to eat.

Conditions are ideal currently for swelling the pods - not too hot and nice and damp (brilliant for growing lawns but other things are suffering).  While the cats are doing their best to keep bees away from the beans, as they are only outdoors for a couple of hours a day, it is not too much of a problem.

The potential problem with broad beans, and also why we sow so early, are black fly.  We don't spray - partly due to vague organic principles, but mainly due to feeding the chickens with any garden scraps that are doing the rounds, particularly if there is a chance of a bit of extra protein.  Instead, once the beans start to set, we pinch out the growing tips of the plants.  It is recommended to do this after the fourth group of flowers, we do it where it feels right.  The chickens get the growing tips and regard them as a treat, and as there are no new succulent growing tips, the ants that farm the black fly aren't that interested.  Well, it works for us anyway!

Broad bean recipes to follow once we start harvesting!

See these entries to compare the growth - November and February.

Update on tree planting

Earlier in the spring, we tried to offset our carbon footprint by planting a tree.

Actually that is overly pretentious - we were in a garden centre with a bit of spare cash and saw a medlar tree for sale and I had to have it.  That is much more the truth!!

Anyway, in a previous post I showed the large leaf buds on the medlar tree - it has been so cold since then that they have only opened slowly and we are still waiting to see if we will get any blossom this year, however in the photo below you can see the tantalisingly slow progress of our new tree. 

Hopefully the roots are spreading out nicely underground, as it is wet as well as cold here, and the root system will be more important for the future health and development of the tree than any pretty leaves or flowers that I can see!

Wot you lookin' at?

Normally I stick to writing about our animals or those that we look after, but the photo below just had to find its way onto a blog!

This is one of the two "hard" chickens from next door.  They have attitude - well they need to.  They share their garden run with a number of cats (occasionally including ours), two ducks, and numerous pigeons and doves.  They don't have anything as namby-pamby as a coop to spend the night in, they just hunker down where ever they are when the sun sets.

There used to be 3 of them, and they could make quite a good chicken stack (best to be at the bottom as you kept warm) or chicken pyramid (for rainy days and nights, rain runs down backs, heads and tummies stay warm and dry).  We don't know what happened to the third one, and none of the neighbours are admitting anything, however "Droopy" didn't like them as they kept climbing into his garden and trashing the compost heap.  We haven't found any remains in our cellar, so we don't think a cat got it, and their owner is a self-proclaimed pacifist, who can't remember killing it, so we have to believe him.

So if you see a chicken with as bad an attitude as this, send it back to us, to rejoin her flock.

While I was away....

I would love to say that the reason I haven't added to this blog for a while is because I have been too busy outside, sowing, planting, walking, cooking and generally doing all sorts of good rural stuff.  The sad fact is that I have been preparing for, undertaking and recuperating from the sort of business trip that I have to do to support that life style.  So what has been going on while I have been attending to Statistics, Skills, OR and consultancy type stuff?

• The pear and cherry are now in blossom, the quince has ever larger leaves and blossom buds coming through while the medlar leaf buds are slowly starting to unfurl.
• The pigeon couple in the eaves have hatched and nurtured a young pigeon (or feathered rat depending on your point of view).
• Poirot and Maigret have dispatched said young pigeon, by breaking out of the attic into the eaves of the house, catching it, dragging it back into the house and doing what cats do.....
• White has been laying an egg a day for the past 2 weeks - I must remind her that as a Light Sussex, she is allowed the odd day off!
• Black is starting to look happier about the world (she has been having a senior sulk), particularly now they have been given a bigger run as they have learnt to go into their coop at night.
• Spot has started to lay eggs - Poirot is currently trying to take the credit for this development as she found Spot out of the chicken run, went for her, and presumably frightened her into laying.  Spot can do 6 foot vertical jumps with a cat behind her.
• The peas and spinach that I sowed about 3 weeks ago have started to come through - the peas despite being walked over repeatedly by two cats.
• The broad beans are in flower.

I am now officially behind with sowing for the kitchen garden and have lost the chance to have the asparagus bed strimmed so that I can try to weed it to see where the new spears come up.  Over the next few days I hope to mix desk work with being out in the garden, taking advantage of the light evenings to put that right.

I will finish with a photo of the savage hunter that we harbour in the house - scourge of chickens and pigeons, who dreams of taking down a duck next!