Webbed Feet

It has been ages since I last blogged and since then we have had Yule and I have been back to the UK twice, once for a 90th Birthday party and once for a funeral. As my family and I age, I become more aware of the cycle of life and how transient our time on this wonderful planet is. Therefore I try to make the most of every day. Yesterday my daughter and I went to the coast with the dogs despite the awful weather. We took a picnic and sat in a cave eating it and looking out at the view. We also collected driftwood and seaweed for the vegetable patch.








As we drove to the coast we passed through the small town of Parga, on the River Parga and it was the worst floods there that I have seen.






We have had heavy rain for weeks now, the house is leaking like a sieve and the stable walls run with water. We have moved the geese into the stables as the part of their orchard by their house and where we feed them is awash, which doesn't bother them but Catherine and I were sick of wading through liquid mud every time we tended them. They have the run of the chickens outdoor enclosure and will trim the tussocks we hope whilst the chickens spend some time in the barns and courtyard.



The local newspapers are full of stories of flooding and hardship so we count ourselves lucky to just have wet floors.

Cold Snap

After a lovely long warm Autumn the cold weather has arrived. The wind is very chill but my wood fired range is lit and I seem to be making endless cups of herbal tea. The Geese have grown at an incredible rate, Gloria at the back has developed Angel wing, which is a deformity of the last joint of her wings making them stand out sideways but it doesn't seem to bother her.

I am thrilled with the polytunnel. I have the best cauliflowers I have ever grown, they are huge, the broccoli is thriving and I am still picking aubergines, peppers, chillies and tomatoes. I have been curing over a dozen large butternut squashes in there before winter storage.

The tyre towers around the patio are also brilliant, they give a good depth of soil, something which is missing here as the soil is thin with a stony layer a couple of inches below the surface. It is going to take me a lifetime to build the soil up a reasonable depth in the main vegetable patch.

The mandarin tree in the polytunnel is in full bloom, smelling heavenly and even in this cold weather a hardy bumblebee is working hard. Sorry about the poor picture, Action shots are not my forte.

 It is brilliant to see the progress being made in the garden. Trees we planted three or four years ago are starting to fruit and no longer look like sticks. The range of trees and shrubs increase year on year as we order once a year from Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Research Trust. Another 20 bare rooted trees are due to be delivered next month including some interesting nut varieties (don't tell the squirrels). Finally Tim took a quick trip out here a week ago to celebrate my birthday with me and we planted out a pot grown Seville orange and two Siberian pea trees into the chicken run. The Siberian peas provide chicken fodder which they harvest themselves and fix nitrogen into the soil. All of them grown by me from seed. Small triumphs such as these are moments to savour and more than make up for the many smallholding disasters along the way.

Summers End

I haven't blogged for a while but busyness got in the way and a succession of disasters included a minor car crash necessitating car repairs. Autumn has definitely arrived and we are madly harvesting chestnuts, parasol mushrooms, apples and drying seeds for next year. The poly-tunnel has been a great success, I got the dreaded tomato blight which meant I had to rip up most of the tomatoes but I still have one producing small salad tomatoes (thanks broad ripple yellow currant).

I have had a succession of family members staying which is great and ensures days out and great company. Tim is still looking for the remote working job which will allow him to work from here but they are few and far between. Most employers still prefer to stand over their employees with a whip.

I have discovered that the evil spanish mole-rats eat horseradish root from below, I will have to move the pitiful remnants to a tyre tower standing on concrete and hope they recover. The trees get bigger every year, we have had our first crop of quinces which are waiting to be turned into membrillo. The asian pears have also produced a bumper harvest. For the first time I have a decent chilli crop, all still ripening in the poly-tunnel. We had a huge glut of melons all ready at the same time, over a dozen. Ditto the butternut squashes which were real thugs but at least they store well.

Most of the turkeys have survived, I have four left of the six I started with which all happen to be male so no mating pair this year. The ones I lost all flew over the high fence and got killed by the dogs. Although clipping a wing was an option it still left them vulnerable to attack on the ground, on the rare occasion dogs got in despite our best fencing efforts. It is remarkably difficult to make an area of uneven ground dog proof when the small terrier can burrow under fences and the large bulky dog can leap over 1.5 m fences like a gazelle.

The next residents of the orchard, now that my dreams of a breeding pair of turkeys is on hold, is a trio of Toulouse goslings. Luckily they have been sexed for us, one male called Gandalf and his two women Gloria and Gwen, and despite  an attack of the snotty sniffles are now looking healthy and hooty and as soon as they are big enough they will live in the horreo where the turkeys currently reside. The death date for the turkeys has been arranged as I am determined that they don't get to the monstrous size that they did last year.

This is our second try at geese, the previous group were home hatched and proved to be too aggressive to live with humans or their fellow chickens. The Toulouse are renowned for being less aggressive and they will be living separately from the other poultry in the fenced orchard and I hope they will also prove to be less vulnerable to dogs and good grazers. Only time will tell.