Death and illness… aka My first Kill May 14, 2009

Wierd – got my first kill.

We had a small rabbit in the garden that I decided to see if I could approach and I could – almost too easily.  when I got near enough I could see it looked almost blind and moving quite slowly overall.  Got him and took him to show wifey at the back door and she said ahhhhhh…. oh…. mexamitocis (sp?).    So she said something needed to be done – 100% mortality rate apparently.

So told toddler I’d let it go in the back fields, but went off.  Took a deep breath.  Got a grip on it’s neck/head and held it’s back legs for a crack.  Seemed quite easy and definite.  But it did seem to still be breathing a moving slightly and not jerking around, so I gave it a smack against a fence post.  Then it did the jerky thing.

Not nice.  But I felt glad he wouldn’t suffer any more.

Update. May 14, 2009

Man I’ve failed for a numer of months now.  Ah well.  At least things have been happening so there’s always plenty to report.

Current status:

- Good crop of early potatoes coming through into small bushes

- Main crop are desperatly pointing out of the window at the garden they want to be planted in (soon)

- Carrot early sowings are actually coming through and surving so far

- Misc others ok like salad, cucumbers, strawberries.

- Got small number of baby tomato plants going ok – will they actually produce fruit (!) for us this year?

- Got two beds of sweetpeas growing (wifey is hoping for wedding flowers in September).

Poor performers – Peas – Only around 6 in so far – had about a 20% germination rate…..    Spanish peppers -third year of failure….!

Chickens are doing well except for an attack of red mite – have scrubbed the house today but now am itching lots and think I’m being eaten by the little buggers…… wifey will be pleased in bed-not….

… and it stayed overnight. What a day. February 2, 2009

 

 

The view from my office (got sent home from a near-empty office by our boss boss)…..

Just before i head to bed…. a nice night-time sight February 1, 2009

I know we don’t live in Canada or anything – but this felt pretty nice tonight as I was heading to bed…..

Easter? Mini-eggs but not cadburys… February 1, 2009

Not sure what happened with this little blighter….

..and so a brand new season begins.. February 1, 2009

Well I know that gardening/allotmenting should be a year-round activity but we’re not there yet.

Today has been a milestone for getting things started for this year…..

 

We bought seed potatoes.  Around 75 specimens – 50% first earlies, 50% main crop.  Two varieties each.  So assuming a yield of 8 per plant (though we won’t probaly be able to get them all in) that’s 600 potatoes!! For a grand total of £8.00.  Woo hoo.  Asda price? £3 for two bags totalling around 30 potatoes?  Excellent.

It struck me that it’s amazing in today’s society that a bag of seed potatoes are still so cheap at only £4.50.  I would have thought it would have had a massive mark up these days.  So I guess they must be worth virtually nothing at cost?

A second sexy element is digging over the plot and beginning to prepare. Last year’s collected and piled turf has turned once again amazingly into wonderful top soil.  Sexy Earth once more.

And it was a beautiful sunny moment as I sweated digging into it.  I even added nigey-compost (apparently that sounds bad – I just mean nige-made from veg kitchen scraps) to it to help get even richer.  It is probaly destined for the potato tyre stacks.

This year should see:

• Shifted around beds following a rotation as per chapter 1, page 1 of all books.
• A cleared pond side hopefully with bench (freecycle wanted)
• Another shed (freecycle acquired already) for chickens to try out breeding/stroking chicks/killing/eating….
• A major assult to beat the nettles from taking over…..
• A new gardener to join the team as Baby Yogi joins in (will be 18m in the summer).

Hope to see all others active on their plots too……

BTW I am still here…. November 17, 2008

… just quiet on the blogging front currently..

watch this space….

New project September 2, 2008

I need/want to rescue our ‘car port’ type building that is dying a little.  The landlords highlighted that they don’t support this ’structure’ which was put up by a previous tenant and which we use at our own risk. 

It’s quite large car port-type thing with four bays, two on the left for us.  The left-most is dying badly as it was when we moved in, but now the main beam and strutts for the back wall have lost their footing and the wall / roof is falling away.

 

So enter the new project/plan to try to rescue.  I’ll be calling on my Welsh architect friend who has helped my build a cooker for littleun, a hen house for little chooks, and tonnes of other jobs around the place.

Presume we’ll remove the majority of the back panel/wall, dig into the slope a bit and lay some concrete or something to otherwise secure a base for the back panels and re-fix some horizontal beams????  Should be a laugh and will aim to document the work.

Wot an Autumn Haul….. September 2, 2008

Back from two plus weeks away on holiday with the parents in Spain.   Hope to post a pic of us helping to harvest their potato crop when we finally get fully unpacked!  It was quite a laugh, hard work and fully un-rewarding as they had a very poor yield.  Stubborn oldies meant they re-use essentially the same plot each year, don’t use any fresh composty type input, and shallow bury the seed potatoes with no earthing-up!!  ah well.  Around 100 potatoes yielded around 200 potatoes.  ah.  Still have 200 though so better than a trip to Carrefour for them.

 

Our garden however….  We had already brought up and used the earlies which were ok, and with the wet weather decided to get our main crop haul in rather than unpack from the holiday! It was quite wet but starting with the tyres we were immediatly smug and joyous esp with the comparison with the Spain outcome.

 

  In the basket is the yield from two potatoes in one of the tyres (about 20-25 i think)

 

We had some other good growths over our holiday period including a bumper crop of jalepeno peppers, a reasonable haul of cherry tomatoes, two pretty good sweetcorns, a forest of carrots at last, another nice big marrow (our third and we planted squash seeds!!),  and two stonking sunflowers:

Bonding continues with the chicks…. July 24, 2008

A warm welcome after work or after a hot sunny days’ walk - to come back to a pecking chook.

I still love their desire to join us in the house – by window, stable back door or just the right opportunity presented….