The red mite mist...

Before we left for our long-awaited holiday I was having some small problems with red mite in the chicken shed. Namely, the little bleeders (in more ways than one) suddenly seemed to be everywhere, including in my clothes. This led to a nit-picking session in the bar on the ferry, which was viewed with horror by other passengers but gave us a table to ourselves. On our return, while the hens themselves were fine and ably looked after by next door neighbours, the mites were everywehre. Of all the things I though I'd be doing when I got back from holiday, standing in the yard in a t-shirt spraying Jeyes fluid on the hen hut wasn't one of them. But it had to be done: a thorough clean out, Jeyes fluid, blowtorch and Dyna-Mite. After reading some of the forums, I am also going to get some Poultry Shield and will make extra efforts to eradicate this bloody menace. If there are no mites in the hut then there'll be no mites on me and, as Agnieszka said the other night, she doesn't want to spend the winter picking biddies off my neck.

Thankfully this isn't life size...

Feast from the hedgerow...

Almost at the end of summer and the weather suddenly gets better. A lovely few days over the weekend and we decided to forgo any work on the allotment and go out for a walk. We’ve hardly been walking this year and I really miss it, even though I know that neglecting the plot will be at our peril. At least now things are winding down a bit and the weeds, while still a problem, are not as bad as they were. So we popped up to Blackrod for a ramble along the canal. I am so glad we did because the sun shone, the sky was blue, the elderberries have made some lovely syrup (to guard against swine flu over the winter) and we found the biggest mushrooms I’ve ever seen.

Odd uses of a flowerpot...

I am almost at the end of my second season as a bee keeper and was tying up the rampant honeysuckle to the trellis when another plot-holder shouted me, pointed at the new hive and then promptly locked himself in his shed. There was a mass of bees flying above the hive, many more than the normal daily activity so I wandered over to have a look. Bees were pouring out of the entrance and, when they’d more or less all exited, moved as a cloud across the allotments and settled in the highest tree they could find.
There was nothing I could do then, so I finished off the plot jobs, called at the house (in whose garden the tree was) to apologise and let them know I was coming back, then went home for a bite to eat and to assemble a brood box and equipment to house the swarm. We returned around 5.30, just as the rain started. After some difficulty getting the ladder up to the tree, a manoeuvre which included dropping it on my head, I finally got it positioned and started to climb.

In the textbooks, collecting a swarm is a piece of piss. In reality, 20’ off the ground, trying to hold onto a wobbly ladder, a spray, a sheet and a cardboard box and shake the tree to dislodge the colony, it’s anything but. I soon got rid of the spray, dropping it into the thick grass. Next I cut a couple of little branches to get the box in position, then I whacked the trunk. Nothing. A slight buzzing but no movement. So I shook the tree harder. While some of the bees dropped into the box, plenty more decided it was time to fly. I got back down to the ground and put the box onto the sheet, propping open an entrance. When I looked up, most of the bees were still where they were: on the tree. By now I was sweating like a pig, a mixture of nervous energy and adrenalin-fuelled fear. Grabbing a large flower pot, I went up again, managed to get the pot under another large hanging cluster and, again, shook hard. This time they dropped with a plop and I got stung in the process. I don’t think I ever got down from a ladder so quickly. I threw the rest of the bees into the box and then left them for the night, not hoping for much.

The next day the bees were gone from the tree and were clustered in the box so I decided I probably got the queen. Now I just had to get them out of the box and into the hive.

And the easiest way to do this? Shake them out. So I did. Mostly all over the floor but some of them went into the hive. I arranged the sheet (bought in India ten years ago and, until now, unused) so they could use it as a little ramp to get into their new home.

Then, slowly but surely, the remaining bees walked into the hive. I've heard about this before but this is the first time I have witnessed it and it is, indeed, fascinating; watching them all plod up the cloth and in through the hive entrance.

After about an hour they were all, more or less, inside. The feeder was filled with sugar syrup so they don't starve, and the roof put on.

I can only hope, now, that the queen is inside and in one piece. I have to check the hive they swarmed from, to see what is going on in there, but as there were a lot of wasps buzzing round I decided to leave it for another day. I don't like wasps at all and, even though they were sneakily robbing the honey, I still found it unsettling.

This my first swarm experience and I learned a lot from it. The hand that was stung swelled up dramatically over the next day but, two days later, is going down slowly. I am glad it was only the one sting! Now all I have to think are the robbing wasps and the three colonies I now have. I don't have any more equipment and some of the boxes on one hive don't fit properly, leaking when it rains. I will have to reduce my stock down to two for the winter.

Thanks to Agnieszka for moral support and photos, I'll try to keep the bees out of your hair.

On with the show...

After the non-event that was the Royal Lancashire show last year, cancelled due to rain, we decided to make the effort to get to a few shows this year. One reason we missed shows last year was because they were happening earlier than I expected and also many take place in the middle of the week. So we decided, after advice (and some free tickets), to go to the Great Yorkshire and Great Eccleston shows.

Arriving at the Harrogate showground at 7.25am on the Tuesday morning I was surprised to see just how busy it was. We were lucky in that we got a car park close by the showground as, when we were leaving around 5pm, some of the fields to park in were a long way from the entrance. So, after a quick boiled egg / coffee breakfast, we hit the animal sheds.

The GYS is huge. And busy. There were breeds of animal I had never even heard of, in colours / styles I didn’t think were possible. I think photos show more than words.

Steam cleaning the cows before giving them a blowdry to make their hair curl...

Better quality equipment than anything I've seen inside a salon was used with care...
Getting the sheep ready with a final trim...Taking the pigs for a walk in the show ring (these are Berkshires)...Ugly sheep. A Texel, bred for quality of carcase rather than personality...Beef cattle, showing their thighs. I think these were Limousin...
Holstein-Friesians, with their bags full and looking painful...Some cheese to look at, because you couldn't buy it there...

In stark contrast to the warm sun in Harrogate, the day of the Great Eccleston show dawned dark and dreary. We decided to chance it, driving up the M61 past Chorley in torrential rain. By the time we got past Preston it had slowed to a trickle and arriving at the showground it was cloudy but dry, with hints of sunshine poking through the clouds. A lovely site, with views across to Bowland and the smell of country in the air.

Again, photos do more justice than the words.
Saying hello to English white pigs the day after a Saddleback boar made a run for it - to the bar.Anglo-Nubian goats, becoming our preferred choice for the future...A load of bull, probably a ton and a half load and not something I wanted to get too near...Tractor-pulling, the noisy, and seemingly pointless, thing that modern farmers do...Of course, some Shetland sheep after they cleaned up the awards...The sheep show, an informative and amusing look at sheep through the ages...Finally, what to do when there's no television. Eat your sandwiches, watch your cow.

Thanks to Tony and Kath for tickets to Great Yorks and, as ever, to Agnieszka for the lovely photos.

A stitch in time...

It is true that a stitch in time saves nine because if I’d written this the week after, it would have been posted. But I didn’t and, as time went by, it got harder and harder to post. Anyway, it is here now.
A recent trip to Wool-Fest (http://www.woolfest.co.uk/), held in Cockermouth, was a real eye-opener. We went there on a mini-bus organised by our knitting circle, the Knitting Noras, more out of curiosity than anything. It was amazing, and really brought home how little I actually know about wool and fibre. All shades under the sun, in all blends of fibre, from pure wool to bamboo and soy bean fibre, plus everything you could possibly want to knit, spin or crochet. There were even a few sheep and alpacas there, to show where the yarn begins.
We were there for about four hours and had a good look round. It isn’t cheap, but the quality is excellent and most stallholders were pleasant and helpful (are you reading this narky old bag on the book stall?), although there was an amusing reversal of the ‘woman asking a plumber’ scenario when I asked one of the stallholders about a type of wool / sock. When she replied, she looked only at Agnieszka. It was only when I pointed out that it was me who did the knitting did she talk to me properly.
A wedding dress, made from Wensleydale fleece / wool and worn at a sheep-infused wedding.

Queenie-i, queenie-i...

This year’s beekeeping has been fraught with potential disasters and has led to me wondering if I will ever get the hang of it. For some time I have been finding queen cells on the frames of my supers and all the books (and everyone I spoke to) say that on the day, or the day after, a queen cell is capped, the bees swarm. Certain members of Manchester Bee Keepers have been very smug in their prediction that ‘they’ll have gone’. However, I’ve been extremely lucky in that, once or twice, I have arrived to inspect the bees and there have been capped queen cells but the queen is still there and all has been ok. After knocking them down for a couple of weeks I finally decided to split the hive and try to increase my stocks.

Three weeks after splitting the original colony it was time to inspect the new and, while there were quite a lot of bees, there seemed to be no sign of either a queen or eggs. In fact, the brood box was completely empty, all cells clean and waiting, but nothing laying in them and most of the bees clustered in the super of stores. I assumed the new queen was still out on her mating flight and another week was needed but my hand was pushed when I checked the original hive.
Going through the super were odd bits if brood, some larvae and what looked like eggs. This couldn’t be right. I had moved a frame from the brood box to the super to encourage the bees up into the hive but that was long enough ago that they should have hatched and gone by now. Going through the super frames more carefully I spotted the reason for the brood – a second queen. This was clearly not right and it was with some trepidation that I checked the brood box to find the original queen busy about her business, seemingly unconcerned. I now had to think about what to do and I decided to remove the new queen and put her in the, queenless, other hive. Of course, going through the frames again I couldn’t find her so closed up the hive and thought I would come back the next day.

A gap in work meant I could get back to the hive around dinner time. On the first look through I spotted the queen and managed to grab her but she wriggled free and, as I tried to grab her again, flew up and over my hand, between the frames and into the box. Three further trawls through the frames didn’t uncover her again and, with a lot of now narky bees, I closed the hive and went back to work. The third time I went, after work on the same day, things started off as badly, as a couple of searches revealed nothing. On the third run through, however, I spotted the queen on a frame and, quick as a flash, I jabbed the Butler cage over her and then managed to get a bit of newspaper over the end. The sigh of relief was heard throughout the allotments. I closed up the original hive and, hanging the queen cage between two of the super frames of brood, placed her carefully in the new hive and closed everything up.

A week later when I checked there was no sign of the queen in the new hive but I did see eggs. So it seems, at this point, the split was eventually successful. It remains to be seen if she carries on laying and the brood hatches healthily and the wait between each hive visit is hard to bear. If it all works out then I am very pleased but, if not, then towards the end of summer the two colonies will be united and I will try again next year. It hasn’t gone as smoothly as the books lead you to believe, but having to decide what to do on my own has boosted my confidence that I do know what to do without having to take advice from others. My hope now is that the bees settle down and get on with making us some honey.

I recently borrowed a bee suit in order to show a nine-year-old how a hive works and, as I still had it, asked Agnieszka if she wanted to use it to get closer with her camera. She jumped at the chance and, while a little bit nervous, got some great shots. At last I can put some close-up shots on the blog that aren’t blurred. Thank you to Pippa for the loan of the bee suit and to Agnieszka for the photos.

Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin...

I am constantly thinking of how best to address the issue of self-sufficiency. How to get the most out of the least; how to provide for a family without cutting corners and continuing to enjoy a complete lifestyle. One of the difficulties to overcome is how to produce butter and cheese, as we do eat a lot of both. I’ve talked to people about cows but, while I really like the idea of keeping a couple, the deciding factor will be the amount of land. Apparently William Cobbett, a (turn of the) 19th Century reformist and farmer, had a way to keep a cow on a quarter of an acre but everyone else you speak to, alive that is, says you need at least one acre per beast plus another for hay. So that, pretty much, is out of our league.
Goats also produce good quality milk, need a lot less room and are smaller than cows so that’s been a recent avenue of exploration. After contacting both the Anglo Nubian and Saanen societies, I was given the name of a goat keeper near Blackpool and, on the hottest day of the year (not difficult), we trundled off to look at his herd. It was a little disappointing, then, to find only four Anglo Nubian goats in residence: two milkers, a year-old female and a crusty old Billy in a back field. We were warned not to touch him, ‘because of the smell’, and told he was ‘past his sell-by date’, although still capable of siring kids. Billy didn't seem too upset at hearing this.
Out of the hot noon sun and into the goat shed, a light and airy, albeit cobwebby, building where the three females are housed. We talked about care and feeding and how fussy they were about eating things off the floor. From there we moved on to the small parlour where they were milked. Environmental health are very fussy about hygiene, we were told, although as we were shown the scales, where the milk is weighed and then recorded, I noticed a cobweb running from them to the wall. Next door was the cheese-making room and we went through the basic process of making cheese, cleanliness being paramount.
Then it was outside to meet the milkers. One of the goats, the dark one, is a very good example of how the breed should look as one of the others has lop-sided udders. As if to prove she was still exceptional, the lop-sided one showed us how she could cough and fart at the same time, something that impressed me at least. I even managed not to laugh, despite the temptation. We discussed the amount of milk, between 3 – 6 litres, you would get daily, and how to get rid of it. Would we make cheese and butter? Sell it? One option is to freeze it as goat milk and cheese freezes well, better than cow’s milk, so that would be an option for when the goat is dry. The other thing to consider carefully is the twice-daily routine of milking…
After we left we headed for the beach and, surrounded English fatties and Polish families, we chatted about the commitment of keeping animals. It really is a tie, so if we can’t find people to look after them, we wouldn’t be able to go away and there lies the crux of the problem. One that needs a lot of thought. For now, while we're thinking, I will continue my quest for information about the best options and next on the list is milk sheep.

Many thanks to George Bassindale and his wife for their patience and honesty in answering a multitude of questions and for the milk and cheese we were given to take home. To be able to home produce something as tasty as this could well be the deciding factor!

Shear delight…

Bank Holiday weekends can sometimes be a washout but for once the weather matched the forecast and, while not as hot as predicted, was warm and dry enough for me to toddle up to Ramsbottom to give Tony and Kath a hand with the shearing of the sheep.
Whatever I was expecting, it certainly wasn’t the sight of Tony, still in his Sunday best shirt and tie, hand clipping a ewe. After a few minutes of chat it was down to business and I was given the task of trying to ‘roo’ a ewe. Unfortunately the wool hadn’t risen enough for it to come off easily and, despite tugging and pulling, I couldn’t seem to make the fleece come off and had to resort to clippers. With the ewe fairly immobilised by a head restraint, it was quite straightforward to clip the back and down the sides of the belly. Doing the legs was a different matter as they don’t like their legs touched so trying to clip the fleece from a squirming, wriggling sheep made it a slightly more difficult task.
The second ewe we did was one of the older ones and well used to the process. She stood quietly while the fleece was literally pulled off her. When the new wool starts to grow it pushes the old growth off to some extent and that means it can be pulled, or roo-ed, easily. Again, starting on the spine the fleece is peeled off the sheep like you would a banana, except that it’s wool, warm and smells differently. The ewe, I’ve forgotten her name, stood quietly, burping occasionally.
Finally we attempted a ram. This is a whole different ball game, if you’ll pardon the expression. Firstly, they have horns and, secondly, they are much stronger than the ewes and a lot more wilful, so even getting them into the head restraint was a task in itself. I held onto the horns while Kath pulled with the halter but it wasn’t easy. This one had to be clipped and so, again starting at the spine, we clipped the fleece from its back. The ram let its displeasure be known by having a wee a couple of times and dropping a few sheep currants, but neither found a target. He settled down as we did the belly but got understandably skittish when it was time to trim the fleece from around his tea and sugar, add to this my nervousness with a sharp pair of clippers and it’s a wonder there wasn’t blood. I was proud of my ability to shear and only once nicked a sheep but not enough to draw blood – although it was enough to make the ewe a bit nervous.
As a bonus I was given the fleece from the chocolate coloured ewe that I clipped. As soon as my carding brushes arrive I will attempt to turn this into some sort of yarn and knit something from it, the first time I will have done the whole process from clipping to knitting via carding, spinning (not sure how to do this bit yet) and washing. It seems every week I learn something new and I feel good that I can do these things. I look forward to learning more and, maybe one day, passing on some skills to my offspring.

Double the investment...

Not since I was a child have I seen a double yolker and, on Tuesday, we got one each. Now that's what I call a return on the investment.
Needless to say, they were bloody lovely, and gone in seconds!

Doing the splits in a morning...

So far this year the hive hasn’t presented any problems but over the last few weeks the bees have been building queen cells and, after finding a couple of them capped, I started to get very nervous that I would lose them if they swarmed. At my weekly inspection last Monday I found a very nice queen cell and decided to split the hive to stop them swarming and to increase my potential honey harvest.

So on Tuesday morning I went to the site before work and did the best I could to perform an artificial swarm. This involves removing the queen and then replacing the brood box with a completely new one. The old box is moved a few feet away and any flying bees return to the new box on the old site, with the old queen. The box is bare so they think they’ve swarmed. The second hive contains the queen cell and the non-flying bees and will be left for three weeks in the hope the new queen will mate and start laying.

Everything seemed to go smoothly but, after reporting back to a more experienced bee-keeper I realised the queen excluder was above the new brood box and not underneath (to stop the queen trying to make a run for it). I had to go back and change it all round later that day. Now all I have to do is wait but the weather is poor and it may mean the queen doesn’t mate properly. Whatever happens, it’s a new learning curve and a chance to try to get better at techniques to increase the size of my apiary.

Dung. It's the future, I smelled it...

Over the weekend we went to Builth Wells for the Smallholder and Garden Festival, held at the Royal Welsh Showground. It was a chance to meet people who already farm on a small, or larger, scale, to see breeds and, hopefully, to get some information that would inform our choices for the future.

It was more than even I had hoped for and just about everything you could want was represented: hens, ducks, turkeys, guinea fowl, dogs, sheep, pigs, goats, cows, horses, tractors, alpacas, hamsters, rabbits and bees. I haven't been this excited since I crossed the border into Albania. We got to the showground around 9am and we didn't leave until many of the trade stands had packed in and gone at about 6pm. Where the time went to I have no idea. It was fantastic. I got to speak to people about cows, goats, sheep and spinning and for all the questions that got an answer, another dozen sprang into my head.
I was really buoyed up by the positive attitude of the people I spoke to, their hard lives made better by the quality of life they now enjoyed. I was at once elated and depressed. Elated because this is what I want for our future, somewhere to live where my family can enjoy food and drink untainted by chemical additives, where it is produced locally and doesn't sit for days in the back of a trailer, trundling across Europe so that Tesco shoppers can enjoy the fruit (and veg) of the season at unseasonable times. I know it will be hard work but I am not afraid of that, not if it means giving Agnieszka and any children a good standard of living. On the flip side, it made me depressed knowing that, for a few years at least (how many? Three? Five? Twenty?) we will be stuck in that cultural sewer pipe known as Farnworth and that money will restrict what we do here, or in Poland. It was a sobering thought and one that made me think hard over the following few days. Depressed I might be about my current finances and lack of 'easy' opportunities but the resolve has hardened and the determination is there. One day, we will have it. I am sure of it.

From the show, then. Some photos:

An Angora goat, softest fleece I've ever touched.

Some Anglo-Nubian kids...

An ancient cow of Wales with calf...

A modern farrier, making a horseshoe the traditional way...

Parading some Welsh mountain sheep in the ring...

Preparing to show...

A sheep hairdrier, I kid ye not...

How to shear a sheep in under two minutes by a bloke from the British Wool Marketing Board...

Some quail, these ones are Cinnamon Quail...

The pig shed buzzed and hummed, mainly from the smell of the pigs, which is a bit of an acquired taste. These are English Whites being shown in the ring. Essentially it is an opportunity for the pigs to do a bit of running around and for their owners to chase them with a bit of board and a flimsy walking stick...

An Oxford Sandy and Black, or possibly a Gloucester Old Spot...

My mum's favourite (on a butty) is the Saddleback...

While the rain stopped for a bit we popped outside to look at a working threshing machine...

And a stretch tractor...

And finally, for everyone we know in Ramsbottom... a ram's bottom.