On the verge

Life's good at Rock HQ, it always has been, but with today's sunshine it was especially good. The critters all enjoyed the sun on their backs and for once were all well behaved. The only drama of the day was soon solved. A noise like a goose being maimed prompted a frantic search of the smallholding, eventually Sally our Chinese goose was found firmly wedged under the garden gate. Panic over the noise some poultry was released and mustering all the dignity she could waddled off to join the rest of the flock.

I took some time out from writing up assessments to enjoy the sunshine while it lasted, BBMC training took us over The Bonsai Mountain three times, this time it took longer than an hour, partly because it was so hot, partly because I had a pint of beer before hand with a large ploughman's lunch, but mostly because of laziness. Spring flowers are everywhere laying a colourful carpet to walk on. However amongst the beautiful flower arrangements I spotted an evil menace.

Its about to start again, we are on the verge of another war. These bracken hooks will be six inches high by the end of the week. This year we are better prepared, the yellow strimmer that turned every sortie against the green stuff into a man test has been replaced by a smart blue mean machine. So go ahead bracken, make my day.

The war continues

The are many battles smallholders fight. Some are massive wars of attrition such as the one waged against the ever encroaching Bracken, whoever gives up first loses. So far armed with a petrol strimmer I have managed to carve nearly three acres of reasonable grassland from the strangle hold of the dreaded ferns.

Then there are battles that you cannot win, like the one against the weather so you adapt, adopt and improvise to get the jobs done before the weather wins. Or how about the battle you must win at all costs, keeping the goats out of the garden, constant vigilance is called for and sometimes parts of the garden have to be sacrificed in order to let the goats think they are winning while you regroup and launch a new offensive.

Perhaps the strangest battle is the one over the eggs. It seems all of the inhabitants of Rock HQ want to get their hands, paws, claws and even hooves on the rent from the hens. I turn my back for a second tonight and Faith hurdles the barn door and takes off with two eggs in her mouth. Last night Reba ate 14 eggs collected and put for safe keeping on the kitchen worktop.

But the strangest thief of all is Trevor, caught on camera having eggs for breakfast!

Welcome to the jungle!

Our son Ben is in Belize doing jungle warfare training with the army. Its a bit of a way to go when he could have done it on our hill where a jungle flourishes.

I have been getting top tips on bracken control from a chap called Rob Marrs from Liverpool University. He has been conducting a controlled study on eliminating this menace of a plant.


As you can see these pictures show how thick it grows and in places its over five feet tall. Our fields were like this when we moved into Rock HQ but we attacked it with our brush cutter and reclaimed the grassland.


Emailing Rob has confirmed that we are on the right approach, cutting it is the best way of getting rid of it if you are running an organic smallholding like we do, on the other hand I was looking forward to a time when I didn't have to dress in combat gear and do battle against the foliage, I thought five years and it would be gone.

Rob has been cutting one area for 18 years and its still not clear.

I need a drink!

Horse Power!

I was talking to a friend today who told me I should get rid of all the animals that don't directly contribute to Rock HQ. In other words get rid of the Horses, Goats, Dogs, Cats, the Poultry that are free loading and presumably the fish.

Whilst I can see his point that they are eating us out of house and home, that our feed bill every month is twice or three times what we spend on our own food and that sometimes there seems very little return for our investment, what he failed to understand is that most of the animals here now are work in progress and one day will, hopefully, contribute to the smooth operation of Rock HQ.

The goats will be milk goats once they go to kid in November. This does depend on us being able to find a Billy Goat that wants to do the business with our two very pretty females. It also relies on us being able to transport a Billy here in accordance with Defra rules and current restrictions on moving animals in and out of our area due to the Blue Tongue Midge. Then there's finding a Billy that's the same scrapey rating as our two, that they can actually get pregnant and safely deliver kids and produce milk in reasonable quantity. Apart from all that its easy to see that by the end of the year they will be giving us "free" milk and some kids that we can sell, bring on to milk goats or even eat Caribbean style. Meantime they keep us entertained. Or busy.

The dogs and cats are pets, so they are allowed to live here rent free. The fish are very quiet so no trouble, unless they get out and start swimming up and down the path, they then have to be caught and put back in the pond before their flood created adventure playground dries up. But as we live in Wales it hardly ever rains so it no problem.

The poultry are currently under review, do we replace the three turkey females that got eaten by the fox, or do we cut our losses as well as Terry the turkeys head off and eat him. He is fortunate that there are no festivals or holidays coming up otherwise he might find his reign of the garden ending very soon. That and he is an absolute monster bird, therefore scarey and difficult to deal with particularly when you only have one arm capable of turkey homicide. The geese are pets, as are the ducks (Tracey has a habit of nominating things as pets to prevent their premature demise and subsequent appearance on the dinner table). The rest of the poultry are being rotated, in other words the new chicks we have will be layers next year, the current layers will be chicken stews in the winter, apart from Devil Hen, Cheeper, Budge, Cheeper's Mate, Donna, Black Hen, Fluffy and Walter who have all achieved the exhaulted status of petship. So again hardly any hangers on there.

The sheep are all pets, with the exception of Hercules, Bonny, Maude and Sandy. Hercules will be sold as a pedigree ram as soon as he is old enough thereby making a small contribution to the feed bill. The other three will be making a very real contribution to reducing our personal feed bill and taking up residence in Mr. Whirlpool the freezer just before Christmas. Bill is still missing on the common, the two Suffolks will be mutton or sold once I can track them down but at present don't put a strain on the purse. Ebony the coloured ryeland may be sold as a pet, or eaten as a bar b que, it depends on how she looks tomorrow after shearing. He has promised to turn up tomorrow, Trevor the Shitland hopes he does as they are in his stable at the moment and he has been evicted to the dairy. As usual we are keeping the smallholder rule, if you have an empty building then you must fill it with animals.

The pigs will all be going for meat, one as bacon and two as pork. The astute amongst you will already have worked out we have four pigs and I have only listed three. This is because the status of "Pet" has been given to Tiny, a pig with half a tail and who is substantially smaller than the rest. Why has this one been chosen as a pig we want to breed from, well not because she is the best, healthiest, biggest or strongest, no, its because she looks so cute and has kind eyes. I must stop Tracey going to the pig sty before others get pet status and I have no bacon next year.

The horses are definitely work in progress. They are going to be working horses who will carry and cart stuff around the smallholding, from moving hay to logs, from dragging a bracken bruiser to clear large patches of future grazing to dragging a scuffle or harrow across our fields to improve the grassland. I am not a Luddite, but machinery here is not suited to the ground, we had a Land Rover called Ivan (pictured above) but he was useless and totally unable to get into the fields. The slope is quite severe. A quad bike would be fun, but again impractical as it would not manage the gradient safely. This leads us to horse power. I am keen to learn old country skills and horse handling is one skill I intend to master. If you have seen the picture of my attempt to shear you will see I am keen to acquire the ancient ways of country folk and have an obvious talent.

I expressed this desire to learn horse handling to JJ at the weekend and told him how a harrow for a quad bike is about £100 whereas a similar sized one for a horse coats over £1100. This is because of a quick release mechanism engineers refer to as a dog which prevent horse hurting itself when it bolts off, or stops the horse handler being dragged under the harrow by the enthusiastic beast. Apparently JJ is inspired to help this project, he is an engineer type, not because he is overly concerned about the welfare of the horse, or that the handler may suffer a devastating injury to his other arm as he acquires these new skills, no he wants to help so the project actually happens and he can read about the mayhem on this blog.

Its good to have friends!

The Green Menace

This is a clip of the Bracken in the cauldron, as you can see in places its five foot high and totally covers the hill. This is why I cut the green manace back from our field every week. There are times I feel like I am not making progress, it grows back so fast, in the worst patch on the top of Oak Bank its nearly a foot high, but compared to the rest of the hill I am making massive gains. It's a tough plant and the roots store energy and produce the massive green foliage, by constantly cutting it back the reserves of the plant are exhausted and it will die.

Eventually.

Hopefully before the strimmer breaks.

Ideal renovation project

This may look like a pile of stones but it is in fact the remains of a cottage that once stood in Oak Bank. The bright green strip above the trees pointing to the top of the hill is what we call North Face Gully, very steep and the source of one of the streams that runs alongside our boundary.

The hill beyond the trees is all ours, its actually common land but that's just a technicality.

The gully isn't on the north face either, but its sounds more dramatic saying you have been up North Face Gully rather than saying you have been up West North West Gully.

The field is work in progress, in 2006 the field looked like the rest of the hill, hard work, a sharp machette, a box of plasters and a brushcutter coupled with lots of perseverance has turned it into reasonable grassland, all be it littered with anthills and fallen trees. There is a lot more to be done, the soil is a bit on the acidic side so this weekend I will be scattering lime over it and cutting back the new shoots of bracken.

You may have read previous entries where I mentioned that this is valley has been inhabited for a long time. Rock HQ dates back to around 1750, thankfully a few improvements have been made on the original cottage, its been extended up and out. We have the paperwork for the cottage dating from 1887 which are interesting to look at but impossible to read. Amongst all the parchments is a curious document referring to another cottage with the same name as Rock HQ.

This was sold to the owners of Rock HQ in 1906 for the princely sum on ten whole pounds. For that they got the cottage and the grounds, approximately two acres. The inhabitant, an old lady moved out to live with relatives in the next village. Times have changed since 1906, ten pounds wouldn't buy a door lock yet alone a cottage and two acres. The cottage has also seen better days but its repair is on the to do list.

Not that it will be restored to an actual cottage, the stones will be used to create a dwelling like The Black House in the Outer Hebrides. The blackhouses of the Highlands of Scotland were byre dwellings in the tradition of ‘long houses’ which have existed in Northern Europe for over a thousand years. Originally blackhouses had no chimneys or windows and were built with locally-found materials - stone, turf, thatch of reeds, oats, barley or marram grass. The animals lived one end and the people lived the other. Ours will be used as either an animal shelter or a bunkhouse for walkers. More likely it will be used by me as a play house for living history days. Until I get fed up and wander back down the track to a house with plumbing, a roof that doesn't leak and comfortable beds.

The way the current jobs list is being raced through this project should reach the top of the list in about 2016.

Patience is a virtue.

Know your enemy!

These three are high on the hit list, the Bracken grows the fastest, when it dies it breaks down leaving the brown mulch that doesn't allow anything to grow except its mates the thistle and nettles. As we are trying to manage the garden and grassland organically weedkillers are not an option. So we shall be cutting them down every week and hoping the grass seed we spread today establish in their place. Pity our brush cutter broke on the weekend!