Horse Training, exciting days

From previous post you will know that we have started our horse traction project. Our training  progressed steadily from introduction to harness to pulling a pallet.
Then it got a little exciting, the mare got spooked I suspect by the pallet digging into the ground and jarring her back. She bolted and ran a few yards so developed a fear of things following her, Then she managed to puck up a gate the harness and went carousing around the field.

She eventually stopped after trying and failing yo brush the gate off round a tree. No damage done to her or the equipment but we do need to replace a couple of gate posts.
That was probably the most exciting day, now we are back getting her used to the harness and the sound of chains which she objects to more than walking through or past gates.

This was undoubtedly a set back but we have to just get on with it and work on her confidence again.

We have paid for the equipment from France and are waiting its delivery but this will be put to work in the spring.

Progress in the tunnel

The dwarf french beans have come on well this year, we used trickle irrigation under the Mypex which so far has worked well.

The garlic is harvested from the tunnel and has been dried ready for sale, we do sell some as wet or fresh garlic but can't leave in the ground too late as the bulbs will split apart giving a blown appearance. the this last part of the crop has been lifted trimmed and cleaned ready for sale. 

 Fine beans developing nicely on the plants, the first harvest already sold

The Autumn so far

The summer as has been documented was one of the worst growing seasons in living memory. Most crops have been between three and four weeks late right through the season. In my experience most crops catch up by mid summer but this year crops stayed behind for the whole season which effectively meant three weeks lost from the season.
Surprising for me was the fact that Leeks that need lots of daylight were early compared to last year, nothing is straight forward with organic growing. Most of our various crops are or have been harvested but production is generally much lower than previous years.

The Ram is in with the ewes and has done his job on 3/4 of them. We are looking at lambing from the end of March onwards. At the Hill Radnor show and sale I sold all the ewe lambs except one and they fetched a reasonable price. This year will see the last of the other breeds of sheep on our farm and we will concentrate on Hill Radnors.

Following the loss of my sheep dog Millie we bought a trained dog which we've called Shiv. A mature dog who initially was very shy and nervous, she was unsure of everything so was 'sticky'  when working and hesitant taking instructions. Now after four weeks of back to basics training she is starting to show what she is capable of.  

The bees have produced about a quarter of last years crop which in itself was poor. The main concern though is how well the colonies will winter. The poor summer will have meant patchy mating of queens  which could result in high losses during winter due to queen failure. There is little we can do to influence this we just have to wait and see.

The vegetable plot

For the first time this season we are seeing a good growth rate on the vegetable plot, brassicas are moving ahead well and we should see  a  reasonable crop. The leeks are coming on, not so sure if they have enough time but we are due some warmer weather towards the end of the week.

The wet weather has been ideal for couch grass which we generally have a problem wit. These beds had to be abandoned and will be rotovated at the first opportunity during dry weath

Good, bad and lessons learned

This is the strangest season I've known  we are by my reckoning four weeks behind what we have come to regard as normal. By far the most demanding of years as almost everything has been negatively affected.
The vegetables such as carrots parsnips leeks and beetroot have been slowed down but should hopefully produce a crop they require relativity low growing temperatures. All the most marginal crops however have effectively lost a month of their growing season. While we may get some tomatoes, courgettes, fine beans and squash the shorter growing season will  dramatically reduce the harvest.

The bees have had it rough I've not lost any colonies but have had to feed once in June. The swarming this year has been phenomenal. In one apiary I had all 14 colonies swarming in July and even had a swarm issue in the last week of July.      

The sheep have enjoyed the good grass growth and we have one the best crop of lambs. The hay though still has not been cut as our contractor was away during our only (so far) good week. We're sweating on three or four consecutive rain free days, none in sight so far.

So what have we learned this year?
We have an urgent need to build diversity into our systems. the climate now can produce drought or flood, poor light levels or searing heat. To produce economic crops in these variable conditions there has to be a range of crops able to cope with these extremes.
The poor growing conditions have highlighted a fertility problem here. When there are low temperatures and poor light, fertility needs to be high in order to take advantage of  what warmth there is. Our green manure system will be incorporated with the animals (hens and sheep) to boost nitrogen and phosphate levels.   

Keeping the bees with young queens is vital in poor years, to loose half your bees and the stores to a swarm can spell disaster for the honey crop. This year has been the worst for swarming by an order of magnitude Next year we will be raising queens for all the colonies from the earliest possible date regardless of the
 age of the queen. We are aiming for each colony to have a queen of the current year and a partner nucleus hive with a young queen.

The sheep this year have done well, lambs are looking good with no signs of the fly and worm problem of last year. We have developed a comprehensive health plan with the vet and so far it seems to have produced the desired results.

We may have to look into our own hay making equipment this year, the opportunity to make good hay can have a  tiny window that small hay producers like us need to be able to respond quickly before the chance is gone. 

Veggie progress

 They say you need a lot of water for runner beans. It all started so well with beans germinated under a cloche they seemed to be ahead of a "normal" season. Now they look battered and water logged some flower but no beans and poor lank growth.

 Since this picture was taken the weather has improved beyond recognition with temperatures above 20C every day since the weekend. So we get get some beans but not a heavy crop.

 Peas and broad beans have done better but the pollination of the broad beans has proved patchy in the later stages of the crops development, they are at the moment about or 4 weeks late.

Laying Bio Plastic for planting

After a wet April where we were unable to get on the ground there is at last an opportunity to get on the land and start laying the bio plastic mulch in readiness for planting.

Following a couple of false starts due to hydraulic problems we got off to a good start and the plastics have gone down well.

For the first time this year we are rolling the beds after they have been laid to prevent the problem of random air pockets under the mulch, so far it seems to be working well.

Millie checking the depth of the coulters and tension of the mulch

Season so far

We are in an unusually warm spell at the moment a trend which has developed over the past few years of warm period late winter early spring. We may gamble on that next year and bring lambing forward by a month to February.

Lambing is on schedule for first week of March, the ewes are slow at putting on condition so I've upped their rations Perhaps it is a feature of the breed but they will need more condition during lambing, something we will need to keep an eye on over the next few weeks.

The bees have been fed twice during the winter and have been treated for Nosema, I have omitted the Varroa treatment this year a fact I am increasingly uneasy about. I may resort to a late treatment with Oxalic acid over the next week, will have to see how the time goes. I think that to allow some pressure from Varroa every now and again is useful in preventing Varroa resistance to Oxalic or Thymol. But that doesn't stop me worrying about the upsurge in Varroa especially in this warm winter.

The vegetables have not got going yet, Broad Beans, Garlic and Spinach are all in and growing and we have just planted the Leek seeds in a cold frame.

As for the year ahead we are hoping to expand the bees, transfer the sheep flock over to Hill Radnors exclusively. Perhaps move at last to Care farming and last but not least have a litter of Pups from Millie. She has been going great guns recently but more of that in a later post.

Organic production and morality

The economist Shaun Rikard has stated that Organic production is morally indefensible, on the grounds that we are impeding progress, by holding back the introduction of GM crops. Which presumably he sees as the savior of conventional agriculture and therefore the human race. (Farmers Guardian 20 Oct 2011)

I am astounded that Mr Rikard has pulled out the moral argument, talk about venturing on shaky ground.

The basis of his argument typically ignores the inconvenient fact of peak oil. We as food producers cannot ignore the implications of diminishing oil stocks and the resultant impact on food availability and cost.

The economic advantage of conventional agriculture over organic production depends on the availability of cheap oil based inputs. These financial benefits will disappear as the oil price rises.

80% of an average arable farmers costs are oil based compared to around 20% for organic production it is not difficult to see with a doubling or more in the cost of oil that organic production systems start to approach parity

It is surely the height of folly to put all our efforts into a system of production which relies so heavily on one finite and diminishing resource.

Commercially released GM crops to date have increased the dependency on petro chemicals, they are not a break from oil based agriculture but a continuation along the same track producing evermore intensive growing systems. Resulting in the consumption of increasing quantities of oil based inputs.

Organic production while not free from the use of oil (tractors, poly tunnels etc) reduces massively the reliance on oil, improving rather than diminishing our food security. The moral imperative must be to invest in forms of food production which provide at the opportunity grow food in an oil poor future.

The moral imperative must be to investigate and develop food production techniques which enrich peoples lives by the quality of produce and by an equitable share in the income generated.

Seasonal update

Been a long time since my. last post, so a bit of an update on where we are, the photos are from a visit by a friend in Shrewsbury who offered to do a poster design and print that can be used in the market hall.

The vegetable crops have been acceptable this year, poor growth rates due to the dry and cool conditions we've had this year but they have just about bulked up in time for harvest. That is apart from the Cucurbits, we sowed all the squash, marrow and courgette left them in the tunnel to harden off..../every last one was bitten off just above the soil level, a complete write off. You have to accept some failures every year.

Chickens so far progressing well, we raised all our replacements from day old's again this year and have so far had no repeat of the sheep dog attack of the past two years. Egg sales are also keeping up but feed costs at over £500 per tonne stop us making too much profit from the birds.

The sheep are progressing as planned we put 8 Radnors and 7 Lleyns to the Radnor tup and got 22 lambs, the Lleyn cross have been a bit disappointing with poor growth rates but we have been very happy with the pure Hill Radnors. As a result we will convert the flock to all Hill Radnor's this year.

No Bee related pictures but the bees have been struggling this year without any sustained period of plus 25c temps so the harvest has been mediocre, somewhat down on last year. On a bright point we have acquired three extra colonies as swarms who helped themselves to out empyu boxes, one gave a crop of over 60lbs welcome in a poor year.

we will set to work soon preparing them for winter and topping up their winter stores.

Spring in the vegetable plot

We are getting good early growth this spring with conditions good for cultivating and planting, established plants such as Rhubarb are growing well putting on weight.


The season is running about three to four weeks ahead of what we have come to expect. The spring is hot and dry which so far has progressed things well.

But the soil moisture levels are dropping and without rain in the next week or two the growth of many crops will be compromised. Already we are seeing slow growth rates on the pastures and poor establishment on seeded areas, both pasture and green manures.
Tunnel crops relying as they do on artificial irrigation are going along nicely but with a tendency to run to seed quickly.

The season has started much dryer than previous years so we hope to get rain to stop many of the field crops getting stunted, and the pastures burning off.

Forced Rhubarb

For the fisrt time we tried forced rhubarb under the propagation bench.
We had some success but had too many thin shoots which don't sell so well. Next year we will pot up the roots after lifting and giving the right amout of frost this will allow us to water more effectively so providing better growth rates.
The roots will be divided and grown on for pot sales in the autumn.

Propagation season

The seed sowing season is going full rate now, onions are done lettuce shallots and leeks are being completed. We increased the capacity of the propagation bench and have surrounded the whole thing with white polythene. The result is that we can grow on 20% more trays with the same number of lights. We aim to maintain a temperature of about 15 to 20 C and use only incidental heat from the lamps. These burn 20hrs per day.

These onions are sown 3 to a cell which gives us the right size of bulb for our customers, and being from seed we can store them through to April.

Compost problems

We have been having problems germinating seed this year, especially lettuce so decided to do some pH tests. We used a standard pH and nutrient testing kit which uses liquid a pH test reagent.
The picture (sorry its a bit fuzzy) shows the various materials we have used. The second from the right is the ready made organic Coir based compost which is a very acid pH 4.5. This may explain the poor germination.

We have in the past experimented with mixing our own compost using Coir and our own sterilised topsoil. We tested our batch of top soil which came out at about 6 to 6.5 pH which is OK for our uses. The soil will to some extent act as a buffer holding onto moisture and nutrients while the seedlings are still in the modules as well as neutralising the acidic effect of the Coir
A small batch of our intended mix was made up and when tested it came out at pH6.0 which is perhaps a bit acid so we will by adding lime at about 50gm per 40 litres.
The other additives are perlite which both come out at about pH6to pH6.5.
The results of our pH tests, the mixed compost is extreme right showing pH about 6.5.

Thursday Sheep bees market

First thing John came round our part time help and he started planting the last of the onions, that job all finished now except that there is a serious patch of Couch Grass invading the allium beds which will have to be hand pulled. Millie helped move some sheep who had escaped into the wrong field.
After organising a visit to check Mum in laws new chair I picked the spinach for Fridays market and set off to pick up the vegetables to supplement our own on the market. On route Millie and I checked the sheep we have in Hereford and took the opportunity to do a little training.
Next stop was to check the third of my apiary sites which had taken a big hit,loosing 75% of the colonies. Six now are left two of which are Nucleus hives still needing feeding. I sorted out all the now spare boxes and stacked them out of the way and checked through the remnant colonies. They seem in reasonable nick and will be checked for brood disease next Monday.
Then off to pick are additional produce from our wholesaler and back home to add our home produced stuff. The market is the next stop where I set up the stall ready for Friday morning. Then back where my day ends after putting chickens away and seperating a broody hen ready to take the chicks we are due to collect tomorrow.

Wednesday,First graft and accounts not done

Spent yet another Wednesday not completing my VAT and year end accounts, will have to wait till next week I guess.

I did get the first graft for queen cells done this season. This cold season is slowing every down the bees are slow as are the field vegetables but the poly tunnel crops are OK, we have already cleared one of them ready for the spring planting of fine beans. We have also planted runner beans but have had to heavily protect them against the frost predicted for the next few year.

Tuesday, vegetables, bees and care farming

We have part time help on Tuesdays so they have been clearing tunnels and incorporating compost in readiness for planting our fine beans, we are also sowing Beetroot, 3 types of Kale and Sorrel, all in modules for planting as transplants.

In addition to a short church meeting I had a visit from the Bee Inspector, a government appointed inspector checking for brood diseases specifically American and European Foul Brood. So far all clear but the bigger test will be on Monday when he will be checking the much larger number of Herefordshire colonies.

Spring cultivations for field vegetables

The first jobs was to use our sheep to graze the grass and mow removing the tough grass not eaten by our sheep. Then we broke the surface using a set of deep tines.
They will go deeper but we aim for 6 to 8 inches giving aeration and a key for the Rotary Cultivator.
Then cultivate to about 5" using the tractor mounted cultivator. I like to limit the depth to a minimum, in an attempt to reduce water loss.
For the first time this year we rolled the whole area to compact and loose less soil moisture and hopefully make it easier to lay the biodegradable mulch.

Leek seedbed prblems

Seedling raising in cold frames is fraught with hazards, we have come up against the short tailed vole yet again. there we were thinking we have the leeks nailed for a another season. Sowed 5,000 seed and covered three days ago and hey presto vole city.
The next thing we do is buy in 5,000 seed for sowing in modules where the lights will hopefully bring the seedlings on to catch up with the ones destroyed by our friends the voles.

Sowing

It's a root day on our planting calender, so today we have sown golden and Forono Beetroot, and Fennel also Leeks not a root plant but we're not working to a council of perfection. The germination room is still in use but as the weather improves we will be sowing more in the tunnels rather than under the expensive heat and light of the germination room.
For seeds that still need that extra control over temperature we have a small cabinet which gives some light and bottom heat, it's kept in the germination room so we can control temperature. Useful for lettuce that need a cool germination temperature even in full summer.