Farming Friends

I am thrilled to announce that Mrs Boss, the broody hen at The Cottage Smallholder website has successfully hatched at least 3 of the 6 guinea fowl eggs that I sent in the post to them four weeks ago.

When I read that Mrs Boss had gone broody and needed some eggs I offered some of my guinea fowl eggs. When Fiona @ The Cottage Smallholder said that she would love some, the challenge was then on for me to find the eggs. I had to compete with the local magpies and the guinea hens who like to lay their eggs in the hedgerows. A particular favourite nesting site is in the middle of a pile of nettles. Luckily for me, I had noticed where Camilla, Diana and Harriet were laying their eggs that week, so over the course of a few days I managed to gather 6 eggs which I stored in the kitchen (there would have been 7 eggs to send but my husband didn’t realise why I was storing eggs for incubation and ate one for his tea!)

Once the 6 eggs were gathered I then had to think about packaging them and this became my second challenge. I went to the local post office to buy a box to send them in only to find that they didn’t have one nor parcel wrap. They did kindly give me a box. So I returned home to carefully wrap each egg in a plastic bag, placed in an eggs box then put side the box which was then stuffed with practically every plastic carrier bag I possess - now that’s what I call recycling! Luckily for me I managed to find some old parcel wrap that belonged to my husband’s Grandma which I made fit the box with some nifty cutting. On returning to the local post office I was told that the post office counter was shut and so I had to trek to the local town.

Once the parcel was successfully in the post the worrying did not stop. Next I was worried that the eggs would not arrive intact, but they did. Then I worried that Mrs Boss wouldn’t accept the eggs, but she did. (Click on this link to read about their arrival and acceptance.) The biggest worry of all was whether the eggs were fertile and yes they were. The reason I know, I hear you ask is because this morning when I went to visit The Cottage Smallholder, I read that so far 3 guinea fowl keets have hatched off.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Fiona and Mrs Boss are now the proud mums of 3 guinea fowl keets that originate from my farm. Click on this link to read all about the guinea fowl hatching event.

When I find out more information about the keets I will let you know.

Farm life continues even though the farm has been flooded and is still standing in water in many places.

• A calf is born.
• The farm prepares for the arrival of the two saddleback gilts.
• The calves are moved out of the back field.
• The cattle, guinea fowl and hen still need feeding twice daily.
• The landrover goes for it’s MOT.

I received an email on Saturday from one of my regular readers Joanna, enquiring about what food can be given to young chicks as one of her Orpington hens had turned up with a chick.

All the books I have recommend giving chick crumbs for the first ten to 14 days and this is what I feed my guinea fowl chicks along with some chopped up lettuce. I give my keets the lettuce from about one week of age when I have a few leaves spare.

If you don’t have chick starter feed, you can feed them for a day or two on;

• instant oatmeal,
• flaked infant cereal,
• or other whole-grain cereals.

You can put whole grains (rice, wheat, barley, old-fashioned oats) into the blender and blend them slightly. Do not blend completely to a powder, the feed should have some “grits” in it.

Adding ground up hard boiled eggs, milk or yoghurt to chick crumbs or crushed up feed is also recommended.

Lettuce and greens chopped up small can also be given to chicks.

Recipes For Homemade Chick Crumbs

Recipe one.

Grind up the following ingredients;
canary seed 3parts,
millet seed 2parts,
groats 2parts,
hempseed 1part,
finely cracked peas 1part.

This recipe is taken from Home Poultry Keeping By Dr Geoffrey Eley.

Recipe 2. Chick Mash.Wheat, maize & oats meal - 13kg.
Fish or meat meal - 5kg.
Alfalfa meal - 5kg.
Ground seashells - 0.9kg.
Cod liver oil - 0.5kg.
Salt - 0.5kg.

This recipe says that if you give them plenty of wholemilk you can forget all but a little of the cod liver oil, the alfalfa meal and half if not all of the fish/meat meal.

This recipe is taken from The Complete Book Of Self Sufficiency By John Seymour.

I have never tried these recipes so I am not able to say whether chicks like this alternative.

If there are any ingredients that I have omitted to list that can be fed to chicks or are a favourite with your chicks, then please leave a comment.

I have found radish very easy to grow thanks to advice from TopVeg. I thought that it would be great for the children in my gardening club to sow radish seeds and then get to eat their radish with the lettuce that we have grown.

Farming Friends & TopVeg have collaborated to create a How To Grow Summer Radish growing card.

Click on the image to enlarge and if you wish to print off this growing card, right click on the enlarged image and then click print picture to print out a copy.

If you would like this document as a pdf, just contact farmingfriends and I will email you the document.

I intend to print off copies and then laminate the sheet so that I can use the growing card with my school gardening club in the future.

Teachers, children, vegetable growers and anyone interested in growing Summer radish are welcome to print off this growing card for their own use.

Other growing cards we have already created;

• How To Grow Garlic.
• How To Grow Lettuce.
• How To Grow Beetroot.

If you have any other growing cards that you would like Farming Friends & TopVeg to create then please leave a comment and we will be happy to create it for you.

I’ve often noticed that my cats do not like to get their paws wet and will take the long route across the farmyard to avoid the puddles of water that accumulate on the yard.

This is why I was abit shocked to find that when I waded through the knee high water to check on my guinea fowl and Hatty the hen on Tuesday night I could hear loud meaowing. I was a little concerned as the cries seemed to be coming from the orchard which I knew was flooded. As I headed back to the house, I was greeted by four cats all standing at the waters edge.

Where was Snowball? I thought. The answer came from the old apple tree. To my surprise, Snowball was sitting in the apple tree licking his paws which were drenched. I’m not sure how Snowball managed to get himself into this predicament as the tree was surrounded by deep water on all side.

I spent 3 hours trying differnt ways to coax the cat out of the tree. I waded up to the tree and was met by Snowball who accepted a stroke on the back and head, before darting back up the tree before I had chance to grab hold of him.

A box with scraps of chicken was sure to entice a cat from the tree but this tactic failed too. It’s a little difficult holding a box, a piece of chicken and then trying to grab a cat that doesn’t like to be held.

As a last resort I went to fetch some ladders and placed them against the tree. Initially I thought about climbing up them but then decided that this wasn’t safe so I leant one ladder against the tree and then the others were placed horizontally on the floor so that if Snowball wanted he could climb down.

I left Snowball sat near the top of the tree snoozing, like a fluffed up “snowball!” as I couldn’t coax him down onto the ladder.

How Snowball got up the tree in the first place will remain a mystery and so will his escape because when I got up the following day there was no sign of Snowball in the tree or in the water below.

It was a great relief when I called the cats to find that Snowball was amongst the gang of hungry ginger and white felines. Lets hope he’s learnt his lesson.

Here are more photos of the flood that covered our farm and land yesterday.

These photographs were taken about mid morning.

The water began to surround the house and foldyard inching closer and closer. By early afternoon a couple of inches of water was lapping at our back doorstep and the water was approaching our house from the lane. The village was flooded and the water was running down the lane towards our house, so although we had managed to stem the flow of the water from the beck behind our back field the water was now approaching from another direction.

Our farmhouse has been built in a dip and if the water from the lane joined the water from the garden our house and foldyard would be flooded. We built a flood bank up the lane to try to divert the water from the lane to another field but the farmer who owned the field was not happy that his sugar beet field was beginning to fill up. He wanted the floodbank taking away so that we could all share the flood! With the floodbank removed the threat of flooding in the house grew ever closer and as the skies threatened more rain we became anxious that the house and livestock would flood.

Then water began to appear from the drains in the farmyard which threatened the cattle in the foldyard. We prepared to move the cattle but where to was a problem as the other farm was already underwater.

By 7pm the water level in the farmyard near the foldyard had marginally receded and the flow of water from the village was beginning to slow down. The threat to the house and livestock had passed thankfully.

The full extent of the damage is yet to be assessed.

At 2 am this morning we were woken by a phone call from our neighbour to say that the beck had burst it’s bank and the village was flooded. The water was making it’s way up the lane, like a river in the neighbouring field and flowing quickly from our back field into the yard, veg patch and garden.

After a number of phonecalls to the other farm to see if that was flooded we decided to start sand bagging a corner of the back field. With no sand and only mud and plastic feedbags, 4 of us started to shovel soil into the bags and pile them high. Did we do any good? Only time will tell. My father in law said that the water was now only a trickle instead of the gushing torrent that it had been when we first encountered the problem.

By 5am we had run out of bags and energy from all the digging and headed back to the house to find that the water level was creeping up and creeping closer to the house. I practically swam to the poultry hut to check on the guinea fowl and Hatty. The veg patch is now a swimming pool and the garden is little by little disappearing from view.

Here are photos from about 5.30am this morning.

We are hoping that the flood doesn’t worsen, thank heavens it’s not raining still. What makes matters worse for us is that we have two farms flooded and not just one.

I will give you updates as events change.