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14 December 2007 I realised, when getting stuff together for the school Christmas fair, that I haven't made any jam or chutney this year. I blame the weather for wrecking the plum harvest, though being frantically busy is probably a more honest explanation. Cold and damp December now. Soggy brown leaves carpet the grass where I have failed to collect them. The ponds are refilling after their levels fell in the dry spell of early autumn. Chickens are shivering and bored from being shut in - avoiding the threat of both bird flu and the fox. The web site has had a bit of an overhaul. Photos were taking up too much space so we have offloaded them to external sites. They might take a little longer to load, but they will look better and it does allow us to show some short video too. 10 June 2007 June already. You all know what the weather's been like, but for the record: April was extraordinary and lovely so Spring came early. Blossom was excellent and huge crops of fruit have set on all the trees. May was drenching and a bit worrying for all the early-hatched birds, but they seem to have survived. We've had a brood of moorhens on each pond and some ducklings too. June is mixed, but great when the sun comes out. There are loads of young tits about, and a few blackbirds. And I heard and saw a blackcap in the Grove, so have added it to the list. Most noticeably are the huge numbers of rabbits - we are completely overrun. They have not yet managed to penetrate the veg patch where, after a slow start, things are going OK. We're picking broad beans and lettuces and the potatoes are looking great. One story from earlier I must record: one morning as I stepped out of the shower, I heard the dreadful squawking of terrified chickens. I rushed to the window and leaned out bellowing at the blasted fox. It took no notice and had one of the poor birds on the ground by the neck. Suddenly, from across the ditch a muntjac deer dashed across the garden and attacked. The fox was so startled it dropped the chicken and the deer chased it away up into the field. Amazing. A couple of days later, I saw the deer again - with a tiny calf. The deer continued to protect us for the next few weeks as her baby hid in the grass. Sadly, the fox returned when she had gone and took the cockerel and a hen and since then we have had to confine them. I'm seeing the fox almost daily at the moment, usually carrying a young rabbit. 2 March 2007 Already two months into the new year. Winter never really arrived and now it's nearly Spring. It seems to have rained non-stop and for the first time in two years the ditches are running freely and ponds overflowing into them. We've been hopelessly busy with renovating the kitchen. It is finally finished after a month of hard work, and it looks fantastic. I'm embarrassed to show off about it but, in response to popular demand, I have posted a few pictures of it on the Family page. Birds are singing and nesting; chickens are laying; and the vegetable garden demands my attention. 26 September 2006 Summer's over; children are back to school; and the garden shifts towards winter. July continued fiercely hot, until by the first week in August the large pond was quite literally just a puddle and all the water butts were empty. The moorhens seemed desperately hungry and resorted to eating the unripe apples, congregating on the swimming pool cover and leaving the cores in the water. We lost every single Bramley apple on the tree and all the first ever crop on the espaliers. In contrast, August was soaking. The ponds were rejuvenated and the water butts filled again. The vegetables coped Ok with the contrasts in weather and we has the usual bountiful crops. The tomatoes were particularly fabulous, both indoor and out. We grew mangetout for the first time, and were impressed by its mildew resistance - indeed I picked that last of the crop only yesterday. September has been warm and golden. The greenhouse continues to produce tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, aubergines and chillies; while in the veg patch beans are courgettes are still flowering, and the final crop of lettuces is looking very healthy. 7 July 2006 Back this week from our Twinning visit to La Bonneville-sur-Iton in Normandy. Hot and exhausted, it was a delight to be home. The garden has thrived in the heat and we are swamped with lovely, fresh veg. The flowers and grass have suffered in the heat and I am reluctant to rescue them as water is very short now. I am continuing to pump rainwater from the galvanised tank next to the barn into the water butt by the greenhouse, but its 200 gallons cannot last forever. We need some rain. Photos of the twinning visit are on the Family page. 20 June 2006 Little rain this month and the ponds are retreating again. The vegetables are flourishing in the warmth, with peas and broad beans nearly ready and courgettes flowering. There will be masses of tomatoes, provided they don't succumb to tomato lurgy (that's a technical term). French beans and sweetcorn have recovered from their rather hasty planting out and are beginning to grow well. We have eaten our first potatoes and carrots. It looks like we may get our first apples and pears on the espaliers that I planted round the veg garden fence and having remembered to net the soft fruit in time this year, we will also get a decent crop of red and black currants, plus the usual gooseberries. All this success with the veg, though, is at the expense of flowers which are barely surviving beneath the onslaught of bind weed and ground elder. The hot weather has made us head for the pool and we have had a couple of lovely relaxing weekends, eating outside and lazing around in the sun. Good weather coincided with our annual bat count and it was with a glass of cold white wine that we recorded 151 pregnant pips this year. Regular readers will be glad to note that I have fixed the problem with the holiday snaps and they should now be happily visible on the Family page, though lack of server space means I have had to axe some of the archive photos. 5 June 2006 Back from holiday (see photos) to find a baby great tit grounded near the pool and a swallow with a broken wing dying nearby. Moorhen chicks have hatched on the large pond and there are lots of baby rabbits feasting on the flowers. 12 May 2006 May really is the best month here. It is extraordinary how quickly the landscape has changed. Over the last six weeks, winter has become summer. The acid green background to everything is dazzling. All the trees are now in leaf. The daffodils that waited for so long burst into life when warmer air finally arrived and were glorious, but have now finished - apart from the few late ones beneath the flowering cherries. The vegetables are roaring ahead. We have our first lettuces ready, potatoes are earthed up, cauliflowers, carrots, peas and broad beans are coming along. In the greenhouse, the tomato plants are 18 inches tall and in bud. Courgettes, sweetcorn and french beans are waiting for a week or so more before I put them in the ground. The swallows finally returned at the end of April, though we do not have any in the barn so far this year. Instead, we have been finding a lot of barn owl pellets. We have had great fun dissecting these and identifying the skulls of voles and shrews. The owl must be using the barn as a useful shelter. April was very dry and the ponds shrank alarmingly. The large pond became a muddy puddle, with it's 'arm' completely dry. Last weekend, however, 36 hours of steady rain during which about 2 inches must have fallen, saw the ponds restored to normal levels. One casualty of the downpour, however, was our ancient damson tree. Already leaning alarmingly, it fell in the night. 15 March 2006 Winter is still with us - this is something of a shock after several years of early springs. It is still barely above freezing, the snowdrops are still glorious and the daffodils remain half-height and tightly wrapped. The birds are prospecting the nest boxes and the ducks are still feeding with us daily. No moorhen nests or frogspawn yet. We have recently discovered a barn owl using a tree hole in the ancient oak that overhangs the western paddock. It is the oak that is so beautifully silhouetted against the pink and purple sunset on our wildlife page and although it really belongs to our neighbour, I covet it wickedly. Martin and I were walking round the perimeter and stood admiring the oak when, with a whisper, the bird flew from the hole and off across the grove. There are droppings around the hole to suggest that it is in regular use. On a couple of occasions, I have also recently disturbed a woodcock in the wood. We had been told they were there, but I had not spotted one until this year. Chickens are all laying, for a change but remain penned in for fear of the fox and flu. The greenhouse seeds I planted three weeks ago have germinated and I have begun digging over the vegetable garden although it is still too cold to plant anything in it, I think. Indoors, we have redecorated Ellie's tiny room in brighter colours and are awaiting the arrival of a fabulous new bed for her. The children's bathroom is finished and a huge improvement, though I am hoarse with shouting at them to keep it clean! 19 January 2006 It is almost a year since I have added to this log. Did you miss me? The main reason has been that I have spent a lot of my computer time last year working on a website for Woolpit School. This left little time for my own stuff. Once I'd finished that I realised that I should probably give this site a makeover and it has taken me a little time to get around to it. Anyway, I'm back and I think you could do with a brief summary of last year's highlights. Spring was lovely, as ever. Lots of frogs and newts, moorhens and ducks. We were once again adopted by a brood of ducklings - the offspring of the black and white duck. We fed them and watched them grow throughout the summer until they left us in the Autumn. We hope to have them or their parents back again in the Spring. A rare visitor turned up in the Spring too. A Harris Hawk, presumably an escapee from somewhere lurked around for a couple of days scaring the life out of the poor birds, before disappearing again. In the summer, we played host to a roost of 160+ pregnant soprano pipistrelle bats. Two of the babies found their way through the ceiling into the house and with advice from the BCT we put them back in the loft. The fields around us have lain fallow since the cows left a couple of years ago and are increasingly inhabited by roe deer. It has been a treat to watch them, but our apple trees are suffering a bit from their attentions. We have also enjoyed watching our weasel playing and catching mice around the house. Last week I saw it chasing a rabbit, though I lost sight of it before I could tell whether it had caught it or not. Now we are looking forward to spring again. The first snowdrops came out in the first week of January and yesterday I saw two seven spot ladybirds on one of the espalier apples. The seasons do seem in a bit of a muddle - we had apple blossom in October last year!
24 February 2005 Brrr! Cold and snowy all week but not cold enough for the large amount that has fallen from the sky to stay around long enough to be turned into snowmen. The snowdrops, which appeared on 8 January, are now fading and once the cold snap retreats I expect it will very soon be daffodil time. Lots of bird activity, including regular visits now from goldfinches. We've already found a few frogs and newts in the swimming pool, but no spawn identifiable as yet. I'm behind with sowing vegetables as decorating in the house has taken over a bit this month. Jack's room and the sitting room have had a new coat of paint. We finally have eggs again with our surviving Welsummer laying. Hopefully, the new pullets will soon follow their mother.
8 November 2004 Summer already seems a long time ago. It was wet, but warm and the children had their usual fun in the pool and garden. Ellie learned to swim and she and Harriet are also now proficient cyclists. We suffered a bit in the garden as a result of the weather. The potatoes caught blight, which meant we had to harvest them early. Low light conditions in our increasingly shady and overcrowded greenhouse meant that cucumbers and aubergines took a very long time to grow, although they were prolific when they did. The chillies and peppers are only now beginning to get ripe. We had our first ever success with tomatoes. A cherry variety called sweet million seemed blight resistant and were lovely. It has been a mild autumn so far, and we picked courgettes and beans until the end of October. The vegetable garden is planted up now with overwintering onions, garlic, broad beans and peas. We also have some lettuces remaining and leeks and spring cabbage to look forward to before the spring. Sally hatched three chicks for us at the beginning of September and they are now here outside in a run. She also let us have two adults, including Elt the last suvivor from the fox visit back in May. We did let them run free until we had another visit from Mr Fox one Saturday morning. The children, finishing beakfast, heard a commotion and succeeded in scaring him away before he could catch Beauty. For a few sad hours we thought he'd taken Elt, but eventually she returned having escaped being fox food for a second time this year. So, reluctantly, all the chickens are now cooped up. The horses have gone, for the winter at least but probably for good. We will try and find another tenant in the Spring. There were lots of moorhen chicks this summer and a little black and white duck too. In recent weeks we have twice seen a tawny owl perch on trees and the electricity pole at the front of the house and then swoop away.
6 July 2004 More grim news to report. Our rabbit, Twitcher, contracted myxi and had to be put down last month. She was a little overdue for her vaccine and I feel pretty bad about it but have decided that we shan't take the risk with a rabbit again. We now have another lovely guinea pig named Rascus. The bird life is really thriving this year. The wrens in the dog kennel fledged successfully, using the safety of the kennel to practise flying before diappearing outside. Another wren is now feeding young in a nest in the barn. The swallows from the nest in the stables fledged and we saw them resting on the electricity cables. Another pair are now nesting in the barn also. The moorhens on the large pond have hatched a single chick for a second brood and a third pair seem to have nested under a tree. We saw a very new chick with them on the front grass. The chick was so little it could barely walk and I would not normally expect it to be off the water at this stage, but if the nest is not on the pond I guess it has no choice. I fear for it, though, as it is very exposed out in the short grass. We also have ducklings - just two to a white and black speckled mother. We've seen the fox several times since it attacked the hens, once with a large rabbit in it's mouth.. Our last bird has happily found a new home with Sally. The vegetables are doing well, though are not as advanced as last year. We are eating a lot of lettuce, have harvested broad beans, redcurrants, red onions and garlic. The potatoes and carrots are almost ready and the first crop of peas fattening.
26 May 2004 Sadly, we have had two devastating visits from the fox this week. Last Thursday, all three Leghorns were taken at dusk. Feathers everywhere in the morning. Yesterday evening we lost one of the two Welsummers - so sign of her at all. It is really upsetting and I'm not sure that we will be in a hurry to restock as I think the fox will be back. More optimisticly, the second moorhen nest hatched about three weeks ago and at least two chicks survive from the original four hatchlings. On the other pond, I think we are down to a single survivor. The nest in the dog kennel turned out to be that of a wren and was, in fact, in use. Four or five baby birds hatched and seem to be thriving. Blue tits have fledged, I think, from the box by the pond but Great Tits continue to fly in nd out of the box on the great oak.
30 April 2004 Back from a lovely trip to Germany and a weekend away at a friends wedding. The first moorhen chicks have hatched on the large pond this week, while on the small pond a hen is still sitting on a nest of six or seven eggs. It's cold, though, particularly after some lovely warm weather last weekend. Lettuces and carrots are growing well, but I want to get out and plant some peas and beans at the weekend. The potatoes that I planted before Easter are now emerging and the leeks are also up. A bird has made an enclosed nest in the straw bales in the dog kennel - a robin or a wren, I think, but it doesn't seem to be in use. There has been a male mallard wandering about, but no sign of nest or ducklings. The swallows arrived this week and we watched them having a rest and a clean up on the electricity wires before they flew off, presumably to start nest building in the stables as usual.
16 March 2004 A warm day at last. February blew cold and wintry for most of the month and March carried on the theme - until today. The sun shone, a breeze blew and I finally got into the garden and planted some onions. All chickens are now laying, Twitcher and Patch seem happy enough and we have three horses renting the fields and putting up with the girls' attentions. The daffodils have been out properly for a couple of weeks but there is still no sign of either moorhen nests or frogspawn, although I've noticed a robin building a nest in or around the dog kennel. Martin coppiced a few ash trees in the wood at the weekend to give a bit more light to the rest and I've transplanted a few hundred snowdrops along the path. I've also ordered some bluebells 'in the green' and I hope they'll arrive while I still have the enthusiasm to plant them!
16 January 2004 Another new year in Suffolk. December seems a long time ago already, but it was bright enough with even a little snow in the week before Christmas. Two of the leghorns are laying again. Christmas itself was lovely and notable for the arrival of two new Place Farm residents. Twitcher and Patch - rabbit and guinea pig, respectively - took their place in the menagerie. January has been more than usually foul, so far, with no snow to lift the spirits. The first snowdrops flowered out by the flint wall last weekend, a few days earlier than last year (itself earlier than the year before). However, the weather remains cold and grey with lots of rain and wind. The ponds are filling steadily but remain at historically low levels. With all the children now in school, I have begun some of the overdue jobs such as painting the halls and boot room. When the weather improves I am looking forward to getting on with some outdoor jobs too.