Normal Service is Restored

Rumours of my demise are just that ...  rumours.  Basically an internet outage has limited my access to The Journal, hence no entries for the past few days.  I'll accept that I could have used my phone, but I prefer a full size screen and keyboard for generating this waffle and nonsense.

Right, enough of the excuses, it's time for a relatively brief summary of the past five days.

Friday, 9th August, 2024

Earlier in the week Ben reached out to me and asked if I fancied shooting a few clays today. If I'm honest, I didn't really. My shooting has been very poor recently and I've found the experience increasingly frustrating. However, the fact that the youngster wanted to spend this morning in my company was a friendly gesture, so I did the decent thing. We spent the morning at Wedgenock, near Warwick and were rewarded with a fine sunny day. The targets were challenging for both of us, but my heart wasn't really in it. I think I'll give my gun a good clean and put it away for a while until my enthusiasm returns.

The afternoon was spent in the garden watering as the dry weather continues. Everything in the veg patch is growing vigorously and it now takes a couple of hundred litres each day to keep it all lush and green.

Saturday, 10th August, 2024

Today we bundled ourselves and the four dogs* in to the Defender and headed West to Cardiff to spend the day with TP.

We had a lovely time, although his walk planning may need a little work.  He lives right at the edge of Rhiwbina and it is a short but steep walk to the woods and Castell Coch. The distance and incline would have been acceptable, but the weather was hot, very humid and it was also raining. By the time we reached the woodland cafe that he had selected for lunch; we were boiling in our own sweat and knackered.

Fortunately the rain abated and the walk back was quite pleasant, especially as it was mostly downhill.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent drinking coffee, diagnosing a minor problem with his motorcycle and then noticing a nail protruding from his rear tyre. I tried to get him to see the positive side of this by pointing out that it was better to notice it in his garage, than have a flat tyre fifty miles away from home ... I'm not sure that he was convinced by this perspective.

As I said, we had a lovely day and, hopefully, we will get to spend a couple of days with him in the not too distant future.

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* Our house guest Lupin remains in residence

Sunday, 11th August, 2024

One of the first things I do each day is to check that the chicks all have fresh food and water and that the incubator is running correctly.  I performed my incubator check this morning and was amazed to see a fluffy little chick staggering around amongst the incubating eggs.

This was not supposed to happen. I only set the eggs on 31st July and hens eggs have a twenty one day incubation period. This egg has hatched after 12 days.  This is not some avian development miracle.** This is a poultry management clusterfuck. Fundamentally the idiot that sold me the eggs hasn't got a clue what he is doing and has given me a batch of eggs that included some that have been underneath a broody hen for about 10 days.

The more I think about this, the more I am dismayed. The breeder clearly isn't checking his birds properly and has just had a rummage around in the coop and thought "these eggs'll do". I certainly wouldn't want to  eat any of his eggs based on this experience.

What is worse, I am now likely to have two batches of chicks to rear separately.  It will not be possible to raise them all in the same brooder as the older chicks will bully the younger ones mercilessly. Normally chicks will hatch over a two to three day period. If the age range is much more than that they will need to be raised separately.

The is a balls up and one that I will have to do my best to manage. By the end of the day another chick had hatched and, as they are auto sexing,*** I now know that I have a cockerel and a pullet.

The late morning was spent catching up with Bubbles' news from the Edinburgh Tattoo. We spent a good hour nattering and drinking coffee before he headed off with Lupin.

In the early afternoon 30% and I headed out to the other side of Stratford to collect some reclaimed Victorian border edging stones. Our initial plan is to use them in the veg patch to retain the bark chips around the raised beds, but I need to do some measuring first to make sure I have enough.

Once back at home, we hit the garden and divided the beautiful blue Iris from the perennial bed and the large potted Agapanthus.  These were dead headed and replanted in  the area that we cleared about a week ago.

The weather remains beautiful and the local farmer started to harvest the field of wheat alongside the cottage. The stupid fucker managed to hit the overhead wire providing our broadband service, tearing it free from the telegraph pole.****

Fortunately the BT fault recording service was effective; an engineer was promised for Tuesday and an EE 4G mini hub has been promptly dispatched.

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** The surprising thing about this is that the incubation has been interrupted for at least 24 hours and the eggs were washed in egg disinfectant before they were placed in my incubator. Despite this the buggers have still hatched. To quote Dr Malcom, "life finds a way".

*** The chicks of some poultry breeds have different colouration, depending on sex at the point of hatching. This has been exploited by commercial hatcheries producing laying birds. There is no profit in rearing the cockerels, as they are no good for eating.

**** The pig ignorant bastard couldn't even be bothered to apologise and seemed to be of the opinion that BT had got the cable too low over his field.  This is despite the fact that he has managed to avoid it in the preceding three years ... What a Prick!

Monday, 12th August, 2024

A check of the incubator this morning found a third fluffy chick pottering around. We now have two pullets and a cockerel. All being well, we should have a couple of layers from this incubation cock-up.

The early arrival of the Legbar chicks meant that I had some Poutry management to perform, so the morning was spent setting up a larger brooder in one of the outbuildings. The older chicks were moved to it and this freed up space in the smaller brooder for the premature hatchlings.  All three chicks are doing well and will be moved over to the brooder about twenty four hours after hatching.

The day was incredibly hot, so I spent the afternoon sat in the shade of a parasol preparing runner and French beans for blanching and freezing. It was too bloody hot to do much else!

Tuesday, 13th August, 2024

This morning saw the chap from Openreach arrive nice and early to replace the broken fibre cable.  The repair took most of the morning and, hopefully, the new cable will be out of reach of Farmer Dick's combine harvester!

The Legbar chicks were moved to the brooder and then we applied ourselves in the garden. 

Our morning was spent watering as the hot dry spell continues. A lot of the crops in the veg patch need plenty of water so a good hour or two was spent lugging water from the butts.  I like the fact that we can irrigate with our own well water and are not reliant on Severn Trent to grow our vegetables.

We then headed over to Goll's Nursery to pick up some leek plants (var. Bleu de Solaise) and scout out some fresh colour for the herbaceous perennial bed.

It'll come as no surprise that my afternoon was spent puddling in the leek plants and the late afternoon saw a walk around the Three Miler with Bobbyn and the dogs.

I appreciate that this has been a bit of a rambling, brain dump, but at least I'm up to date ... I think!