We went exploring

 Another walk this morning and, this time, 30% set the route.

I tend to be quite unimaginative in my walking* and tend to plod around the Three Miler with the sole aim of getting the dogs walked and myself exercised. 30%, on the other hand, is far more adventurous and will explore the lanes and paths. She will often return and recount her walk and I won't have a clue where she has been.

Well, today we turned left out of the cottage and walked to the top of the low rise. We left the road and took the footpath along the crest of the hill.  She then directed us through a spinney and three or four interconnected paddocks. It was a lovely walk, but there is a "but". 

I learnt that my good lady is absolutely brilliant at finding new walks but she has no bloody sense of direction. Our walk became an out 'n back because it wasn't possible to loop back via the bridle path as she had originally planned. As we reached the aforementioned spinney 30% attempted to direct us down a non-existent path, despite me pointing to the route indicated by our footprints left in the grass no more than forty minutes earlier.

Our afternoon was spent working on the large bed of herbaceous perennials in the back garden. One end of the bed was dominated by a huge clump of Day Lillies (Hemerocallis) and they desperately needed to be cleared to make room for other plants.

It took most of the afternoon to clear the two or three square yards of plants, dig over the soil and do my best to remove the roots and rhizomes.** The next step will be to refresh the soil in the bed with rotted manure, compost and bonemeal, before planting our Agapanthus and Iris.

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* We think this might be a consequence of my working life. I would find an hour to get the dogs walked, but would generally need to get back to my desk fairly promptly. This became an ingrained habit and I did the same walk, knowing how long it would take.  Clearly, I now need to break this habit.

** I have a strong suspicion that I will be removing plantlets for years to come!

Mostly Mowing

This morning 30% and I took an early morning walk over the rise and down the lane towards the bridge. It is probably little more than a mile and a half, but the dogs loved it, tearing along the verges and sniffing the scents from the nocturnal wildlife.

By the time we got back home, the dew had lifted and it became clear what the remainder of my day would look like.

The shed was unlocked, the lawn mower was wheeled out and that was it. I spent the rest of the day mowing the lawns. The garden looks pretty good at the moment and a neatly clipped lawn really finishes it off.

A casual observer might note that there are a few strange clumps of uncut grass on the front lawn and on the verges in front of the cottage.  The reason for these unmown tufts is that they are where the cowslips grow. I love these delightful little flowers and do my best to encourage them.  Although the flowers bloom very early in the year, their seeds do not mature until late July or even early August. Hence the plants need to be left uncut until now, several months after their petals have dropped.

Well, August has finally arrived and I have checked the now scruffy tufts. The cowslip seeds are mature and many of the plants have already shed their seeds.  I was now able to mow the lawns without having to skirt around the tufts .... Avoiding the tufts a pain in the arse, but, I think, worth it to see the cowslips again next Spring.

A guest arrives

Yesterday evening 30% was perusing Facebook Marketplace and asked if I needed a workbench.  Before proceeding with this narrative I need to clarify a couple of points.  

1. I have two matching workbenches in the workshop and a dinky little carpenter's bench in the garage.* I am also about to build a potting bench for 30% in the shed. 
2. This is a redundant question, of course I need another workbench.

I took a look at the advertisement and saw a rather nice engineer's bench with what looked like a Record vice bolted to the top. It is fair to say that within thirty minutes the bench had been viewed, hands had been shaken and we had arranged for me to pick it up this morning.

So, the trailer was hitched to the Defender and it was a short journey to the other side of the village to collect the bench. It really needs a new ply work surface, but the clincher was the No 24 Record Engineers bench vice with quick release mechanism. The bench and vice set us back £120, but the discontinued vice model sells second-hand for upward of £150. They are a fantastic piece of kit and I am extremely chuffed to have finally got my hand on one.**

Most of this morning was spent clearing a space and moving the bench in to the garage ... Christ, it was heavy!

In the afternoon I headed over to Childswickham and met up with Bubbles and Ben for a round of clay shooting.  I wish I hadn't bothered. The course was a nightmare and I shot appallingly.  To make matters worse Bubbles had agreed to combine a shooting lesson with our round.  The tuition was a significant interruption and the delays just added to the frustration of a very poor shoot.

I followed Bubbles home, as we will be having a guest for the next few days. Bubbles and Bobbyn are off to Edinburgh for the Tattoo and we have been asked to look after their senior terrier; Lupin.*** She is a delightful little dog and is sat on my lap, demanding affection, as I write this.

It was a matter of minutes to bundle her luggage in to the Defender and we were soon heading back to the cottage. Lupin knows our house and three dogs really well and it is a recurring joke that, upon arrival, she just treats the place like her own home. 

She settled in without any fuss and has spent the evening curled up on her bed, the sofa, the other dogs' beds, our laps ... in fact anywhere she likes!

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* In need of some refurbishment

** I have perused engineers vices on the internet for a couple of years, but have been put off by the price of a good one and poor reviews of the cheap ones.

*** They have a house sitter taking care of the other two dogs, but felt that looking after three would be "too much for them". We are also well aware that when all three of the terrors are together they have a tendency to scrap, and I mean SCRAP!

Faery Beefs

Today's first mission was to head in to Alcester and pick up my new specs. A trip that should have taken no more than an hour ended up consuming the entire morning and included massively prolonged conversations in a bakery and the jewellers ... I'll leave it to you to work out which one of us was in desperate need of extended, but pointless conversation ... if you need a clue, it wasn't me!

Anyway, we eventually arrived home and were chatting in the sun, when a thought occurred to me ... what do faeries actually eat?

I mulled this over and thought that maintaining flight with those tiny wings must required one hell of a calorific input ... thoughts of hummingbirds did come to mind and I wondered whether dewdrops sweetened with nectar was the favoured faery juice?  This train of thought continued and I started to cogitate on the dietary preferences of faery folk. Pollen bread and mushroom based foodstuffs seemed like possible faery comestibles, but, after a long, hard day flying around granting wishes,* I'll wager that they really fancy a burger.  There is already literary evidence of faeries stealing milk from cows, so we know the little devils aren't vegan.  The references to theft also suggest that they are far from "pure and fair" and, clearly, no strangers to mortal transgressions.

I think it's a short stretch from nicking milk to vegging out on a comfy toadstool sofa with a dirty burger grasped between faery fingers.

The next question is where do the faery folk get the beef for the burgers?  One might be tempted to assume that they steal it in the same way as they do the milk. However, a moments thought highlights the weakness of this theory.  A faery attempting to dispatch and butcher a bullock of killing weight is probably the equivalent of humans whaling.**

I'm pretty sure that people would start to notice missing cattle, or dead beasts with little nibbles taken from the finest cuts, because there is no way that the faeries would be able to consume, or cache, an entire Bos taurus carcass. 

My research has identified that the faery folk actually have their own cattle or Faery Beefs. These are somewhere between a pigeon and a duck in size and look exactly like a miniature cow apart from sporting a fine pair of wings.  They can be a pest in parts of the country when huge flocks of them descend on, and devastate, young crops of wheat and barley.

They also make a dreadful mess if they crap on your car when they are flying over.

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* or exchanging milk teeth for coins of the realm

** Mind you, a crew of faeries manning a steam punk, flying abattoir ship does have a certain visual appeal

"On Trend" in the garden?

 Over the past few days we have cleared a neglected border alongside one of the outbuildings and have been left with a dry, narrow bed. The soil is very shallow and impoverished, so it badly needs to be improved and, if possible, made deeper.

Our plan was to add edging that would enable us to increase the depth of the soil, but none of the options available from local establishments were particularly attractive. We did, however, notice that galvanised metal, particularly corrugated, galvanised metal seems to be very popular at the moment. Many of the garden centres and nurseries are displaying vast arrays of galvanised metal containers, both new and vintage.

This must have tweaked something in my subconscious as I remembered that we had a few small sheets of galvanised, corrugated iron sheeting up in the orchard.

I grabbed one, and after a couple of measurements I realised that, if I cut it in to 8" wide strips, they would be perfect to form an edge to the border. They would also allow us to add compost and manure, raising the soil level, improving both the soil quality and its moisture retaining ability.

After twenty minutes with an angle grinder the 24" by 30" sheet was cut in to four strips and I was ready to try out my design.

It worked beautifully. The strips of corrugated iron don't reduce the width of the bed and they interlock, making them simple to install and tie together. The corrugations also add rigidity, so we will be able to add compost and manure, increasing the soil depth without fear of the edging collapsing.

The edging looks great alongside the brickwork and I am feeling quite pleased with my low cost, up cycling solution.

Everything is growing beautifully

We were both up before six this morning and, after an early breakfast, we got started with the day's activities.

Mission #1 was to give the hatching eggs a good clean in egg sanitiser before placing them in the incubator and starting off the next twenty one day incubation cycle.  I then continued in the poultry vein, cleaning out the brooder and ensured that our first batch of chicks had plenty of food and clean water.

I then headed out to the orchard where 30% had applied herself to weeding the pumpkin patch. In the past couple of months the pumpkin plants have run riot. After a slow start they suddenly put on a growth spurt and the six plants have now completely taken over the old poultry run and are pushing out vigorous shoots across the grass. Pumpkin fruits are starting to form on the vines and the largest of which is close to eight inches in diameter.

We spent a good couple of hours placing tiles under each of the young fruits to lift them clear of the damp earth and reduce the risk of rot. We also cleared the remaining debris from the now demolished chicken house. This old shed appeared to have been built on a foundation of railway sleepers, loose bricks and whatever else came to hand. I swear I even extracted an enamel dish and a baking cooling rack from the ground this morning.

With the another part of the orchard decontaminated, we lunched and then headed in to the afternoon.  30% "headed" straight to bed for a nap, and I wandered over to the computer and attempted to find inspiration for yesterday's Journal entry.

After taking it easy during the heat of the day, we wandered back out to the garden. I thinned the beetroot seedlings to ten centimetre spacings and then mowed a strip in the orchard, where 30% wanted to clear and prune. After a few minutes of this, we both decided that it was far too hot for manual labour and, instead, decided to head off in search of edging for the small bed we cleared on Monday.

The bed is shallow, narrow,  dry and its soil is impoverished. We would like to install edging that would allow us to increase the depth of soil, but everything we looked at either wouldn't work or looked bloody awful.  In the end I decided that I might be able to do something innovative in a rustic fashion with some corrugated iron that is kicking around in the orchard ... I will either be feeling smug or bloody frustrated, depending on how that pans out.

In other gardening news; the tomato crop has now started to ripen and we have tasted the first of the Bloody Butcher fruits. They are tasty enough, but not as good as Alicante in either flavour or vigour. I can also report that the Spring cabbage seedlings have already started to shoot, barely four days after planting ... not bad for seeds that passed their expiry date three months ago.

To wash or not to wash?

 Today I seemed to be mostly collecting fertile eggs.

In the morning 30% and I headed over to Stratford-upon-Avon and whizzed around the supermarket before heading across town and on to Snitterfield.  Our destination was the Domestic Fowl Trust, where we were supposed to collect twenty Crested Cream Legbar hatching eggs.

Unfortunately, the laying birds had not read the order properly and there were only fifteen eggs available ... and many of those were pretty grubby. The chap at the Trust was very decent about this and halved the price of the eggs. He also threw in a good few kilos of medicated chick crumb, so it would be churlish to be anything other than complimentary. 

As we headed home I pointed out that we would have five spare spots in our incubator and we might as well try to fill them.  The man at the Trust had mentioned Newland Poultry over towards Malvern, so I gave them a call.

It is getting towards the end of the poultry breeding season as the parent birds will soon start their moult, but Newland Poutry managed to scrape together half a dozen "Olive Eggers" for me to pick up later in the day. Olive Eggers are a cross breed from Marans and Crested Cream Legbar parent birds. They will, as the name suggests, lay olive green eggs once they mature.

Having collected the eggs, I left them to settle overnight, planning to start the incubation tomorrow. However, as mentioned earlier, the Legbar eggs were pretty dirty and, obviously, the incubator is the perfect environment for bacteria to grow. Should I wash the eggs, or not?

An internet search followed and left me none the wiser. Some sources state that washing the eggs in a proprietary egg disinfectant solution is the way forward. Others say that it damages the egg's protective cuticle and is the action of a madman.*

In the end I decided that the eggs would be washed before incubation. It'll be interesting to see how thing pan out in twenty one or two days time.

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* Many years ago I recall collecting a Minorca egg from a very muddy run. The egg was literally plastered with mud and other chicken run filth. I clearly remember that I incubated the egg and it hatched successfully, and I am pretty certain that I would have washed it first.

Cleaning & Tidying

 The chicks are doing really well and first job of the day is to check that they are OK before refreshing the newspaper lining of the brooder and ensuring they have clean water* and plenty of chick crumb.

After cleaning the chicks' brooder, I attended to the cleaning and sterilisation of the incubator. This was timely as 30% has arranged to collect a batch of Crested Cream Legbar eggs tomorrow morning.  I was amazed at how grubby the incubator was considering the chicks were only in it for less than sixty hours. Every surface was covered with a fine dusting of down and the base was littered with shell fragments and chick faeces. 

As I washed and sterilised the components my thoughts turned to an acquaintance of ours, who is an incubation addict.  She will set batch after batch of eggs without ever cleaning her incubators. I often wonder what her hatch rates are and whether her chicks are impacted by being hatched in such an environment?**

Cleaning and reassembling the incubator took most of the morning and the afternoon was fairly leisurely. 30% and I cleared a small, shallow border alongside one of the outbuildings. Until this afternoon it was planted with a scruffy rose that refused to flower, a poorly fruiting raspberry and several Stinking Iris plants.

Our plan is to plant a couple of Lupins in the bed, but, having cleared it, I wonder whether Lavender might be better suited.  The bed has very shallow soil and is also very dry.

Whatever we plant there, it will need a lot of care and attention until it is established and possibly beyond.

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* The chicks may be precocious, meaning that they require no parental care, but this precociousness seems to be combined with an innate ability to crap in any food or water container less that five minutes after it has been refreshed.

** Mind You, it can get pretty rank under a broody hen! That is definitely NOT a sterile environment and naturally hatched chicks seem to do OK.

Guests

 We don't see M&M that often, but when we do it is always great fun.

After our last get-together in Winchcombe, we had arranged for M&M and Nova* to come over for lunch and a leisurely afternoon.

That day had finally arrived and the weather was absolutely perfect for al fresco dining. 30% spent the morning preparing a huge feast of salads, cheeses, charcuterie and nibbles, whilst I spent a couple of hours mowing the orchard.

M&M arrive around one o'clock and we had a wonderful afternoon out on the patio laughing, eating and drinking.  

They are a little overprotective of Nova, but she is their "first baby" and we'll allow them their  new parent insecurities. 

Hobson was an angel and played beautifully with her. Dog #4 came out had a sniff and a bit of a play before returning to her bed and staying out of sight for the rest of the day. As for Whiffler, he did feel the need to show that he was top dog and did attempt to hump Nova a few times. This did cause a few concerned dashes across the garden to protect her innocence.

We could see that it was a dominance behaviour, mostly to show Hobson who was boss, unfortunately M&M were worried that Nova would be defiled.

Oh well, hopefully they will relax more as she gets older.

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* Their six month old Labrador pup

Hailes & Gardening.

Saturday was another busy one!

I was out of the house before eight thirty and headed over to Evesham to collect Bubbles.  We then drove over to Hailes and had a splendid morning clay shooting.  The weather was absolutely glorious and it is one of the most attractive shooting grounds that I have ever visited.  From the stand at the top of the hill there are splendid views north west across beautiful countryside towards Dumbleton and beyond.

I had a couple of appalling stands, but, overall, was reasonably pleased with how I shot. My score was 52/96.*

Clay shooting consumed the morning and first task of the afternoon was to plant a row of second crop potatoes.** I've not planted spuds so late in the year and it'll be interesting to see how they perform. If the packaging is to be believed we will be able to have Charlotte new potatoes with our Christmas Lunch.

30% and I then headed out towards Powick. We have set our hearts on a water feature comprising a mill stone with a bubbling little fountain at its centre. 30% had found a local Architectural Antiques dealer with a potential stone and we were off to check it out.  When we found the dealer we were surprised to see that it was a house that we had viewed about four or five years ago when we first put The Pile on the market. At that time we rejected the house because it was very close to a busy road and this time we rejected the mill stone because it was cast concrete, rather than the real thing ... the search continues.

Back at home I returned to the greenhouse and planted some Durham Early Spring cabbage in seedling plug trays. These will be grown on, transplanted in to pots and will be planted out in the veg patch later in the year.  They will spend the Winter under cloches and should provide some lovely Spring greens by February.

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* The Hailes shoot is twelve stands with eight clays at each.

** Maris Peer and Charlotte varieties. Ten seed potatoes of each. The Maris Peer were planted at the end of the row closest to the path through the veg patch.

Chick Update

It is time for the results of our recent incubation. We set twenty eggs on the Fourth of July. Ten were from Cuckoo Marans and the other ten were from Norfolk Grey chickens.

The eggs were due to hatch on Thursday 25th, but the first chick, a cuckoo Maran made its appearance on Wednesday.

By Thursday morning a couple more had hatched and the end of day total was five.

Friday was a busy day at the Game Fair, but we checked the eggs before we left, and ten were cheeping and staggering around the incubator. 

On our return we checked again and no more had hatched. As we were now a day over the normal twenty one day incubation, we decided it was time to open up the incubator and take a look. We also transferred the hatched chicks to a Brooder pen, providing food, water and an electric hen to keep them warm

One further egg had pipped, but the other nine were still intact. I float tested* these and none seemed show any indications of containing a hatching chick.  All of the eggs were returned to the incubator.

On Saturday morning no further eggs had pipped. The one egg that had pipped had cracked further but the chick was struggling. 30% stepped in and assisted the hatch. The youngster was left to dry off and recover from the exertions of hatching.

By Sunday we transferred the last check to the Brooder pen and turned off the incubator. The final total was eleven chicks; six Norfolk Greys and five Cuckoo Marans.  A fifty five percent hatch rate isn't great, but it could have been a lot worse. Now we need to wait a few weeks to see how many pullets we have.

Oh, and 30% is already scouring the internet for another batch of fertile eggs!

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* Float testing: If a hatching, but not yet pipped, egg is floated in warm water, the movement of the chick stirring inside the egg will jiggle the floating egg. No jiggling suggests that the egg is either infertile or the chick is dead in shell.

The Game Fair

 We were up early this morning and, after a quick breakfast, we whizzed around the garden and ensured that everything was well watered.  Next on the list was to take the dogs for a short walk to make sure they were emptied!

Then we all bundled in to the Defender and headed off down the A44 to Blenheim Palace for this Years Game Fair ... basically an excuse for a commercial extravaganza wrapped around a theme of Hunting, Shooting and Fishing. 

We had a lovely day, parts of which were spent with Bubbles and Bobbyn. The weather was just perfect, dry and sunny, but not too hot for the dogs. As for the dogs, they got many compliments and caresses ... mostly accompanied by statements to the effect of "it's so nice to see proper poodles rather than doodles and cockapoos!"

Having three large dogs meant that most of our day was a wander around and a general viewing rather than intense scrutiny of any of the events, demonstrations or commercial outlets. However, we did end up ordering a case of some splendid wines and a replacement cheese knife was also purchased.*

We headed home at about four in the afternoon. We had had a lovely day, but we both agreed that it is a far better event when it is hosted three miles down the road from home at Ragley Hall.**

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* How the hell do you loose a bloody cheese knife?  We had a little beauty, but it simply disappeared about 6 months ago, never to be seen again. We are both blaming TP for that crime!

** The Blenheim organisers haven't got a fucking clue about car parking or signposting within the venue.

Busy Day

Today was always going to be a busy day.

We have chicks hatching in the incubator, but they don't demand a lot of attention. In fact, the worst thing one can do is to open up the incubator for a better look. We just needed to be patient and leave them to hatch in their own time.

So, off we went to Alcester for eye tests. 30% was due for her post cataract surgery check up and all was good. We hope that the second operation, scheduled for October, will go as smoothly. As for me, I had my last eye test in February, but I felt that my vision had deteriorated and wanted to check that all was well. It turned out that my prescription had changed and, by the end of the session, my wallet was three hundred quid lighter as readers and long distance spectacles were now needed.

We had a fun time choosing specs, and then headed down the high street to the show shop to return a pair that 30% had gifted me last week.  They were lovely sandals, but they just didn't fit correctly, so back they needed to go. Again, we had a super time with the sales assistant* and found a pair that fitted perfectly and also a replacement pair of Josef Siebel Max mules ... my slipper of choice.

With our Alcester trip completed we headed back home and had a hasty lunch. We then headed over to Pershore to pick up a pair of teak Steamer Chairs that 30% had found on Facebook Marketplace.  They will be perfect for the garden, needing only a new set of cushions. I might give them a rub down and oil over at some point over the Winter, but, for the Summer, we can put up with their slightly worn appearance.

Back at home we both collapsed and snoozed for an hour before Mr and Mrs Tweedy arrived for afternoon tea and a peep at the hatching chicks. Mrs Tweedy was at the better end of her irritability spectrum today, so we had a reasonable couple of hours catching up on 30%'s family news.

Bobbyn arrived shortly after their departure and we headed off around the Three Miler with the mutts. More peeping at chicks followed, before I collapsed on the sofa with supper.

As for the chicks, the end of day count was five.

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* She made it quite clear that we could take as much of her time as we liked and that she was quite willing to bend over backwards ... basically do anything but be involved with the mother and two boisterous children that needed new trainers.

Cut out the middle man?

 This morning 30% and I headed in to Redditch to pick up some supplies from a local Feed & Tackle Store.  30% failed to find a suitable poultry drinker and I emerged from the fishing tackle section with my wallet £20 pounds lighter.

That was the point where I should, knowing what I know now, have just thrown the twenty quid straight in to the river ... or a convenient bin.

The day rolled on and minor jobs were completed. The high spot of the day is that a couple of the eggs in the incubator have started to pip.  The young chicks have managed to make an initial chip in the eggshell, but it will be several hours before they manage to break free.

Now, back to fishing and fishing tackle. This evening I headed over to Fladbury and set myself up on a peg near the bridge, as suggested by Bubbles. Over the course of the evening I was, once again, subjected to inane and deeply uninteresting trivia from the workshop of the local Volkswagen dealer. I also managed to loose not one, but two sets of tackle on an underwater snag and had barely a bite all evening. By ten o'clock I was quite cold and decided to pack up my gear ... just as Ben pulled a beautiful chub from the river.

At this point I realised that I could have just chucked the twenty quid straight in the river and spent the evening at home with 30%.

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Post Script: I actually do enjoy my fishing. There is something quite zen about the preparation, the gathering of the tackle, the set up of rod, line, hook and bait. It comes close to meditation. And, as for the hours watching the rod tip, the flow of the river and the rising of the fish, that is incredibly relaxing. And there is also the underlying tension of the potential catch!

It is just that, recently, I find myself somewhat irritated by B&B's chatter. They work together, hence much of the discussion is work related and I find myself excluded. Also Ben is only twenty two and has very little life experience. Consequently a conversation with him tends to be limited ... he is a nice kid, but discourse with him is definitely within boundaries established by his lack of life experience.

Perhaps I need to invest in a landing net and fish on my own peg for a while.

Quite Busy

 A short entry in the Journal today, as I need to be sorting out fishing tackle rather than sitting in front of a screen.

Tuesday morning was spent dealing with vital, but relatively minor items from my to do  list.  The cobweb covered poultry feeders and drinkers were scrubbed clean and put out in the sun to dry.  A moisture trap was placed in the BMW and I prepared some bait* for fishing on Wednesday.

I then extracted my tea chest smoker from the shed and set it up under the carport.  My intention was to smoke a few blocks of mature cheddar.  However, I was going to need to make a minor modification to the smoker to increase its capacity. 

The smoker has a single shelf comprised of removable dowels that is perfect for smoking a block of cheese. However, the cheese I smoked a few weeks ago was very popular and I had orders from Bubbles, a member of the coven and 30% for more. 

I needed to construct and install another removable shelf** in order to accommodate three pieces of cheddar. Fortunately a quick search of the workshop located dowels and a piece of oak that would work quite nicely. A happy couple of hours followed whilst I fashioned and installed the second smoking rack.

The smoker was lit, the cheese was inserted and the timer on my 'phone was set to two hours. 

Whilst the cheese smoked, I dragged The Beast from the shed and finished the lawns, specifically the rough areas around the garage and the verges at the front of the house.

That pretty much sums up my day apart from wrapping and refrigerating the cheese after smoking, a walk around the Three Miler with Bobbyn and the dogs and a lazy night trying to stay awake on the sofa.

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* cubed luncheon meat marinated in garlic paste with a sprinkle of madras curry powder.

** The shelves need to be removable so that the smoker can accommodate two full loins of pork, when I am smoking bacon.

Gardener's World

Today was always going to be a gardening day.  Our potterings over the weekend had identified a couple of jobs that needed attention and my plan was to get them crossed off the to do list.

First job of the day was to check the tomatoes, nipping out any side shoots and tying up the vines as necessary.  As I checked them over I was delighted to find that one of the fruits has finally started to ripen,* a first blush of red.  This is a gardening milestone for us and it seems to have taken an age this year, perhaps due to the mediocre weather that seems to be prevalent. 

I can't wait to enjoy our home-grown tomatoes rather than the frequently tasteless varieties available from the Supermarket.

After tying up the toms I headed out to the raspberry canes. The Autumn cropping varieties are starting to produce long shoots and these needed tying in to the supporting wires. By late morning I was finished and it was time for the first outing of the new Mountfield mower.

I am delighted to report that it mows beautifully and the lawns look fantastic,** having benefitted from the recent showers.

While I was mowing, 30% had been possessed by her pyromaniac alter ego and had an impressive bonfire burning in the orchard. By the end of the afternoon she had disposed of the huge pile of material cleared from the Pineapple Broom Bed, leaving me with another large area of the orchard to attack with The Beast later on in the week.

That's just about it for today, although I will mention that we now only have three days to go until the eggs are due to hatch. The incubator has automatically increased the humidity, slightly dropped the incubation temperature and turned off the egg turning function ... now we wait with bated breath for the first signs of pipping.

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* The variety is Bloody Butcher. This is the first year I have grown it and I am not overly impressed. The plants have not done well, when compared to the other varieties that I am growing; Alicante, Sweet Aperitif, Shirley, Marmande and Gardeners Delight. It may have won the prize for first tomato of the season, but it is far less vigorous than, and will be easily outcropped by, the other varieties.

** Apart from where that fucking mole has been buggering about!

Shattered!

After last night's dinner party it was one o'clock in the morning before my head hit the pillows.

You can, therefore, imagine my disgust when I found myself wide a-fucking-wake four hours later!  Try as I might, I couldn't get back to sleep, so I rose and took a very slow start to the day. As the morning continued I felt more and more groggy. It's not as though I can blame drink as I was the designated driver* last night. 

After re-setting the mole trap** I had to admit defeat and retired to my bed for a desperately needed hour of sleep.  This became a recurring theme throughout the day and further kips and snoozes were necessary at intervals.

The day wasn't a complete write-off though. 30% and I did manage to plant out her pea plants. They are just starting to flower and are now out in the veg patch with a rather professional looking mesh support for the vines.

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* I've actually been off the booze since the beginning of the month.

** Yes, another of the little bastards has encroached on the lawn ... fucker!

Don't count your chickens

 I am well aware that one shouldn't count their chickens before they hatch, but I am also equally aware that one should always be prepared.

With five days to go before our eggs are due to hatch we are making sure that we have everything we need to successfully raise the chicks. Feeders and drinkers have been located and will be cleaned and sterilised over the next couple of days. And much thought has been given to housing the young birds.

For the first six weeks they will need to be sheltered and kept warm, mimicking the conditions that would, under normal conditions, have been provided by the hen.  I have an old wooden brooder box that I built years ago. It is tried and tested, but is very heavy and rapidly developing chicks soon outgrow it. I therefore scoured eBay a few days ago and found a purpose built, easy to clean brooder up for auction. It would need to be collected, but was only about thirty miles away ... so guess what I was up to this morning?

Yep, I won the auction at the opening price of twenty quid and this morning 30% and I headed up the M42 to Coleshill to collect it.  I suppose one of the luxuries of being retired is having the time to find a bargain and then go and pick it up.

On our return we called in at one of the local feed stores and picked up some chick crumb. All I need to do now is get an additive for their drinking water to, hopefully, prevent coccidiosis, and we should have everything we need.

I assembled the brooder in the afternoon and delighted with it. It is light, spacious and easy to clean. All we need now is a successful  hatch.

The remainder of my afternoon was quite lazy.  Rain storms came and went and a planned dog walk didn't happen.

In the evening we headed in to Evesham for dinner with friends. Our hosts were Rosie and Jim and we were also joined by the Tewkesbury contingent; Gizzie and Jules.  The evening started with Gizz and Jules, recently returned from a trip to The States, arriving dressed as a cheerleader and a New York cop. It then descended in to many hours of great food and hysterical laughter.

It was, most definitely a late one!

A long, sweaty afternoon in the sun with a couple of Hos ...

By the end of it I was absolutely exhausted!

Hang on. After re-reading that intro I realise that I may have missed out an "e", or two.

It was another scorching day and, after breakfast in the sun and a stroll around the garden, 30% headed out for supplies and I attended to watering. 

30% returned just before lunch and informed me that "if we can't go to Greece yet, I'm going to bring Greece to us". She smiled and produced a lollipop Olive Tree in a pot and an inflatable paddling pool. Basically it's an instant villa kit ... just add sunshine, a few puffs of air and several litres of water.

30% was out again in the afternoon ... another triple c* session with the coven, so I was left alone. I did what any man starved of company would do and arranged for an afternoon with a couple of hoes.

Yep, I spent a long afternoon in the sun weeding the vegetable patch!

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* coffee, cake and chat

Home Alone

 It was foretold in the stars and the scattering of the chicken bones that I would be on my own for much of the day ... Basically 30% had planned a day out with the coven in Malvern. They would be away for most of the day, as lunch was planned before viewing a musical based on the hits of Dolly Parton.

This left me home alone with a couple of items to be, hopefully, crossed off the to do list.

It was a beautiful morning, and we started it with a gentle stroll around the garden before taking breakfast on the little bench that I have recently moved to catch the first rays as the sun rises over the orchard. 

As 30% made her preparations to leave, I realised that the tomatoes needed watering quite urgently and emptied several watering cans in the greenhouse. This left the water butts drained, so my next task was to unroll the hosepipe, plug in the well pump and refill them.

With my morning, and the water butts, duly filled, I retired to the shade for lunch before starting objective #1 ... nettle spraying.  

Parts of the orchard become thick with head high nettles as the year unfolds and they are a pig to control. I have tried brush cutting but it leaves the roots intact, allowing for regrowth.  My preferred approach is to spray with SBK. It is a selective, broad leaved herbicide that targets nettles, docks and brush, leaving grass unaffected. 

SBK is perfect for the orchard as our aim is to improve the grass cover. We are hoping that a combination of nettle killing and mowing will encourage and improve the grass to a point where we can actually call it pasture.

It took 13 litres of spray to treat the orchard and by the time I finished the last patch I was ready for a kip away from the afternoon sun.

In the later afternoon I gathered my fishing tackle together along with sundry items* and a rather tasty supper, before heading over to Barton for an evening fishing with Bubbles and Ben.  

Well! that turned out to be painful! I spent the evening sat between B&B and had to endure a fucking tedious conversation that tacked from shooting ear plugs to the comings and goings of a Volkswagen Dealership.  I wish I had selected a solo peg and enjoyed a quiet Summer evening rather than listen to their bloody nonsense.**

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* Phone, car keys, fishing permit etc

** To make matters even worse I had forgotten my insulin, so my home made chicken and mayo on wholemeal remained uneaten and my belly rumbled.