July 1st

Happy sunny days!

Busy Bees:

At last the bees have arrived and are busy (we hope). Two nuk’s arrived wrapped in cardboard boxes all the way from Gorey. The boxes sounded like something boiling over inside. Anyway with not too much use of the smoker they were transferred to the actual hives and will be visited by the intrepid bee keeper in 3 days. Meanwhile the hens haven't batted a wing at their new companions in the orchard- pecking order and all that.

Hens:

happy hen Whose egg is it anyway?

The hens are as ever happy. They have found a mystery escape point from the orchard and tend to roam in the evenings or when hunger strikes. Unfortunately they can’t find their way back in again. See encl for another hen mystery-whose egg is it anyway?

Ducks:

Can you believe how big they are? They still love their ‘ponds’ i.e. sand pits but seem to be drinking less; probably just another sign they are fully mature and ready for the oven well no eggs to date so maybe not quite so mature or else Farmer J’s diagnosis of 5 ducks and 3 drakes might be mistaken?

Hey Hay:

Hooray the hay is saved and solved the problem of what to do with the grass. A total of 160 bales (square ones) not bad for 2 acres. It was great to feel part of the farming community too not to mention have an opportunity to drool over farm equipment (farmer J).

Pigs:

Suffice it to say they are getting bigger and maybe lazier. On rainy days they seem to sleep more except for a strange game of tag they seem to play in the evenings. They are now allotted significantly less space and seem to be showing that they can truly root up all right. A recent visit to Dunmore East’s food festival gave some ‘food for thought’ to Farmer J on how to roast a pig.

Veggie Plot:

Weed No weed (can you spot the onions?)

Despite some mystery no shows of carrots, leeks and chives to mention a few we have done some replanting and delighted to begin to eat mange tout, radish, rocket and onion and emergency spuds when we discovered no spuds for dinner. Currently there’s a bit of an unintentional experiment on weed versus no weed. One bed of onions quickly was regained by grass and weeds and weeding was given up on. Despite this, so far they seem to be doing as well as the other onions. The only drawback is finding the onions maybe? Hopefully next year we’ll have the glass house up and running. Right now we have the frame erected but have still to make sides for it. We have a load of polycarbonate waiting in the shed to glaze it. The weather has been a bit poor and that has slowed things down but we will get there.

The veggie patch is coming on!