Good morning all.

What's going on here? Well..

The thaw came in the nick of time for us - one more day and it would
have been carrying buckets of water for the cows from the kitchen...
Yikes, that would have been an all day job I think.

Our goose project worked reasonably well - we got 4 goslings from a
Cosmore auction in spring. They kept safe from foxes with a 3 sided
shelter inside a 50m length of electric poultry netting. After a
while we let them free during the daytime to get more grass. Having
spent the summer dreading the prospect of what we have been led to
believe is the tedious task of plucking them, I luckily found a
commercial grower, who was prepared to take ours for killing and
plucking. Very satisfactory! They ended up at 3.5kg dressed weight -
so next year we'll feed them a bit more grain rather than just
relying on grass...

There will be geese next year - they may have been a bit of hassle
but too delicious not to do again.

Our veggie patch is looking pretty sorry for itself. The curly kale
is pathetic - not sure if it was the frosts or our method of
harvesting. We take the medium leaves from the sides but recently
heard that we should take a few from the top to promote more side
growth. Any views?

The leeks haven't recovered from repeated rabbit action in the summer
and it took me a long while to recover from digging in rabbit
netting. Shutting the stable door etc but, as is my theme, there is
always next year.
The best successes this year were beetroot, celeriac and swedes.

I planted a few M9 apple trees in the garden a couple of years ago:
they fruit early and are slow growing. Had some good fruiting this
year but because they are so small, the b$@@dy dogs jumped up and ate
the lot! Quite depressing really.

Regards
Peter





>
> We're all very quiet out there folks?
>
> As an update to my Winter Crops, my Curly Kale was devastated in
the
> frosts! Should have covered them up with fleece!
>
> So we missed out on a bumper crop for the Christmas period!
>
> Things haven't gone too well so far this year with all these severe
> frosts, but what is happening with the raised bed issue?
>
> We've had new members come and go (probably through lack of
> activity?) we need to be on our toes this year as I feel the
weather
> is going to jump out at us and we'll have a good year for a change?
> (Hopefully anyway).
>
> It cannot be much worse than the last 2yrs we've had?
>
> The ground is generally dry after the morning frosts, no bogging in
> of the machinery so far but we still have to be careful of that
> compaction of the topsoils! The Flowers are shooting up all of a
> sudden so we have a little bit of colour out there for our forays
> around the land anyway. Ican't wait for all of the colours to come
> out though, it might put a spring in our steps to get down to it...
>
> So it's time for a Wakey Wakey call folks. What are you all up to?
>
> Cheers
> John
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