the daydream fund challenge thread

COOLTRIKERCHICK

Happy Easter everyone.

well the timing couldnt have been better, our first chick of the season hatched out this morning, her mun is the hen in the last pic in one of my other posts..




sorry they are not every good pics, but when a few more of hte others hatch out i will take some more pics.

here are some of my trays planted up with some of last years strawberry runners, and trays of my runner and broad beans, once they start growing these are the ones that i will be selling in the farm auctions

Rummer

What a cutie, with great timing too! I am so impressed at the amount of things you have planted ready to germinate! I just started yesterday and as usual I feel really disorganised and far behind, however all I can do is keep ploughing on and keep my fingers crossed!

rhiwfield

Rummer, I've not sown my outdoor tender crops yet (runner beans, cucumbers, courgette, climbing beans, pumpkin and sweetcorn) though I will before long. I'll stick some basil seeds in today. Tomato plants are looking good, far better than the bedraggled rubbish being offered up by Homebase! Have tried the toilet roll inner method for parsnips which I havent grown before. Will see how it turns out. Also did second sowing of peas in the guttering lengths, first sowings doing fine in new beds while the shoots of onion sets are peeking thru the surface.

What a lovely photo CTC! And great to see all the seed trays in use. Now you may remember an early post or two somewhere about whether or not we should keep chickens. But I'd convinced myself that I really didnt have the room. But the other day the nice lady who supplies our eggs from her smallholding told me we had the room, but to get Silkies, which she could supply in a few months. On-off, on-off, on? Who knows?

In the little wildlife area of the garden, the tiny patch of rough couch grass (my 2 sqm meadow!) is beginning to show a few other plants, lesser celandine, creeping jenny, chives and best of all, several cowslips. In the ornamental wildflower bed looks like the betony, foxgloves, bugle, lungwort and violets have survived the transplanting together with a heuchera that the bees love. But my pond is probably too shady so we dont get frogspawn, though we get lots of toads sheltering in the log and rock piles.

With the sun yesterday afternoon we had an 8/10 day for the new solar PV. 7.5 kWh generated, monthly average should be 5.8 but at the start of the month I'd expect about 5.0 average. Changing our dishwashing, washing machine times to take advantage of the leccy we'd otherwise export.

Rozeepozee, not long now, hope all goes well. Looking at my twin gds, you'll have your hands full!

Enjoy the better weather everyone

Rummer

Rhiwfield sadly we no longer have good weather I have woken up today to torrential rain storms. So much for my planting plans, I really don't want to go out in such bad weather!

COOLTRIKERCHICK

rhiwfield.... silkies are lovely chickens, i have some red ones, but they have to be kept under cover, they are not as hardy as bluebells, warrens etc, as they have alot of soft feathers if the head feathers get wet, they are prone to eye infections etc due to the wet feathers in their eyes etc.

so i personally would only have silkies if you give then an under cover run if its raining etc

we have 5 chicks now:j so really pleased....

very cold and windy here, so i think the best hting to do today is just snuggle-up on the sofa and have a moochy day:D

Davesnave

It's a bit blowy out, but dry, so I'm digging out an area to stand the big ferret cage on. Wilf, one of our ferrets, collapsed a couple of weeks ago; his eyes suddenly going milky due to fat deposits in them. None of the specialist vets can explain this, but he's only partially sighted now, so I feel bound to improve his situation and put up the summer cage, not that he's exactly restricted in the four floors of his winter quarters!

I'm not one for caged animals, but ferrets are an exception, as they really love their home, always bounding back joyfully when they've been out on their leads, as though they've been away a week!

Sorry, I haven't posted for a while. I tried to last night and lost the lot; just tiredness.:o I've been a bit under the weather: spent a minor fortune on dental treatment and ended up with toothache, and then I split the top of my thumb with a craft knife when chopping up plants. However, the best news is that the digger man has been and the 50'x40' area for the polytunnel is levelled, the huge heap of soil and debris we christened 'Silbury Hill' has gone and a north to south pathway has been carved through part of the garden.

We also have about 10 one tonne bags of rubbish that came out of the heap to sort through, dry out and then dispose of too. :mad:

I have a photo of what it looked like after we finished, here:


If it works, I will post more!

rhiwfield

Great progress Davesnave, but sorry to hear of your ailments. Cutting the top part of your thumb is a real bind, did that myself 3 weeks back and it took an age to heal because you use it constantly.

Re chickens, my next door neighbour's daughter just bought them 2 hens as an easter present, I'm not sure how well they were received!

Davesnave

rhiwfield wrote: »

Great progress Davesnave, but sorry to hear of your ailments. Cutting the top part of your thumb is a real bind, did that myself 3 weeks back and it took an age to heal because you use it constantly.

Thanks rhiwfield. The thumb is healing rapidly as it was such a sharp knife, but the toothache still returns at the end of the day. Nothing 1/2 an Ibuprofen can't handle though.

I'm not sure we have made as much progress after all. I expected the mucky stuff in our mystery mound to be spongy when 6' deep, but it is still quite spongy in places and very inconsistent overall, despite deliberate mixing. More worrying, I'm still pulling rubbish out of it, including burnt plastics and metal, so I've lost confidence in using it for growing any kind of crop. Goodness knows what went in there!:eek:

As we are lucky enough to have plenty of good soil, we'll shift the whole area we laid as soon as we can get the digger back. If DW drives the dumper, we can do that in a day and then replace with good soil. Eventually, If I can clean the muck up, it can be used to landscape a wildlife area we plan to make at the far end of the land. That will only have shrubs and small trees on it; nothing edible. I'd rather play safe.

As the first photo went OK, I thought I'd post a few more, showing the place when we first saw it in May of last year:

Rummer

Dave that looks amazing! I would love to own somewhere like that in the future (especially with a horse too!), just shows that hard work and determination as well as a lot of planning can pay off. Although I appreciate the hard work is still ongoing!

I decided to use the atrocious weather here to my advantage and went seed shopping, now I have to get busy and get potting! We have covered the beds with carpet with a hope of killing off the weeds. Left it too late as usual but who knows it may weaken them a bit making them easier to haul out.

Now I need to get the greenhouse sorted out and ready for my new plants in a few weeks. Decided to take it a bit easier in the greenhouse this year by having fewer plants in it over the summer and focusing our attentions on the outside space. Putting in a couple more raised beds and going to try and stagger our planting this year so we have tasty thins for longer!

ukmaggie45

Hi Dave, looks like things are finally moving for you. What a pain having to move all that earth again though. :eek:

Thought you might like a before and after pic from me too. Here's what the garden looked like on 12th December, the day after we completed.



And here's how it looked on Easter Sunday evening.



There's shallots under the mini poly tunnel. I know they don't need it, but it's squirrel protection until nets arrive. To the right of the poly tunnel there's a bed of elephant garlic that's just poking through, and to the right of the "stepping stones" there's a freshly dug bed waiting for more spuds, and to the right of that there's a small row of 7 Lady Chrystl spuds by the central path. The other 3 Lady Christl we planted in a spud bag about a month ago to get an early meal... It's been moved onto the front porch when frost threatened, and I earthed it up for the first time on Monday. Can't wait for those new potatoes!

Other side of the central path we'll prob mainly have fruit bushes, but this year will use some of it for veg. Have lots of bulbs to move when they've finished flowering in it though! Shed is going at far right hand end of the garden - you can see the beginnings of the base for it. OH finished the base yesterday after work, in the rain.