Lockdown Veggies

We are very lucky to be here at the Croft in these strange times of lockdown and quarantine. Lucky because of the space to move around outside, lucky because we have livestock that require us to get outside, lucky because we are naturally isolated from the outside world, 4km up a dirt track from the village, and lucky because we have helpful, kind, thoughtful neighbours - people who look out for each other in difficult times.

Just before the lockdown, Hester, the daughter of a friend from Cornwall, and her friend Kerry, came to stay for the night before dashing across the border to France, and then back to England.

We devised and then built an experimental raised bed in the vegetable garden, using hazel poles:

A sticky situation

Hester and Bed

 It's been a total success. We planted it with courgettes (zucchini) and they have bloomed, with the fruit just forming now.

To Marrow is Another Day

Thanks to brilliant planning by Hester and Kerry (or, possibly, good luck), the bed is 1.4 metres x 1.4 metres - in other words 2 square metres*. So if I'm bored in the lockdown I can measure precisely how much water the plants are getting, by emptying 4 litres into the bed - 2 litres per square metre. 

Covid does seem to bring out the obsessive gardener in me...

*Thanks to my dad, a civil engineer, for a correction here

A Hungry Donkey Looks at the Thistle*

It's a tough life being a donkey on the Croft. I've put Arran and friends on a diet, and now there are only thistles to eat. It's a delicate process, getting past the prickles...

The straw diet is working well, and I think that the donkeys are beginning to lose weight. They are certainly tucking into their feed.

*With apologies to Hugh MacDiarmid, author of "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle"

Hornet Horror

Last week (24th August) I saw an Asian hornet, Vespa velutina, at the beehives. Not good news. The hornets are capable of killing off whole hives of bees.

I phoned the Agents Rurals (a rural warden service) who where quick and efficient, arriving an hour after my call with a trap and a load of instructions.

I have been checking the trap and the area around the hives; the clue is to look for the severed heads of worker bees. The hornet takes the thorax, which provides protein for its larvae.

So far I have not found any.

But I am on guard:

Kung Fu Crofter

Bee Tongue

A fascinating piece - if you like words - from the University of Barcelona, has helped me understand why people in Catalonia use so many words for beehive. Some people here say it's a 'rusc' and others that it is an 'arna.'

Research by Maria-Pilar Perea and Germà Colón Domènech at the University of Barcelona that might be of interest to Dr Jarrett over in his Corner of 10th Century Europe, shows the development of at least six words or phrases for beehive. 

'Rusc' in yellow, 'arna' in green

Their map shows how 'rusc' was the word used in the Barcelona area, while 'arna' was used in western Catalonia, at least since the 13th century.

Which of course led me back to Scotland, where I can remember my Mum using a word that was not 'hive.'  She called a hive a 'bee-howff', which means a bee-residence or bee lodge.

In Scots we also have;

• Bee-bike, or byke, defined in the Scots Dialect Dictionary as a wild bees' nest, and in Chambers Scots Dictionary as also meaning a swarm, an assembly of people, or unexpected good luck. In the old days, finding a wild bees' nest was unexpected good luck
• Bink, defined in The Scots Thesaurus as a hive
• Ruskie, a straw beehive

Truly we speak in bee-tongues.


Special thanks to Teresa at the Catalan Beekeepers Association for this information.

Bugs at the Croft

A selection of images to reassure you that despite the pesticides that are being sprayed around the world, this little corner of Catalonia still has a load of lovely bugs.

Stink bug sex, in full colour

This is a potter wasp nest, beautifully built on a blade of grass.

Potter; The Cupboard under the Staircase

This is the beauty of leaving your skin behind.

I jumped out of my skin

And here is the life on our thyme flowers, on 26th June of this year:

Runny Honey

My first honey harvest today!

Miquel had loaned me his centrifuge, and today started sunny and calm, so I set out the kitchen ready for the harvest:

Not ergonomic, but it works

I sealed the windows. Not to stop the bees coming in, but to stop them getting out. If they escape they head off to tell their mates, and in no time you have 10,000 bees trying to get in to rob your harvested honey.

Then up to the hives with all the necessary equipment...

..and back with one full upper and two sets of frames. It has been rainy, so the bees are not yet really ready with the honey.

In the kitchen I weighed the honey.

That honey is dense

Then removed the cappings from the frames, centrifuged them and filtered the  honey. 

Watch that knife, Crofter.

 

Result: 26.5kg of fresh honey!

Crofting Gallimaufry

It has been a week of action here at the Croft.

First, Patrick (now a year old) has started halter training. He doesn't much like it, but the apples I feed him make it bearable.

Yeah OK but what about that apple you promised?

Then, for Sant Jordi, the poppies came out.

Just poppin' out

And yesterday, Dink the bantam hatched five lovely wee chicks.

Dinx chix pix

Life goes on going on.

Breast is best

We have had a couple of cases of mastitis recently, and so have had to bottle feed two or three lambs. In some cases this is complete substitution (the mother had no milk) and in others it has been an addition to their diet.

I compared the live weight of lambs with the meat weight - i.e. the carcass processed by the butcher. The carcass includes just the bone and muscle structure, not the internal organs, skin or contents of the body cavity.

Here is the result:


 

Date	Live Weight at Slaughter (kg)	Meat weight (kg)	% Meat /Live	Bottle Fed
31/10/2015	23.5	9.2	39.15%	Yes
03/05/2015	21.1	9.8	46.45%	Yes
31/03/2015	27	15.1	55.93%	No
17/08/2015	19.2	8.8	45.83%	No
17/08/2015	21	10.99	52.33%	No

The ratio of meat to live weight seems - this is a very, very small sample - to be higher in the lambs that fed naturally. Naturally feeding lambs had an average 51.4% meat:live weight ratio, while bottle fed lambs had an average 42.8%.

There are some published papers on this, for example this paper on milk source and body weight [1] but none, that I know of, on Ripollesa sheep.

Time for more research, methinks!

Update:
Joaquim Casellas at the Autonomous University of Barcelona has confirmed that there are no studies of this issue in Ripollesas. He has pointed me to this useful study on goats which shows that maternal milk vs milk powder does cause differences in fatty acid composition. 

This leads me to think that one possible explanation of the differences in meat weight:live weight is that bottle fed lambs may build up more body cavity fat (which is discarded in the butchering process) than ewe-fed.



1 Hernández-Castellano, L. E., I. Moreno-Indias, A. Morales-delaNuez, D. Sánchez-Macías, A. Torres, J. Capote, A. Argüello, and N. Castro. ‘The Effect of Milk Source on Body Weight and Immune Status of Lambs’. Livestock Science 175 (May 2015): 70–76. doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2015.02.011.

Tender moment

"Just nipping down to the butcher to get a bit of meat."

"Get something tender, dear. A nice but of lamb, maybe?"

Millions of households, millions of Saturday mornings. It's the butcher, or it's the supermarket, but the story is the same; a bit of meat for lunch or supper.

We said goodbye to Fat Face the lamb, yesterday, off to the butcher's too...but from the opposite direction.

It's a difficult moment, even when you have been doing it for years. You know that the lamb has had a good life, probably better than millions of other animals, with care and affection and, in the case of Fat Face, a visit to the village to be blessed by the priest on St Anthony's day this February.

You know all of that. And yet it hurts to hand him over to the butcher.

And it should hurt. Because meat production is not some distant, automated, faceless process. The meat you bought this morning in the supermarket used to walk around enjoying the fresh grass and hay. We should treasure it, not just fry it. For those like me who do not want to be vegetarian, we should remember the animal before.

Keeping sheep makes you tender.

Honey, I'm waxed

My plans for a hive-full of honey have been poleaxed by the wax moth, Achroia grisella. Against the advice of my mentor, Miguel the honey man, I had kept a hive without a queen. The results - a weakened hive unable to defend itself against the moth - are dramatic:

Moth invasion

Coo-coo cocoon

I took down the hive at the weekend, scattering the few bees left there to the four winds, and incinerated the whole lot as a precaution.

Burn 'em all

And over to Skye...

Benbecula, the sheep who lived, has given birth. Our second lamb in two days. 

The new boy on the block is called Skye, and he's a strong wee chap:

Likes a drink, does Skye

Flame of life

Yesterday night we had to put out the flame of life of our wonderful tup, Phoenix. 

He was born here on the Croft on 8th November 2007 the son of a black sheep, Mildred. Black sheep represent good luck here in Catalonia and I was lucky with him. Phoneix was the ram with hay fever, and the father of all the lambs born on the Croft in the last seven years.

Mum, son, and daughter

You learn from animals, and I have learned a lot about sheep from Phoenix. Starting with his birth; I thought that Mildred was just a bit overweight... I went up to the field on that day in November and found a new lamb, and an old sheep (Polly) dead of natural causes. His flame of life ignited as hers went out.

Butt me no buts

And now the cycle has been repeated, although this time with more knowledge - on the part of the humans - about what is going on. For one day before Phoenix' flame was put out a new lamb - we called him Flama - was born.
 

The new flame

The flame of life burns on.

Chick feed

We planted chickpeas for the first time this year, and keep finding the pods empty.

Now I know why:

Helicoverpa armigera?

It looks like the moths lay an egg inside the chick pea pod. They are possibly Helicoverpa spp, conceivably Helicoverpa armigera. According to the Queensland Dept of Agriculture site "chickpeas secrete an organic acid (malic acid) from hairs on their leaves, stems and pods, making the crop unattractive" but the moth larvae enter the pod and eat my chickpeas. Here is a pod with a scar where it has been penetrated:

I'm in here eating your chickpeas, Crofter!

Make hay while the sun shines...

...and it has been shining. Rather too much in fact - today we hit 30ºC at mid day. The Croft is 330m (1,000 ft) above sea level, and even here it's roasting.

Hot spot

 We cropped a record 63 small bales from our two main fields:

Baling hay, the old way...

The sheep have been sheared:

Cool sheep

 It's summer, but it's early, so everyone here in Montseny is starting to worry about forest fires...

Passer over Parus

We have had double bubble this year with the nesting boxes.

Here (look closely) is one, with a busy parent just back from feeding the chicks:

Tree sparrow, Passer montanus

And here is the other. This one has a video camera inside, so I can see four chicks, and the parents coming in every three or four minutes with food.

Great Tit, Parus major

Nature is blooming on the Croft.

Bee day

I've been at the bees today:

I can't give up smoking

I am a total beginner at bees, so I'm likely to make mistakes. But this, for pretty well sure, is a frame of capped brood in the typical oval laying pattern at the centre of the frame, with a ring of larvae around it, and a ring of honey beyond that:

I was framed, mate

Patrick Plods Along

I moved Patrick the foal and his mum Marguerita into a newly-fenced field today. The field is called "Camelot" because it was (King) Artur, a friend, who opened it up for us.

Bramble Breaks Out

Bramble the lamb is small...and can still slip under the fences. Here she is, on the way to freedom:

Patrick takes a run

Here is three-day old Patrick. His namesake was not even thinking about crawling at the same age (yes, I remember), but this wee chap can already get up a fine speed. And then at the end Laialuing can't bear to be left out of the action...

The Arrival of Saint Patrick

Today is Saint Patrick's day (and would have been the 81st birthday of my mum, Patricia)...and today at 09:00, wee Patrick was born to Marguerita:

Just arrived...

Mum! I've got so much to tell you!