Tag Archives: barbara’s back yard

Autumn in Barbara’s Back Yard

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Autumn  – season of mists and mellow fruitfulness – perfectly described by John Keats

So much brighter – and warmer – today – tidied up the hen house – and found where the Spice Girls are laying their eggs.  They have settled in much faster than the last lot and have calmed down – they don’t skitter away from me in panic any more.  Still have difficulty getting them in at night – it’s almost like they are saying to me:  “Just one more bit of grass first…”  I tell them that they really will be let out again in the morning and there will be plenty more grass to eat!

Dillon crowed for the first time this week – I felt a thrill of excitement when I heard him – its ages since we had an adult cockerel.  He has quite a deep crow (the bantam cockerel we had made a really shrill noise – much to the annoyance of the boys who were sleeping in the room nearest him!)  Clearing up the garden it was so lovely to hear him crowing.  Happy hens lay happy eggs!

Lit the fire the last few nights – my new herby firelighters work really well – just need to show husband how to use them instead of those smelly petrol ones – you just put them on top of screwed up newspaper and you need some really dry kindling or a dry log on top.  Works like a dream!

My two new ‘NZW’ does must have some Californian blood in them.  Half Keri’s babies now have black noses and tails – and ear tips!  They will probably be much hardier – and make better rabbits to breed for meat – but they are definitely not pure bred NZWhites!  Wonder how Lily’s babies will turn out!  They will all make lovely house rabbits – they are really friendly and the Californians with their black noses and tails are really cute.  They are ready for new homes now – £15 each – if you are looking for a pet that doesn’t need a walk every day.

Jack Frost is back!

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Jack Frost is Back!

Frosty this morning – so cold in comparison to last week – but there’s always a bright side – the birds are back on the bird table in all their winter colours – the robin showing off his new waistcoat, the great spotted woodpecker in all his glory – and all the tits – the stunning black and yellow of the great tits and the tiny blue tits and coal tits, nibbling seeds when they can get a beak in.  Blackbirds are fighting over territory in the apple tree and nuthatches are busy gobbling up sunflower seeds – and peanuts – they don’t eat them on the bird table, they fly off with them – to eat in secret – or to store?  I would love to know where they go with them.

The frost has finished off the runner beans – and the nasturtiums:  “They’ve gone willy-nilly, umbrellas and all.”  Along with the Nasturtium Fairy.

Hallowe’en in Barbara’s Back Yard

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Hallowe’en in Barbara’s Back Yard

Hallowe’en – the night when the divide between the worlds of the living and the dead is especially thin – my Grandmother used to have a teapot stand that said:  “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties, and things that go bump in the night, may the good Lord deliver us.”  I’ve no idea why it was on a teapot stand but I always think of it at Hallowe’en.  (Looking it up I find out that it’s a Scottish prayer.)

Time to pick pumpkins and carve Jack O’lanterns (tip – use an ice cream scoop to scrape out the seeds).  Reserve the flesh for pumpkin soup.

The idea of a hollowed-out vegetable with a candle in the middle originated with the Celts – but they didn’t have pumpkins (they came later – from America).  They used beets, and turnips, and carved grotesque faces on them – and put them outside their doors to ward off evil spirits.

According to Irish folklore, Jack O’lantern comes from the story of Stingy Jack who tried to outsmart the Devil: Jack invites the Devil for a drink and convinces him to transform into a coin to pay with – as soon as the coin appeared, Jack changed his mind and kept the coin in his pocket with a silver cross – so preventing it turning back into the Devil.  Eventually Jack freed the devil, on condition that he would leave Jack alone for a year – and – that he wouldn’t claim Jack’s soul when he died.  At the end of the year Jack tricked the devil again by persuading him to climb up a tree to pick some fruit.  Whilst the Devil was in the tree, Jack carved a cross into the tree trunk so the Devil couldn’t get down.  The Devil had to swear that he would leave Jack alone for another ten years before he was allowed to come down.

Then Jack died – but he had led such a sinful life that God wouldn’t let him into Heaven and, because of his bargain with the Devil, he couldn’t get into hell either, so Jack was sent instead into the eternal night. Jack complained about how dark it was, wandering around earth with no place to go, so someone tossed him a hot coal, which he placed in a hollowed-out turnip – and he has been roaming the earth ever since – with his turnip-lantern to guide him.

The Irish began to refer to this spooky figure as “Jack of the Lantern”, which has since become Jack O’Lantern – and some folks say that Jack comes out on Hallowe’en night looking for someone to take his place… so watch out, if you see him wandering your way!

The Samhain festival marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, the “darker half” of the year.  Time to pick and store the apples for winter puddings – and to add to soups (Squash Apple and Sage Soup) – and to feed to the rabbits and hens when winter sets in.  Time to make Wittenham Cider with the windfalls.  The recipe says to leave it for a week after its bottled – but it’s usually quite fizzy – and very drinkable – the day after it’s bottled!

At Christmas, we always have a real Christmas tree – and we save it to help get the bonfire going at Samhain.   I’m not too keen on fireworks – but we do love sparklers – and no-one is ever too old to draw sparkling shapes in the air on Bonfire night.

We have spicy pumpkin soup, hot dogs – and Wittenham Cider (which is much better before it becomes alcoholic as its much sweeter).  And we combine Guy Fawkes with All Hallows Eve and have our own Samhain on the nearest weekend – I always light candles on 31st October – and tealights in our Jack O’Lanterns to keep away Stingy Jack!

Happy, smiley, pumpkin Jack’o’Lantern

Ducks Go a Dabbling

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The ducklings are now so big I can’t tell them apart from Arthur and Martha.  Love this clip, reminds me of Wind in the Willows – Ducks Ditty:
All along the backwater,
Through the rushes tall,
Ducks are a-dabbling,
Up tails all!

I cleaned the duck pond out today and filled it with clean water.  It’s only a plastic ornamental pond and not very big but the ducks love it – especially when it’s full of clean water.  Love this clip.

https://barbararainford.co.uk/ducks-are-a-dabbling

 

Rearing New Zealand White baby rabbits is never boring!

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Catalogue of catastrophies with Eny’s latest litter!

New Zealand White Rabbits

New Zealand White rabbits are beautiful, very tame and very friendly so they make excellent pets. They are good house rabbits as they are clean, usually using the same place as a toilet all the time. They also grow quite big, quite quickly which is why they are often bred as meat rabbits. Once they reach 3 months old they generally have very few health problems, BUT, until they get to ten weeks old they can be notoriously difficult to rear.

Eny had 6 babies, two of them died in the first few days – no idea why – it was just like she abandoned them. The other four were fine at 3 weeks old, then one of them mysteriously just flaked out and I found it cold as stone in the morning. And then there were three!

Next day I found one of the babies in the hen house, goodness knows how he got out but I managed to catch him and reinstall him safely with his mum. Checked everything but couldn’t figure out how he got out but added extra security just in case.

Two days later – he’s with the hens again – but this time something has attacked him and he’s looking very sorry for himself indeed, so I put him in a pen on his own, cleaned him up and covered him in Aloe Vera gel (works wonders on everything from rabbit scratches on me to hens attacked by foxes – and poorly rabbits).

The next day he looked a lot better, but the shock must have been too much because he was dead the next morning.

So now we are down to two – one of which is quite small and therefore not really suitable for breeding although she’s really sweet and would make an excellent pet. Often people who are looking for rabbits as pets want two of the same sex to keep each other company. Guess what – the other baby is a male. So I am looking for someone who would like a small NZ white doe as a pet and someone else who would like a buck as either a pet or for breeding.

Breeding NZ whites is never simple! (But never boring either!)

On a more positive note, for the first time I have kept one of my own does and one of my own bucks (different mothers and fathers) for breeding and they are just old enough now to breed.  George is beautiful, he’s a really large buck and was the only baby Cowslip had in her last litter so he had the best possible attention.  He’s just over 6 months old.   Holly, my new doe, was one of Eny’s babies.  She is now just over 5 months old.  Alhough it’s still winter, the weather last weekend was quite mild so I thought I would see how they got on together.

I never leave a doe with a buck unattended as sometimes they can fight so I always keep an eye on them – there’s always lots of things I can get on with in the rabbit shed – cleaning up, washing food bowls, stroking the rabbits (my favourite task!).  After 10 minutes of chasing each other round I put them back in their pens and tried again the next day – with no luck.

Holly really doesn’t like being kept in a cage – the other rabbits are fine but she absolutely loves being in the run outside so she gets to go out more often than the others.  In the spring she will have a hutch outside but, for the moment, she’s safe in her cage.  So I thought I might put a nest box in her cage to see if that changed her mind about mating.  (Usually you put the nest box in a week before the babies are due because otherwise rabbits tend to make a mess in them and you have to keep cleaning them out.)  Anyway, Holly loved her nest box and settled down happily in it.  Next day when I introduced her to George again, she mated straight away,  so I am hoping Holly and George will be parents for the first time in February.

Let’s hope the babies in this next litter are less problematic than Eny’s last litter.

Sunflowers

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Sunflowers

s sunflowers

I always grow some sunflowers as the birds love the seeds.  I tried to get some ordinary size sunflower seeds but must have ended up with giant ones – either that or the rabbit manure has worked wonders as these sunflowers are over a foot across – and one of the plants is over 12 feet tall!  It’s a wonder it’s still standing – my time spent staking the plants in the spring has paid off.

I used to spend ages collecting the sunflower seeds but it takes ages scraping them all out and the earwigs seem to like hiding in them too – so now I just dry the whole heads in the barn then put them out for the birds in the winter – they don’t mind the earwigs!