🐝 Inspection day today. All hives have laying queens, marked two of them (white is the official paint colour in UK for 2026 queens). Only one left to find. One hive is grumpy, so is a priority for merging with one of our "spare" colonies so we can keep the calmer queen and fix that issue.

Ducks in the (slowly) growing local variety orchard/wildflower area. We are all having a lovely time.

Both peas and strawberries are getting going. These two were both bred by Thomas Laxton in the late 1800s: Progress #9 peas, Royal Sovereign strawberries.

Right, that's me done for the day (apart from lighting the bbq later). Dappled shade & a well known brand of French lager: sadly not my kit, which while tasting promising needs to drop a few more degrees before priming. Oh, plus a splash of lime cordial and some chilli rice crackers. 👌

Conservatory a little too toasty for the squash seedlings(!) so have evicted everything but the chillies, which, given the unlimited water a self-watering pot provides, seem to be thriving in it. 🥵

... and, loaded up a new (and rather spendy) 43cm self-watering pot with a jalapeño plant. High hopes, as last year the 30cm pot in the same range in our furnace of a conservatory quickly grew a Hot Paper Lantern nearly 1m tall, which then drank the entire reservoir daily. Great crops though. 😄🌶️

Two trays of sweetcorn belatedly sown; risk of domestic strife due to lack of sweetcorn averted. 😅🌽

You sometimes see videos of beekeepers with no veil or gloves, preaching that it's "all about calm handling". Selective editing, more like. Foolishly popped into apiary without veil. *Thwop!* Right in the temple. 🐝😬 Now waiting to see if face swells up. 🫪 Wear your beesuit, people.

Bank holiday weekend looking to be a scorcher. Bit of early morning watering of veg: glad I did it now, it's already pretty toasty outside, but bits of the plot are still in their fleeting morning shade. 😅 Time to kick the biquino chillies out into the polytunnel hanging baskets.

Well, this is looking promising... #broadies

Happy #worldbeeday to all who celebrate. Bees are wonderful little creatures, and have been a superb addition to our smallholding (even when they build free comb on the crown board or swarm everywhere and necessitate moonlit wheelbarrow trips).

Honey processing today and tomorrow. Before starting, noticed our drake was limping, so discussed isolation/catching plans. We removed 3 of the 5 supers, other 2 were not beetight at the top (old kit), so sorted that temporarily with some willow twig shims and masking tape so they can empty.

Setting up this morning for our first honey extraction of the year. This involved adding "clearing boards" with one-way bee escapes on the full supers. In theory these gradually empty them of bees. Second sting of the year. On shoulder through bee suit. 🙄 Always a chore, never a pleasure.

I have been saying "night night ducks" as part of the ducks' night time housing routine since we trained them to go in at night. They have obviously remembered the rhythm of the phrase, as every evening now sees me shepherding them into their little hut to a shouted chorus of "WAAK! WAKWAKWAK!" 🤣

'What's that on the Salvia?', I thought. 'Oh right, a small ball of baby yellow spiders. All good then, leave them to it.'

Adamant that converting our tough broad beans from last year into falafel for the freezer IS a good idea. However frying off 60 oversized falafel is, unavoidably, going to take a little time... 🧑🏻‍🍳🤣

Oh, hello, ball of unexpected bees.

The multiduck, enjoying the warm spring weather.

All the best beer starts off in giant tins, right? 🤔

Gave the bees 2 more supers this morning and moved the parent colonies for the artificial swarms (phase 2 of the Pagden method). It is going to be a brilliant spring for us, honey-wise. Need to book the beekeeping society's extractor soon. 🍯🍯🍯🍯

Little bank holiday project: building some triple beehive stands. This is the prototype, 2 more to make. We only aim to run 3 hives but this will enable us to add boxes on either side temporarily when doing artificial swarms (that again!) Width allows hanging frames on the bars when inspecting.

First rain in ages, drumming on conservatory roof. Really pleased, as have a load of grass seed down which needs to take. Time to knock up some much needed super frames for the bees, who are rapidly running out of storage space!

Every year, the cactus gets bigger, as does its ring of small pink flowers.

It is a bee-y time of year. Inspected today to work out the logistics of which hives need what, and the best we can do with the kit we have. We can muddle through today, but shopping trip definitely needed soon. Still, supers filling up nicely with a spring honey crop, and it's not even May!

Today's little project- hot smoking a pork shoulder. When cooking at 120c, you need to get going early!

Right. Bonfire pit dug out and bagged- dusty work we're both glad to be the other side of. Process delayed by dealing with unexpected swarm of bees. 🤦 Roll on midsummer.

The air is alive here with St Mark's flies- medium dangly legged black insects which turn up around the time the hawthorn flowers. More of a fan of those than the winter moths whose caterpillars have almost defoliated one of my young plum trees (prior to being removed and fed to the chickens).

Royal Sovereign: THE state of the art strawberry (in 1892). Today, thought to be too disease-prone for spray-free growing. Which, of course, is what I'm trying to do. 🫣 So, manual disease control it is. (i.e removing any spotty leaf I see). Plus, a nice mushroom compost mulch.

Argh. Just checked forecast, and as per usual the weather has responded to me planting up the polytunnel by scheduling some chilly overnight temperatures at the weekend. Need to try and rig up some kind of water barrels/fleecing. 🙄

Patience exhausted, polytunnel loaded. 🍅🍈🫑🌶️🍆🥒

Pair of wild ducks has taken to visiting the last few days, and the female appears to have some kind of unusual black-and-white feather pattern and a dark bill. She's wild duck size rather than chunky like our domestic Orpingtons. Anyone have any idea what variety/breed of duck she might be?

Teenage chickens have finally acquired enough feathers to be evicted from the house (phew! 🐔💨🤢) Minds were duly blown at the discovery of sky, grass, weather etc. These have the honour of being the first animals living on our field. Minds will be blown further when the geese arrive.

Goose lodge kit arrived today. Quality looks great pre-assembly (build is for a day with another pair of hands available!) But got the wheels on the base, so could use it as a massive dolly to heave the weightiest sections uphill to the field. Pleased to have that done. 🥵

Tomatoes, cukes and chillies being introduced to the concept of "outside" today. Hopefully toughening them up for when my patience runs out and I inevitably get them in the polytunnel too early...

April dramas continue with an escaped duck, taking full advantage of my focus on bees this afternoon. 🙄 Now retrieved, and escape route identified.

Had I not been somewhat distracted yesterday I might have considered that a 20°c day in April might induce swarming. 🐝 Very weird one this, as the cluster formed underneath the hive.

Chick growth continues. Almost a month, and the last few days their necks have grown significantly. They are now very lanky: almost a full covering of small feathers on the body, but a fluffy chick head. The pace of development is amazing to watch, and these are a "slow-growing" traditional breed!

One of our Bramley apples has died. Not particulary old, but lots of rotty bits & always had low vigour. My attempt at topworking it last year was obviously the final indignity, and it gave up completely. So, got our fencing contractor to push the remains of it over with his digger.

April. Time to kick my little potted calamondin out of the conservatory, and get that small handful of Maris Piper maincrop spuds in the ground, to complete this year's trio of classic Cambridgeshire potato varieties.

Nice little army of plants growing on well on my propagation table. They will be shifted into the polytunnel over the next month.

Field fencing is finally complete! It has taken a fair bit of clearance to get robust boundaries in place, but we can now rebuild habitat in sensible places balancing our use of the land and nature's! First step: species-rich grass seed chucked around on bare bits/former bramble thicket.

Another couple of pallets of logs shifted down to the house and stacked for final drying and (as this afternoon) a bit of logburner to take the chill off early Spring nights. Mostly ash, so top quality stuff. 🔥

Nothing to do with smallholding really (apart from the duck eggs used to make it) but I am rather proud of this black forest gateau I've put together this morning. Really must get some cherry trees planted- maybe in the field... 🤔

Lovely spring day here. Pear blossom, daffs, euphorbia and primroses all having a fine old time.

Chick HQ has received an upgrade. Lots of pin feathers coming through now. Full of energy, lots of chest bumping and cheeping.

Put cat out as she was being annoying. Cat came back in through window, then posed by the door I exited her through, looking outside with fake surprise, then at me: "I thought you put a cat out there, human. Where's that cat now, eh? eh?"

Spring equinox seems like an auspicious day to get my first and second early potatoes in. Maris Bard and Maris Peer, not grown either before so let's see how they like our plot.

Beans and sausages for dinner. Fantastic homegrown/dried Czar beans. Give us a couple of years, we'll be making the chorizo too.

Our kindly smallholding has self-set lots of hawthorn and cherry plum seedlings which are ideal for adding to gappy bits in the hedge I planted a year or so ago. Quick lift and shift, job done.

Sunny and warm today, so beesuit on and a bit of hive-wrangling. We've lost one colony over winter (as suspected), so removed that one to clean it down and worked out the logistics for shoggling the spare bees we have in nucleus hives around to fill the gap over the next few days.