Ikea hack stack wormery- nearly a year on

 

 

 

I thought it might be helpful to update on how the wormery is doing a year on.

Sorry about the rubbish picture- we are still in moving chaos, hence the wormery, white spirit and bird seed sharing the same space.

The wormery has been a complete success. I worried that the surface area wouldn't be enough, but it has worked brilliantly, making lots of juice and castings, and uses up some of our green waste. I even divided the worms up and gave half away, but there are loads and loads again now.

Plan for the future is to make a larger one for outside with Small Boy and Small Girl- maybe this birthday?!?!

Grumpy bees

Here are my hives yesterday afternoon before I decided to 'have a look inside'.

There isn't a picture of after because I was too busy running down the garden screaming.

Maybe wearing a boiler suit with a gap in the front, hooped veil and using a liquid smoke spray wasn't the dream combination I thought it would be.

I got 2 stings, and think I got off lightly.

Came inside, recovered from the shock, and got straight on to ordering an all in one suit with fencing veil and a stainless steel smoker.

They are not bad bees, I am a bad beekeeper.

Broody hen

You may or may not have seen my 'roll call' the other day, which mentioned that I have a broody hen currently sitting on eggs. not really sure how the broodiness happened- she is one of last October's ex-barn hens from BHWT, and went a bit weird when we brought the pekins home from market a month or so ago. She started spending ages in the next box, and rolling everyone's eggs into a pile before sitting on them all. After a great deal of though, we decided to place some fertile eggs under her and place her in a rabbit hutch. We are now on day 17 and she is still diligently sitting. Theoretically, hatch day is Thursday so we will see what happens- they are cream legbar eggs.
Small Boy is so excited- he wants to take the chicks to school, and Small Girl wants to 'cuddle and kiss them'. Hoping at least one out of 6 hatches, otherwise there will be sad children here next weekend.

Bee day!

Yesterday was bee day!

After completing my beginners course back in April ish, hubby and I negotiated over having a hive of bees- he said I could have some next year, for my birthday in November this year.
Last week the association newsletter came out, with an advert saying someone was selling their colonies off in Nationals for a very very modest price, so at the earliest opportunity I phoned her. Now, before phoning, we agreed amongst ourselves that one hve was enough. After the call I had reserved 2.
Fast forward a week, and yesterday we spent the day frantically trying to buy hubby a bee suit as he wanted to help collect them. 3 hours later we found a red boiler suit, which I then modified, and we set up a hive stand made of pallets (salvaged from the side of a road). last night at dusk we went to collect the bees, and we brought them home in the dark, all 20,000 ish of them.
I will add pictures soon, but later today I will do my first hive inspection- how exciting!

Roll Call

Current total:

8 chickens (4 ex batts- 1 broody with eggs and 3 pekins)
10 quails
2 guinea pigs
1 snail
1 gerbil
2 goldfish

Another new house update

We have moved in!

After weeks of plumbing and electrical work, we have finally moved in. Beds are built, internet, phone and TV all installed. (Small Boy and Small Girl are watching cbeebies as I type).

Small Boy has started in foundation at the local school, and Small Girl has increased her nursery hours slightly to help me do all of the work that the house needs!

The garden is wonderful, if currently a little overgrown. We have largely neglected it over the summer, but it looks ok, if a little jungle-like :)

All in all it is going rather well.

Timothy, the accidental gerbil

Just before I say any more, I want to say sorry for my complete lack of ability to blog regularly. there are mitigating circumstances, namely that internet access could be described at best as sporadic, and at worst non existent. We are still not moved into Tiny Trees, 3 months nearly after purchasing it; the electrics have been undated, and the new boiler went in today, so hopefully we are making progress.

The animals have all moved to Tiny Trees now, and we have stayed a few nights, although not at the moment because there is no water or gas. Things are looking good though...

So, on to Timmy. He is not accidental in in the sense that he used to be something else (Squirrel? mouse?) and turned into a gerbil, more accidental in the sense that gerbil wasn't on my 'must have' pet list.

We were on a trip to our local pet shop to see if there were any stick insects left, and we left with Timmy. He is old, and he couldn't be looked after by his owner anymore. His owner was a rather elderly looking man who asked the pet shop to take Timmy, but they wouldn't, but said that they could offer him to the pythons. I them stepped in and said that he could come home with me. The pet shop lady shrugged and said that was fine, but he looked to be so old he wouldn't make it past his first bag of food.

Not sure what hubby thought when I brought Timmy home- we haven't had little tiny rodents before. So, I borrowed a large fish tank from a good friend and Timmy now lives on a shelf, spending his day shredding toilet roll tubes and eating sunflower seeds. He is a happy, and incredibly tame gerbil :-)