Anglesey Smallholder

Last week, the final remaining chicken had to be put down due to fly strike.  It was very distressing – I tried to clean her up and get the maggots out, but she had a deep abscess full of them.  If I get some more chickens then I will have to bathe them regularly to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  It seems that by the time it’s noticeable, it’s already too late.

We’ve had a few little problems with the new mower – while my brother was using it, a large circlip came loose on the roller and dropped off in the field.  I repaired the metal detector and had a search for it, but to no avail.  I went inside assuming that my brother would either keep looking for the clip or put the roller away, but instead he decided to keep using it.  It should be obvious what happened next – without the circlip to keep it on there, one side of the roller’s axle popped out of the frame, and completely bent the other side of the frame.  I don’t know what possessed him to carry on using it when it was so predictable what would happen.

In happier news, the polytunnel is in full swing.  The cucumbers are growing faster than I can eat them and the tomatoes are ripening.  I just hope we can have some sunshine to ripen them fully, because it’s been a bit gray recently.  I pulled up the pattypans – I ate a couple and they were bitter and nasty, I won’t be planting any more of them!  The courgette plant doesn’t seem to be doing quite as well this year either, they are growing but not getting big for some reason.  It’s putting out huge amounts of leaves though – I have to keep cutting it back to stop it from swamping all the other plants.