I really wish I could say there’s been a flurry of activity here at the Smallest Smallholding. But the simple truth is, there hasn’t. The sleeping problems are getting better, however I suffered yet another setback, this time due to my back. I have the back of an incompetent 70 year old. When I was 14, I managed to land a bit funny after doing a standing long jump (as instructed by my P.E. teacher) on the hard school gym floor. My cousin (my osteopath too) thinks that it’s caused some disc damage, which still plagues me now. All I did was get up from sitting on the sofa. A few moments later, there were the rumblings of a bad muscle spasm, and before I knew it, my legs were collapsing and I couldn’t stand up properly.

It’s got better though, at least I can walk upright now. And thank goodness I finished all that ruddy digging, because there’s no way I can do anything like that for a while. It sucks. It really does. But I’ve managed to do a bit of pricking out and weeding for now. I’ve thinned the turnips a few times, and I can honestly say they’re probably one of the easiest vegetables I’ve ever grown. And fast! I got an early variety called Snowball, and they’ve needed next to no assistance from me.

I have a whole lot of transplanting to do, and I REALLY need to get down the allotment to earth up the potatoes and weed the onions. And sow things. But it’s just got to all go on hold again. So very very frustrating. I should be whizzing around doing a million jobs! And to top it all off, I have the dreaded school reunion that I organised tomorrow evening. A whole evening of “so what do YOU do?” and trying not to look like a crip. I have wedge shoes though, which actually helps. And hopefully eveyone’ll get so blotto that no one will notice. Not that they’d notice anyway.

So what’s actually been going on here? Well, Pattie and Yoko had a good run, but as ever one of them had to get a bit poorly. Pattie has got her re-occurring thing again. Her comb goes dark red, she starts drinking like a fish and her crop fills with water. She then has explosions of watery poo and looks a bit sorry for herself. We don’t know whether the course of baytril helped last time, but we’re trying to get her on another course to see if it helps. It’s all supposedly linked in with her sterile egg yolk peritonitis, but I just don’t understand why it affects her in this way. Twice she’s made a full recovery, and I don’t know if it’s just her getting over it herself, or the baytril. Thing is, I don’t want to leave her and chance the fact that it’s not the baytril doing it’s job. So what do I do? She’s the happiest, sweetest little hen otherwise.

Yoko has been sneezing a bit still, but despite that is marching and parading around, when she’s not dozing off to sleep in the shade. In the warm weather they all go a bit quiet and dozy. There’s a massive hedge by the shed that they gather under. They preen, they doze, they make small chatty noises amongst themselves, occasionally they’ll wander about but until much later on in the day they don’t do an awful lot else. What a life!

We’ve also had another round of hedgehog releases here from Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue. At dusk we pick the carriers up, and leave them open so that the hogs can be merrily on their way to finding a new nest/mate/food etc. There were so many to be released that I ended up taking a load over to my aunt and grandmother’s. They live next to each other and both have 200ft+ gardens, both of which have dedicated wildlife areas and plenty of scope for the hedgies to move in and out to other gardens as they please. Last night I ran into two of my released fatties (they’re gargantuan!) that had met each other under the hollyhocks and borage. I have a feeling we’re going to have lots of tiddlers running around come mid summer…

I have to say I do not have a problem with slug munched flowers or veg at all. If you’re interested in encouraging hedgehogs into your patch, here’s a few pointers:

• Don’t be too tidy, leave piles of leaves in inconspicuous corners or against a sheltered spot, such as down the side of your shed. Leaves not only provide nesting material, but are home to lots of hedgehog food such as slugs, beetles and worms.
• If you have a pond, try to make sure that there is an escape route for hedgehogs. They are brilliant climbers but cannot really swim. If your pond has sheer sides (fatal for wildlife), try to provide ladders out of the pond. Even better, why not make a wildlife pond with shallow shelves (needs to be about 18 inches in its deepest part). This way wildlife can come and drink without the danger of falling in and drowning.  Likewise open drains can be an accident waiting to happen, so make sure they’re all covered.
• In dry spells and cold spells, hedgehogs struggle to find food and water.  You can buy special hedgehog mixes (such as ‘Spike’s dinner or hedgehog mix with nuts, fruit, insects and fat from noahsarkgardens.co.uk) or provide them with meaty chicken flavour cat food (without jelly, as it is too rich and can cause diarrhoea) and biscuits. Hedgehogs love to crunch! They also have a sweet tooth, so will appreciate the occasional bit of dried fruit, but don’t go overboard as like humans, they can suffer from dental problems. NEVER give a hedgehog bread or milk. Bread carries little or no nutrition and will cause upset tummies. Milk is far too rich and will cause diarrhoea, which can be fatal.
• Be vigilant with your compost heaps - never plunge your fork straight in. I’ve seen hedgehogs that have been impaled in this way, and don’t forget that female hedgehogs will abandon their litter of hoglets if they’re disturbed. A better way is to take small layers off and carefully turn your compost.  This method is better for your compost anyway!
• Never leave a bonfire pile for hours or days before lighting it. This one is pretty self explanatory.
• Make sure you have lots of places in your hedges or fencing where hedgehogs can get through.  You’d be surprised at how nimble they are, and how flat they can go to squeee themselves through the smallest nooks and crannies! Hedgehogs can travel up to one mile in an evening to find enough food, so obviously the easier they can travel, the better.
• If you ever see a hedgehog out in the daytime, it’s in trouble. It doesn’t matter how well it looks - it’s in trouble. Pick it up, bring it in, wrap a water bottle in a towel and place the hog on top if the towel in a box. Then call your nearest wildlife hospital or the RSPCA.
• Slug pellets are evil and should be banned. NEVER use them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Sustainability, wildlife, hens, veg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.