Perhaps it is a Polytunnel after all

Finally the great day arrived. The long awaited cover for the garden was ready and there were three people at home to help roll it over. One person stood on the ute, one on a ladder and I stood in the middle on a table armed with a broom. It took a couple of minutes getting the hang of it but once the roll made it nearly to the top the rest was easy.

 

 

Once we had pulled it square and tight the ends were secured by screwing strapping into the end hoop. Lots of screws meant that the pressure of windy days is spread out as much as possible.

 

At the sides the plastic was rolled around a piece of wood which was pulled under an already fixed piece. This drew it tighter and gave a level surface to secure it to.

Now that it is covered it is possible to feel the increase in temperature, even on cool damp spring days. The air circulates well so it is definitely not a hot house. The construction does not lend itself to being a greenhouse so I am leaning towards calling it a polytunnel. Like a tunnel it is open both ends and it is certainly made out of 'poly'.

Cover for the Polytunnel

 

The Polytunnel / Hothouse has been a long time in the making. At last the paths are laid, the beds raised, the polypipe hoops up and the doorway framed. It is time for a cover.  

 

It was one thing to find a website where I could order a piece of plastic seven and half metres wide and ten metres long but I wasn't sure how I would get it to our far-flung corner of the country. "No worries", the manager said, "We can send it by Australia Post." So a few days later a box arrived at the nearest Post Office with a pile of folded plastic in it. The only way to get it ready was to spread it all out. It needy a still day, a dry lawn and a few blocks of wood to get it laid out.

 
 
 
 


The next challenge was to get it rolled up so that it could be unrolled over the top of the hoops. After a few abortive attempts I remembered that I had some two metre lengths of conduit pipe that I could join together and wrap the plastic around. With four of these in place I could make a roll the full length of the frame.

 

Now for the tricky bit - attaching it to the frame. First I stapled it round some lengths of sheep shed grating - about 2.5 by 2 cms. Then I had to balance the roll on a table and a couple of chairs so that I could dangle the end alongside the bottom plate and screw the grating onto it.

 

 

 

Then I could gently lower the roll to the ground. All set and as far as I could go by myself. Time for some reinforcements to help unroll the plastic and secure it.

The First New Chicks

Last year I incubated three lots of eggs - 27 with 21 hatching. Amazingly only 5 roosters and 16 hens. I kept four hens and two roosters and the rest were sold or bartered. Word got around that we were breeding Light Sussex hens and now I have pre-orders.
This year I will probably end up with lots of roosters so the process may take a while. Especially with Light Sussex it takes a long time to be sure of their sex. 
Our best layers are the Isa Browns and they are getting a little on the old side so I started with a clutch of their eggs. Their rooster has a fair bit of Barnevelder in him but I think they will lay well.

So I cleaned out the incubator, added the eggs and 200ml of water and waited. On Day 18 when I turned off the turning device and went to increase the humidity I had a scare. There was almost no water. I thought that I had not checked it often enough and that none would hatch or if they did they would be deformed. So I was very pleased when on Day 20 the first chicks emerged looking happy and healthy. Over the next 24 hours another four followed. While the smallest succumbed to a leg injury, possibly sustained by being bullied by its bigger brood mates, the other five are growing fast. They will have to mature quick enough to move out of the brooder when the next batch - this time some Light Sussex - crack out in another week.

Destocking

During the long winter feed has become scarce. This has been further stretched by the arrival of Blitz - a very large and hungry thoroughbred horse. So we needed to destock a little.

A planned outing down the coast seemed a good opportunity to offload some excess sheep and goats.

 

First we delivered two ewes to a couple who are slowly building up a flock of Wiltshire Horns and find them ideal grass munchers. They certainly enjoy not crutching or shearing. We had a lamb that was supposed to have become a wether but ended up a ram, so he is off to replace an older ram that has already bred himself out of a job. Our final drop off was two goats to be used as weed eradicators or suppressants. So five animals down - ready for the kids and lambs to boost the numbers up again.

New Kids on the Block

Spring has arrived with the first kids. Posy the four year old poddy Toggenburg doe has produced two bucks. No fuss or alarm - she just took herself off to the highest point in the paddock and by the next morning these two little fellas were part of the establishment. They have been named Peter and Pan by our children even though they realize that they will probably end up as Roast and Chops.