#croftNews
Learning to thresh the barley... I am not there yet. Have hacked this old Austrian lab thresher. And trying to process the ears to make seeds. Still a lot of chaff in with the seeds.

Chicken and trees

#CroftNews Our Scots Grey pullets are free in the microforest for the first time.

#CroftNews
We have broccoli 🥦! First time successful, this is in our new netted tunnel. We are definitely behind but they are coming together beautifully.

A bowl full of wild purslane, some wild garlic leaves on a wooden chopping board with a sliced lemon.

#CroftNews
Spring pleasures:
The wild plants are coming out, full of goodness for us.
Made some fresh pasta with our eggs, served with olive oil and wild garlic. On the side a simple wild purslane salad.

Garlic sprouting through mulching paper in a covered raised bed (lazy bed)

#CroftNews
I love watching the garlic grow. The mulching paper inside the netted tunnel seems to kick start the season. #SelfSatisfaction #MarketGarden

Chitted early potatoes on the composting hip. Our chicken beds are made of hay and we take it away for composting. You can see the base is fine compost whereas the top is fresh litter.

First we lay cardboard with a little bit of compost. The chicken keep on scratching the cardboard which is messing everything

We lay the early potatoes in 2 double rows. Chickens are still at it,messing this up...

This is the hay+chicken manure compost aka potatoes heroin.

#CroftNews
The early potatoes are in. We now plant on cardboard with a mix of hay and the chicken litter (hay+poop) that composts in a big pile.
We added earth worms last winter I was very happy to see them thriving in the compost hip. Fingers crossed for the blight... Always risky with earlies.

#CroftNews
Made 4 6x2m lazy beds for an experiment with the @hutton.ac.uk growing #bere. Not the beds we usually make as our tractor is 85 cm wide. Also ran out of muck. I will prepare the soil like that anyway as soon as it dries and will top-up with hay and wool. Not sure when to plant tho.

Catkins on the tip of a willow branch.

#CroftNews
The first catkins of our croft. It is the first time a tree from our #microforest starts its breeding cycle. It is just 1 endemic willow but it gives hope our microenvironment is improving. We can wait to make things happen everywhere or we can do something in our reach for biodiversity.

Flower head of a purple sprouting broccoli.

Sprouting garlic plants coming out of the paper mulch

#CroftNews
The garlic is coming out and the purple sprouting broccoli is flowering in the netted tunnel. Sounds like spring but it cannot be, have to resist planting. The crows killed and picked clean one of our ducks. Also a seasonal thing... It is a harsh world out there

Wild garlic sprouting close to a small oak tree still having brown leaves from the fall

Boxes of eggs and a treat of eggs with one chicken and many duck eggs

#CroftNews
I start to believe spring is approaching although we have some horrid weather. Hens are laying and the wild garlic is coming out in the microforest.

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Our first opened crocus... Ever!
Between the chicken and the sheep we never managed to get any yet. You can see the tulips got chewed a bit tho. Will it make it?

Ducks and chicken coming to feed on grains around a champagne bucket

#CroftNews
Champagne for the ducks! In the quest for a practical and adequately sized trough to feed the duck made of stainless steel... I ended up with a champagne bucket.
We put the grains for the ducks underwater so they are the only ones feeding from it.

New Zealand flat worm unrolled on a wooden decking.

Macro picture of the head of a new Zealand flat worm showing an eye(?).

#CroftNews
The New Zealand flat worm is spreading in new parts of our #croft. I got rid of 5 of them recently. They feed exclusively on earth worms and can entirely annihilate them. They have no known predators here. It is a big concern for us as part of the croft is already devoid of earth worms.