Goose egg on contact microphone

The goose heart starts beating before it hatches, as I found out listening to an egg with a contact microphone

So far we have 14 baby goslings, and two eggs from the final batch (from our own breeding geese) are starting to “pip” (break through the shell, as you can see in the photo of the egg on the microphone above).

Joanne picks grass grass for the younger ones, who are still inside in a special insulated and heated pen, several times a day from our back garden.

at 7am Joanne serves our baby goslings breakfast in bed ….

And here is the sound of baby geese with a whole load of fresh grass – life doesn’t get better than this!!

… and a couple of hours later they’d like some more, please!

They have baby gosling crumbs to eat too, but they prefer grass!

Meanwhile the eldest of our goslings, who are growing up fast, went outside in our back garden for the first time today! They are in a specially heated and glass covered home and run (they are still little!) but they just loved picking their own fresh grass…

Safe in their heated, glass covered home…

oooh – grass!

April and May are the traditional “Hungry Gap” when annual veg, the sort you normally eat, and what we grow at The Oak Tree, are scarce. By a wonderful coincidence this is just the time when wild green, perennial edible plants that grow all around us in the hedgerows, are plentiful!

If you missed the walk, here are the recipes for Nettle Soup, Hedge Garlic Soup and the Wild Leaf Salad on Joanne’s blog. The soups can be adapted for vegetarians by using veg stock and vegetable oil

Healthy Eating Starts at a young age at The Oak Tree!

The three chefs anticipating their wild food feast!

Hungry gap? What hungry gap?!

Mike wields his Alexander stalks…

Nettle and hedge garlic soup

A well earned rest for chef Lucy!

A gosling breaking out of the shell

I developed a sensor that is connected to the Internet to make display easier, so here is the humidity of our gosling incubator

humidity of the gosling incubator (this is %RH and the x-axis is time, over a 24h span)

Unlike temperature, controlling humidity is low-tech – bar towels soaked in water and a water spray.

High tech bar towels raising the humidity

Richard kindly did this sound recording of them – don’t they sound sweet?!

But most of all he has helped me to believe that it is possible to farm in a way that is good for the environment, is good for people and is a viable business. Polyface Farm keeps livestock in healthy, humane conditions in a way that improves the soil, is very efficient in a good way, and which provides healthy and delicious food. What’s not to like? Well, to do so he has to break half a tonne of stupid rules and regulations designed to suit industrial agriculture (sound familar?) but he’s not too bothered about that. He’s too busy getting on with it.

Our goals at The Oak Tree aren’t exactly the same as those of Polyface farm, but we can learn one hell of a lot from those good people!

It’s quite a way down to Midhurst, and we arrived fairly late Sunday evening at our campsite. An Oak Tree pork casserole & Oak Tree Salad leaves, prepared in my campervan along with a little refreshment in the form of wine and beer just what was needed too to help us get a good night’s sleep ahead of meeting the great man.

Next morning Eric was up bright and early to feed a campsite robin some of his breakfast…

Eric shares his breakfast

I’m not going to try to summarise everything we learned from Joel. Frankly everyone who attended the course, including some very extremely experienced farmers, was bedazzled by the range and breadth of Joel’s knowledge, and his incredible enthusiasm. Essentially Joel shows, by his own example and experience, what really matters when running a farm that aims to make a positive difference.

So what I will attempt to do here is give you a tour of the wonderful ideas and experience of Joel Salatin links from the web.

Here goes!

Firstly a video of Joel Salatin introducing Polyface Farm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxTfQpv8xGA

TED talk by Joel Salatin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T9UaP1AsMI

… and an interview in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/31/food-industry-environment

If you’re really getting serious, get hold of a copy of Food Inc. It is a fantastic, though frightening, film, that feature Joel:

And this book of his is most definately on my birthday list!

I’ve already read this one, and he dedicated my copy to us all at The Oak Tree Farm.

And finally here we are with the great man himself:

Tom, Joel, Joanne and Eric

Low carbon transport at The Oak Tree Farm!

There have been some really fun and productive work parties and a definite positive vibe has arrived with the warmer weather. Spring has finally sprung and we’re hoping for an improved harvest this year after the dreadful weather conditions we suffered last year!

The barn owl has been spotted occasionally throughout April but it is unclear whether it has nested in the box kindly installed by Suffolk Wildlife Trust. This graceful and silent bird tends to hunt up and down across the top of the field before flying over a particular spot in the hedge near the gate and heading north over the fields.

Small tortoiseshell (and couch grass!)

There have been an encouraging number of small tortoiseshell butterflies flitting about the field, and several small whites. Warm days in the middle of the month saw further butterfly species, a peacock sunning itself in the grass, and a bright yellow brimstone flying powerfully along the hedgerow.

A damp morning towards the end of the month was cheered considerably by the arrival of The Oak Tree Farm’s first cuckoo of 2013, not in the field but close enough for the eponymous and unmistakable call to be clearly heard from the shed. A little later that same morning, while diligently harvesting salad leaves in the polytunnel, I heard the mewing cries of a buzzard. Abandoning the spinach momentarily and dashing hurriedly out for the binoculars, I found no less than four of these magnificent birds of prey circling almost directly overhead in a suddenly blue sky.

The skylarks are performing their impressive territorial song-flights more energetically than ever, while the first wave of swallows has arrived, swooping  low over the field, hedges and polytunnels with their beautiful tail streamers and distinctive song.

The wren’s nest on the CSA shed

Greenfinches, goldfinches, dunnocks and chaffinches have been joined in the hedgerow by a number of blackcaps, while the blackbirds have finally found their voices – together creating a true summer soundscape. One very determined wren has built a nest right next to the door of the CSA shed. This plucky and very dapper looking bird has been flying in and out of the hedge collecting nest material, defying photography and occasionally diving into thick cover to deliver his astonishingly loud song.

That’s all for now. Look out for next month’s instalment!