Christmas breakfast

Christmas breakfast if you are a duck (and your owners had prawn cocktail the day before)















Christmas breakfast if you own ducks (and remembered to get salmon from Tesco)

Winter harvest time is quite different from the summer and where we have always had disaster with parsnips as our ground is so shallow, Katy is quite different. They are our leeks, onions and artichokes but we cannot even match her on parsnips as ours are about as thick as the leeks and about as long as the onions.





Following on from previous posts, the rest of the sleepers have been moved to our allotment. A rather unusual technique of tossing the sleeper was adopted but.....




they have been piled along the path, carefully avoiding placing them on raspberry canes ........






.. and they make lovely seat for a well earned rest.












I am thinking about starting a spot the difference competition as there seems to be growing similarities between Nick and Matt.

We garden by organic methods so there is no risk of genetic modification.

Out of every sadness a benefit.....

It was a sad moment when we arrived at the allotment yesterday to find that two of the nicest allotmenteers you could meet had been allocated a plot just a short walk from their home rather than the two miles to Churchill Way, so had decided to move plots.

We will really miss them, but gave them a two egg leaving present.

They left us their raised beds. Today we started moving and were amazed by the smount of compost they contained as well as railway sleepers.

We have brought eight half lengths home to make steps between the two lawns and have moved some of the heavier ones onto our allotment. There are still a lot to move, and if the plot hasn't been allocated to someone else we will move some more next weekend.




We decided to fill the Jewswons bags provided by Brian from the sand for his extention, and thought we might be lucky to half fill one. This was the case by 2p.m. but by 4.30 when it was dark, I had filled 1 1/2 but was too tired to lift the camara to take a picture.

The ducks were a bit miffed as they weren't tall enough to look in the bag but they somehow knew just how many worms there were in there. Putting it in bags was my good deed for the worm preservation society.

Watch this space for very long, very straight carrots and parsnip next year!!!

Anatomy isn't one of my strong points, but however many bones there are in the human body, every one of mine aches.

Water Water everywhere

Last weekend Nick replaced the taps on the water butts attached to the downpipes on the brick shed. We managed to 'find' a couple on other sheds that weren't working so now have two on each side of the shed. Amazingly, in just one week, all four are full of water.

Great relief as the water gets turned off on the troughs so we were worried what we were going to do for replacing the water in the ducks pond.

Ice Skating

It has become a tradition to ice skate at Christmas. The Natural History museum has one, Somerset House has one, Canary Wharf has one, and now Churchill Way has one.

Happy Christmas from the 12 ducks of Christmas

Eggs and greens

One other benefit of the sun shining and lots of water to swim in, is that we have ducks that are still laying. We have either one of two per day so they are keeping us well fed.

Man cannot live by eggs alone (we would be egg bound if we did) so we balance it out with a lovely selection of greens.





The sprouts don't seem to have sprouted but we have some good leaves from them. Brocolli is still sprouting and we have some lovely Kale.

There is a good crop of Jerusalem Artichokes as well as some crisp French parsley and a steady supply of salad leaves in the greenhouse.






I am a bit worried that the onions I planted a few weeks ago aren't all sprouting but the garlic is looking very strong and healthy so we should have a good crop by next June/July.






As always, the first thing to suffer from too much rain is the path to the duck compound where it becomes a bit of a mud slide. Not good in high heals before work in the morning, so Nick has had to start wearing wellies in stead! Thankfully, it is time for the council to do hedge trimming so great surprise yesterday when an enormous heap of chippings had been deposited so tomorrow is going to be path day.

December sun

After the October snow we have December sun. November was very little but rain so the camera refused to get out of the car.


The ducks love the weekend as much as we do as it means forage time. They also get to spend some quality time in their outer pond.






They are also getting the message that they are have a celebrity status so have to pose when requested. It is a bit like it used to be at the swimming pool where colour bands had a time slot. They swap over so there seems to be a message that all chocolate ducks to the pond, followed by white ducks to the pond.




The others are good but Apple really has become a diva.







Jessica has become a duck with attitude












while Fennel is a still a bit shy










unlike Eve who was determined to be in front.

Raspberry canes

We decided to cut down all the raspberry canes. They have done amazingly this year but have rather taken over the plot so we have cleared some and given some to new allotmenteers.

They were still in leaf and some had berries on them but it was time for them to be cut down so that we can get another bumper crop next year.





We have left quite a stalk so that we know where they are. It will be sooooo exciting in the spring when they start shooting up again. It is amazing that a short stick can grow to a 6ft cane in just one season.


One of the problems is that the canes are too woody to go in the compost bin so bonfire time. Two benefits of a bonfire - get rid of the waste that can't be composted and create lots of potash that can be spread on the potatoe bed.

One of the difficulties we had is that it has rained so much over the last few weeks that everything is very wet and, I know they say that there is no smoke without fire but after getting ourselves kippered we still have a bonfire waiting to be burned.