“Well, we’ve sure had the rain I was wishing for last week. The vegetable garden is now growing away nicely. The “plan” has been amended to include purple sprouting broccoli and kale. Normally, we don’t grow this because our fleece arrangement doesn’t cover it properly but our new hoops should be high enough to accommodate the plants.

The direct-sown runner beans are through the ground and all the peas are showing – two more rows to sow this weekend then we can stand back and wait for the harvest.

The Hubbard chicks are doing well. We lost one in the first few days – it looked like it had been squashed by the others, which is not something we’ve experienced before. They are still inside, but they have a run with straw and tray of soil to scratch around in and a box to climb over. I put the box of soil in yesterday and last night they all had dirty feet.

Unfortunately, we had a visit from the fox this week. Dan caught the fox with a Black Rock in its mouth; surprised, it dropped the hen, which ran away, but we found it dead the following day - from shock, I expect. We found one dead Legbar, but a headcount revealed than a second Legbar and four more Black Rocks had been taken. These were all young, inexperienced hens and would have been an easy meal for Reynard.

I have a sick hen today. She’s a Copper Black Maran, and quite young. She’s not displaying any real symptoms apart from being generally unwell. I’ve got an antibiotic from the vet, so I hope that works quickly. She’s not eating and only drinking her water (laced with garlic) if encouraged to. I hope she survives, but I’m not very hopeful.

The sheep are being wormed this week. I’ll do another worm test to see if it works. If not, I’ll have to use a chemical wormer. One of the lambs is poorly – we’re doing our own version of ‘Animal Hospital’ here – and has antibiotics. It’s Lyra, of course, our only ewe lamb. She’s a big strong lamb, so hopefully she’ll put in a good recovery. The shearer is coming next week, weather permitting, so the ewes will be better able to cope with the predicted hot summer.

There was no heat at Central and West Fife Show yesterday. Central Scotland Smallholders Association had a stand at the show to publicise the work of the Association and to attract new members. It was so cold; the rain was horizontal at times; keeping our gazebo on the ground was our main concern most of the time, because of the strength of the wind. We’re at Doune and Dunblane Show on 4th July if anyone wants to swing by and say hello. Hopefully, the long, hot summer will have started by then!”