Bird Flu

The news caught up with me just before lunch yesterday.

Over the last few days, things have become easier down on the farm; the weather has given us a respite from the cold, outside water is now flowing and everything that looked so frozen and sad a week ago, has pulled through. Even the coriander in the polytunnel looks as if it might survive to photosynthesis another day.

So, I was in a good mood as I swung into the kitchen to grab a sandwich. Enter my better half; had I heard about the bird flu threat and the decision by DEFRA to impose an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone across England, Wales, and Scotland? No, I hadn’t but I was about to.

There have been outbreaks of what is classified as a ‘highly pathogenic strain’ of avian influenza (there are two strains and this is the nasty one) in several eastern European countries very recently and now the news was of one in France, just across that tiny stretch of water that separates us from all sorts of harm. The disease is spread by contact, bird to bird and through body fluids and faeces rather than airborne so very early yesterday morning the government decided to enforce an ‘immediate and compulsory housing of domestic chickens, hens, turkeys and ducks or their separation from wild birds’; rough quote from the DEFRA website. This applies to all poultry flocks, big and small, from large producers to people like me with a few birds. The order stands for a month until the 6^th January.

As I walked down to shut up my birds, I was trying to work out what I was going to do. My chickens and ducks are free range. They spend their lives outside. They live in small arks and have large runs surrounded by electric fencing which protects them from foxes but not viruses. How was I going to comply and protect them? The arks are too small to keep the birds in for a month. The runs are too big to cover in any way. By the time I reached the smallholding I had had a couple of flashes of inspiration. The chickens could go into the polytunnel and there was room for the ducks in our bird proof fruit cage where I had pulled up a bed of aging strawberry plants in the Autumn.

A plan. I would need to borrow a crate to put the birds in while we moved house for them, we would still need the electric fencing because I don’t trust our fox population, we would need to dismantle part of the fruit cage to move the duck ark inside it and we would need to construct some sort of roosting area inside the polytunnel where the chickens would feel safe at night and lay their eggs.

Somehow today we did it. I rescued some of the plants that were in pots from the polytunnel, cut parsley and coriander to dry and turned my back on the beds of leaf salad and greens and then we swung into action with a couple of pallets and some ply to create a nesting area for the chickens, caught them and introduced them to their new home. Then came the electric fencing around the outside and much swearing.

Once family one was settled in, we concentrated on the ducks and moved their ark into the safe zone I had chosen for them. More electric fencing and more swearing but we did it. There is no pond but they can move around through the raspberry canes and shovel for worms.

Once everything was done I peeped into the polytunnel to see how the chickens were faring in their new abode. The leaf salad, spinach and lettuce were gone and the greens were stripped and they looked remarkably happy with life.

Tonight, as I shut up the ducks and checked the chickens everything was quiet, all had settled down in their new homes; it was just my world that had turned upside down.

Winter

Who rattled Winter’s cage? Who poked a stick between the bars and woke her from her slumbers? Who whispered in her ear, ‘ok enough of this rain and wind. How about some real winter weather’?

As she awoke and we slept, temperatures plunged. Up early, she tiptoed down the lane and brushed the leaves, which had been scooped by the wind into piles at the edge of the road, with frozen fingers. Her skirts swirled across the fields and left behind a rind of white frost. Water turned grey and frozen. The air stood still, holding its breath in the silence left by the cold. The sun rose above the rim of the hills into a spotless sky. The light fired the bare branches of the silver birch and the world shook itself and woke to a winter’s morning.

-7⁰C. I checked the thermometer on the wall outside the porch as I pulled on my coat and struggled into gloves. This was it. My first real winter as a small holder. The dog and I walked into work. A short walk, with the warmth of the sun as it lifted through the trees, with ears stinging with the cold, breath hanging on the air, fingers throbbing, with contrails in a clear blue sky, hips sparkling with frost, with a sudden loud green woodpecker bobbing across a stubble field, with eyes watering, a robin, and with a good to be alive feeling deep in the warmth inside.

Then we were there, standing outside a glistening polytunnel looking out across the field to the chicken and duck arcs pitched in a field painted white by the frost.

When I opened up, the chickens spilled out across the frozen run, fanning out across the grass as usual. When it became apparent to them that the ground they were pecking at was frozen solid they seemed to accept the situation with a large dollop of stoicism and made a headlong assault on the feeder of mash I carried into their run.

The ducks were confused. Their flurry out of the shed normally ends in the pond, in the water in the pond that is. Today this was not to be. They stood on it, tested it, walked across it and one of them tried to take off from it but nobody got to swim.

Water was the first problem. The weather forecast had warned it would be cold but I hadn’t expected all the outside water to be frozen. The pipes were lagged but there are limits and -7⁰ was obviously it. Even water inside the field shed was frozen and the kettle in the veg shed was solid ice. And it was not about to thaw. I was obviously not well organised. There was no choice but to scourge buckets of water from one of the workshops that lies alongside the small holding so the birds could drink and I could make coffee.

Then it was up to the sheep. The field at the top where they are grazing slopes gently east to west and the sun was warming the air and the ground. I carried apples as a treat and hand fed some of the more trusting sheep, lingering in the warmth of the sun and enjoying the view across the river valley to the hills in the distance. The bottom field, where the birds and the allotment are, was still lying in shadow and still very cold.

Then came the polytunnel and greenhouse. As I lifted the bubble wrap from the plants things did not look good. Even with the extra protection, the leaf salad and lettuce, carrots, parsley, and spring greens lay limp and sad. The coriander was definitely not going to be a survivor. There is nothing I can do except hope some of the plants come round as temperatures rise.

Now was the time to get organised better. More water carrying, ready for late afternoon when the ducks and chickens would be fed again and put safely away for the night. Then there were extra buckets of water for the morning wrapped in old paper sacks inside the field shed. I wasn’t going to get caught out again. Extra straw to keep everyone warm. Everything is a learning curve.

Winter is enjoying herself. With another cold night of -7⁰, it dropped again to -8⁰ last night. But I now have a routine. A different routine. Life has shifted a little, like walking into a tunnel where you know you just have to keep going because you can see light at the end which you will eventually reach.

It IS cold working outside but it is also very alive and quite amazing at times.

As I shut the chickens and ducks up it has grown dark except for a smear of light lying along the ridge of the Downs. The rooks lift from the trees on the side of the hill, their noise fills the air, and then as one they settle back into their night roost. Silence fills the sky. The trees stand dark, limbs outstretched against the fading light. Cold drifts up from the frozen ground. And then from out of the trees the moon rises above the line of the hills. So close you could touch it, against a clear velvet black sky, a perfect crescent hanging in the night sky.

Winter is enjoying herself and so am I.