June Smallholding Update

It's been a busy month!


The Vegetable Garden: We've started having a special meal every Tuesday night, consisting of only what we have grown ourselves or found growing on the smallholding... So far it's been a huge success! The meals have been simple, but incredibly tasty - the potatoes (although not hugely prolific) are amazing, the salad leaves fresh and flavoursome (especially with the addition of herbs such as basil, chives and parsley), the beetroots rich and sweet. I have started making fresh drinks from lemon balm, mint and elderflowers, which have gone down a treat. We now have 17 fully planted deep beds - the additions this month being: a bed of purple brussel sprouts and turnips; rainbow chard and celeriac; leeks; and a bed containing two spare squash plants and three cucumber seedlings.


The Orchard: The massive, old apple trees (which were here when we arrived) are laden with fruit, by now the apples are about one and a half inches in diameter. I don't yet know very much about fruit trees, but it would seem to me that these are all cooking apples rather than "eaters." I have winter pies in my mind, but Phil and my mum are getting very interested in the idea of making lots and lots of cider!

Pests: Still no major signs of slugs, partly I suppose because it's been so dry. There have been some mysterious scratchings and diggings in some of the beds though, which has resulted in the loss of several of the celeriac seedlings. I wondered if it might be our naughty toilet-making cats, but have been assured that "no poo has been found in the disturbed areas" so we still don't know who or what is the perpetrator.


The Polytunnel: The first red tomatoes have been eaten! I think we've had about seven or eight in total so far, so don't get too excited. The plants are heavy with bulging trusses, however, so we're ever-hopeful that we might at some point be overwhelmed with fruits... The cucumber plants have exploded in size and are climbing rapidly up their supports. Though they look healthy, the fruits have been turning to mush before they really start to develop, so we're not really sure what we're doing wrong. A quick look in The Vegetable and Herb Expert shows that this can be caused by over- or under-watering, so we are none the wiser. The courgette plants have also grown exponentially over the last month, and there are several mini golden courgettes waiting to be eaten in our special meal tonight, as well as a stripey green one.

Water: It's been so dry, we're starting to realise how lucky we are having our own water supply. If we were threatened with a hosepipe ban, our vegetables would certainly die. I have friends who have to carry all of their water up a steep hill to their vegetable plot, and there's not enough time in the day (or energy in the body!) to fully provide for the needs of the thirsty plants. In the house, I've started drinking water from the tap (water which comes from our borehole) as the sulphurous smell seems to have gone away - perhaps both houses making use of the water has cleared out the staleness in the collection tank, and allowed fresher water to enter the system. It's good water, and has none of the chemicals we had to put up with in town - it's a pleasure to drink :D

Plant Feed: The comfrey tea was great, but after a while we started to realise that some of the tomato leaves were curling up at the edges and looking rather ropey. When we investigated the causes of this, it turned out that comfrey is really great for root development, and what we hadn't noticed was the fact that the affected plants had developed ridiculously excessive roots. They had grown out of the bottom of the pots, and along the surface of the soil on the polytunnel floor, and were hating having nothing to cover them. We covered them up with more compost, and set about making a new nutrient tea, this time one full of nitrogen (good for leaves): one made out of poo.


Wild Food: The elderflowers are out, and elderflower cordial has been the flavour of the month! It's so easy and quick to make, yet I've not had time to get around to it these last few years, so it felt really good to be back on track, and enjoying seasonal delights.


Baby: At 34 weeks, I've finally got my head around what we have been given and what we still need. I spent a day researching washable nappies and their components (I have been given some Fuzzi Bunz pocket nappies, but nothing to go in the pockets!), and found a great list of what I'll need. My advert on the Machynlleth Swapshop brought loads of promises of nappy and baby bits, so I'm really pleased. I also spent a day (yes, it took a whole day!) going through all of the clothes we've been given, ordering them into sizes/ages and washing everything from 0-3 months. It felt really good to be getting everything in order, and so exciting to be holding these tiny and incredibly cute garments... I can't wait to put Squiggles in them! Here's how the bump is developing:


Things can only get... bigger, I guess! Er... :D

May Smallholding Update

A summary of the month is in order!

The House Situation: After a very quick sale, we moved all of our furniture and boxes of STUFF out of the house in Machynlleth and over the mountain road to the smallholding. The job took two days, and we were very fortunate to have my parents there to help. My dad helped Phil and my friend Martin to carry the heavy furniture and boxes out of the house, and did a great job of loading the trailer. My mum cleaned the house from top to bottom and offered much needed moral support! The first trailer load was fine, but the second resulted in a tire blowing up, so the process became much more long-winded than it should have been. It was strange to find that my attitude towards many of my belongings changed dramatically as soon as I tried to fit them into our much smaller home. In the house in town, I had found it really difficult to get rid of so many things, but once they arrived at the smallholding I saw a lot of it as excess weight, and the lightening process was incredibly easy - enjoyable even. Phil and I are starting to feel the stress of the house sliding away, selling it has relieved us of a huge burden of responsibility and anxiety.


The Vegetable Garden: It's been a little slower this month in terms of creating new deep beds. Partly because I can no longer help with the digging (due to the fact that my heartburn has been getting worse and worse, and kicks in the minute I bend over, then lasts all day and night), but also because the grass and (more specifically) the docks are growing so quickly that they make the job much more difficult. Last month I found myself taking loads of "before" pictures, hoping that soon we'd be looking at a veritable jungle of healthy greenery, and I'm glad I did as the beds are really starting to fill out now. It's so satisfying to see progress! My parents have done a great job getting the raspberry canes into what must have been the most nightmarishly weed-bound, root-clogged area we've come across yet, and they have been cracking on with more vegetable beds. We now have 13 fully planted beds, containing: onions (white and red), shallots, potatoes (earlies and main crop), broad beans, runner beans, climbing beans (rare Native American Indian 'Trail of Tears' and 'Lazy Housewife'), lettuce (various, including a number of Chinese salad leaves), spinach, parsnips, beetroot, peas, celeriac, kale, and purple sprouting broccoli. There are another two unfinished beds. As of a couple of weeks ago, we've been getting all of our lettuce from the garden - with a little more available every day, it's very rewarding, and unbelievably tasty! :D


The Orchard: Some of the baby apple trees had mysteriously been losing what few leaves they had, and at first we thought it might have been some kind of insect attack. Later it was discovered that a very bolshy lamb had been getting in through the slightly rickety fence which divides us from our neighbour's land. The little scavenger was coming in whenever he felt like it, and helping himself to our goodies! So my dad fixed the fence. No more naughty lamb.

Pests: Incidentally, (touch wood!) we've seen no more evidence of rabbit activity in the garden - perhaps they were put off by the fleece we laid down to cover the parsnips and beetroots, and the cloches and chicken-wire frame we used to protect the lettuces. Perhaps they've heard the rumours about the two black and white killing machines which steal their young and show no mercy. Our cats (especially the female of the two) have been quietly decimating the local rabbit population, regularly bringing decapitated baby rabbits into the house and eating them whole - fur, feet and all - bar the very bitterest organs. Slugs are starting to appear amongst the leaves, so we're going to leave a sharp pair of 'slug scissors' down in the garden. I hate killing things, but in this case slugs are The Enemy.

The Polytunnel: Once the polytunnel was declared fit for use, we avoided it for a week or two - it just looked like it was going to be so much hard work trying to open up the compacted earth, not to mention somehow enriching the pale, lifeless soil. Eventually we realised that we needn't expect miracles of perfection this year, but would make do as best we could. We would make the most of the protected space and awesome heat (the thermometer was recording a reading of 50 degrees most days). We now have plants in pots, as well as some in the ground (planted on top of a generous bucketful of well-rotted manure) - these are all in the left hand side of the tunnel (which is pretty much full), the right hand side has yet to be worked on...

In pots:
Tomatoes (10)
Basil (17)
Peppers (6x Hungarian Hot Wax, 4x Marconi Rosso)
Aubergines (5)

In a bed:
Cucumbers (3x Crystal Lemon, 4x Marketmore)
Courgettes (3x Gold Rush, 1x Cocozelle)
Squash (2x Custard White, 4x Butternut Squash)

Here's a picture of my wacky cucumber supports, three were made out of spare sections of trellis, the others are clearly an experiment in bamboo canes and binder twine, ha ha!


Water: There is a trough set up in the polytunnel with the option of water from the borehole or the stream. As explained before, our borehole water is very alkaline, whereas the stream water is acid, so we fill half the trough with one and then divert to the other - though the results may not be perfectly pH neutral, at least it's an attempt at a compromise!

Plant Feed: Next to the polytunnel we have a large bucket of comfrey "tea" - made by stuffing comfrey leaves into an onion net, then throwing them into a covered bucket of water where they "brew" for a couple of weeks. When the smell becomes disgusting, the tea is ready! We dilute a mugful of the liquid in a watering can of water from the trough and feed the plants as we water them. Our tomatoes are fed every day, but other plants have the tea once or twice a week.

Wild Food: As the trees came into leaf, and then into blossom (some of them, at least!), we were excited to find that we have an elder tree quite close to the house - I can't wait to make elderflower cordial and elderflower champagne! And later in the year the berries are great in crumbles and puddings. There's a suspected wild damson tree down by the river as well, and some other as yet unrecognisable fruit trees dotted about the land... We shall see what they are in due course. The oyster mushrooms have not returned, though I try to check the log by the stream every time I go to collect the post.

The Baby: We're at the 30 week stage, so only 10 more weeks to go! Squiggles is growing so quickly, and loves crashing about in there - it's quite amazing to see the kicks and squirmings. I have started investigating washable nappies and other essentials: we have been given a number of different types of nappies, now I just have to get my head around them and make sure we have everything we need! The hormones have been up and down, as one might expect, and I've been struggling with depression, but I'm optimistic that once Squiggie is out and in my arms I'll feel a lot better :) Phil and I are both very excited (and a little nervous!) about the future, but I'm sure it's going to be a fantastic adventure!

Here's a pic of my friend Martin and I, after we'd cleared most of the house: it serves as a good bump update! :D

April Smallholding Update

The much needed rain has come. Finally, a chance to get some long overdue jobs done in the house, and take stock! We've been here for just over a month now, and neither Phil nor I can believe that so much has happened in such a short time. It's been continuously sunny for the past month, with a couple of overcast days thrown in, and we've been busy outside in the vegetable garden almost every day. Perhaps it's time for an update:

The Vegetable Garden: From humble beginnings, the fenced-off area now boasts 10 deep beds for vegetables - mostly potatoes and onions at this stage, but we've also planted out some broad beans, peas, parsnips, spinach, and beetroot seedlings. We're crossing our fingers and willing the experimental row of carrots to sprout, and have sown a hopeful row of broad beans between rows of potatoes. The rabbits have already shown interest, daintily destroying half of the parsnip seedlings overnight, and leaving their telltale droppings. The battle has commenced. We were afraid we might have to invest time and money in rabbit-proof fencing, and it looks like that might turn out to be the case - but for now we have had to be cunning, creating makeshift protection out of odd bits of mesh, fleece and corrugated plastic.

The Orchard: We have planted 5 apple trees of different varieties, as well as a damson tree. They are still very young (two years old?), so we'll have a bit of a wait before we can actually harvest any fruit, but it's a good start. We are still debating the pros and cons of planting the soft fruit bushes between the fruit trees - I saw it done like that on a forest gardening documentary and it looked like a great idea, but we're not sure whether or not we should just bunch the soft fruit together in cages so that we can protect them from the birds... There are some really old apple (and some as yet unknown) trees which were already here when we arrived - they looked gnarled and moss-eaten and completely dead until a few days ago when they exploded with blossom. Their yield shall decide their fates... :)

The Polytunnel: The sheer duration of the demonstration DVD should have served as a warning to us, but our optimism knew no bounds... What should have taken a day (or two at the most) has become an ongoing saga. There have been several setbacks in the way of missing parts, but that still doesn't justify such a lengthy project! The digger came in and flattened the area, then we found we needed to gouge out more space by hand. The water and electricity pipes were laid at the same time, and the trough connected - so now we have water in the vegetable garden at least. The hoops have been screwed together and painted (so as not to absorb too much heat), and the hot-spot tape has been stuck on... Slightly prematurely... And now, finally, all the hoops are up, the crop bars have been attached - it looks like the skeleton of a giant metal beast who laid down to die amongst the freshly dug graves. Yes, deep beds look like graves. Which is ironic, given that from them life flows. It reminds me of when I was in Guanajuato, in Mexico, and we were walking up to the Mummy Museum when we stopped at a shop which sold both coffins and fresh vegetables. Clever, I thought to myself, they've got something for everyone, whether living or dead.

The Water Situation: We've got two options for water - the first is the borehole, which goes down about 300 feet and is serviced by a pump. This is the water which comes out of our taps in the houses, and it gives off a smell of sulphur and upon testing was found to contain rather high quantities of manganese. It is alkaline. Hmm. The second is the stream, which would need a good slow sand filter to purify it if you wanted it for drinking water, and due to its course through peaty valleys, it is acid. The seedlings we have been raising in my mum's house have started going yellow, perhaps due to being too alkaline, so we've had to start mixing the two waters to get more of a balance in pH. So far so good, but thank goodness it's raining, because all that carrying is hard work!

My dad just discovered that I am writing this, so has emailed me over a couple of pics (thanks Da'!)... Here's one of the men looking very proud of themselves after the first hoop went up:

And here's one of the women in action - preparing the bed for the beetroot seedlings. You can see the broad beans and peas to the left, and the dead area to the right is where the rabbits found the parsnips:


Wild Food: It turns out that we have some really pernicious weeds in the garden, and it just so happens that some of them are edible. I'm planning on cooking with ground elder for the first time, and the young nettles are looking radiantly healthy too. I have enjoyed nettle soups in the past (the trick being to use a handful of oats in with the nettle leaves - that way they don't tickle as they go down your throat!), but my dad has often spoken of nettle beer (only very mildly alcoholic) so I'm hoping to give that a go too. The bushes and trees around us are springing to life, so it's a really exciting time - in the next few months we'll find out exactly what the fields and hedges have to offer! Who knows, maybe there will be some elder trees, hazelnuts, wild damsons and blackberries, not to mention horse mushrooms, hedge garlic, and fish in the river!

Exciting times! :)