The Smallest Smallholder

Spent the first part of the weekend getting the last of the manure for the new raised bed and forking that in, so its now ready for use. Paid for the manure with home made jam and fresh egg's. Then Saturday afternoon I decided to see if any of the wine I started last year was ready, and ended up bottling 2 gallons - 1 of strawberry, raspberry and logonberry, and one of apple. Then of course we had to try it (v nice), and then went out for the night (cause we may as well have a few more now. Hic.).

Sunday was not a good day, and the only thing we accomplished through the haze of hangovers was to move the damson tree. There was one nice surprise though - OH was watering the propagators, and the first of the seedling are poking through. Always good to see those first few shoots of the year.

We have been promising a few pictures of the place but the garden looks like a bomb site - got loads of half finished projects so theres stuff everywhere - need to have a general tidy-up. Next-up will be digging trenches for the new water pipes and electric cables, and then extending the chicken run. So, if you dont mind ignoring the mess, here goes:

The new raised bed

The chooks aka 'those who give us eggs'

From the patio, looking down towards the chooks. You can see the pond on the right. The raised bed is just past the wall on the left.

From the patio again, looking towards the fence where we grow raspberrys, and the damson tree.

The snow has gone and the forecasters say that the cold-snaps should now be over. Hopefully that means some warmer days are round the corner and the serious springtime business of the smallest smallholding can begin - 'The Planting'

We already have seeds in the propagators and on the windowsill (although none have sprouted yet ), but with the warmer weather we can start putting things in the ground. Planning decent plots of carrots and parsnips this year - both huge favorites of mine when fresh as they taste completely different from any you will ever buy from a shop - and i cant wait to start putting them in.

Also looking forward to the change to BST at the weekend - from Monday it means ill have at least an hour of daylight left when i get home from work, so i can spend some time everyday just pottering about and enjoying our little patch of Ol' Blighty.

The chooks are enjoying the change too - despite yesterdays snowy antics I was rewarded with 3 eggs this morning. Since we are considering adding more birds (for a total of 5), I think home-laid fresh eggs could soon become part of our daily income - either selling a few over the garden gate or trading some for those things we dont/cant grow or make ourselves.

Yesterday may have been the official start of spring, but today feels like it might actually be the start of spring.

Oh yeah - I got my car back too. WOOHOO!!

Apparently, its the first day of spring. Mother nature must have a huge sense of humour and really ironic side to her.

After all the sun last week, we woke up this morning to about an inch of snow all across the garden. As usual with snow it looks really nice - a good carpet of think clean white covering up all the mess ive been making lately. Our chickens are not so impressed however - opened thier house, they ran out out, stopped suddenly, and looked confused (more confused than usual anyway) - then they looked at me as if it was my fault and i should do something about it. Luckily they soon seemed to get the hang of it and were happily ploughing thier way through the white stuff (in search of any bugs stupid enough to try and live in a chicken run), when I left for work.

Had a quick look around the garden and at the plants poking through the snow - PSB, sprouts, and the long shoots from the garlic, shallots and onions we put in last year - big carpet of white snow broken up by spots of green stuff. Good to think that its all stuff we planted and not weeds, and even better to think we can eat it all.

Well hopefully it will warm up again soon, and we can get on with planting this years vegies.

Ill try to get some piccies up soon too - plan to spend some time at the weekend tramping round the smallest smallholding (should take about a minute) with my camera.

Few days worth of stuff here - been v busy so not had time to post. Read on and all will be revealed........

So Saturday was spent thus:

• Cut the dead stems from the loganberry and tied that back to wires
• Pruned and tied back the grapes (they were beginning to attack people walking by, and was a job ive been putting off for ages
• Cleaned my pond filter
• Pruned/de-weeded/tidied up the pots of herbs that we left out over the winter
• Tidied up some of the edging on the new patio
• Chucked out a load of rubbish that had built up over the winter

Was quite happy with myself, and once the OH got home from work, we went to the butcher and got the protein required for a carnivorous feast (OH insisted we got some bread and salad too) and then cleaned off the grill, chucked a huge heap of charcoal on the BBQ and (drum roll please ) lit the firelighters.

Queue 2 good friends, lots of char-grilled meat, plenty of booze and another year where the 4 of us sit and wonder why we always do this on the first weekend of the year where it 'might' be warm enough, but we actually sit huddled around the BBQ with our coats on. Damn good fun though, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Sunday - Its Mothers Day, so visit my parents and hand over card and choc's to mum, then head over to OH's parents, hand over card and a young bay tree (which OH swapped for 6 of the home laid eggs).

Then we progressed with the ulterior motive for visiting - toddle over to their neighbours and load up the car with manure that’s been happily rotting down for the last few years. They made the mistake of telling us they had several heaps of the stuff and we could have as much as we want - plan to get more this weekend.

Drove home (in the snow), shovelled manure out the car (in the rain), raked/dug manure into raised bed (in wind, hail and snow).

Monday. Should have known the weekend went too well (other than the unpredictable weather, but 'hey', it is March) and something just had to go wrong to balance things up again. I was about 2 miles from home, driving to work as normal, when my car tried to kill me. My left front wheel locked up and I almost went flying off the road. Long story short (or ill never get to the end of the entry), my brakes are completely knackered and need about £500 of work to fix. Great.

So car's in for repairs and I have to find a way to work for the next few days. The government are always urging us to use public transport so I have a look. I live about 30 miles from work, and its a 35 minute journey in morning traffic. There is no train station where i live or where I work so its the bus for me. Bring up the web, enter the details, and stare in disbelief. Try another website, enter the details again and stare in disbelief again as the results are confirmed. My 30 mile and 35 minute journey, takes 3 buses and nearly 2 hours 30 minutes using public transport. No wonder no one uses it - I would love to give up the car, cut pollution and go to work on the bus, but it's just not a winner. Really not looking forward to the next few days.

Who, What, and Where are we 

We live in Suffolk, near both the Norfolk and Cambridge borders. The dream is ten acres and a part time job so we can spend time on the smallholding, growing our own food and generally enjoy a better quality of life.  
Until then however.....  
We live in a residential estate, in a 2 bed semi-detached bungalow, with a small - average sized garden. We started on the road to self sufficiency a couple of years ago, mainly for financial reasons - I was out of work after being made redundant and bills were piling up. The idea of growing our own, good quality food for very little money, and foraging for FREE food was a huge draw.  We are complete novices, learning from books and advice from other people, and this has led many of our friends and family to think (probably with good reason) that we are completely and utterly insane.  

A brief history of the last few years.... 

2005: How it started..
We got some books and done some reading, but other than blackberries, apples and elderberries that’s as far as the foraging got, but it did give us a kick in the right direction. We devoted part of the back garden to veggies, planted potatoes, peas and carrots in pots, and planted a few strawberry’s. Then I got carried away and planted grapes, raspberry’s, blackberries, and loganberry’s, hops, and done 4 growbags of tomatoes. We got one of those cheap plastic 4 shelf lean-to greenhouse/shelving/staging things (don’t have room for a green house), and used it to propagate some seeds. We went picking for fruit, and the wife made blackberry jam (or sugary glop as she called it), and I made apple and blackberry wine, and used a beer kit (that I brought my brother 2 years before - he never used it and returned it too me - cheers mate) to make my first home brew.  

2006: We got brave and plunged in head first...
Added 2 more mini greenhouse things - for toms and peppers, planted more raspberries, watercress (in the spillway for my pond), extended the back garden veg bed, got 2 small trees - damson and cherry, and turned 80% of our front garden into veggie beds (although has led to my rather large pumpkins (never grown before and was rather proud off) being stolen, as anyone walking past could see what we were growing. We even got 1 free meal of crayfish from the river lark (even if it did cost a pack of bacon as bait!!).  That summer also saw the great menace of the cabbage white completely devastate our broccoli, cabbage, sprouts and even watercress!!! We regularly tried to remove as many of the little sods as possible in a vain hope that after the first frost we might salvage a few sprouts or a tiny sprig of broccoli.  Our biggest venture was to add 3 chooks. The original idea was a movable house, but after looking into the price of these I decided to build my own. I’m no carpenter and got a bit carried away. The house is fantastic, with doors in both sides, removable roof, perches, dropping tray and nestboxes. The chooks love it, but its 4ft wide, 4ft long and 6 ft high !!!!!. They also have a 5ft long run that attaches to the front and its raised 2 ft off the ground so they can get underneath giving them plenty of room to root around - altogether though it’s not easily movable, and has had to be sited in a permanent location. They will be let loose on any cabbage whites that dare threaten the garden again.  We also started to try and get more green/thrifty/eco friendly. During the summer I used some old bedroom furniture (from when I still lived with my mum and dad - it was about 12 years old!!!) to hammer together a very (very very) rough compost bin, and we put our first water butt in place. After spending 2 years buying compost and manure in those little bags from the garden centre, I was also given access to an 11 ton pile of well rotted horse manure.  For Christmas we made jams, chutneys, jellies and piccalilli, wine and hams for everyone’s gifts - and they went down a storm. Everyone still thinks we are a bit mad, but hey 'who aint', and at least our insanity provided them with grub 

2007 (upto March 15th and the start of this blog):
Home brewing is going from strength to strength (literally - damn it’s strong) with beer and wine constantly bubbling away in the cupboard (about 20 gallons of wine at the mo). Plans are in the making for curing bacon, the summer fruit crop, bartering with jams and eggs and making more experimental booze.  The chooks are now permanently situated by the garden fence, and provide free entertainment for all the passing school children on a daily basis, and has led to us meeting more people wanting to make the lifestyle leap - they see the chooks and front garden full of veggies and stop by and ask us how we do it - I’m a complete amateur, I never thought id be giving out advice!!! We have now even decided to extend the run and add 2 more chooks.  Shopping at big supermarkets is now only done for things we really need - mainly cleaning supplies, cat food etc, tinned foods etc. All our meat now comes from the local butcher who also does bags of local spuds, carrots, onions etc for a really good price. This is all supplemented by a smallholding we discovered in a nearby village who sell (either their own or from other local sources) fresh produce direct to the public - they even supply all my chicken feed and bedding at a bargain price!  I’m in the middle of moving our patio to make room for more growing space, and am learning to shoot (air rifle needs a new spring and/or seals at the mo) so bunnies beware. For the first time we have been planning out what we need to sow and where - up to now our plan has been, there’s a space, stick something in it - but this year we really want to try and get a year round supply, rather than just a period of glut, and have made our first attempts into this by letting onions, shallots and garlic over winter - they now have 5 inch shoots on some of them. The frost and snow finally put an end to the great cabbage white caterpillar invasion, and our struggling broccoli and sprouts have recovered enough to provide us a few good meals. The cabbages however where completely RIP'd - what the caterpillars left, the slugs took - I gave the sorry remnants to the chooks though, so at least some good came of it.  With the old patio moved, we have just put in a raised bed that I can net - hopefully this year’s brassicas will do much better. Hoping to fill it with manure this weekend. Wife has just taken to making all our own bread too - its great setting the timer on the bread maker and waking up to the smell of fresh bread - certainly gets me out of bed in the mornings. She has really taken to seeing what can be made in the kitchen, and her jams and chutneys are always in demand - im a huge fan of her chunky piccalilli. Our thrifty-ness has increased too - a far as possible all leftovers/offcuts of meat, veg and fruit, either goes to the chooks, the compost, a good stock or soup or even another complete meal - one of our proudest moments was when we done 2 meals (both for 3 people) with one pheasant (I must admit though - he was a big'un), and still made a cracking stock with the carcass- we weren’t stingy with the meat, we just used every bit of it we could find, with good accomplaments - there was a time we would have cut the breasts off and chucked the rest in the bin.  

Where we are now, and why are we doing this 

We have now firmly decided the self sufficient, green, eco-friendly, River Cottage-esqe, life style is for us. People wonder what we are on about - at one end of the scale are those who think it means you have to be a colourful, unwashed, vegetarian hippy (FYO - I have nothing against colourful, unwashed, vegetarian hippies), while at the other end are those that think we are against all forms of modern living. In fact we are a little of both (the hippie bit is washed however, and the modern part would beat you senseless if you tried to take the XBOX away), and the way we live is about taking notice and responsibility for what you do and how it affects the people and environment around you. For example: 

• To cut back on food miles, we try to grow some of our own food or buy local produce.
• I enjoy a drink (or several), so I save some money from brewing my own.
• We feed green kitchen scraps to our chickens, and compost other organic waste, so there’s less for the landfill.
• We recycle - not hard to do, but it does makes a difference.
• Use energy saving lightbulbs and turn things off - dont leave them on standby. Again, its easy to do and it does make a difference.

Hopefully this blog will give you an insight into our small smallholding, and what it means to us in our daily lives. If it inspires anyone to try something new, then thats even better.