Since our chickens joined us here on the smallholding a week ago we’ve developed a lovely routine whereby we go and check for eggs every day. Nothing can make our little boy beam like finding an egg that he can pluck out of the nest box and pop into his little egg basket to bear […]
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Today we made a start on re-stocking our little smallholding with that most versatile of creatures, the chicken. Or rather, four chickens (despite the ardent lobbying of the toddler son who for some reason had the figure of twenty stuck firmly in his head). We had decided to offer a genteel home county retirement to some […]
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This week marked what I think is our first big lesson about smallholding, to whit, that we had some very strong preconceived notions of what this would be like. I wanted to like the alpacas, I really did. They were so dainty, with their pretty eyelashes and their long graceful necks. I had visions of […]
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I think that the alpacas have to go.
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What a week. And what a shame that so much of it has been spent inside but with a little boy and two cats (my life really is filled with marvellous small noisy beings), getting the house unpacked so that they could feel like they were home seemed to be a priority. We’ve had a […]
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In my 34 years on this planet I’ve lived in 17 different houses, but not one of them has ever affected me like this one. I’m sitting in an empty, echoing kitchen on a camping chair as I type this and in a few hours men in a big truck will come and pick up […]
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I’ve learnt a lot about gardening this year. I’ve filled my 44 hanging and wall baskets to bursting, as well as my four raised beds. Some things have worked well (I’ve grown more than £150 of organic produce and haven’t bought tomatoes all summer!) and some less well (one measly squash from six plants?). So […]
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We recently harvested our Crown Prince squash. I really enjoyed growing the squashes and pumpkins vertically and I was pleasantly surprised by how well they climbed but I do wonder if the fact that they were growing up rather than out was responsible for their poor crop. That or lack of pollination perhaps? Because I […]
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We have a new project on the horizon. It’s not absolutely certain yet but we’re pretty sure we’re going ahead. All will be revealed anon but until then I thought I’d show you what that means for the garden. The squash and pumpkin vines were so lousy with blight that they looked just dreadful and […]
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Pumpkin before I’ve been generally pleased by the way that the pumpkins have grown vertically on a cane support in the garden. They actually haven’t fruited that much but that appears to have been down to poor pollination as I’ve had loads of tiny pumpkins develop and simply rot on the vine. Our tiny urban […]
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London to Land Girl 