Digging in the rain!

 

Over at the allotment last weekend, Mark was disapointed to find that his strawberry patch had flooded, as well as another part at the back of the allotment where our weed pile is. He is contemplating rice and garlic growing now! Unfortunately, it seems this weather is going to continue for a few more summers, it might be a good idea...

We did well, and got some good work done moving the weeds we cut the week before, and clearing the path to get to the gooseberry bush and apple trees. But eventually, our luck ran out, and we hid under the trees at the back of the allotment. Beth isn't one for rain, and decided our shed would make a good dog kennel! It wasn't long before we had to join her as well.

I managed my first harvest of the year, and nearly all of it was fruit I hadn't actually grown. I picked a handful of gooseberries, a plant that was already in the allotment when we took it over. I also found a few ripe raspberries from the self rooted raspberry bushes that sprang up between the weeds this year. The only think I planted was a blackcurrant plant, which I got about a dozen blackcurrents off. Not bad really, usually I only get about 3!

At home I have had my first two ripe tomatoes, although they were barely big enough to be called cherry tomatoes! I have repotted the three plants I have in the mini greenhouse at home, so hopefully they will start fruiting soon.

The House That Rocked...

No chickens were harmed in the making of this blog.

I went outside to let the chickens out, and found the house had fallen off it's bricks in the night. Luckily it had happened when all the chickens were tucked up asleep, not when they were sat under the house sheltering from the never ending rain.

I don't quite know what happened, as it wasn't that windy last night. Maybe a fox tried to open the door and knocked it over in frustration!

Expect more photos tomorrow of me and Matt falling over in the mud, trying to balance the house on the bricks again!

People are strange...

As I mentioned before, we moved house. We moved in November and have a lot of families around as well as being on a short cut to a primary school. Although our fence is high people can see in and as usual, the chickens are very popular. I love that youngsters can see the chickens, but twice in the past few weeks we have found cooked chicken in the run.

I have checked them, and they don't have any bits missing! I just dont see why someone would think a chicken would want to eat chicken. I have been assured that it won't harm them, so maybe the weird joke will get boring and they will stop doing it.


On a lighter note I was going to add a photo, but this app is so poor, I can't do it. I will try again when I can use a pc.

I'm back!

It seems it has been a year since my last post. Bit I am back with a new app, so I can send updates from my phone instead of prizing the laptop away from Matt.

Things are a little slow at the allotment at the moment. I only have time to go on a saturday afternoon so have spent the last three weeks weeding.

In the ground are potatoes, onions, garlic and leeks. At home are some tomato plants and sweet potato plants.

Also at home, our black star chicken died a couple of months ago.  But we have three new additions, a frizzle chicken, a cream legbar chick and a legbar cross chick.

Speaking of home, we have moved. The chickens now have a bigger run,and our garden is enclosed so Beth can sun bathe to her hearts content.

That's enough catching up. I am off to plant some salad leaves.

Scrambled!

8 days after purchasing the two Warren chickens, a perfect pale brown egg with darker speckles appeared in the hen house. I was suprised how impressed I was. Chickens don't lay if they are stressed or ill, so I was pleased that we had provided the correct environment for a chicken to be happy enough to want to lay an egg. I have my suspicions that it was Cicero as she is the healthiest looking of the two warrens, and until recently Beatty was occasionally sick. Since the first egg, Cicero has been providing us with an egg a day without fail. That was 3 weeks ago, and today Matt went to the hen house after work, and there were two eggs in there. After some probiotic yoghurt, cider apple vinegar and chicken spice, and more likely some more time to get over her moult, Beatty has started laying also. She also looks like she is back to normal health.

I have learnt how impatient me and Matt are, we haven't been off the internet trying to find out why Beatty wasn't laying and why she was sick etc. Now that both Warrens are laying, we can relax. I have discovered that the other two hybrids are still very young, and can start laying between 18 and 30 weeks old. As they are only 19 weeks at the moment, we could be in for a long wait. But at least the bullying has pretty much stopped, and all four are getting along much better now.

Things at the allotment are not going so well. I was going to go on Bank Holiday weekend, but the weather was bad, so I missed out. Last weekend, I took some courgette plants thinking I could plant them and then go again. Instead I was met with tall grasses up to chest height all over the allotment. The onions still looked strong, althought they needed weeding. The potatoes could barely be seen for the weeds. I started work on weeding the potatoes, but I had to use a trowel to get the roots out, and ended up damaging some of the potatoes in doing so. The allotment looked almost as if we hadn't done any work over the last six months, and with all the other stuff I have going on with working and study etc, I felt like this year was going to be a right off like last year.

However, despite the problems with the veg I had planted, the rest of the allotment was taking care of itself. The apple trees are all full of fruit, the gooseberry plant is doing great and the fruit is nearly ready for picking. I also have a new favourite plant - I dug up a blackberry plant from the old allotment as well as some raspberry plants and put them into a bag with the intention of planting them at the new allotment in the spring. Spring has turned into summer almost, and there is still no room for planting due to the pile of dead brambles. But still my blackcurrent plant has produced at least a dozen fruits. Not bad going to hardly any soil and no room for root growth!

Our next project begins this weekend. Matt ordered a home brewing starter kit, and we are going to pick some rhubarb from the allotment tomorrow. Watch this space...

photos courtesy of Broken Fence Photography. www.redbubble.com (search salmonmattus)

The Chickens Have Landed!

The next stage of our self sufficiency, good life master plan, is chickens. This has been on the slow burner since before christmas, and started with a chicken keeping course at Stonebridge City Farm.

It then took us til this long to sort out buying some sort of house for them and build a run.

Finally though, two Warrens (Beatty and Cicero), a black star (Pam) and a Columbine (Oona) arrived in our garden. We bought the Warrens first and after a couple of days went to collect the other two. The two Warrens are in the picture on the left. The other two are in the photos below.

I thought it would all be straight forward from then on. Feeding, cleaning out, and collecting eggs. Oh, no! The Warrens are about 6 months older than the other two and chased them onto the roof of the hen house, where they stayed for a couple of days - I did grab them and put them into the house at night. Gradually they began to get braver, and hungrier but were still chased about by Beatty. Me and Matt decided to intervene, and extended the run and put more feed bowls around, so that the bullying Warrens couldn't guard all the food. It seems to have helped, and they are getting along a bit better now. Next problem - no eggs. The two Warrens are moulting, and chickens don't lay when in moult. The other two are a little too young to be laying yet.

On a brighter note, our cat Smiley got bored of them after one evening, and has wondered past them in the garden without raising a claw! Out Staffy Beth is a little more excited by them, but has figured out that she can't get to them when they are in the run and leaves them alone. However, if the chickens are loose in the garden, Beth is not!

They are also very relaxing to watch, scratching about on the ground. And they are every allotmenteers dream, I threw a slug in front on one the other day and it was gobbled up straight away!

Next time at the allotment, I will be collecting slugs, bugs and dandelion leaves to bring home for them!

I might try them on sticky weed tonight, even if they don't eat it, it will be funny to see them wandering around with sticky weed on them!

So much to do, so little time...

I know, I am a bad blogger. Despite all my promises about blogging more regularly on my new blog, I have slipped into old habits. They really do die hard!

It's not that I haven't been working away, I've just been too busy to write.

Life on the road to self sufficiency has been good, as you can see by the photo. Well truthfully I haven't had much to do with any of the produce in the photo, but still the frugal life is all about sharing and taking part!

Two weeks ago, I took part in a brewing day at Stonebridge City Farm. The Saturday consisted of Nettle Beer, and the Sunday that me and Matt went along to was about using other items from hedgerows and verges to make some home brew. We decided on Hawthorn Blossom wine. A week later, some of the nettle beer was going spare, and as we had taken part on the Sunday, we were offered some nettle beer. The only thing we could find to put it in to transport it home was a plastic bucket with a lid. Needless to say, my car now smells of nettle beer! However, I did manage to save enough to fill two two litre water bottles. I only have another week to wait until it is ready for drinking.

In front of the nettle beer, is a couple of jars of curried onion chutney, and three jars of rhubarb and vanilla jam. All of this was made by Matt, who has suddenly really got into all this growing, preserving, brewing idea. I think it was the brewing, that sparked his interst personally! Either way, it is great to have some more enthusiasm and planning input at the allotment and home.

Speaking of the allotment, we now have a shed. We had to carry it from the main gates ourselves in the pouring rain, but after a struggle to nail a warped roof on and a trip to Wickes to change the damaged roofing felt, there is now a wodden shed at the back of the allotment. No more dragging lots of tools back and forth to the car each time I go.

Before the shed arrived, I did a bit of weeding in the onion bed, they all seem to be doing well, although the garlic hasn't grown quite as much as it should. I think this might have been due to the dry spell we had before, as garlic tends to prefer lots of water. In the potato bed, things aren't quite as good. A number of plants have got brown dead leaves, I feared it might be potato blight so dug out my vege books and had a look. I didn't take any photo's but it appears that another likely cause if frost damage. A friend mentioned there had been  a frost a couple of weeks ago, so I am hoping it is that, rather than potato blight.