Let’s say things have been a bit…..tight around here. Of course it’s rude to talk about money (apparently), but a couple of unpaid invoices, a backlog of work thanks to my back episode last week, and a few other factors have meant that Rich and I are…well…a bit broke.

I would love to wholeheartedly blame oil prices and rising food prices. I know that they have played a small part - after all, the cost of living has increased noticably, particularly the last gas & electric bills we had despite our best efforts to keep them as low as possible. But the simple fact is that having two of us self-employed has it’s downsides. And this is one of them. Work, and payment in particular, can be sporadic and unreliable. Especially when you rely on people paying invoices on time, and for whatever reason, it doesn’t happen.

Rich would be fine if he didn’t have me to contend with too. It’s me that’s the problem really.

I’ve almost cleared our cupboards out, trying to come up with meals using tins of kidney, cannellini or pinto beans, boxes of passata, potatoes, carrots et al. My store cupboard staples are diminishing. The freezer is emptying, now resident to unhelpful things like frozen filo pastry and 18 month old Quorn bangers. Even the car is running on fumes now.

But we’re getting perilously close to not having anything to eat, and not being able to go food shopping until next week. So far today I had to skip breakfast (not such a problem, as I was lazy and didn’t get up until mid morning), nicked a packet of Hula Hoops from my Mum’s house en route to see Nannie in hospital, came home and ate the remnants of some chewy bitesize shredded wheat, and to finish had a slightly stale roll with some spread in it. Rich ate some raw cabbage for lunch. It’s a bit desperate, but I can’t help but feel amused by it. If my Mum knew the exact circumstances she’d probably fall over with worry. Of course the animals eat better than we do. I can go a few days eating stale bread and ancient frozen food. I don’t expect them to ’suffer’ because of *my* lifestyle choice.

Anyway, this has all go me thinking about my vegetable plots and allotment. Nothing is quite ready to harvest yet, apart from some rhubarb (ooo…I have fat, sugar and flour, I could make a crumble) . I can’t wait until I can drastically reduce my food shopping bill and gobble my vegetables. I can make a meal out of almost anything, and when you have a glut of potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and turnips, you’re forced to get creative.

With things being a bit brassic, I’m wondering if I could chance an early raid on the potatoes. My radar onions are almost there, they’ve got smallish bulbs on them (one bolted, mnargh!), but I’m holding off on pulling them just yet. A few rogue potatoes from last year’s Charlotte crop popped up amongst the onions. One has started flowering, so I think that could be of great help.

At the end of this growing season, I’m definitely going to look into successive growing and all year round crops. I just can’t be doing with extra stresses on top of everything else. Once we start harvesting our fruit and veg, a little weight will be lifted from my shoulders.

If you get your hands on a copy of this month’s (July 2008 edition) Home Farmer magazine, on page 14 you’ll see my mug (and Yoko the chicken) staring back at you. Scary!!!!

Home Farmer is a brilliant magazine - it’s relatively new and at the moment is only available in independent newsagents by request, or stocked in WHSmiths. It’s a mag for kitchen gardener, allotment holder, smallholder or veggie enthusiast, and a good read. Naturally, I suggest you go out and get yourself a copy! I basically wrote the article in order to give my perspective on how the whole Smallest Smallholding idea came into fruition. I also wrote about my take on trying to live the Good Life, what it’s like being a “not the norm” (despite the fact that being a bit self-sufficientish is en vogue now, apparently) 25 year old vegetable growing wildlife enthusiast, a bit about my ex-batt hens, and how the world of blogging has introduced me to so many like-minded people*.

Actually, the whole blogging experience so far has been brill. I actually feel now that I am far from a weirdo outsider, that there are actually others out there that are my age, doing similar things and enjoying similar interests. It’s not a case of looking to other people for confirmation that my hobbies, interests and take on life are OK. It’s about sharing experiences and being able to engage in some sort of dialogue - whether face to face, via email or just a short comment on a blog - with other people that I can connect with. And I love the fact that vegetable growing, gardening, smallholding, home farming - whatever you want to call it - reaches out to so many people.

A while ago I blogged about how Facebook depressed the hell out of me. How I felt like I was supposedly missing out on living the high life in London, questioning whether I was going to feel unfulfilled or lacking in some way for not going in that direction. But last week I had my school reunion, and I can safely say that I came away feeling fine. Great, in fact. And it had nothing to do with the (relatively small, compared to others) amount of alcohol I had drunk! It was just the fact that I didn’t feel like an ugly fat dag compared to everyone else. I didn’t feel boring. I didn’t feel outdone or rubbish. I just felt fine! I spent an evening chatting to two or three really good friends that I keep in fairly regularly contact with. I caught up with old school friends who were great. One even came bounding up to me and declared she too had an allotment.

I came home and sat there and realised that I pleased to be amongst my melange of animals, looking forward to a weekend prodding the vegetable patch (I’d had a nasty back incident earlier in the week), doing a bit of writing work, cooking, visiting my grandmother (she’s had a stroke but they expect her to make a very good if not full recovery) in hospital, seeing my sister, catching up on blogs. I might sound like a complete sad sack to most people, but who cares. Really - who cares? I’m happy and I think a lot of people are missing out. It might sound crazy or a bit out there, but I really think that growing vegetables, an interest in wildlife gardening and aspiring to live in this way, whatever it is, has given me a grounding and a solid foundation that I can lose myself in when everything else threatens to drive me stark raving bonkers. Or maybe I’ve just got past stark raving bonkers…

*The only thing is for some reason the word ‘cousin’ has been replaced by ’sister’ in the article. Deborah is my first cousin, not my sister! And please excuse my slightly dodgy wonky scanning skills.

These little blighters keep popping up all over the Smallest Smallholding. They appear literally overnight in small clusters, peeping up through the grass. It seems that two days of non-stop rain coupled with the relative humidity have given them the perfect conditions to thrive.

Whilst I don’t really object to having them about the place, I am a bit concerned whether they could cause trouble for the hens. The girls spend all day roaming around freely, and are free to peck at will. So for me this means a certain degree of managing the environment that they’re in - such as keeping grass in check and removing any poisonous plants such as foxgloves.

We haven’t been able to identify any these three types of mushroom, so don’t know whether they’ll be poisonous to us or the hens. For now, on the mornings that I get up to let the hens out after sunrise, Rich has me trawling around picking the mushrooms out of the grass, just in case.

If you’ve any idea what these are, I’d be really handy to know more…

Two vegetable garden assistants letting me do all the work.