For those of you that regularly read this blog, you’ll know that the Smallest Smallholding has been home to some lovely ex-battery hens. I’ve watched my girls flourish and live wonderful, free lives, whilst keeping us nicely supplied with tasty fresh eggs.

If you think you would like to take on some ex-batts, then North London Hen Rescue are currently looking for homes for 1,000 hens from a massive 3,000 hen rescue. These girls HAVE to find homes, and the rescue is due to take place in the latter half of September on a weekend. I’ll post when I know the exact date. But if you think you can give them the retirement they deserve, then contact Carly at North London Hen Rescue via the Adoption form on:

www.northlondonhenrescue.org.uk (via the Adoption tab on the left hand menu)

There are  co-ordination ‘pick up’ points all over the UK, so it’s not just restricted to London and the M25.

I can safely say that having hens has, overall, been such a rewarding experience. If you’ve been thinking about it, I would say take the plunge and go for it. I’ve put up a picture of Cynthia so you can see just how much they come on when given a bit of TLC and a chance to live the life they should have always had. Please help if you can!

I’m in mourning for my cabbages. I think I have one decent, harvestable one left. After being so smug about my tent cloche keeping the cabbage whites out, a couple got in and laid their spawn who merrily munched their way through my cabbage crop. I tried in vain to rescue them but alas, I fear it is too late. So two cabbages in total this year. Next year I’ll have to get some sort of netting I think, the tent cloche has one velcro strip at the bottom that seems to be it’s weakness. Whilst it’s fantastic for keeping in warmth and birds off my produce, the little guys can get in far too easily. Lesson learned!

I received my small shipment of field-grown kale earlier this week. It was basically packaged bare root, although there was some soil (nice Cornish red soil) to keep them comfortable for their journey. But typically I left it a bit too long to put them in the ground. I’d give them a little soak in water after a couple of days, and not having enough time to go and buy some compost (mine isn’t ready yet), Rich actually took it upon himself to bring them outside and made me dig a few holes to shove them in for the time being. They do look rather yellow, but I’m foolishly optimistic.

“Are they actually alive?” Rich asked me. “Oh yes,” I said authoritatively, “they’re fine, they’ll grow nice new green shoots”. I don’t actually know if they will, but I feel like I should be bigging them up. Rich is a bit cynical by nature but amazingly he seems to think I’m some sort of fountain of knowledge and experience when it comes to flowers. Probably just because I can name a few plants and flower by their latin names. Verbena bonariensis, for instance. It’s a running joke really - Mum has a habit of walking past a plant and exclaiming the full latin name and then waxing lyrical about them. But I’ve taken it upon myself to inform her that actually, I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about half the time, e.g:

Mum: OOOOOOooohh, look at that beautiful Meconopsis betonicifolia! Ohhh it’s wonderful, really difficult to grow but it would look so good in the border by the verbena bonariensis. Magnificent colouring…

Me: Uh?

Mum: Meconopsis betonicifolia - there. Himalayan Poppy.

Me: Wha?

The BLUE ONE. Next to the phlox paniculata there.There! THERE! The pink plant. It’s phlox…you’ve got it in your garden?

Me: Mum, you’re doing it again. I don’t know what the hell you’re going on about.

Walking around nurseries and garden centres with Mum is interesting but bewildering. But then Rich says I do it too. What is they say about women turning into their mothers?

Anyhow, I’ve been struggling to keep abreast with everything lately. Ah hell, I’ve been struggling all year really. I’ve been so focused on how crap everything’s been going and what’s going on with work that things have been just sort of left. In fact, I have had the opportunity to apply for a full-time job that could see me very very comfortably paid. It’s scary in a way, because I’d be flusher than I’ve ever been in my life. Much more than I ever thought I could, so much so that I wonder whether they’d laugh at my application. But everybody, including the agency, thinks that I can do it. Rich says I should have more confidence in my abilities. I guess I’ve been struggling financially for so long that I think that’s all I’m worth.

It’s weird really, I look around and I see everything that could be fixed up or sorted out if I had the money. It’s like a tempting lure, but I’m afraid that by stepping into that full-time world that I’ll get sucked into the rat race and lose sight of my dream. But then Rich said I could look at it as a way to get myself out of a hole and start saving up for my dream. The company is only about 15 mins from home, so conceivably I could come home for lunch, still be able to see my hens and cats in daylight during winter. I could pay to get my greenhouse fixed, to buy the wood so Rich can make our new henhouse, pay to get my websites off the ground, replace the manky carpets, get an electrician in to sort out our power problem, buy new flooring and finally not have to endure a freezing cold concrete kitchen floor. There’s no doubt about it, having the extra money would solve a lot of problems. But it would take me out of my comfort zone, out of trying to claw my way up this really difficult freelance career ladder. It’s a big compromise, and I have to remind myself that having money and working 8:30 - 5:30 5 days a week could be a way to sort of fast-forward my way to making the Good Life a real possibility. Rich reckons it’s like putting in a couple of years of really hard graft but ultimately making it work for me. But then I said to Rich “I guess it depends on how happy I’ll be ultimately”. He replied, “Yeah but I don’t think you’re going to be particularly happy either way. Because you’ll be either happy because you’re at home but unhappy because you’re struggling with less money, or you’ll be happy because you have money but unhappy because you’re at work all day.”. Hmph. “Bad luck!” he also added with a chuckle. Ah, we have to laugh or we’d cry!

I can’t deny that it’s a very very tempting prospect to earn a nice living. But there are times when the money issue just goes out of the window. The other morning, it was gorgeous and sunny, there was a slight Autumnal chill on the air, the sunshine was a bit watery and it was fresh and bracing. I was plonked on the sofa with my laptop, my cat was curled up beside me looking so comfortable and content. I was gently stroking her on the head as I worked and I was thinking, could I really trade this all in? When I get a bit fed up with work I can shut down my laptop, walk away and potter around the garden with a toasted cheese sandwich in my hand, chattering to the hens and poking my veg plot. I’m so happy right now, imagining being stuck in an office, having when you can eat or take a break dictated to you is really quite offputting.

I don’t know - it’s like I always hated being told what to do. And as I’ve got older and been able to make decisions for myself and tell people to naff off if they don’t like what I’ve been doing, I’ve developed an even intenser dislike of being told what to do and when to do it. I resent it big time. But as I said, it’s a compromise for being paid what I would consider handsomely. And actually, having a bit of structure back would be nice.

Difficult. I think I’m going to send in my application though. Having said all this they probably wouldn’t even consider me! So the saga continues. Nobody said the Good Life was an easy life, did they?

The photo - yes. That’s me decked out so I don’t swallow a lungful of dust from ripping an old manky ivy down. Or swallow spiders as big as my hands that were emerging from it. The photo sequence audio goes something like this:- Photo 1 - dealing with ivy, Photo 2 - “Rich? What are you doing? Why aren’t you helping me?”, Photo 3 “Rich, stop blimmin’ taking pictures. Stop Laughing at me! What’s so funny? Right, you’re in trouble…”, climbs down ladder. Men. So un-useful sometimes.

Anyhow.

Wow, looking back to almost a year ago, apparently we were Busy Bank Holiday Bees. This Bank Holiday weekend, so far I’ve been up for an hour and a quarter, it’s well past midday and am still in my summer jimjams. I was up late working last night, after a last minute change to one of my articles, I had to rush around trying to find the right info and writing something decent. Still, managed it but didn’t crawl into bed until gone 2am, and didn’t nod off to sleep until gone 3. Poor Rich, who’d been working too, had to get up and do the chickens at just gone 6am. Needless to say, he’s still tucked up fast asleep upstairs.

You see, bank holidays just mean more crowds to me and Rich. I remember when I worked in an office, bank holidays were so welcome, such a relief and a luxury to have three days off in a row. When I left uni and found some temporary work at my local Next store (to keep the wolf from the door, good grief I wouldn’t do it now for all the tea in China), I didn’t get bank holidays. I was contracted to work, and only got time and a quarter for it. Disgusting really. So you can partly understand why I’m trying to do what I do. I don’t want that feeling of dread on Sunday night/Monday morning. I don’t want to have to look forward to a paltry number of bank holidays each year.

But that said, at the moment my days lack so much structure that they’re basically taken up thinking about work, feeling guilty because I’m doing something else and not working, or just working. So in a toss up, I’m not sure which is worse. I suppose having the freedom and potential to change things is enough. I really work a lot better in the mornings, but am a hopeless case because I’m such a night owl. I don’t know, I’ll have to try harder. Thing is Rich and I are both night owls so getting into bed and going to sleep at what other people would consider a decent hour is actually really hard work!

I know I’ve been lacking in the vegetable-department-type blogs lately. It’s just that I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to sort out what’s going on with my work. If I can’t make my freelance work happen, then I can’t really keep striding towards this idealised life I want. My life is far from ideal at the moment, as you know from my whinges about money, my whinges about how I live in a crap hole (we’re currently putting up with no electric lights in the dining room, kitchen or utility room, thanks to ancient wiring and really weird circuits and loops in the house), and my perpetual griping about how I just can’t seem to progress. But I think I have to give up on this idea that somehow I’ll be able to eke out some sort of notable career. Or should I? No actually, I won’t. I need something to keep me going if I’m not going to fall into something as droll and mundane as working in a the veal-fattening pens of souless offices and undertaking a stress-and-heart-disease-inducing commute each day. I’ve been there - I do not want to go back.

I know if I can just finish all my current work this weekend, I can stop feeling guilty about investing time in the projects that I want to take up - things like my henkeeping website, my online magazine website, my Daily Good Life blog and my You Tube channel. And not forgetting of course, the endless number of jobs that need doing around the Smallest Smallholding. I’m commissioning Rich to build me some herb planters near the house. He’s pissed off because the flies keep landing on his basil plants on the windowsill and crapping all over them, so we’ll have to think of a way to protect them outside too. Of course, there’s the ‘problem’ of protecting them over winter. It’ll get Rich’s creative juices flowing at least.

I’ve got to work on fixing the greenhouse for the winter, got LOADS of field-grown kale plants to transplant in, harvest more onions and try to persuade Rich that taking up some of his beloved expanse of open lawn to make way for more veg plots is A Really Good Idea. Also trying to persuade Rich that planting a willow hedge for small amounts of coppicing is A REALLY Really Good Idea. Might also consider a supply of winter lettuce too. Hmmm. Then there’s hedge cutting, mowing, strimming, composting, green manuring…blimey. The list just goes on. Oh, and the possibility of getting a few more hens. Still trying not to develop an irrational fear of vet visits and vet bills, given our track record with ex-batts. Apparently we’ve been very unlucky, and I do know of people that have had ex-batts and not had a day’s problem with them. I still feel good about the fact that Pattie and Cynthia had good lives here. And that Yoko, despite her condition, has a nice life too. Maureen is just a super hen. She’s had a dream life. Does make a difference in the end, that’s probably why we’ll still keep getting ex-batts (and poss. a couple of hybrids too).

But unfortunately on my List of Things to Do this weekend (I’m an avid fan of making lists), the majority of entries commence with the word “Clean” or “Tidy”. Sad fact is, housework has got to be done, there’s no getting away from it. Literally. When you’re living and working in a house most of the time, it’s a bit soul crushing dodging wobbly piles of junk, wading through heaps of mess, trying to find some pants and socks because you haven’t managed to do a clothes wash in over a week, no cutlery because it’s all still dirty and jammed into the dishwasher. hiding from the electric meter reader man because you’re too embarrassed to let anyone in the house. At least we have food. Ah, another problem. Yesterday I ate 6 chocolate brioches. Within about an hour. ‘Diet’ is a very dirty word, but I think I need to alter my eating habits. Crisps, chocolate, bread and cheese are all very nice, but endless consumption is not exactly good for me. Doesn’t really make me a very good example for living the Good Life now, does it?

I had to do a rescue mission late last evening on the cabbages. My prized Kilaxy cabbages were under attack by the above monster munchers. I *think* they’re cabbage white caterpillars. I can certainly see the ‘cat’ in caterpillar.

Whilst I expect and don’t really mind the cabbage whites’ spawn feasting on a couple of my cabbages, I’m not happy for them to go the whole hog. After all obviously I do want a few left for myself.  So I spent a while picking of laced leaves, removing the furry fiends (and a few slugs to boot) and taking them far, far away with the defunct half-decimated cabbage leaves. As much as people probably roll their eyes, I still try and stick with my no-kill policy.

So the remaining cabbages are relatively pest free. I let Maureen our hen have a run around under the tent cloche for good measure, she’s got a keen eye and would soon draw my attention by making excited ‘o! boh! bop bop!” sort of noises. Hopefully I’ll still have a few to enjoy in the next few weeks, the hearts are coming along nicely and I’m smacking my lips together in anticipation.