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?

Well I had a quiet couple of days after Pattie. And thanks for all the comments, it’s the most I’ve ever had on my blog and it’s good to receive supportive messages. To some people, it’s ‘just’ a chicken, but to us she was a little beauty and a valued pet.

I’ve had a couple of tearful moments, I probably will do for a while. I miss her little chatty noises and sweetness. It’s very quiet out there, so Rich and I have decided that we’ll probably get another couple of hens. Yoko isn’t as busy and venturing as she used to be, so quite often Maureen is off scratching about on her own. I think giving another couple of hens a retirement here is something I’m keen to do. We’re not sure when the next hen rescue is, so we’ve been wondering about getting a couple of hybrids to begin with and then introducing another couple of ex-batts.

The only thing is, despite her weight and egg size, for all intents and purposes Maureen is quite a small hen. She was always second in the pecking order (Yoko still firmly rules the roost) though and is more than capable of looking after herself. But the hybrids we looked at yesterday would stand taller than her, and we don’t want to stress her out with having to introduce two new birds that could threaten her position as Yoko’s Number Two. Either way, we’re not sure about financing another couple of hybrids at the mo - they’re £13 each (fully innoculated) so it might be that we just wait and get a couple of ex-batts a bit later on. It just depends on Maureen really, she’s been getting a bit clingy and is louder than normal. I just don’t know if I’m reading too much into it and humanising her behaviour.

On the veggie front I’ve been mostly harvesting, and I’m going to do a bit of a show and tell here. Every few days I’m able to pull up some onions. I’m still getting pathetically small ones out of the row nearest the edge of one of my onion patches, but I’m keeping them for pickling a bit later on once they’ve dried.

I’m told summer onions are best for storage, whereas Autumn onions tend to be meant for use straight away. As I only have summer onions at present I’m going to be trying to braid them together to store them. I think Mum has a couple of old onion nets that I might see if I can pinch too.

I was really really pleased to be able to harvest my first ever cabbage. It’s a kilaxy (round) cabbage, and I thought I ought to pull it out whilst it was whole and untouched. The cabbage whites have got in and laid some of their eggs, and a couple have got a bit rotten underneath. This one though is a beauty and hopefully the remaining ones that are forming hearts will follow suit. I can’t wait to eat some of it tonight. If you want to try cabbages, I really recommend this variety from a growing point of view. Obviously jury is still out on the taste because I have yet to sample it, but it seems very crunchy so I imagine it’ll be good.

My tomatoes are also finally ripening (see top pic), I’ve already started offloading them onto Mum and anyone else that’ll take them. My whole greenhouse has been taken over by wild, widthways-spreading tomato plants so I’m expecting a bumper crop. So far, so good. As I’ve said before, it’s a real shame I don’t like raw tomatoes. Somehow can’t help but grow them though…

I’m so sad right now. The Smallest Smallholding got a bit smaller today. Pattie had been getting better - miraculously we thought. And then we popped out for 5 or 10 minutes and when we came back I found her on her side on the lawn with her eyes closed. She’d just suddenly passed away and I picked her up and the tears just came pouring out of me.

She’d spent the day sunbathing and walking around with Maureen, she seemed ok. It’s such a shock that all of a sudden my beautiful little Pattie has gone. She was so chatty and lively, a real little character and so delighted with the world. I’m only glad that I gave her over one and a half years of the best retirement I possibly could, as being an ex-batt she had a shitty start in life. I know she had a lovely life here, and I’m glad but at the moment I just feel so sad that she’s gone. I don’t know about life, the universe and everything but I reckon even animals like Pattie have little souls that go somewhere.

What a beautiful girl, I will miss her like mad.

In addition to my post below,we also have a small spattering of the other sort of corn - err, corn. Field corn? It’s been growing under the crab apple all summer. I thought it looked good, especially as we have lots of poppies growing close by. It’s also been a handy place for wildlife to shelter, and I took a picture of one such resident:

I have been wondering if I can do anything useful with the corn though. I can’t really see myself grinding it down by hand with a pestle and mortar (partly because I don’t own one). So my little project is to find out harvest corn, how to mill corn by hand, and how much you need to do something decent with. Corn chips, anyone? Does it make flour easily? Am I completely on the wrong track? It’s actually quite embarrassing that I’m so baffled by the whole thing.

Anyroad, I’m not totally opposed to the idea of having a mini corn field here next year. The only problem is the chickens and cats have a tendency to sit in the middle of it and flatten it…more investigation needed me thinks.