I woke up just an hour or so ago to a fine dusting of snow. It’s still coming down in a steady flurry, tiny criss crossing flakes that are settling everywhere. I’m sitting here on top of the world (or so it feels) on the second floor looking out across the Smallest Smallholding. My cat Mindu is curled up with me, headbutting me at every opportunity and quietly purring. The other cats are all dotted about the house curled up fast asleep. Rich is tucked up in bed quietly snoozing away. Now that I’ve come in, the birds are coming in to land in the fruit frees where the bird seed is. Like a squadron of spitfires, they circle and dive down with sweeping yet precise movements. I topped the feeders up this morning, well aware that after such a cold night and with the prospect of snow they’d need extras today. I must have counted at least 50 finches (greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches and some bramblings), as well as a collection of collared doves and woodpigeons. Our resident blackbirds tend to skirt around the edges in the hedges and trees, darting in and out of the pyracantha or coming down onto the lawned area to hoover up the sunflower hearts.

The hens are totally non-plussed with the snow. I let their ladder down this morning, only for them to come down, one by one and gather underneath the house, not wanting to venture out. With some coaxing, they formed an orderly line and marched quickly into the relative warmth and dry of the greenhouse where I’d put down extra straw yesterday evening. There are currently two summer chairs acting as makeshift covers, and they huddle underneath in the straw bedding and settle down. The greenhouse door is only just open enough so that they can get in and out, to try and keep as much warmth in as possible. They’ve got their drinking water and food in there too, so they’ll only come out to get to the nestbox in the henhouse to lay.

I left what little seeds I’ve sown outside - my Kilaxy cabbages, tendersnax carrots in pots, some broadbeans and a mystery seed tray (can’t remember what I sowed - could be tomatoes? In which case, they’re probably going to be buggered now) under the henhouse extension run, away from the mice, birds and Cynthia who likes to tip everything up in order to get a good look. My new plot is still just a third dug so far, I have not been tempted to venture outside for at least a week, as I’m rubbish with cold weather and I don’t like getting cold and damp (who does?!). The allotment has been neglected for about 2 weeks, owing in part to strong winds - it’s like a wind tunnel down there - Nannie’s return from the rehabilitation unit at the hospital, work, and redecorating the kitchen. Mum and I are resolute in our pledge to get down there ASAP and start getting things ready for planting.

I did manage to get some Hercules onion sets in - goodness knows how they’re doing to fare with this snow as I took the fleece tunnels down during the windy weather. I have 150 more sets so if they turn out to be a disappointment, it’s not a complete disaster if they don’t ‘work’ properly. My super early Radar onions are slowly making progress though, which is encouraging. I’m going to get the rest of my broadbeans in, now it seems the windy weather has all but passed I’ll get some canes up and put them straight in the ground.

I think the wee wee chitting potatoes are actually ok - which is really surprising. It seems the tubers are tougher than I first anticipated. Whether or not they’ll grow mutant potatoes as a result of their exposure to the near-radioactive quality of cat wee remains to be seen. I’m regarding it as an accidental yet quite interesting little Smallest Smallholding experiment. I’ve also got a plethora of herbs to sow - probably about 8 or 10 different types, but not sure where they’re going to go yet. I think I might have to buy some pots and then grab some of the pot holding trays from the garden centre. They pile them up at the exit and you can take as many as you need - really handy for keeping everything together and makes moving things around much easier. And of course, a great recycling initiative.

Intermission: - the snow flakes are gathering pace, and getting larger. A squadron of starlings has just arrived too. There are a few slightly resigned-looking doves and pigeons sitting in the tall tree. Hens are not venturing outside, they’re staying snuggled in the straw in the greenhouse. Bramblings are going potty around the feeders.

End of Intermission.

Yup, still got loads of sowing to do. The thing is, from my very limited experience I’ve decided that it’s best not to rush these things. On the one hand, you have the opportunity to sow, and as with my onion sets, if they fail, you can sow again. However, I think if you try and push things too early then you end up with leggy, weak seedlings that don’t do as well. I don’t use propagators, but then I can pop to the shops if I need something to eat at the mo, so I can afford to take my time. The plan is to not rely on shops (especially supermarkets), to master the art of storing veg, achieve successive planting for continuous crops etc, but at the moment I’m just concentrating on growing good sized quality vegetables. I think propagators are an exact science and I’m a) not tempted and not impressed by other family member’s attempts to use them and b) can’t afford one anyway.

Rich’s parents came to visit yesterday, and they said they’re trying to grow vegetables from the plug trays this year. Apparently Suttons are doing a special offer whereby for around £25 you receive about 175 plugs, with 20 of a different vegetable. I may have got the particulars completely wrong, but the figures I’m giving are being served up by my memory which believes itself to be accurate at this present time. I think plugs are a great way to get growing if you have limited space, facilities or have difficulty raising seeds, either because your soil is poor (Rich’s parents’ soil is chalky and stony, although they’re trying raised beds too to try and improve it) or you don’t have enough window space or a greenhouse to start everything off in. I think anything that gets and keeps people growing veggies is good, I think the more people that learn about the way things grow and the nurturing of their plants and veg will have a greater appreciation for food, its taste and where it comes from. I would love to see Primary Schools (or if you’re Bedfordshire folk, Lower and Middle Schools) investing more time in teaching children these skills, and perhaps starting them off with plug vegetables would be great. Then they could progress to growing from seed. I remember as a child at school we would have egg shells with drawn on faces, stuffed with damp tissue paper and cress seeds. That was my first experience of growing something.

Speaking of eggs, I’m not sure how all the Easter Egg hunts are going to go down today in the snow. I expect there will be a lot of excited children waking up to the snow. I’m not sure there’s going to be enough to sledge on here, but it’ll still be nice for them to wake up to it. Even better is that a lot of adults will be able to enjoy it too, being a Sunday and a bank holiday weekend. And then of course there’ll be those that will have a nice walk to Church for the Easter service. Mum is coming around a little later to deliver a little Easter present for us - she says it’s not an egg but it’s baked, so can’t wait for that. I have a lot of work to catch up on, but I’ll be snuggled up on the sofa with my cats and duvet. And next week when the snow has melted, I’m going to do another sowing session.

Happy Easter all x

Pics coming soon!

Well we took Yoko to see another vet more experienced with poultry. She basically said that we ought to keep going with the baytril and that she thought Yoko wasn’t alarmingly thin at all. Clear chest, good colouring, she seemed well hydrated and not too much diarrhoea staining. She gave Pokey (Yoko) a steroid injection and said that we should get a faecal sample to check for any worms, parasites etc. But all in all not to worry too much.

Yoko has gone very broody and we think this is perhaps why she hasn’t been eating very well. She has definitely perked up but still has her moments of lethargy. Lately she’s been charging around the henhouse trying to get into the nestbox to no avail (we were trying to stop her being broody), but the vet advised us to let her settle in so that she’d be happier in herself. We have to monitor her eating but maybe if she’s not so hellbent on getting into the nestbox she’ll take more time to eat. So I’m really hoping that she’ll get better as I haven’t yet seen her regurgitate and although her crop was still fairly squishy yesterday, today it seems better - although she hasn’t eaten much apart from layers mash and lamb’s lettuce this morning. We’ll keep an eye on her but I’m hoping that she’ll improve with each day and get over her broody phase more quickly. So now she’s in the nestbox and I can hear the occasional piping coming out. She’s less anxious which is great, I wish I could have had a steroid injection to make me feel less anxious!!!!

I’ve been up every morning around quarter to half past six observing the hens solidly for about 3 hours. I think people around here must think I’m a very strange chicken lady - no, I just like to know what’s going on with them! I was out in the wind and rain yesterday complete with umbrella turning inside out every now and then. We had a tornado pass through about 10 miles away, but luckily I just got a bit soggy and windswept. The girls were confined to the run with the extension and seemed perfectly happy as they were chomping on their breakfast under the dry bit.

Since I’ve been so involved with Yoko I haven’t really done an awful lot else. I managed to lay the path in the greenhouse with some of the free block paving, and Maureen christened it by doing the smelliest poo from a height, with maximum splat factor, whilst perching on Rich’s garden chair that’s currently in there. Luckily the stinker misesd both Rich and me, but we had to do a rapid evacuation due to smellypoofumes. Anyhow, Rich has six million and thirty nine things to do, so I’m not sure when we’ll get the greenhouse staging in. As long as it’s in time for me to start growing my herbs, I’m not *too* worried.

On the vegetable front, I have still yet to sow my agricultural mustard (eek!), although I’m still waiting on my Radar onions and Thermidore garlic to arrive from the Organic Gardening Catalogue, so not sure whether I’ll be putting part of that bed to ‘fallow’ anyway. Hopefully they’ll arrive soon. In the other bed my Chatennay and Autumn King carrots are going ok, despite Pattie’s mining attempts and the other hen’s discovery that they quite like carrot tops - so the fleece tunnels have gone back on. Not sure if they’ll do anything because to be quite frank, they’re looking pretty weedy at the moment…so we’ll see… Leeks are going ok too, although again the hens got a bit carried away and trampled on a few, but they seem to be still going despite this. Right, I need a lie down.

Digging, cutting, pruning, raking, wheelbarrowing. That seems to have been my life for the past week. There is SO much cutting back, re-shaping, digging out, composting, shredding and green-tipping to do that I think I am starting to go ever so slightly raving mad. It can be a bit demotivating thinking about just how much work still has to be done to get the smallest smallholding into any sort of working shape for next year. It seems that the autumn and winter are going to be dedicated to mostly re-shaping the land to make better use of it now that I have some inkling of how things work and just how much veg (and herbs - remember the herb project!) I want to grow.

Thing is, I bloody hate digging out my veg plots with a passion. But with my mega-plot extension, it’s just got to be done. We did consider hiring a mini digger for the day, but as much as I would LOVE to get one to help, it’s just too expensive for the likes of us, the piss poor church mice that we are currently. So it looks like the next few weeks I’ll be out in the rain and wind (long hair constantly being blown into my face is possibly the most aggrivating experience - even when tied up and wedged down underneath a dodgy beanie hat) digging and uncovering goodness knows what. Previous debris uncovered (or recovered) from the plots include disturbingly large animal bones, terracotta drainage pipes, wire, wrangled metal, old bottles, bits of random china, a lot of glass and whole bricks (useful!).

We managed to score some free used block paving at the weekend. My aunt works for a local school which had taken up a few pallets-worth of this very weathered and worn block paving. So rather than it going to the skip, and then on to landfill, my aunt declared that we’d take it away and use it. So there was me, Rich, my mum and dad, my aunt and step-uncle, all loading our cars up and taking the stuff away. The ultimate in recycling! I have already laid some down next to my greenhouse so that I can put out pots in the summer on it. It actually looks pretty good - not as utlitarian as I thought. Because it’s been weathered nicely, it’s quite mellow-looking and actually looks as if it’s been there quite a while already. Anyway, I’m going to use the rest to lay down a path into and inside my greenhouse (also a freebie from freecycle), and if there’s any left over I might even do a small seating area outside the greenhouse.

I splurged last week and bought some 3mm UV-resistant acrylic panes for the greenhouse, so now that’s all in one piece, no gaping holes. I decided on the seemingly less-”green” option of acrylic rather than glass as I thought it would probably last longer, so I wouldn’t have to keep buying (and someone manufacturing) the brittle horticultural glass. The acrylic, although pretty much just as good as the glass (and safer for the likes of the accident prone like me) does tend to sag a bit in the middle in the roof panes, so Rich reckons he’s going to construct a little support for it. This is when he’s constructed my greenhouse staging - are you getting this Rich? Greenhouse staging - need it pronto!!!

N.B. Pic is me digging for victory with our hens at the very beginning of this year, just a few weeks after we’d got them. Take a look at my “meet the girls” page to see what they look like now - beauties!

What a weekend - it started with me innocently pulling down some ivy and ended with a very sore face and puffy eye. There is a wasp’s nest not far from where I was pulling the ivy down, and unbeknown to me, one had flown at me from behind, and I managed to get stung just below my eye. Cue lots of screaming, pain, burning sensation in my eye “it’s stung my eye! it’s stung me eye!”, more shouting, and dancing on the spot whilst Rich tried to pull the blighter out of my hair. Poor thing was half-mangled by the time it was freed from my locks, so Rich had to stamp on it. Feel a bit sorry for it really, I should have been more careful! I’m just steering clear of any wasps at this time of year, they’re mental - like a group of lager louts, completely pissed and up for a fight at the drop of a hat. Much prefer bees anyway, they have something distinctly more laid back about them.

My face was painful and sore and a little swollen for the rest of the day, but I went to bed and woke up the next morning looking like a Klingon. Puffy, half-closed eye and a distinct lack of defining of cheekbone on my right side. Oh how very! Bit better today, although it did puff up again overnight - but you can’t really see it that much anymore. Which is a good thing. My grandmother goes into anaphylactic shock when she’s stung by bees - I have never been stung by a wasp or bee before, so I don’t know. Well, didn’t know - I know about wasps now.

It seems this clearing of land is taking forever. The hedges are just MASSIVE, but it’s not so much the cutting that takes forever, it’s the clearing up and disposing of afterwards. And it’s quite boring work if I’m frank. Our compost heap is gigornmous, so I really don’t want to add a few extra feet to it, so I’m insisting that we take our cuttings to the local Tidy Tip, where they have a green skip. So at the moment we have lots of piles of hedge trimmings, ivy, buddleia and soon bionic Dogwood cuttings all over the joint. I’m waiting to dig out my extra veg plots (Rich thinks I should ditch the bordered beds that I currently have and just have one massive plot…not sure about this) when it’s rained a bit later on, as the ground is just rock solid at the moment.

I bought a load of herb seeds yesterday because I was a bit bored - can’t decide whether to do a trial run or not. I don’t want to waste my time or money, but I think if I have been more patient I could have got the seeds a lot cheaper. It seems that it’s totally the wrong time of year to plant any sort of herb, save a couple and the ones that you can grow indoors all year round. I think the people at the garden centre thought I was a bit mental - they were taking off the seed packets from the display whilst I was frantically trying to grab the herb seeds that I could salvage from the remnants of the display before they were put away. I might do some research and see if it’s viable to grow them all in pots over winter under cover. It’s all on a whim, I haven’t really thought forward about potential farmer’s markets, about how I should source the seed etc. I have done some research into how the different herbs are used in cooking - so that’s giving me some ideas for my own cullinary activities! Anyway, at least if I can’t grow them until early next year, I can have more time to plan this slightly bizarre venture.

I’m currently drawing up a plan to grow loads of (mostly cullinary) herbs next year - part of a little commercial enterprise I’m cooking (ho ho!) up. The other day I was out in the car with Mum, and we had to take a little detour through the grounds of Woburn Abbey (belonging to Duke and Duchess of Bedford). Mum had been there the day before and she was explaining about the walled kitchen garden. Apparently there used to be upwards of 40 gardeners at Woburn Abbey - now there are only 6. How times have changed! Anyway, we stopped and I had a quick chat with the deer that were hanging around the side of the track that leads out of the Park grounds, and then whilst we were driving along and talking, Mum revealed to me that the land and surroundings (about an acre and a half) that our house was built on (and the bit left over next to our house that was left fallow for decades) used to be a proper market garden, with chickens, vegetables, and the remains of the orchard. The neighbouring 70s terrace was built on the remaining land after our cottages and the nearby railway cottages were built, but with their postage stamp sized gardens, a generous bulk of the fallow land was left for some 20 odd years to become overgrown with brambles and bindweed. So much so that we didn’t really realise that there were all these fruit trees growing there until we cleared it when we bought it in the 90s.

So it’s really made me want to almost “put it back” to what it once was. You see, we have two parts to the Smallest Smallholding - there’s what we call the “garden”, and then the “working” Smallest Smallholding bit. The garden is obviously for flowers, socialising, pottering, and the like. The working bit is the centre of the smallest smallholding, although with my love of all things wildlifey, I admit it will be more like a potager/kitchen/market garden than just land turned over purely to arable means.