I’ve put a picture of my monster Snowball turnip up, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with this post. A more relevant picture would be my miserable mug staring back at you, but I took the executive decision to spare any Smallest Smallholding blog readers the horror of enduring that kind of imagery. Prepare yourself, this post is not going to be light relief.

Ugh. I’m basically in a pretty pissed off kind of mood. Again. And yes, it’s money again - bloody money! I’m the weakest link in the microcosm of Lucy and Rich. If it wasn’t for me being useless, we’d be comfortably afloat every month instead of having to bale ourselves out some way or another. I have work, but it’s not enough. I think I may have just lost a client because I wasn’t comfortable with what the work entailed and passed on it. I have no idea when my next writing job will be and it’s starting to keep me awake at night. Or when I finally get to sleep I’m having anxiety nightmares where I’m back working for my boss from hell and feeling extremely stressed. The result is I wake up feeling tired and stressed, spend the day looking for work and getting nowhere, feel very unproductive and a complete waste of space and go to bed, feeling tired and stressed still. My face has broken out so I look like a join-the-dots game, I’m pale and washed out, and I generally don’t look like someone you’d want to be associated with. Poor Rich.

I don’t know. I just feel like such a loser. I was destined for great things. Teachers at school and even at my crappy local uni told me I had so many avenues open to me, that I had lots of talent blah blah blah. And yet, here I am, not making anything of my life apart from keeping hens and growng vegetables, wasting every day that passes trying to find work that’ll fit in with the life I want to build. I’d love to be the Anita Roddick of the Good Life movement, spreading the message to the world. Or do what Jimmy Doherty does - enlightening people, inspiring them and getting people in the groove of the way I aspire to live. I just don’t know where to begin or how to do it outside of this blog. It’s been a bit of an enlightening journey for me, but sometimes it all seems so far out of reach.

I could jack it all in and just start commuting to London (if they’d have me, getting on for 26 I think I am past doing internships and couldn’t afford to do them now anyway, so would have to start all over again and climb the greasy, slippery bitchy career ladder), or get a job in one of my local towns and at least have money rolling in regularly. Thing is, I’d feel even worse I think. Like I was giving up on my dream and just joining the rat race and getting sucked in.

But I’m just SO pissed off with earning pittance and feeling like I’m furiously pedalling forwards but not going anywhere. I wake up every day thinking “right, this is it, this is the day I turn it all around”, and then just end up wasting my time browsing the web, posting on forums, trying to come up with ideas but getting stuck and getting very very downbeat about everything. I get fed up with living in a craphole too. The house is very slowly but steadily falling into disrepair and it’s amazing how much of an effect it has on my mood. Sometimes I just sit here and feel like crying because I just can’t see a way out. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to contribute towards a mortgage.

I’ve tried getting part-time work, but I don’t want to have to spend mountains of money on petrol to get into town, only to be paid what equates to a crap wage when I could potentially be doing something here off my own back and keeping all the money for myself (minus, of course, Income Tax and N.I. - no escaping them!). I also have the big problem that my back problems mean that I can’t spend a whole day sitting at a computer. Nor can I do heavy lifting, or stand on my feet all day. You’d be amazed at how many jobs that rules out. I need a sort of happy medium, which is why freelancing has helped me so much in that regard. Employers in the past have said my back won’t be a problem, but quickly get shitty when you have to take a break to stand up and move around because your back muscles are threatening to go into spasm (it’s more painful than it sounds). Or you can’t lift something and aren’t seen to be doing everything your job entails, despite telling them before you took the job.

I don’t know. It all sounds so pitiful and I probably come across as if I’m feeling very sorry for myself. I’m not - I’ve only got myself to blame and finding the energy, the determination and the inspiration to work really hard on my projects is extremely difficult. Once you’re in this sort of loop and perpetually knackered and down in the mouth it’s hard to find a means to claw your way out. I guess it’s the difference between having strength of character to work under your own steam and not. The more you feel like a failure, the worse you get.

I’m just not in a good place at the moment and I’m struggling to push myself to achieve something that I’m proud of, and make a decent living for once in my life. I have no structure and no definitive goals, just these projects I want to get going but need a little capital to start up. Finding the capital - or even just staying afloat and not being charged £25 everytime I go overdrawn - seems like a mammoth task at the moment. I just feel like I’m in a total mess.

Usually I would be moaning my socks off about the rain, the dreaded rain! But it’s actually a welcome relief, things were starting to look a bit parched, and I imagine my water butt is brimming again. Of course, it also saves me all the watering of an evening too. Not such a bad chore, but it’s good to have ‘free time’ to do other ’stuff’.

I haven’t really been that active at the Smallest Smallholding lately. Lots of work and stress in other areas (praying for funds to clear, only to be bitterly disappointed that I am going to have to wait yet another weekend with not a penny to my name), as well as trying to forge ahead on the allotment. We are currently undertaking the UTTERLY BORING task of removing all the twitch in the ‘upper section’ of the allotment by fork and hand. It’s going in a metal bin to be burnt later on. I also cleared around the raspberries (still haven’t worked out whether they’re summer or autumn fruiting), and am currently sporting a slightly infected splinter wound, thanks to our ancient wooden-handled rake.

I managed to get at least 50 more sets of my Hercules onions in here at the Smallest Smallholding though, only 50 more to find space for. Although, if I’m honest with myself, I am really pushing it a bit now. Last year I got through 50 sets in around 3-4 weeks, and by August I had cleared them out. This year I hope at least my inability to plant anything on time has translated into a sort of successive planting plan, where I’ll be able to continually harvest. That’s the plan anyway. It really depends on the weather this year - I’m relying on another run of very mild weather to get everything going. And I’m also relying on Lilla, one of my cats, to NOT go under my fleece tunnels and dig up the onion sets. Or roll in my carrot seedlings and crush and/or displace them. I say rely - unfortunately Lilla is a law unto herself and despite my protests, she does as she pleases.

I still haven’t planted any sweetcorn, and let’s face it - I could be setting myself up for a big failure if I tried to do it now. Bunnies are chomping their way through sweetcorn like it’s going out of fashion, so I may have to resort to (shock! horror!) buying in some plugs to get a bit of a head start. I’m a bit funny about buying in plants from supermarkets or garden centres. I just feel like I haven’t had enough control over them, I can’t really say “look what I grew!” because I wasn’t responsible for the whole process. But then again, I bought my ‘leeklings’ from a WI stall last year, and leeched off someone else’s handywork and claimed those leeks as my own. It feels a bit different though, taking something from another gardener rather than a commercial outlet. Maybe I’m just far too puritan about these things.

My aubergines are going very well and need repotting now. Once the weather has improved a bit I’ll put a few of them outside the door to sell, along with my tomatoes. My tomatoes are gaining height as each day passes, quite spectacularly. I still can’t get over the fact that not long ago, they were tiny dormant seeds, and now look at them! This year I’ve been so much more regimented with my watering. I am a bad earth mother sometimes, but this year I am willing to face up to my failures and try to improve. My tomatoes suffered as a result of my haphazard watering schedule last year. We ended up with black rot under a lot of the fruit. And I had too many plants to contend with, so we ended up chucking lots of overripe tomatoes to the hens. I suppose that’s not such a bad thing, they gobbled the toms up with glee. Free food, and all that.

Oh, and the asparagus that are going to seed are looking glorious.

Firstly, I just want to say thank you everybody for your kind comments about Cynthia. I am starting to get used to the fact that she’s not around anymore. I’ve had a few teary moments and blubbed a bit over the past couple of days, but I know that it was the best thing for her. She had a good life here and that’s what is the most important thing for me to remember.

Pattie doesn’t seem to be getting any better, nor does she seem much worse, save for the fact that she’s not drinking so much water and she’s gone off her food a little. She’s quite a bit quieter now and we suspect she has an impacted crop, or there is some sort of blockage further down the track that could be causing problems. So we’re massaging her crop, tried to get her to eat live maggots (the white ones from the fishing shop, foreign territory for me the anti-hunting anti-fishing vegetarian softie that I am), but she ended up squishing most of the ones she did eat in her beak before swallowing them down. The idea is that these particular maggots have an insinct to wriggle and bore downwards, which can help to dislodge and break up any impacted material in the crop.

Long grass and vegetation can sometimes curl into a ball, simply because it’s long and tangled or because there’s a problem in the crop, such as canker or mycosis. Then again it could be a digestive tract problem. We’re still waiting on Pattie’s fecal results (she was squitting water and little bits of poo earlier on this week when she was drinking like a fish) to see if there’s anything going on there. She may have to have x-rays to see if there’s a blockage, or bloods taken if it’s a kidney problem. She doesn’t seem to be drinking so much anymore, but her crop is impacted - like hard dough - in the mornings, so not everything is getting through. This can affect the amount of nutrition she’s getting, obviously the less she’s getting through, the weaker and more lethargic she feels. So I can’t see the vet bills stopping any time soon unfortunately.

Big sigh.

Rich has been steadily working on the new wooden compost bins. Hens shouldn’t have access to compost really, and ours regularly infiltrate the barriers and merrily spend half an afternoon scrabbling all over it before they’re discovered. So Rich has designed some very nice large wooden compost bins with lots of breathing space. There are basically two types of organism that thrive in compost heaps - those that thrive in aerobic (access to air, water etc) conditions and those that are perfectly happy in anaerobic (no air) conditions. We’ve decided to leave the compost bins with gaps inbetween the wood planks. Not because aerobic organisms are any better at breaking down compost, purely because it’s cheaper to use less wood. Rich has also designed a sloping lid with hinges to keep the hens off the top, as well as a gated front so empyting, turning and generally getting to the compost is much easier. They’ll also smarten that corner of the Smallest Smallholding up no end.

I’ve also got some seeds that suddenly germinated in the conservatory, but I have no idea what they are. I stupidly stuck the torn packet labels in as makeshift temporary plant labels, but in all the wind they blew away. What an idiot. So now I’m not exactly sure what is what. I only know what’s in the pots and which tray has aubergines in, and which tray is full of tabasco chilli seeds. The others are anybody’s guess. I think some of the cabbages might be coming through. I’ll try and post a picture of the seeds to see if anyone can help me identify them. It’s nothing to do with the picture attached to this post, that’s merely for aesthetic purposes.

One last request - I am cleaning and disinfecting my greenhouse (and henhouse) with special disinfectant from the farm shop (it’s fine for use alongside the hens). I was clearing up the greenhouse a bit today and noticed that my chives that have been growing in there all winter are infested with greenfly. I don’t like those sticky pad things, and again being a softie vegetarian I’m more into preventative actio or deterrents rather than chemicals that KILL!KILL!KILL!!!! Anybody know how I can discourage the greenfly from coming back? I was hoping to grow my tomatoes in there this year…

I don’t really understand what’s going on. Everything seems to be going in slow motion. Plodding along. Sleeping.

Maybe I’m just thrown off because Easter was so early this year (got another 150 years before it comes around this early again, I think it’s safe to assume that I won’t be around), but I can’t help feeling that everything is growing at a snail’s pace this year. No, scrub that, nothing is growing. Nothing is even *germinating* yet.

I’m hideously behind schedule with all my planting and sowing - good grief, I still haven’t got the broadbeans in yet! But I just figured that with all the wind, rain and snow we’ve had recently there was no point. As I’ve said before, I’m propagator-less and the greenhouse is not heated (and currently a dayroom to 4 little brown hens) and without staging (next week though… mark my words!). So I’ve only done a tiny amount of sowing. I’ve either left the seed trays outside with the hardy stuff in them, or just got them out in our (unheated) conservatory. I keep willing the little seedling heads to pop up through the soil, but alas, nothing as yet.

Got loads of work to finish for Fri, then I’ll be down at the allotment, around the Smallest Smallholding, and tackling my other website projects for a while. Perhaps then I’ll have something actually interesting to blog about, rather than filling my posts with my plans, instead of documenting actions.

So in the meantime, I’ve provided you all with a fab pic that Rich, my other half, took recently of some lichen. Amazing when you actually look at it - no camera or photoshop trickery here!