plans Archives - Page 3 of 39 - The Smallest Smallholding

On demand

September 15, 2016 by Lucy

I’m sitting here sprawled on the sofa in 30 degree heat, baby spread eagled and snoring on my chest, Lilla our white polar bear of a cat purring by my side. Summer is having a last hurrah, and to be honest, I would much rather it packed it’s bags for good for 2016.

These days, since the birth of my daughter (herein known as ‘E’), it’s a monumental achievement if I can make it out of the house before midday, a rare occurrence that I remember (or bother) to brush my hair, or achieve anything vaguely non-baby related. E is approaching three weeks old and these early days are demanding. I know it won’t always be like this but I do miss routines and the ability to just potter at will.

A return to a new normality will come, I know that. But for my own sanity, I need to achieve a little something every day. Otherwise I feel like I’m just existing – sleeping, eating, a human milk bar, nappy changer, zombified parent who watches the days slip by.

A few weeks ago I invested in a bullet journal (“bujo”), which has been used since to help track spending, baby shopping before the birth, meal planning, task lists, and so on. It’s been invaluable and a bit of a revelation. In a good way.

But where I was box ticking several items and achieving several tasks a day before E’s arrival, at the moment it’s a different story. Over the last week or so I’ve come to realise that there’s just no way I can do what I was doing before. So to retain my sanity I’ve decided to do keep it simple; do one thing each day.

Today, that task is weeding the front garden. Tomorrow, it might be sorting out the washing and putting it away. On Saturday, I might aim to plant up two plant pots for Autumn. The hope is that these baby steps will keep things rolling and I’ll head into winter having just about kept on top of things at the Smallest Smallholding.

Filed Under: family, plans, veg Tagged With: baby, chores, mamalife, mum, mummy, newborn, routine, sleep

Getting ready

August 19, 2016 by Lucy

It’s been a long time since I last posted, not that you’d know it by looking around my patch. August has been so devoid of rain here in East Anglia and we’ve slowly gone from the lush greens of July to crispy, ochre tones of a long, dry summer.

I have rapidly been expanding and am now four days off my due date. A couple of weeks ago I was in and out of hospital for monitoring, scans and all sorts, but so far we are OK. I was doing well, keeping active and busy, but the last few days have been a real struggle. Lack of sleep, nausea, funny tummy and general emotional wobbly-ness have all played a part. I thought I’d got away with no stretch marks, but no, with half a week to go, they’ve started creeping in. I am so heavy and cumbersome now that rudimentary weeding on my hands and knees, and a bit of pruning here and there is about all I can manage.

The peas have finished, the carrot supply is dwindling and thanks to a lack of rain, my bean and potato harvests are looking modest at best. The onions and garlic have been left on the drying racks in the greenhouse, and grabbed when needed. Despite a much better blackcurrant and gooseberry crop, I know it won’t be a stellar year for harvesting. Even the raspberries look fed up.

For the summer of 2016, what will be will just have to be as we’ve been focusing on getting the house ready for our baby girl. I still can’t quite believe she’s on her way, despite being woken in the early hours as I’m booted about internally and wondering if every little twinge, niggle or pang is the start of her arrival.

But back to the house. It’s been a family effort to get ready. We lived with holes in the ceiling for a few years, and bare walls knocked back to brick and plaster. Now, with the help of my mum and sister, we have a freshly plastered and painted dining room (open plan) with refreshed painted woodwork and are no longer living under what felt like a dingy cloud. We opted for beachy/coastal colours to try and lift the blue and grey tones from this room that’s a little starved of light. Today, Rich is even attempting to finish the kitchen floor – a job that’s been on the cards for the last 2.5 years. I’ll finally be able to move our big old kitchen table back into the kitchen and reclaim the dining room as a cosy reading room. It won’t be completely finished but I’m starting to accept that fact, and be OK with it. The nesting instinct is still strong with this one.

Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be back to some semblance of physical normality – that is, I really miss being mobile and being able to just potter for half an hour or so in the veg patches and just do what I need to do. No huffing and puffing, taking half a minute to get myself up off the floor and feeling like everything is such an effort. And I am so looking forward to meeting my little girl and showing her the world. Sharing our little slice of it with her. It might be far from perfect right now but that’s OK.

Filed Under: garden, plans, veg Tagged With: August, decorating, drought, family, rain, summer

Finding Space & a Polyculture Approach

July 2, 2016 by Lucy

It’s been nothing short of a tumultuous three or so weeks, and now I’m hoping for blue skies ahead. Work was hectic covering for line managers on leave, preparing handovers and tying up lose ends before maternity leave, and the last week has been spent in a state of half-panic whilst looking after my mum’s geriatric cat who decided to have an imploding serious eye disease just as my mum had finally got herself off on a holiday to Cornwall that she’d been looking forward to for months.

The cat – who is also considered a family cat as we rescued her as the runt of the litter when my sister and I still lived at home (she really is that old, pushing on for two decades now) – is otherwise in perfect health, albeit now with only one eye. And my workload has suddenly diminished as I am on annual leave ahead of my maternity, and now is the time to focus on getting things done and ready for the impending arrival of the squiggly little one in my belly.

Time to find some space in my life and take a few breaths.

There is just so much to do. We’ve got some renovations to finish (builder in hospital), rooms to turn out, wallpaper to remove and walls to plaster and paint, a shopping list of essentials still to buy (working on it), and many tidy tip trips to make.

I haven’t had time to dedicate myself as much as I would have liked to The Smallest Smallholding, but it’s chuntering along none the less. I have broccoli up to my eyeballs and have lost a few florets that have gone to flower… but that will be one harvest over and done with. I’m thinking of replacing the broccoli with flowers to keep the pollinators happy through the summer, and once the onions and shallots have been harvested there’ll be more room for edibles. I’m looking to move forward a bit more with a polyculture of edibles, plants for pollinators and herbs, as I just loved some of the permaculture approaches from RHS Chelsea earlier this year.

I was also given some french and dwarf beans, so I set about trying to find a space for them to grow. I selected a space that’s under the fruit trees but hopefully gets a big enough dose of sunlight at certain points in the day to make it productive. With all the wet weather the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a battle between me and the slugs, but my general non-intervention (occasionally I’ll pick them off at night and fling them in the compost heap) will keep them at bay. I’ve been on the hunt as well for nasturtiums as some companion planting to the beans, as the blackfly have started to make an appearance, but everywhere seems to have stopped selling them.

And of course with the rain, sun, rain, sun everything is exploding around me… I’ve just been so tied up and busy that things have got away from me a bit. But now with some time to myself, no work schedules to take into account (save three days later in July) and a relatively clear timetable, I can now throw myself into whatever tasks I have on my list.

I’ve got a little Moleskine bullet journal now that I’ve faithfully been filling up with task lists, to dos, notes and trackers to make sure that these last days before the birth of our daughter are productive and full. Whether we manage to fit in getting my polytunnel up by the end of August… well, that’s another question altogether.