Hurrah! My first blog award in all it’s glory. Thanks to Karen of Little Veg Patch and owner of the Ex-Battery Hens forum. I’m supposed to forward it on to 7 blogs that I rate as excellent, so here goes:
Of course I’d love to give everyone on my blogroll an award, I think they’re all blimmin’ great.
I have been (and am continuing) working like a complete madwoman. So this is just a quickie.Beavering away, chained to a laptop is not so bad when it’s a bit dull and dreary as it has been over the past week or so. But when it’s a glorious day like today - not too hot, fresh breeze, scattered clouds in an otherwise brilliantly blue sky - it’s really rotten. I could sit in my conservatory and work, but it gets really hot and I can’t see the screen properly. Believe me, I try and after a while have to give up and retreat into the darker depths of the house.
So to cheer myself up in a brief interlude after my lunch (hastily gobbled cheese baguette), I’ve decided to do a little list. I love lists.
5 Things I Love About Summer
1. Flowers. This is glaringly obvious, but when you think to some of the dreariness of winter (if, like me you’re yet to grapple with the skill of seasonal planting for colour), the riot of colour bursting forth everywhere is a joy. I think it really does make you feel more cheerful.
2. Bees, Moths and Butterflies. OK, glaring obvious again and linked to flowers, but these guys are not only beautiful and fun to watch, they’re also vital to THE SURVIVAL OF ALL MANKIND. Not completely vital, but they do play a heck of an important role in pollinating many of the foods that we rely on. As do other pollinators, but butterflies, moths and bees are pretty too. So pay homage to these wee beasties and plant lots of pollen and nectar-rich flowers and shrubs: buddleia, echinachea, foxgloves, verbena bonariensis, cosmos, sedum, lavender, borage - in fact, any flowering herb - and achillea are just the tip of the iceberg.
3. Eating my Own Veg. If you read this blog regularly (and if you do, thank you SO much) you may know that when it comes to seasonal veg growing, I’m rubbish. I just don’t pull my thumb out. I make charts and diagrams and all sorts, and then don’t take action. So most of my veg is produced during the late spring, summer and into the late autumn. Around this time of year in summer I am enjoying the fruits of my (limited) labour. There’s just no comparison to food that’s done food metres and not food miles. And yes, you do feel a bit smug when you tell everyone about how you made the most delicious meal with your own home-grown veggies and fruit.
4. Lots of Sunlight. Well yes - we get more sunlight in summer, everybody knows that. But although I’m not adverse to winter evening tucked in front of the fire with a blanket and flanked by a few cats, I do enjoy the extra energy and vitality that the extra hours of sunshine bring. I feel better, and I think I look better. I have quite pale skin, and in winter sometimes I can look a bit like the walking dead. Summer brings a glow to my skin, and I’m pretty sure I can feel the extra benefits of increased Vit D production. Also, having the extra time to work later into the evenings is a blessing.
5. Being Able to Visit Lots of Places. In the summer, if you want to visit somewhere or just go out, you don’t have to contend with wrapping yourself in sixteen layers to make sure you don’t feel uncomfortably cold (unless of course you live in London, where my friend Ben assures me you can walk around in a t-shirt all year round). I, probably like most females, feel the cold very easily and I become a grumpy, whinging lump if I’m forced to be outside when I’m feeling cold. So trips out can be a trial for Rich if I’m not happy about being there. In summer though, it’s more of a delight. Visiting parks, gardens, the beach, your local cafe - it all seems so much more carefree and easy doesn’t it?
I’m all about balance, so here’s another list:
5 Things I Don’t Like About Summer
1. Flies. I won’t use the word hate, but I intensely dislike flies. In summer, they’re everywhere - hovering around chicken poo pretty much as soon as they plop it out, scavenging around any microbe of cat food that’s left in the food bowl seconds after the cats have moved away, buzzing around my bin (especially since ruddy Council has switched to bi-monthly bin collections) and laying mangy maggots in it. YUCK! They’re just the most irritating thing about summer. And the worst part is that they can cause real damage in the form of flystrike. Pattie has been unwell lately, and her botty gets a bit messy. No sooner do we give her rear end a wash and blow dry, she squits another one out and messes the area up again. The other night we’d checked her bum whilst she was dozing in the nestbox. By mid morning the next day I was horrified to find she had flystrike and the maggots had hatched and were causing blood and general havoc. Pleased to say we got it cleared up, but it can really happen that fast - they only need around 12 hours to hatch and start feeding, so check your animals at least twice a day - particularly rabbits and chickens. Hedgehogs often fall foul of flystrike too. If you see one with fly eggs or a wound get it to a wildlife hospital or to your local vet quick sharp.
2. Heat Waves. I’m probably even more rubbish on intensely hot days than I am in the deep depths of winter. When I get too hot I get a massive throbbing headache, and everything seems to take thrice the amount of effort. So on really hot days where the temperature approaches or breaks the 30 degrees celcius mark, I simply lock myself away in our cool house and wait for it to be over. Of course, I have to tend to the animals as well and make sure they’re comfortable. The chooks hate hot weather and retreat to the back and side of the shed, were it’s perpetually shaded and cool. The rabbit house and most of the run is always in the shade as they’re not sun worshippers at all. They also have milk bottles filled with water that have been frozen in the fridge. They like to lie next to or on top of them until it’s cool enough to start hopping about again.
3. Ice Cream Van Jingles. I think our ice cream van men are in the midst of a turf war. From about Feb To Oct each year we are subjected to the incessant jingle jangle of ice cream van Muzak. I wouldn’t complain if it was once every now and then, but wherever they go, it seems to resonate around the whole town. So you end up with ‘Oh I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside/Camptown Races/English Country Garden’ etc. going round and round in your head for days afterwards.
4. Dawn Choruses. Well, I don’t dislike them entirely. They are spectacular. But when you’ve been working late and you’re awoken by an overzealous blackbird, sparrows that must have little megaphones and booming woodpigeons, sometimes it can grow a little thin. And why is it that just as you’re dropping off…they start all over again!
5. Early mornings. Sort of in line with dawn choruses. If I wasn’t magnificently tired in the mornings, I would love them. In principle, I do. Dewy grass, blue skies, the quiet and calm (apart from dawn chorus). But in reality, in the throes of summer I have to drag myself out of bed between 5:00 - 5:45am to let chookies out. If we leave them too long, they start making alarm calls and shouting from inside the henhouse. Bunbuns come out then too. Cats are usually climbing over me to wake me up for breakfast. Rich and I take turns to get up, but sometimes you can’t help but long for the relatively later mornings in winter when you can have a lie in until gone 7.
How about you?
NB: Was supposed to be a quick blog entry. Somehow it’s turned into a mammoth post. Best get back to work now…
I used to be quite up to date with Internet and new media technology. Then I started to get a bit behind…now it seems I’m actually totally clueless. I only really discovered ‘vlogs’ this week - video logs. Of course I knew about podcasts and people making online video diaries, but the whole subscription to a channel on You Tube and the community feel of it sort of surpassed me. I’ve subscribed to a few vloggers and channels because they’re fairly interesting and some light entertainment. Some people are crazy, some people have something interesting to say.
It got me thinking though. I’d love to do some vlogging. I used to be a theatre studies student, and I suppose I still have a bit of a yearning for performing! I think being on You Tube, even if you are being yourself, is a kind of performance. I love the idea of reaching out to people and spreading fun, interesting, thought-provoking topics, or occasionally just putting something fun and stupid up, or perhaps completely and utterly bizarre.
One of the channels I subscribe to is called 5 Awesome Girls. They’re a bunch of girls from across the USA brought together by their love of Harry Potter. Their ages range from 17 or 18 to early 20s. For each day of the working week, they do a small vlog about why that day is awesome, what they’re up to, answering questions posed by one of the other girls. I like this idea, it’s good to watch something positive. There are other groups of people that form a group and take turns vlogging each day, it seems to be something I missed and something I’d like to get involved in.
So my thought it this. I would love to do something similar. I want to find 4 or 6 other young people that are into living a bit of the Good Life in their own way. I say young because I want people from my generation to fly the flag and show our peers they can do it to. I want us each to say hi, vlog about our day, what we’ve done, what’s on our minds, perhaps talk about projects we’ve got on the go. The videos can be funny, they can be serious, they can be whacky or arty, or just simple and straight to the point. Variety is good.
So if you’d like to join me in forming a group that gets green living, vegetable growing, home cooking - the simple, good things in life - out to an audience, and you think you can make it interesting and watchable (and you have a camera or webcam) let me know. It’s not hard to do! I really want to do this, and I think it would be great to have people from all over the country - or even from other countries - involved. I could do it on my own, but I would rather get a group of us involved in it.
Let me know!
I have been very pleasantly surprised over the past few months with my new(ish) allotment. I am from a generation that don’t greet each other in the street with a smile and a hello, even if there’s miles of lone pavement and only you and the other person crossing paths.
I was surprised when my other half Rich came up to live with me, and he’d say hello to people as we passed them while out walking in our local park. I was even more surprised when they smiled and said hello back! He said he’d always done it when walking his dog back home - I found it a strange phenomenon, but in time have come to do it more readily now.
But down at the allotment, almost from day one for me, there has been a sort of camaraderie, where everyone says hello and has a quick chat regardless of whether you’re a newbie or an old boy.
My neighbour on one side is a young woman in her 30s, really lovely and on the occasions that we’re there at the same time, we exchange greetings, have a quick chat about how things are going. I still don’t know her name though! On the other side is a woman in her 50s or 60s, who came over to have a chat the first time we were both working on the same afternoon.
Further up is an old boy who launched into conversation as I made my way up my allotment sidepath. Very open, had a chuckle. It’s nice. Another young guy in his late 20s waved at me and my Mum as we drove out of the allotments one day.
As I said, I have been part of a generation that looks the other way, bows their head or pretends to rummage around in a bag or wallet, fiddle with a mobile phone or iPod. Anything not to make uncomfortable eye contact, to acknowledge someone else is there. Having an allotment for me has partly opened me up to the art of conversation with strangers. Strangers who, through conversation, become familiar acquaintances. And perhaps one day, even friends?
If you get your hands on a copy of this month’s (July 2008 edition) Home Farmer magazine, on page 14 you’ll see my mug (and Yoko the chicken) staring back at you. Scary!!!!
Home Farmer is a brilliant magazine - it’s relatively new and at the moment is only available in independent newsagents by request, or stocked in WHSmiths. It’s a mag for kitchen gardener, allotment holder, smallholder or veggie enthusiast, and a good read. Naturally, I suggest you go out and get yourself a copy! I basically wrote the article in order to give my perspective on how the whole Smallest Smallholding idea came into fruition. I also wrote about my take on trying to live the Good Life, what it’s like being a “not the norm” (despite the fact that being a bit self-sufficientish is en vogue now, apparently) 25 year old vegetable growing wildlife enthusiast, a bit about my ex-batt hens, and how the world of blogging has introduced me to so many like-minded people*.
Actually, the whole blogging experience so far has been brill. I actually feel now that I am far from a weirdo outsider, that there are actually others out there that are my age, doing similar things and enjoying similar interests. It’s not a case of looking to other people for confirmation that my hobbies, interests and take on life are OK. It’s about sharing experiences and being able to engage in some sort of dialogue - whether face to face, via email or just a short comment on a blog - with other people that I can connect with. And I love the fact that vegetable growing, gardening, smallholding, home farming - whatever you want to call it - reaches out to so many people.
A while ago I blogged about how Facebook depressed the hell out of me. How I felt like I was supposedly missing out on living the high life in London, questioning whether I was going to feel unfulfilled or lacking in some way for not going in that direction. But last week I had my school reunion, and I can safely say that I came away feeling fine. Great, in fact. And it had nothing to do with the (relatively small, compared to others) amount of alcohol I had drunk! It was just the fact that I didn’t feel like an ugly fat dag compared to everyone else. I didn’t feel boring. I didn’t feel outdone or rubbish. I just felt fine! I spent an evening chatting to two or three really good friends that I keep in fairly regularly contact with. I caught up with old school friends who were great. One even came bounding up to me and declared she too had an allotment.
I came home and sat there and realised that I pleased to be amongst my melange of animals, looking forward to a weekend prodding the vegetable patch (I’d had a nasty back incident earlier in the week), doing a bit of writing work, cooking, visiting my grandmother (she’s had a stroke but they expect her to make a very good if not full recovery) in hospital, seeing my sister, catching up on blogs. I might sound like a complete sad sack to most people, but who cares. Really - who cares? I’m happy and I think a lot of people are missing out. It might sound crazy or a bit out there, but I really think that growing vegetables, an interest in wildlife gardening and aspiring to live in this way, whatever it is, has given me a grounding and a solid foundation that I can lose myself in when everything else threatens to drive me stark raving bonkers. Or maybe I’ve just got past stark raving bonkers…
*The only thing is for some reason the word ‘cousin’ has been replaced by ’sister’ in the article. Deborah is my first cousin, not my sister! And please excuse my slightly dodgy wonky scanning skills.
These little blighters keep popping up all over the Smallest Smallholding. They appear literally overnight in small clusters, peeping up through the grass. It seems that two days of non-stop rain coupled with the relative humidity have given them the perfect conditions to thrive.
Whilst I don’t really object to having them about the place, I am a bit concerned whether they could cause trouble for the hens. The girls spend all day roaming around freely, and are free to peck at will. So for me this means a certain degree of managing the environment that they’re in - such as keeping grass in check and removing any poisonous plants such as foxgloves.
We haven’t been able to identify any these three types of mushroom, so don’t know whether they’ll be poisonous to us or the hens. For now, on the mornings that I get up to let the hens out after sunrise, Rich has me trawling around picking the mushrooms out of the grass, just in case.
If you’ve any idea what these are, I’d be really handy to know more…
Two vegetable garden assistants letting me do all the work.
This is a real shame - after suffering a minor stroke Monty has decided to hang up his gardening gloves at Berryfields. I for one am really going to miss seeing him on my screen, he has been an absolute inspiration as far as I’m concerned. I love his earthyness, he almost has a Buddhist monk-like sense of calm and connectiveness with nature. He made me understand why gardening was so important to me.
I sincerely hope to see him in other projects on our screens soon. Get well Monty, going to miss you!
Not much going on at the Smallest Smallholding right now. I’m experiencing what I hope to be a temporary blip. I’ve had breathing problems when falling asleep (as in, I fail to take “in breaths”), and as you might imagine it’s playing havoc with my energy levels., as I can’t remember when I last got a solid, undisturbed night of sleep. It’s got so bad I feel guilty about disturbing Rich so I have taken to sleeping on the sofa so at least one of us can get a good nights kip.
My concentration is shot and work is a struggle at the moment, but I’m trying to do a bit of exercise during the day and get out there, whether it be a bit of weeding or more robust work. But other than that I really just don’t have the energy to do much more.
I’ve had this problem on and off for years. So I’m biting the bullet and going to the docs tomorrow. Let’s hope it resolves itself soon as I’m fed up with feeling perpetually stressed and knackered by it. The cats like to rub it in my face by lolling about all over the place contentedly dozing away without any problems. Lilla has found a tear in my thermal fleece which is covering the carrots - subsequently she’s taken to sleeping under the stretched fleece on the warm soil, squashing my carrot seedlings in the process.
Rich and I went to a wedding on Saturday, not too far from the Suffolk coast. We decided to make a quick detour to the beach en route home (which involved going in the wrong direction, but nevermind), and as I was driving, I let Rich navigate and choose which beach we would visit. It was only going to be a half hour stop or so.
“Well there’s no yellow beach bit at Aldeburgh, but it looks like Leiston is on a beach. It’s got a visitor’s centre too, let’s go there”.
So off we pootled for 25 minutes or so. “Where’s the beach?!” Rich kept exclaiming.
A big dome loomed in the distance, and as we drew closer through the small town of Leiston, the sandbanks came into view and the distinct sea breeze wafted in through the car windows.
“What is that?!” Rich exclaimed, as the dome and brick fortress loomed over us.
“Rich, you’ve only gone and navigated us to the bloody Sizewell B nuclear power station. Well done,” I said.
I’ve known about Sizewell B for years, having visited Dunwich and Walberswick further up the coast since I was a child. We thought Dunwich - despite it’s award-winning chip shop - was a bit too far as a detour. Now I wish we’d gone there instead.
The beach was pebbly, the view was…well, tainted. Rich loved the strange oil-rig type structures around the shoreline, obviously something to do with pumping the sea water into Sizewell B.
Apparently the warm (not radioactive!) water that is pumped back out into the sea from the power station attracts lots of jellyfish to the area. So swimming around there really isn’t much of an option either.
We took pictures, marvelled at Sizewell B’s sheer presence, pondered nuclear power, and turned on our heels. I wanted to get home - Rich wanted a cup of tea. I allowed him a takeaway cup of tea (from the ‘visitor’s centre - aka slightly tatty beach side/nuclear power station side cafe), most of which he spilt on his lap as we drove through the wiggly windy lanes of coastal Suffolk. Well, he had to pay a penance, didn’t he?