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…

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…

I really wish I could say there’s been a flurry of activity here at the Smallest Smallholding. But the simple truth is, there hasn’t. The sleeping problems are getting better, however I suffered yet another setback, this time due to my back. I have the back of an incompetent 70 year old. When I was 14, I managed to land a bit funny after doing a standing long jump (as instructed by my P.E. teacher) on the hard school gym floor. My cousin (my osteopath too) thinks that it’s caused some disc damage, which still plagues me now. All I did was get up from sitting on the sofa. A few moments later, there were the rumblings of a bad muscle spasm, and before I knew it, my legs were collapsing and I couldn’t stand up properly.

It’s got better though, at least I can walk upright now. And thank goodness I finished all that ruddy digging, because there’s no way I can do anything like that for a while. It sucks. It really does. But I’ve managed to do a bit of pricking out and weeding for now. I’ve thinned the turnips a few times, and I can honestly say they’re probably one of the easiest vegetables I’ve ever grown. And fast! I got an early variety called Snowball, and they’ve needed next to no assistance from me.

I have a whole lot of transplanting to do, and I REALLY need to get down the allotment to earth up the potatoes and weed the onions. And sow things. But it’s just got to all go on hold again. So very very frustrating. I should be whizzing around doing a million jobs! And to top it all off, I have the dreaded school reunion that I organised tomorrow evening. A whole evening of “so what do YOU do?” and trying not to look like a crip. I have wedge shoes though, which actually helps. And hopefully eveyone’ll get so blotto that no one will notice. Not that they’d notice anyway.

So what’s actually been going on here? Well, Pattie and Yoko had a good run, but as ever one of them had to get a bit poorly. Pattie has got her re-occurring thing again. Her comb goes dark red, she starts drinking like a fish and her crop fills with water. She then has explosions of watery poo and looks a bit sorry for herself. We don’t know whether the course of baytril helped last time, but we’re trying to get her on another course to see if it helps. It’s all supposedly linked in with her sterile egg yolk peritonitis, but I just don’t understand why it affects her in this way. Twice she’s made a full recovery, and I don’t know if it’s just her getting over it herself, or the baytril. Thing is, I don’t want to leave her and chance the fact that it’s not the baytril doing it’s job. So what do I do? She’s the happiest, sweetest little hen otherwise.

Yoko has been sneezing a bit still, but despite that is marching and parading around, when she’s not dozing off to sleep in the shade. In the warm weather they all go a bit quiet and dozy. There’s a massive hedge by the shed that they gather under. They preen, they doze, they make small chatty noises amongst themselves, occasionally they’ll wander about but until much later on in the day they don’t do an awful lot else. What a life!

We’ve also had another round of hedgehog releases here from Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue. At dusk we pick the carriers up, and leave them open so that the hogs can be merrily on their way to finding a new nest/mate/food etc. There were so many to be released that I ended up taking a load over to my aunt and grandmother’s. They live next to each other and both have 200ft+ gardens, both of which have dedicated wildlife areas and plenty of scope for the hedgies to move in and out to other gardens as they please. Last night I ran into two of my released fatties (they’re gargantuan!) that had met each other under the hollyhocks and borage. I have a feeling we’re going to have lots of tiddlers running around come mid summer…

I have to say I do not have a problem with slug munched flowers or veg at all. If you’re interested in encouraging hedgehogs into your patch, here’s a few pointers:

• Don’t be too tidy, leave piles of leaves in inconspicuous corners or against a sheltered spot, such as down the side of your shed. Leaves not only provide nesting material, but are home to lots of hedgehog food such as slugs, beetles and worms.
• If you have a pond, try to make sure that there is an escape route for hedgehogs. They are brilliant climbers but cannot really swim. If your pond has sheer sides (fatal for wildlife), try to provide ladders out of the pond. Even better, why not make a wildlife pond with shallow shelves (needs to be about 18 inches in its deepest part). This way wildlife can come and drink without the danger of falling in and drowning.  Likewise open drains can be an accident waiting to happen, so make sure they’re all covered.
• In dry spells and cold spells, hedgehogs struggle to find food and water.  You can buy special hedgehog mixes (such as ‘Spike’s dinner or hedgehog mix with nuts, fruit, insects and fat from noahsarkgardens.co.uk) or provide them with meaty chicken flavour cat food (without jelly, as it is too rich and can cause diarrhoea) and biscuits. Hedgehogs love to crunch! They also have a sweet tooth, so will appreciate the occasional bit of dried fruit, but don’t go overboard as like humans, they can suffer from dental problems. NEVER give a hedgehog bread or milk. Bread carries little or no nutrition and will cause upset tummies. Milk is far too rich and will cause diarrhoea, which can be fatal.
• Be vigilant with your compost heaps - never plunge your fork straight in. I’ve seen hedgehogs that have been impaled in this way, and don’t forget that female hedgehogs will abandon their litter of hoglets if they’re disturbed. A better way is to take small layers off and carefully turn your compost.  This method is better for your compost anyway!
• Never leave a bonfire pile for hours or days before lighting it. This one is pretty self explanatory.
• Make sure you have lots of places in your hedges or fencing where hedgehogs can get through.  You’d be surprised at how nimble they are, and how flat they can go to squeee themselves through the smallest nooks and crannies! Hedgehogs can travel up to one mile in an evening to find enough food, so obviously the easier they can travel, the better.
• If you ever see a hedgehog out in the daytime, it’s in trouble. It doesn’t matter how well it looks - it’s in trouble. Pick it up, bring it in, wrap a water bottle in a towel and place the hog on top if the towel in a box. Then call your nearest wildlife hospital or the RSPCA.
• Slug pellets are evil and should be banned. NEVER use them.

This weekend I finally finished digging out the big veg plot. It’s not that big really - it’s only about 5 or 6 metres long, but when you consider that I have a crappy back, and Rich resolutely left me to do it all myself, you can understand why it’s been quite an undertaking for me. I managed to unearth about 12 small bag’s worth of rubble and hardcore (bricks, ceramic roof tiles, drainage pipes etc), about 30 ant’s nests (hens ate the eggs, bit of a delicacy) and untangled an underground thicket of root systems.

Last time we went down to Biggin Hill to see Rich’s family, his Dad gave me two bags of compost which have been put to use in the plots. Otherwise I’d be growing vegetables in dirty sand. The soil is so poor that I think it’s going to need some super manuring, conditioning and feeding over the winter. Still, my Autumn King carrots like it, despite their daily dose of being rolled and slept on by Lilla the cat. And the Hercules onions are coming along. I’m hoping to get my ’snips in (for a roast dinner without ’snips is a sad sight to behold) too.

A couple of days ago I also moved my tent cloche (another gift from Rich’s parents) to cover my newly transplanted Kilaxy cabbages. I’d started them off in seed modules outside, and they’d vastly outgrown my Primo cabbages that had been sown earlier. So I decided now was a good time to transplant them. I took the seed tray off the garden table and put it down beside me whilst I made little holes for the cabbages to go in. My back had been turned for a few seconds, during which time Yoko had strode over and discovered a tray of tasty morsels.

In the space of about 10 seconds, she’d decimated about 5 of my cabbages. Good work, Yoko. I think she thought she was helping - a sort of quality control and selection process, as I always make a point of growing a few extras. Feeling that her work was done, Yoko soon got bored and wandered off somewhere else leaving me to plant in the remaining cabbages. I didn’t want to take any chances though, and staked down my tent cloche. Because I actively encourage the birds to come and feed, I don’t want to inadvertantly invite a load of pot-bellied woodpigeons down to finish off the rest. I still have a tray left to plant down on the allotment, but have nothing to cover them in. So there it’ll be a case of blind, foolish beginner’s luck where brassica growing is concerned.

Today though, I have to resign myself to a few hours of cleaning. So I’m just about to brandish my Mum’s super duper Dyson in one hand (our vacuum is, for want of a better word, crap) and a bottle of Bishop’s Finger real ale in the other. BORING!

I am knackered. My sleep is going haywire and it’s been taking it’s toll on me.

And this post is a bit of a show and tell!

Yesterday though, I actually *finally* managed to get down to the allotment. Thankfully Mum had been down two or three times since my last visit, and it wasn’t in too bad shape. I weeded around the onions (because as all onion growers know, it’s vital to keep them weed free), hoed between the potatoes and started reeling in the blankets of chickweed that were threatening military dictatorship of my plot.

I was met by another nice surprise - we have a raised asparagus plot on our allotment. We snapped a bit off but it was tough as old boots and some stalks had already gone to seed, but nice to know for future reference. I already have a tonne of asparagus growing here at the Smallest Smallholding in the flower borders, but I let it go to seed because it’s so striking. Speaking of going to seed, the rhubarb had grown about 3ft since I last saw it, and was starting to flower. I pulled out the biggest leaves from the base in the vague hope that I’ll still be able to harvest some of the more tender rhubarb in the coming weeks…

All is going ok here. I’m still horribly behind with my sowing - sweet peas are so late now that they’re going to have to be sowed directly and I’ll hope for the best. I’ve saved some old squash bottles and cut them in half to make mini cloches, to try and protect the growing sweet peas from the clutches of enquiring hen beaks. The broad beans are coming along nicely though, despite also being about three months late. Cabbages - Primo and Kilaxy - are both coming along nice and despite being left outside in their seed modules have evaded the beady eyes of the woodpigeons.

My super duper early Tendersnax carrots are actually coming along quite nicely in the pots. I’ve been pricking them out two or three times a week, but I’m still sure I’ll only end up with enough carrots for about 2 meals. My directly sown early Nantes (I think? Still yet to put in labels) carrots are pushing through. They’ll be a bit of an experiment this year as I haven’t put ANYTHING of nutritional value into the soil yet. I might try and feed them as I go along…bit cobbled together but that’s just the way I seem to work at the moment. The tomatoes are going great guns in the conservatory, aubergines are coming along VERY nicely, and my other mystery seed trays are doing ok. The lavender and rosemary cuttings have been a bit of a disaster though, I think I neglected to water them enough and now I only have one surviving specimen of each.

The rabbits - or The BunBuns as they will be know as from hereonin - are getting through a bag of curly kale every day. So I think it’s time that I hunted down a packet of seeds and started to try and opt for the cheaper option of growing my own. Thing is, it probably won’t be ready until late autumn/winter. Oh well. There’s always next year. Trouble is, I am starting to run out of space, so I’m going to have to dig out yet another veg plot here. I haven’t even got around to finishing digging the other one yet. Hence why no parsnips or sweetcorn in the ground. Oh heck - HELLLLLLLLLLLLLP! My uncle has a turf spade which may help my plight, but it’s the digging out of the rubble (I still shake my fists at the builder that thought it was a good idea to bury it) that takes an age.

So on the agenda for next week (and yes, it’s late, I’m working at Lucy speed):

• Finally sow sweet peas direct (wildlife magnets)
• Sow sweetcorn in trays
• Sow butternut squashes (might try grow bags even though I intensely dislike them)
• Think about growing parsnips (and actually sow if have space)
• Get the last of the blasted potatoes in at SS (and enjoy very late crops of early and maincrop potatoes)
• Put in a few remaining onion sets (my version of successive sowing/growing)
• Get down the allotment and Weed for Britain

I think I need a new motto - “Better Late Than Never”

More pissy weather this week then. Hasn’t exactly been conducive to a lot of work. I haven’t been near the allotment for ages and I fear that Mr Mole has wreaked havoc with my onion sets and potatoes. Oh well, I never was really that bothered about planting in straight lines.

Urgh, the chicken saga continues. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m actually spinning around on some level of Dante’s spiral of Hell and damnation when it comes to grappling with sick hens. Oh of course, I’m being melodramatic. They seem ‘ok’ today - Yoko is in better spirits, having had a really good day on Monday, and then a couple of crap days. I think the breakthrough in sunshine today is helping. She has one or two days of baytril left, then we have to assess. She could be going in for a bit of a risky procedure to try and drain off some of the egg yolk in her abdomen.

Pattie laid a tiny ‘wind egg’ (a bit of egg white, aka albumen, no yolk laid in a shell about the size of a large grape) three days ago and hasn’t laid since. Apparently wind eggs (also known as cock eggs, since people once thought cockerels laid them, and fart eggs - can’t answer that one) are fairly common. But the problem is that Pattie hasn’t laid since. I have read that it can be something to do with coming to the end of a ’strain’ of eggs, and that it may take them a few days to get going again. But Pattie refuses to perch at night. Before Yoko comes in, she makes a beeline for the nest box, intending to settle down for the night. Cue the big bad Yoko who, thanks to her sterile EYP, needs the nestbox, Pattie is pushed out. At the moment Pattie is refusing to perch, which is worrying.

More worrying!

I had the rabbits out and about the other day. The hens were not too pleased, as they spied the rabbits charging about. Yoko assumed a rugby-type stance before pecking Smudge on the head for getting too close (I think Smudge was just coming up to investigate), and when Smudge did an about-turn and charged off, she was met by Maureen and Pattie. Pattie flapped her wings and both she and Maureen jumped on the poor wabbit. Chickens are so vicious sometimes. There’s no way I’d leave them out there unsupervised together. Smudge was fine though, I think she was just having fun running around under the hedges. She and Snoopy were doing lots of investigating.

I also brought them in last night to meet two of my cats. The other two live upstairs, they’ve sort of paired off and have their own private routes in and out of the house. Tortoise and Tom, the downstairs cats, weren’t too sure about bunnies charging around the living room. Tortoise is a moody mare sometimes, and she got in a right huff and grumbled as she waltzed off to the kitchen. I swear she was pouting. Tom is a lovely scallywag, totally in awe of Tortoise, sometimes nothing else in the world matters. He can be a bit dim and scatty, and didn’t seem bothered by the rabbits. Not even when Snoop worked out a route up onto the back of the sofa. Eventually they all settled down together, and by 11pm everyone was crashed out in the living room.

Right. Enough about animals.

SEEDS.

It’s going well!

My early Snowball Turnips have come up trumps - they’ve germinated really quickly under the fleece tunnel, so I’ll be pricking them out very shortly. Aubergines are going really well, although a couple withered and died in the seed tray. Peppers popped their heads out of the soil a few days ago, and the tomatoes are going great guns.

My rosemary and lavender cuttings are also establishing themselves, although the rosemary seems to be doing much better. I might try and take larger cuttings of the lavender, and give it another try. i sowed trays of Cosmos too. Last year the flowers lasted right into November, when the bees were still out. They are fantastic for colour, height and most importantly, attracting and providing food for bees. The bees and butterflies could not get enough of them last year. I thoroughly recommend them. Try growing them in seed modules, transplanting to large plots (about 2 or 3 per pot). Wait until they’re fairly well established and quite meaty in the stems, and then plant them out. I did this last year and they were poker straight, strong and lasted for months.

The Tendersnax carrots are doing well in the pots, but my seed scattering skills are not exactly desirable. I sowed most of them in a big cluster in the middle. I think by the time I’ve pricked them all out, I’ll have about 5 carrots per pot. Not exactly a veritable success. I’m still undecided about growing carrots in pots. I don’t think I would recommend it, unless the pot is massive, and unlike me, you are actually able to sow thinly.I suppose you could just harvest tender baby carrots instead. I might try that.

Garlic and super early onions are doing ok too, although the super early onion sets were put in late, so should really be described as fashionably late.

Oh, and I have still neglected to label anything I have sown. I’m too lazy to find a pencil or a waterproof pen. So I am relying on my somewhat currently patchy memory to recall what is what and where.

I try not to kill anything. I don’t swot flies, I try to not provide ants with ideal nesting sites, and with 4 cats on site, mice don’t tend to make themselves known. I am with Chris Packham on this one - live and let live. Which means that things like aphids can become a real problem. I don’t like to use the word pest, because I suppose in some cases, one person’s pest is another beast’s fodder. Or something.

I suppose the answer to successfully growing vegetables and wildlife planting without using standard pest control is to implement and encourage natural predators. Ok, so this is me passing the buck and getting other wildlife to do my dirty work, but I think it’s the lesser of two evils. It also means that I can put more time into productive vegetable growing and gardening!

I’m a release site for Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue’s rehabilitated hedgehogs, so naturally the Smallest Smallholding is a hedgehog friendly environment. And guess what - I don’t have a problem with slugs or snails. However, the aphids came out in earnest earlier this month, sucking away on the ivy and Paul’s Himalayan Musk rose, steadily making their way to the greenhouse. Well, in fact, they were in the (unheated) greenhouse until the hard frosts and snow came back. They’d sucked the life out of my chives. So this year I have to really look at ways to discourage them and the other munchy munchers both here at the Smallest Smallholding and down on the allotment.

A solution is to undertake some companion planting to deter unwanted beasties - things like marigolds and basil next to the tomatoes, planting onions and carrots together, bay leaves next to the beans (get away Mr Weevil!) and any alliums near the fruit trees. We also have dill growing here and there, a favourite for the aphid-eating machines that are hoverflies.

Another solution is to wildlife garden to enourage the natural predators such as hedgehogs, hoverflies, ladybirds and lacewings. Supplying them with shelter spots and habitats, as well as food is vital. At the moment we have buddleia coming through - the equivalent of an open bar to a butterfly - lavender and rosemary, cosmos to be planted (flowered through to Novemeber last year), and I imagine a lot of the attractive annuals such the borage, cornflowers and verbena bonariensis will have reseeded themselves this year. But I definitely need to do more.

The birds help - sparrows in particular love to pick the aphids off the orange blossom. And of course the hens are also a great help in this respect too. They go fly catching on warm afternoons, cluck and shriek with delight when they unearth grubs, and love to pick at the really small slugs. Last year I let them have the run of the veg plots, and apart from decimating my lettuces (my mistake for uncovering them) and the odd nip at a carrot top, everything was left in place.

The only solution I haven’t managed to find yet, is how to deter Mr Moth from my damson and plum trees. Not sure if alliums deter moths, and I certainly don’t want to put up any of those indiscriminate sticky traps either.

I love snow, but it makes me feel guilty.

I love the peace and tranquility that follows a whiteout, where everything looks clean and bright, and sounds are muffled and cushioned. But I find myself worrying about how the wildlife copes. How the birds can feed and drink, how other animals can graze or scavenge. So when I let the hens out this morning (and they took an age to emerge from the relative warmth and comfort of their henhouse), I busied myself clearing patches of ground amongst the fallen snow and scattered down bird food for the ground feeders and topped up the hanging bird table for the others. I scattered out some cheese for the starlings and blackbirds too.

Ground feeding birds that visit the Smallest Smallholding include:

• Robins (although they’ll go to hanging bird tables and standing bird tables too)
• Woodpigeons
• Stock Doves, Collared Doves, Rock Doves
• Starlings
• Blackbirds and other thrushes such as Mistle Thushes, Redwings (who overwinter)
• Carrion Crows and Jackdaws
• Sparrows

Because we keep hens, we have to be careful about hygiene between wild birds and our hens. Using ground feeder trays can help to keep mess to a minimum. Sunflower hearts are also great because they’re not only one of the richest sources of energy for birds (around 600 calories per 100g), but the whole heart is eaten and you’re not left with mounds of discarded husks that can go mouldy. They are quite expensive, but there is next to no wastage and they’re enjoyed by such a wide variety of birds.

Here at the Smallest Smallholding we have the following sunflower heart-earting wild birds - some like to ground feed, some prefer the hanging tables, whilst others frequent the hanging seed feeders:

• Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Chaffinches and Bramblings
• Great Tits, Blue Tits and Coal Tits
• Robins
• Blackbirds, Mistle Thrushes and Redwings
• Wrens
• House Sparrows
• Goldcrests (rare)
• Doves and Woodpigeons
• Carrion crows and Jackdaws (rare)
• Pied Wagtails
• Starlings

If you’re just starting out feeding birds (and I thoroughly recommend it), try sunflower hearts first, making sure that a clean source of water is available nearby. Obviously it’s best to have a variety of foodstuffs on offer - suet, niger (also spelt nyger) seed, peanuts (only in feeders or crushed during breeding system as chicks and young birds can choke on whole peanuts), or special mixes that include insects.

But it may take a while for any regular avian visitors to appear, so it’s not worth spending a fortune if there’s no one around to eat it. As long as you’re frequent enough with topping up your feeders, you should be dually rewarded. It’s really important to keep feeding the birds not just in winter, but throughout spring when they’re busy with their young, and in summer, especially during droughts. Fresh water and good hygiene practises are also essential to minimise disease.

Here at the Smallest Smallholding we also have a special V.I.B. (very important bird) at the moment - a racing or homing pigeon has stopped over and has been hanging around for a few days. I have yet to get close enough (but not too close, don’t want to encourage it to stay!) to see the number on its tag. I hope it’s just resting. Mind you, I wouldn’t be heartbroken if it decided to stay…but there’s no way of knowing whether the owner would just wring it’s neck or give it a cuddle if/when it returns.

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!

It’s a miserable day outside, not very motivational weather. I’m having problems with my motivation at the moment, I think it’s mostly to do with the fact that I’m a complete night owl and never go to bed ‘on time’. On time being a reasonable time that most others would go to bed. It really messes the start of my day up as I find it hard to drag myself out of bed and stay up.

So I’m changing my habits as of today. Think of it as a nod to the leap year, today being 29th of Feb and all. A chance to mark the day when I started working harder and getting some sort of consistency and routine in my life! Working from home is great, but you have to be about six million times more committed and self-discplined than normal in order to really make it work. I’ve been naughty and spend far too much time floating around daydreaming.

So this is how it goes - I get up, I stay up and I get my work done in the mornings. I eat a proper home-made lunch and then the rest of the day is mine for doing something fun but constructive. Goodness knows the Smallest Smallholding has been in a state of stasis for weeks now, completely and utterly down to me. I tried digging some more of the larger veg plot, but my back problems (thanks to falling halfway down the stairs and landing smack on my back) of late haven’t helped. So I have to do little and often, which can be a drag. Oh but listen to me! Moan moan moan! Come on woman! Sort it out!

So, the plan is that when I’m paid early next week, we’re going to take a trip to get some (FSA sourced) untreated wood and start constructing a proper container for our compost. It currently sits under the Dogwood, suffocating all the runners that have previously threatened to take over the whole of mid-Bedfordshire. But every the compost heap grows out of all control, so actually accessing the really nice compost is difficult. Plus it looks very unsightly, and although I understand so many things in the Smallest Smallholding have to be very functional, there’s nothing wrong with making them look pretty too (I’m a girl, give me a break). Another job is to finally but another border around the second veg plot that was dug out last year. I started my veg experiment with two tiny plots - and everything apart from my chantennay carrots (carrots are actually pretty hard to grow! Plus, I sowed them far too late) were a veritable success.

I’m also going to either buy the wood for my greenhouse staging or be a bit naughty and just buy it. I really really really want to get going with my seed sowing, everything is ready and waiting - compost, seed tray, loo rolls for sweet peas, potatoes chitting - so I just need somewhere to put it all. I haven’t even bought my flower seeds yet, although I’m going to try and beg, steal and borrow as many cuttings as I can, and use my own seed collections. Even just thinking about it gets my brain whirring and the seratonin pumping - my seashell cosmos that I grew from seed last year were a veritable success, and very popular with the bees well into November. I’m also going to brave the wind and dullness today and get some long-awaited shredding done. But first - as I promised myself, work first, play later!