Let’s say things have been a bit…..tight around here. Of course it’s rude to talk about money (apparently), but a couple of unpaid invoices, a backlog of work thanks to my back episode last week, and a few other factors have meant that Rich and I are…well…a bit broke.

I would love to wholeheartedly blame oil prices and rising food prices. I know that they have played a small part - after all, the cost of living has increased noticably, particularly the last gas & electric bills we had despite our best efforts to keep them as low as possible. But the simple fact is that having two of us self-employed has it’s downsides. And this is one of them. Work, and payment in particular, can be sporadic and unreliable. Especially when you rely on people paying invoices on time, and for whatever reason, it doesn’t happen.

Rich would be fine if he didn’t have me to contend with too. It’s me that’s the problem really.

I’ve almost cleared our cupboards out, trying to come up with meals using tins of kidney, cannellini or pinto beans, boxes of passata, potatoes, carrots et al. My store cupboard staples are diminishing. The freezer is emptying, now resident to unhelpful things like frozen filo pastry and 18 month old Quorn bangers. Even the car is running on fumes now.

But we’re getting perilously close to not having anything to eat, and not being able to go food shopping until next week. So far today I had to skip breakfast (not such a problem, as I was lazy and didn’t get up until mid morning), nicked a packet of Hula Hoops from my Mum’s house en route to see Nannie in hospital, came home and ate the remnants of some chewy bitesize shredded wheat, and to finish had a slightly stale roll with some spread in it. Rich ate some raw cabbage for lunch. It’s a bit desperate, but I can’t help but feel amused by it. If my Mum knew the exact circumstances she’d probably fall over with worry. Of course the animals eat better than we do. I can go a few days eating stale bread and ancient frozen food. I don’t expect them to ’suffer’ because of *my* lifestyle choice.

Anyway, this has all go me thinking about my vegetable plots and allotment. Nothing is quite ready to harvest yet, apart from some rhubarb (ooo…I have fat, sugar and flour, I could make a crumble) . I can’t wait until I can drastically reduce my food shopping bill and gobble my vegetables. I can make a meal out of almost anything, and when you have a glut of potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and turnips, you’re forced to get creative.

With things being a bit brassic, I’m wondering if I could chance an early raid on the potatoes. My radar onions are almost there, they’ve got smallish bulbs on them (one bolted, mnargh!), but I’m holding off on pulling them just yet. A few rogue potatoes from last year’s Charlotte crop popped up amongst the onions. One has started flowering, so I think that could be of great help.

At the end of this growing season, I’m definitely going to look into successive growing and all year round crops. I just can’t be doing with extra stresses on top of everything else. Once we start harvesting our fruit and veg, a little weight will be lifted from my shoulders.

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.

About three or four years ago I decided that I didn’t want the fig in a large pot where it was. So in a moment of madness, I dug a big hole and dragged, heaved and eventually dropped the fig - pot and all - into the hole and earthed it all back in. But in the process, I hadn’t realised that I’d snapped a major root of the fig tree that had grown through the small drainage hole in the pot and firmly rooted itself into the ground.I thought I’d just leave the fig to see if it would recover, as Mum had had one and it was pretty voracious, hence leaving it in the pot. The roots on Mum’s fig weren’t restricted, and she had to cut hers back more than liberally each year.

However, in the intervening years since the traumatic move, my poor figgy fig wasn’t doing so well. It would manage to squeeze a couple of leaves out on the end of each knarly branch, before producing one single sorry fruit about the size of a large cherry. Then it would give up and drop everything quick sharp.

I was seriously thinking of taking the whole thing out this year and giving up. But as ever, I was being impatient. This year the fig tree has started producing normal sized fruits and leaves. Granted, they’re not huge, but they’re reasonable! And of course it’s great to have another harvestable fruit at the Smallest Smallholding, in addition to the damsons, plums and cherry (and blueberry once I get hold of a couple of extra varieties for cross pollination). So I’m looking forward to harvesting (if the birds don’t get there first) the fruits and doing something interesting with them. Any interesting ideas most welcome!

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!

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.

Daily Telegraph Article

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.

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.