Tortoise the cat sitting near the house in the evening sun
Prologue: I wrote this about 5 weeks ago and never published it. Whoops. I’ve been so busy. SO busy - very sorry for the lack of blog updates. But I will be blogging again soon. Promise.
I’ve just been on a pre-lunch potter, and discovered that in just one square metre of our pretty substantial nettle patch, there are no less than 63 ladybird larvae. I’m quite impressed by that.
It’s been blustery here in Smallest Smallholding land for a good month. In the space of around six weeks. my garlic have been subjected to drought-like conditions (despite my best efforts to water them regularly), 30mph+ winds, as well as a mixture of driving rain AND wind, and I think there may have even been a ground frost thrown in for good measure. The result is that they’ve decided to just lay down and get on with it. I’m quite sure that they’re a soft-neck garlic variety, so I’m not at all surprised. I was hoping that the bulbs underground would continue to swell and in a few weeks, offer me some fat, pungent garlic to cook with for the next few months. I love my garlic SO MUCH. Shop-bought garlic just doesn’t do it for me any more.
But no, the first garlic harvest was absolute crap. So it’s finger’s crossed that the next look (which, admittedly, look so much healthier and robust) make the grade.
In my last blog post I wrote about the chicken rescue I was lucky enough to tag along at. The good news is that the next instalment is in the pipeline, and I’m so ready for another go. Now I know what I’m doing I’m chomping at the bit to get in there and help get those girls out. Finances still won’t allow for me to get my own girls - not that keeping them is expensive, but around here, the vet bills are. The Smallest Smallholding resident white queen cat Lilla had some eye problems last month, and one vet visit, two injections and a tube of eye ointment cot us £60. Then she had an allergic reaction to an insect bite and that was another £50. We’d do anything for our cats, but it does come at a price. And at 9 years old, I don’t think we can get Lilla or her sister or my two ex-stray fat cats Tom and Tortoise insurance, so we have to lump the costs.
Money. Money, money, money. It’s been on my mind a LOT lately, as usual. Basically, I don’t have enough of it to pay off debts, save up for tax, have a life (even a modest social life), save up for a holiday for my 30th, and just pay the bills to get by. Deposit for a mortgage? Upgrade our falling apart car? One day get married and have kids? Dream on.
So it comes down to the fact that I have to make more money via my freelance, save harder and spend smartly.
Going through our bank statements, we’ve realised that we’ve been spending a heck of a lot of money on food. My Smallest Smallholding veg growing exploits aren’t yet anywhere near a level that can sustain us outside of the mid-late summer months. We shop at Waitrose, which isn’t the most competitively priced supermarket, but it’s not bad, and its ethics are generally better than the scourge of British consumerism that are Tesco, Asda and Morrisons (yes, I’m a supermarket snob, and I enjoy the superb customer service for a change!). With our Waitrose being very very local, our problem is that we shop there several times a week, often popping in to get something inane like carrots or tin foil and coming out with £40 worth of goods. There’s not much planning, and its costing us much more than it ought to.
So, as Rich and I are both on a healthy eating thing at the mo (he has lost 6kgs, I have lost 2, boo), we’ve decided to introduce a healthy wallet plan too, where we withdraw a currently undisclosed (because we haven’t worked it out) amount of money for our monthly shopping budget and stick to it. There’s something about paying in cash that makes you realise just how much you’re handing over. All to often I can pay for something by card, not think about the amount that’s been deducted from my account and then a few days later have a small heart attack at just how much I’ve spent. Ridiculous, stupid and irresponsible, in short.
So hopefully we’ll be that little bit better financed throughout the month if we get ourselves sorted out. Time and bank statements will tell.
In other news, I’ve been writing a lot (children’s/YA book, been thinking on it for about 3 years) and continuing to dig a lot. The Mediterranean eating area is coming quite close to being dug over completely. Only one small, but challenging area remains. I say challenging because it’s probably the area most densely rooted with ivy, couch grass and bindweed roots. But with two of us on the case, dare I say it but I think in a week or two, in between work and other commitments, we might have it done. The next job will be to cut back the glorious thicket of honeysuckle and clematis montana so we can extract the fallen down trellis. Then we’re going to create a mood board so we can work out exactly what we’re going to do.
I received a couple of big parcels from Victoriana Nursery Gardens, having given owner Stephen a budget, a vague description consisting of “I need some Mediterranean style plants that the bees will like” and asking him to include some rosemary and lavender in the mix. These plants give us a base to work from, and should do well in the poor, sandy soil without much need for feeding and fertilising (ie, sustainable!):
- Lavandula augustifolia ‘Munstead’ (a dwarf lavender)
- French lavender
- Ceratostigma plumbaginoides
- Phomis fruitcosa (Jerusalem sage)
- Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire’
- Cistus ‘Anne Palmer’
- Abelia x grandiflora
- Lavandula augustifolia/spica - Old English Lavender
- Santolina virens ‘Primrose Gem’
- Phlomis Italica
I think we’ll probably bulk out the rest of the planting with lavenders and flowering/edible herbs. HOW we arrange our planting is yet to be decided.
Tags: bees, mediterranean eating area, money, wildlife planting, work
Officially, I’m on ‘holiday’ at the moment, although as yet we have no plans to actually go anywhere and spend a couple of days relaxing. We’ve bandied about some notion of wandering off to the coast and maybe staying for the day, or overnight, but I have no idea whether this thought will come into fruition. So for now, I’m using my ‘holiday’ to get a lot of jobs done in and around The Smallest Smallholding.
First on the list is giving the place a thorough clean and turnout. My housekeeping abilities are somewhat relaxed, although I have improved in recent years and at least my efforts are now regular, and I think I’m finally starting to become a bit more domesticated. Next on the list is finishing the digging out of the Mediterranean eating area. We’re now pretty much halfway, and already Rich and I have sat down together and started sketching out ideas of how it’s going to pan out. I’d love to be able to make use of it this year, but whether finances allow for that, we’ll have to see. I’m a little behind on my savings for the next tax payment, and in between that and trying to pay off my debts (mostly built up during university) and actually Having A Life, there’s next to nothing left over.
Which brings me to number three on the list - getting my websites sorted so that they can start earning. By trade, I’m a copywriter and SEO-in-the-making, so I have the creative skills and half of the technical skill to do this. Whilst I can’t build websites from scratch, and Rich really can’t spare enough time outside of his own gargantuan workload, there are other options open to me that I need to sit down and take time to explore - Joomla and the like. So I’ll need to spend my evenings taking a look at actually getting my projects rolling for the future.
Fourth on the list, is writing my little bookie. I need to start carrying around a notepad because quite often ideas just come to me, things that make me think ‘yes! that would fit in SO WELL!’… and then low and behold, a few hours later, that wondrous flicker of an idea has diminished, and I’m left with virtually nothing but a very vague recollection that’s no use to me at all.
Oh, and then there’s the potting on. I need to do it imminently, as the seedlings that I’ve actually been taking care of this year are starting to look a little yellow and pathetic. So another job to add to the list.
So yes, very busy this week.
Cynthia, from BHWT Norfolk in 2006, a few months after rescue and a year after her rescue
Last weekend I was pretty busy too. It was my first ever battery hen rescue and rehome, and I am chomping at the bit to go back and help with the next rescue. I worked with Little Hen Rescue, a not for profit organisation set up by Jo, run from her farm in Norfolk. She works tirelessly in her own free time with a handful of volunteers, including the lovely Mel (who took me under her wing and let me ride along in her converted post office van to the farm) and Jules, and rehomes the hens from specially converted fields, stables and a ‘hospital’ room on the farm. Jo never turns away a hen, no matter how ill or weak it is. Little Hen Rescue believes that every hen should be given a chance, and if they need treatment, they get it at Jo’s farm and are given whatever time with a better quality of life, however long that time may be. She’s seem some amazing recoveries, and all treatment comes out of Jo’s pocket, and any money she raises for Little Hen.
Mel the Cambridgeshire coordinator, takes on the ‘wonky’ hens who sometimes have to learn to walk with one good leg, a collapsed breastbones due to their time in the cages, and other ‘wonky hen’ conditions. All live happily together - I’ve seen them ambling about in the their specially converted run with everything where they need it to be, and I can tell you, they are so very contented - and all are given another go at life.
At the farm, I was one of the volunteers given the hens as they came out of the cages, and handed them to the girls putting them in their transport crates, ready for their new lives. They seemed to be very calm, especially when together in the crates with enough room to move about, but somehow soothed by the presence of other hens around them. I can’t tell you how long it took, because I just kept going, kept getting them out as efficiently and calmly as possible. I didn’t feel any emotion really - I’ve seen the videos of the inside of battery farms and knew what to expect, and I tend to crack on with things and then do all the emotional bit later. So that’s what I did. Out of the cage, into the transport carriers ready for their new life. Over and over and over.
There’s about 7000 hens in this farm, and the farmer and his wife are moving over to free range. It’s a fairly long process, and Jo and some other organisations are on hand to get each and every last one of the battery girls out. We got out around 700 this time, and will be going back again for the next phase. Although I did feel sad that the majority of the hens were still in the cages, at least I walked away knowing that I’d be back to help them get out again. I tried not to look in the faces of the hens that I passed - occasionally you’d be watched and as you passed them, they’d retreat to the back of the cage, not so used to human presence. I was also lucky in that all girls removed from the cages were alive. Each girl is checked over, and if she’s thin, or wonky, or got a fat bottom (peritonitis), she’ll get one-to-one treatment.
I won’t lie, the inside of a battery hen house is bleak. I think that’s the right word. There is artificial lighting, but it creates a strange half light with no colour - just grey walls, grey cages, concrete floors, wire and steel, wooden stairs to the second floor of the four-tier cages. I didn’t go upstairs - we’re working our way through the cages and, I’ve been told, the ‘baldest’ hens will be upstairs, where the heat rises and causes them to drop their feathers more readily than the downstairs girls. The dust is incredible, although apparently this farm is of a good standard compared to some others.
I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the experience, but I did get something very valuable from it. I got to drop off some hens to a few points in Cambridgeshire, to see them make their new life. And the efforts that some people go to is incredible. I saw 12 girls rehomed into a corner of a paddock, with a tiny stream running alongside it, two hawthorn shrubs and a tree for shade and shelter, and a huge henhouse made by the husband of the lady rehoming the hens, surrounded by 7ft wire fencing and topped and bottomed with electric wire for extra safety. They were going to be introduced to a cockerel, a very small breed and saved from the table, so a rescue of his own sort. The lady looked at us and asked, slightly worried, “is it OK for them?”. The thing was, I got to see what they came from and what their new life was, and I could safely say that they were going to be in chickeny heaven there. That, for me, was very very special.
And having met the farmer, it helps bring things into perspective. When it comes to battery farming, I don’t think there’s a ‘villain’. We’re all responsible, in a way. To move away from battery farmer, as this farmer is doing, is a very expensive move, and one that has to be supported by merchants (supermarkets) and consumers (us). We all have to make the stand, make the difference that drives more sustainable and kinder free range systems forwards. Of course, there will be farmers around the country that don’t really care, and will carry on regardless (in which case, we need to push forward-thinking legislation) but you might be surprised how many of them do care, and want to make the move away from intensive systems. That’s got to be supported and reinforced by the whole buying chain. All of us. We need to demand it. We need to support it.
Maureen, rescued 2006, RIP 2009, living free at The Smallest Smallholding
I know a lot of you reading this will no doubt already buy free range or even better, organic free range eggs (although, did you know, supermarkets mark up battery eggs by a few pence, and organic free range eggs are marked up by around 63p!). But we’ve got to make everybody around us aware - no just the eggs they buy, but the cakes they buy, the pasta, the sweeties, the pastries, ANYTHING that contains eggs. Most battery eggs are ‘unseen’, and we’ve got to make people aware. So go on, tell people. Write to the supermarkets. Get them to bring their margins down on organic and free range eggs, so that the myth that they’re THAT much more expensive isn’t so true. Encourage people to buy British free range, to support our farmers to make the switch and move away from foreign imports. Buy local free range, if it’s available.
Keep fighting the fight to get these girls out of cages. Let’s take control of our farming systems. Let’s show everyone what we really want! Are you with me? 
Find out more about Little Hen Rescue here.
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Tags: battery, hen, Little Hen Rescue, rehome, rescue
I sat down at my laptop a couple of weeks ago and thrashed out a blog post - it wasn’t very inspired, more like a list of everything that’s going down (or growing up) in my greenhouse. I wouldn’t want to read it, and I couldn’t see any reason why anybody else might, so it has sat unpublished whilst I work out what I wanted to say next.
Every day I seem to have a long list of things to do - some days I manage it, and sometimes it goes out of the window. For instance, yesterday, instead of turning out my books and clothes (I’m having some major “I NEED TO SORT OUT MY LIFE” moments, which translate into gargantuan spring cleans) we decided to ditch everything and head out to Cambridge for the day. We don’t live too far away, and with the extraordinarily handy Madingley Road Park and Ride, for all intents and purposes it’s so easy to get into the town centre. You see, I have a new love affair with Cambridge. I feel at home there. Rich said in some ways it reminds him of Edinburgh, and I agree. It’s almost as if the place lives and breathes history - there’s always a sense of what was living alongside what is and what will be. I’ve now decided that I’d like to live closer to Cambridge, before I make my big move to the coast. One day.
But back to my little plot, my little bit of England, and things are all going a bit higgledy-piggledy, as I knew they would by now. With the burst of summer that was thrown at us a fortnight ago, everything surged ahead, ignorant of nature’s summery false start. In the greenhouse the peppers and chillis are growing slowly and diligently, and I have high hopes for strong plants that will fruit abundantly this year. Likewise the kale and cabbages are doing well, perhaps because I am much more attentive this year, and they’re not being fried alive in the Smallest Smallholding Valley of Death, aka the conservatory. The greenhouse staging has somehow forced me into a routine of care, as I no longer forget to water my seedlings and visit them at least twice a day to find out how they’re getting on. Funny how a piece of furniture can have such a positive effect.
The woodland strawberries were sown weeks ago but are yet to show any signs of life; I fear I may have bought a duff packet. The leeks are also growing with purpose, looking strong and sturdy, yet I can’t help but brush my hands over the tops of them, and let the tips tickle my palms. There’s something very relaxing and almost hypnotic about standing in your greenhouse, and sweeping your hand over your tray of leek seedlings. I thoroughly recommend it. In the words of Mrs Doyle “go ooonnnnnn”.
Of course the grass and weeds are surging ahead at an unforgivable rate; at least, unforgiving to me as our lawn mower has packed up and at present, I’m forced to borrow my mother’s electric mower with a blade measuring just 30cm in diameter. Not only does juggling the extension lead and mower lead require great skill, but mowing takes half a day and makes me cross. We’re getting to that time of year where I begin to feel bad tempered towards my Smallest Smallholding; it teases me, refusing to be tamed and reminding me exactly how insignificant I am when it comes to me vs. the forces of nature. I blame the bindweed. It’s a bad influence. But armed with my spade, and a lot of (blood) sweat (and tears) and determination, and possibly a book on permaculture, I shall one day conquer it. Ha!
Actually, things have been getting out of hand a lot earlier than usual this year. No doubt hundreds of bloggers across the country have noted the early arrival of spring/summer, and here it is no different. The bluebells and wild garlic have already filled my local woodland, at least two or three weeks earlier than ‘normal’ - whatever ‘normal’ is these days. The honeysuckle and clematis montana are already out in force and over a fortnight ago our first blackbird fledglings were out on their own.
So strange.
But then, the past month or so I have been feeling strange. Very, very occasionally I’ll have this feeling that my life is changing by small, almost imperceptible degrees. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a definite feeling of life moving on, or up, or sideways - just changing. Maybe it’s growing up, I don’t know. Sometimes it feels right and sometimes it leaves me feeling as if I never have enough time and I’m always behind it - I’m not moving fast enough with it and it’s leaving me behind. In fact, lately I’ve been feeling as though I’ve been wading through a quagmire and not making much progress at all - things are on hold, I’m never changing or moving and I’m going to be stuck where I am - financially, emotionally and socially - for the rest of my life.
Hence the massive spring cleans. It’s like getting read of my past’s detritus - those bits I cling on to and won’t let go because somehow I’m scared I’ll forget what it was like to be a slightly oddball teenager with passions and imagination and high hopes for the future. But in reality that translates to holding onto old clothes, scuffed up panpipes, oil burners, books that I will never, ever read again… as if I will never be that interesting or imaginative ever again if I let these things go. And living in a house that resembles a building site is like living some sort of lifestyle purgatory. I can’t stand that feeling. In a way it drives me to do more, achieve more, get something - anything - finished. My book would be a good starting place. Oh I know what you’re thinking… oh yes, another ‘would be’ novelist, nice dream, fat chance. But writing and being a writer is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to ‘do’ or ‘be’, and as acting looking a less and less likely option for me, writing is something that I think will satisfy all the different parts of me. Gardening, growing veg, loving wildlife and attempting to live self-sufficiency is part of my lifestyle, what makes me happy. It all mixes in together. Writing is something that I want to do for a living. About time I made more of an effort! And stop making excuses and found the time.
Happy May Day.
Remember, you can keep up with my daily thoughts, ramblings and more pictures at the Smallest Smallholding Facebook Page.
Tags: cabbages, cambridge, herbs, kale, life, vegetables, work
As I type, I am looking out of a window and I see a porcelain-blue sky, I hear the ascending twiddles and musical turns of blackbirds and finches, and I smell the mouth-watering aroma of the leek and potato soup that’s currently bubbling away on my hob.
Yes, as I type, I’m in a bit of a happy place.
You see, the clocks have gone forward and the sun has finally come out to play. Spring has well and truly sprung and I’m finally feeling the benefit of actually feeling the sun on my skin. Oh I know it won’t last, something will happen that will bring me crashing down and I’ll be battling on with life as per usual, but in this moment, it’s glorious, it’s peaceful and I’m happy.
OK, I’ll admit it. I’ve had a couple of cheeky rum-and-mixer drinks this afternoon (morgan spiced with coke and a golden rum with ginger and lime), just to welcome spring to the Smallest Smallholding, so I’m in no doubt that there’s a slightly rosy glow on everything. I have a pile of freelance work that I need to plough through this weekend. But somehow a blue sky, sunshine and the prospect of summer arriving in a few weeks has got me riding on a bit of seasonal high. I’ve been more inclined to roll out of bed in the mornings and I’m actually getting things done when I’m out of the office and effectively under my own initiative. Today I wrote a list of 10 ‘Things to Do’. First on my list was go for a run, and this morning I went for a somewhat ambling job around my local fields and woods. I felt a little tired, in places it was hard work, I looked like I was about to explode, but it felt so good to be plodding alongside the green hedges, feeling the fresh breeze cooling me down as I made my way up the sunshine-dappled bridleway that flanks the field and woods. The bluebells are on the cusp of bursting into life, and there’s this perpetual birdsong backdrop, and somehow it’s completely energised me.
So far today I’ve crossed of 9 of my 10 ‘Things to Do’. Once I get some freelance done tonight I’ll have achieved all I set out to do today. Tonight I’m hoping to add one extra task to the list - planting my Charlotte potatoes in. Last week I started preparing the beds and it shouldn’t take me too long to get them in. They’ve been chitting on my windowsill for a number of weeks now, and they’ve developed some very big, very promising sprouts. I have high hopes for these spuds, and I can picture myself sitting in my new Mediterranean eating area, feasting on a deliciously creamy home-made warm potato salad whilst I catch the last of evening sun.
I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, but this year I think I’m going to nail it.
Tags: Charlotte potatoes, freelance, spring, summer, work
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