the accidental smallholder :: diary archives

Why do we do this?

We had heavy rain last night but this morning, there isn't a cloud in the sky. I picked a couple of handfuls of strawberries, wet with raindrops and warmed by the sun and my daughter and I ate them for breakfast.

In the midst of lawyers and builders and estate agents, it's easy to forget why we're doing this but this morning, I remembered.

The potting shed

We decided to convert the now-redundant coal shed into a potting shed. The existing potting shed, while huge, is kind of, well, ugly. It also sits where John and Linda's cottage will go, so it will be demolished at some point.

The coal shed, on the other hand, has a bit of charm, in my opinion. Its back wall is the wall of the walled garden; the other three walls are made from sleepers. The old tin roof has been removed and replaced with clear glassfibre panels that John salvaged from elsewhere. He also recycled one of the windows from the old potting shed, so it's much lighter than it was before.

It now needs washed out and painted, then the shelves put up. Oh, and the lovely slate sign put on the door, to finish it off.

Strimming

Mark, Mo and the boys were at Dalmore this weekend. While John, Linda, Mark, Mo and Lewis went cycling, Ben, who's 15, elected to stay with us and strim. He enjoyed it so much (!) that we've bought him a new strimmer. It's a Husquvarna and much more robust than our current ones. The harness should come this week just in time for Ben's summer holidays.

Ben also assembled a new cabinet for the outside loo - a few pictures and magazines and it will be just like home.

Welcome to Dalmore!

We took this video a couple of weeks ago - we were surprised at how much had changed in the interim, when we watched it last night!

A tour of Dalmore from asmallholder on Vimeo.

The garden is incredible - every walk round reveals something else growing and flowering. There are orchids in the paddocks and some lovely roses. And a viburnum whose scent stops you in your tracks, such is its intensity.

We'll post more video diary, recording our progress.

Tidy, tidy

Well, Dan and I are up at Dalmore again, boots loaded up with pots and plants.

And dogs. Happily, our two and John and Linda's two are getting on rather well. Tess is the grumpiest - no surprise there then - but even she's coming round. She's a bit scared of Kimi, but Kimi is so easygoing, she just ignores Tess's shenanigans. Fillan's just bonkers and as long as he can run, he's happy.

We've now got tomatoes and cucumber in the greenhouse and peas, beans and courgettes ready to plant out in the vegetable garden.

Yesterday, Dan and I walked the fences again, taking notes of what needs to be done. We've decided to focus on the paddock for the hens and the two acre field, where we'll put the sheep initially. Today, Dan's been pulling out old fencing, ready for John to repair it next week.

I've been working along the west range. The looseboxes are now emptied and swept. There's some stuff to come out of the roof space which will help the ventilation, but I don't "do" ladders. I was accompanied by swallows, so we'll have to be careful not to disturb their nests. The boxes are large and in good condition - if a little high for a Shetland. I don't envisage them being in much though. The concrete floor needs a wee bit of attention but that can wait.

The byre is also emptied. There's room for six cows - the old neck chains are still on some of the stalls. Emptying the looseboxes and byre meant more skip runs and an increase in "stuff" in the cart shed - at least it's moving in the right direction, though. Out.

We've abandoned the inflatable mattress in preference for a real one and we had a much better night's sleep. Our other job for this weekend (!) is to make a detailed list of what we want done in the house, for our builder.

The weather's still fabulous - some rain at night but glorious days. i wonder if it's always like this in Barry.

Commuting

I've been up to Dalmore today, with Lorna, our daughter. She has special needs and will be going to a lovely day centre in Arbroath after she leaves school in June. She got to see her new bedroom - and stairs are a bit of a novelty.

John and Linda have been working away, sorting stuff out - I think they're on first name terms with the guys at the skip site. Until we get the trailer, we're packing the car for every trip, so this morning I brought up the petrol lawnmower and some other bits and pieces.

The weather is still fabulous and it still feels like being on holiday. John and Linda have a routine where they work from 6am until 2pm then have the rest of the day off - this is self-imposed by the way, not at our request!

The dogs are loving it but are exhausted - the flags on the range were down yesterday, so John and Linda took them down to the lighthouses on Buddon Ness. Hopefully, we'll get down there soon too.

Our first morning

Well, at least we'd no cats wakening us with squeakies. Our inflatable mattress had a slow puncture, so about 3am, we wakened lying, effectively, on the floor, but wrapped in rubber and unable to turn over. Still, we were so tired, it didn't really matter. And I have built in padding anyway.

Just as I fell asleep last night, there was a burst of gunfire from the range. It took me a minute to realise that we weren't in Alloa and that there was no need to panic.

Dan and I are going back to Alloa today, so John and Linda will be left to get on with it. Until we get the sheep and hens up, we're really commuters. I'll be up on Tuesday and John and Linda are gettng their furniture out of storage on Thursday, so Dan's coming up then to help. And we'll be back next weekend.

It's another sunny day - we've been sitting outside the caravan and it feels like being on holiday.

Dalmore

Well, we're finally here. We got the keys today - there was a minor glitch when our mortgage money disappeared into the financial ether rather than into our solicitor's bank account - but we're in! And it's wonderful!

The house isn't as bad as we thought and it's bigger than we thought, now that it's empty. The previous owner had lots of stuff. I mean lots.

Dan's folks, John and Linda - I will refer to them as such now! - had their caravan on site and the kettle boiling immediately. It's great having them here. The weather is spectacularly good - sunny and warm, with a wee bit of a breeze. The Army are here too, but I suspect we'll not notice them soon.

The previous owner is still pottering about and still has stuff in one of the outhouses. It's a wee bit awkward, but the remaining stuff is going on Tuesday so we're prepared to cut a bit of slack.

We've started on the west range, which has the garage / workshop, looseboxes, byre and cart shed, clearing out the remaining rubbish. There's stuff all over the place so the plan is to bring it all to the barn - skipping what's rubbish and putting all the same stuff together, so we can see what we've got. There are dozens of bread baskets, drinks bottle crates, galvanised buckets, old metal dustbins and piles of timber.

Dan's brother, Mark, his wife Mo and the boys, Ben and Lewis are coming over later for a "wee swally" then we'll be having an early night in our new home - on the inflatable mattress!

One week to go!

Well, five and a half days to be accurate. And the tension is rising! And Sunday is project planning day, so we'll be reviewing our to do lists tonight. It all seemed ages away and now it seems to be rushing towards us, headlong.

I'v been sorting out dull but essential things like insurance and electricity, while Dan's been working on the PV and heat pump contractors.

The RHET stuff is pretty busy just now, too - not surprisingly, schools want to visit farms in the better weather, but farmers are busy at silage and a lot of the stock is turned away to far fields, so there's not so much to see in bye.

I've also got a VAT return to do - I don't know why this makes me sweat, but it does - and it's almost my business year end, so a visit to my accountant is due.

Bring on the chamomile tea, I think!

Two weeks to go!

Two weeks today until we get the keys for our new place - it's getting exciting!

We've bought a bath, to go with the wasbasin and toilet we bought in the January sales. We've ordered the new house sign but it won't be here for the 14th, unfortunately. I've also bought a bell for the yard, so we can be "called" from the fields - I think it's rather smart. And it's very loud!

The application for the building warrant is in and we have the SAP report for the potential suppliers of ground source heat pumps, and updated drawings for the builder and the kitchen supplier. We've decided on quarry tiles for the boot room, kitchen and dining room floors; the three rooms lead from each other, so it should look quite good, as well as being hardwearing and easy to clean.

Dan's mum and dad have been advised to demolish the existing outbuilding and build new, so they now have plans drawn up ready for submission to the local Council. With all the horror stories on our forum, I'm a bit apprehensive about that part. Maybe Angus planners buck the trend.

We hope to get our new trailer around 18th May, so we'll start moving stuff up then. One of the first jobs will be to prepare a storage area. If we don't do the preparation BEFORE we move stuff in, there's precious little chance of us doing it later. We've bought an Ivor Williams livestock trailer with 7ft headroom, so we can use it for the ponies. It's got a centre panel and breast bars and is 10ft long, so it should be fine. If we run out of money, we can do house removals!!

Maybe really Spring this time

It has been the most glorious day here today. I don't know what the temperature was but we were working outside in T shirts quite comfortably. The sheep were looking a little hot and the hens were dust and sun bathing.

Because we're not planting up the vegetable garden here this year, we have more time for the flower garden. Normally at this time of year, we're so busy sowing veggies, the weeds take over the flower beds and the paths and we never get caught up. Today we spent a couple of hours weeding and what a difference! It's kind of ironic that for the first time, the flower garden might be as I would want it and we won't be here to see it.

We were out sowing grass seed in the semi-dark, in the hope that we'll fool the hens. There are some real bare patches, but with the soil warming up, we're hoping that it will get a good start away. We've mixed the seed with white clover for the bees and other buzzy things. There have been a few bumble bees around and I saw my first butterfly today. Tonight, there were several bats in flight around the house.

When I fed the ewes this afternoon, the two lambs stayed outside the pen and, for the first time, played together. The wee tup lamb is much bolder and was bouncing around, while Milly watched him. Looks like Jura's going to be later, so her lamb won't have anyone to play with - its older half-siblings will probably either bully it or ignore it. Lyra was the same last year, at four weeks younger than Bud and Dickie. I checked Jura's udder tonight and she's no bag, so I'm going to treat myself to a full night's sleep. I hope I don't regret it.

Five weeks to go

Things are moving along here. We should have the first draft drawings of the house alterations this weekend, then we can sort out the insulation and get the SAP rating. Dan's been researching potential installers for the heat pump and the PV system.

I don't think the estate agent's particulars had very accurate room dimensions, from the mutterings of the architect. I know they always put a disclaimer on, and now I know why. We planned to move the bathroom into the smallest bedroom, but it looks like we might have to include part of the original bathroom as well, to give us enough room for a bath and large shower. For cost reasons, we had hoped to avoid this and just keep the former bathroom as a store cupboard but we need a decent sized bathroom.

I've given up thinking about floors and tiles - we'll have plenty of time once we get the keys, when we can get a proper "feel" for the house.

Normally, I'd be spring cleaning but I've decided to leave it until we clear the house. I quite enjoy it - and you can certainly see where you've been when you clean here! - but not enough to do it twice. If it stays nice, I'll get the curtains down, cleaned and stored away.

I'm doing little things - like clearing out the study, running down the freezer and tidying cupboards - but I can't wait for the 14th May.

Project planning

With less than six weeks to go, Dan and I decided we needed something resembling a plan, so last night we sat down with a glass of wine each, a pad, a pen and a laptop to put together our project plan.

I think it has worked quite well although the proof of the pudding etc etc. We now each have a list of things to be done this week. Mine does seem longer than Dan's, but hey ho!

I was getting a tad stressed about "all the things to be done" but when we wrote it down, there were things that can't be done yet anyway. Now they are on the list, I can stop worrying about forgetting them and just do them at the appropriate time.

That's the plan, anyway!

Seven weeks to go

until we get entry to our new smallholding. We went for a visit on Wednesday, with the architect, Doug, the builder, Graham and Louise, from the Energy Saving Trust.

The garden is so lovely and has been so loved. We'll give most of it twelve months until we see what's there. The lady we've bought it from will give me a plan of the trees in particular, since some of them are quite rare specimens. She and her late husband were obviously keen and knowledgeable gardeners - I felt a little intimidated!

Louise, from the EST, will give us her report next week. There are three options and it looks like a ground source heat pump will be a viable one. We will need to insulate well, but we intended to do that anyway. We're also looking seriously at PV cells on the open barn. Although capital grants for the installation have gone, the new feed-in tariffs make it very attractive. If we go with it, we will be Louise's first 4kW installation - she was very excited about that!

Once we decide what type of heating to install, we need a SAP rating, which measures energy efficiency. Then we can get the heating system specified and the cost estimated. Then we'll lie in a dark room for a day or two.

If we go for a ground source heat pump, the coil will be in the closest paddock. We were going to put the vegetable garden there anyway, so it won't matter that it gets ripped apart, since we'd have been doing that to put in the raised beds.

We're hoping to launch the "new" TAS around the time we move, so there will be a new diary charting our progress in Angus.

Countdown

Well, it's eight weeks and five days until we get the keys of our new place. It's exciting AND frustrating. Dan's folks are now living in their caravan in Dunning, which is lovely. We called yesterday and were so surprised to see a foot of snow in the fields. There's still snow on the Ochils, but it's taking a shift in the lovely Spring weather we've been having so far this month. I hope March isn't going to live up to the old saying and go out like a lion.

We keep list of lists; we're hoping to get in with the architect and builder next week. I just want to be doing SOMETHING, so I'm emptying the freezers. Makes for some interesting mealtimes as I hate waste.

We've decided not to plant the vegetable garden here. After reviewing the seed packets, much of what we grow can be sown in mid-May or later, so we'll just have to get our skates on when we get up there.

I've already tidied out the cupboards and drawers. I asked Dan last week if I should start taking down the pictures; he just looked at me over his laptop like I was mad.

And it'll get worse before it gets better.

Finally, missives concluded

Well, the missives on our new smallholding have finally been concluded, with an entry date of 14th May. We're relieved and excited but we now have a lot to do.

We hope to get in to inspect the property with our architect in the next week or two. We won't need planning permission as all the alterations are internal but we will need a building warrant. We also need to firm up on the list of other work to be done so that our builder can start costing it.

We're asking the Energy Saving Trust for advice on insulation and heating. The windows need replaced, the loft insulation upgraded and, since the solum needs sealed and new heating pipes put in, we'll insulate under the floor too. On heating, we're quite keen on using a wood pellet boiler for heating and hot water. There's no mains gas so we need an alternative and LPG or oil won't do. That will leave us with electricity, so we're thinking about installing PV cells, but perhaps not immediately.

We're just looking to get on as quickly as possible with the house, so that we can get on with the "real" stuff on the smallholding.

Aaargh! Knitting with electric fence

At this time of year, I usually put a few sheep on the lawn. When I say "lawn", it's the bit of grass INSIDE the fence as opposed to "field" which is the same grass outside the fence. Bowling green it ain't. However, the sheep do graze it nicely down AND they tidy right up to the clothes poles, fertilising as they go. The lawn was probably it's best ever this summer, thanks to the sheep.

In order to protect the postie from said sheep, - Dickie and Li'l' Bud this year - I run electric fence along the path between the lawn and the front door. Now, I have an electric fence in the big field - one strand, high enough to let the ewes through but keeping the horse out of the sheeps' trough and lick. We only have one energiser, though, and that has been on the big field's fence.

Bud and Dickie, and particularly the latter, quickly worked out that their fence delivered no "zap" and took themselves through my four-strand fence, pretty much destroying it in the process. They are now in the river paddock, but I want the off there and back on the lawn, so yesterday, I set about sorting the fence.

Oh boy, what fun! In Plan A, I had the poles in a zigzag to include a bit of patio for hard standing but I've decided that the temporary fencing really works best in simple straight lines, so I moved some of the poles. This caused the four strands to sag even more. Probably I would have been quicker to have wound up all the tape and started again but it was a nice day and I thought it woudl be a challenge! Actually, I was just too lazy to take it apart.

What a job - the only saving grace was that it wasn't a very long run. It was like knitting with tape, as one strand fell into another or lifted in the breeze. Matters got further complicated when Bertie Bashit came to help. He thought it was all a great wheeze; at one point, the tape was wrapped twice round his middle. He's going to get such a shock - literally - when we put the charge on it. I really don't want to be there for that.

Anyway, it's done now and looks OK. I'll get the battery on it at the weekend and get the boys back on to the lawn, where they should be.

Update w/e 16th August

Well, we’ve seen the end of an era here this week. Our old Rhode Island Red hen finally fell off the perch, literally. We bought her as part of a batch of eight point of lay pullets in 2003 and she was the only one left. She did look old, but she was fine right up until the end, except she couldn’t manage to get up on the roosting perches the night she died. Dan found her in the morning, stiff as a board. We’ll miss her – although she wasn’t really tame, she knew that hanging round the kitchen door was good way to get any treats going. She was also Hector’s “enforcer” and could put all the younger hens in their place.

Dickie seems to be fine after his operation. We checked him again this week and he seems to have healed completely. Juno needed dagging – removing soiled wool from around her back end to prevent fly strike – so that was a rare treat for us all. We’ll check her again later in the week. I’ll do a worm egg count and review our worming strategy.

We’ve weaned the two male lambs. Naturally, it wasn’t without incident. We decided to put the ewes in the rented field across the road and leave the lambs on new grass in the top half of the orchard, where there are no fruit trees for them to eat, using the electric fence. The moves went smoothly but when I went out about 15 minutes later, Dickie and Jura were back in the orchard. Dickie was munching on plums, not having any of his own anymore (!)

So, we put them all back in the river field and started again, after adding a strand to the electric fence. If they can clear that, they’re going to the Hickstead! The lambs and ewes can see each other and there was some nose touching through the fence yesterday but, to be honest, the lambs don’t care – it’s the ewes doing the bleating. I thought they would be glad to see the back of them, but apparently not.

We’ve left Lyra, Jura’s ewe lamb, with the ewes – she’s the youngest and Jura the most troublesome, so we’ll let the boys and their mothers settle, then move Lyra. She needs to get her second dose of Heptavac P Plus this week anyway.

I’ve bought two more ewe lambs and will pick them up next weekend. They are half sisters to Lyra, which will make finding an unrelated tup easier, when the time comes. Both are registered – but we’ll have to choose names for them, starting with the letter “L”.

I am taking up post next month as Project Co-ordinator for Forth Valley Countryside Initiative, Working for the Royal Highland Education Trust, I will be working with schools and farmers to improve links to the countryside including organizing school visits to farms and farmer visits to schools. It’s initially for one year and I’m really looking forward to it.

It was the Central Scotland Smallholders’ Association annual barbeque on Saturday. Our Secretary and her husband hosted the event at their smallholding in Fife. It stayed dry but was very windy, especially on their hilltop site. A good afternoon was enjoyed by everyone – Graham had organized a “Show what you grow” event, including classes for best nettle, best dock and best thistle, so we all had a chance to compete, regardless of our gardening skill. Dan won the “Best Rude Vegetable” with his “bottomato”. I don’t know if he’ll be able to repeat that success next year!

Update w/e 9th August

Well, it’s been a week with a couple of new sheep experiences here – castration and ear tagging.

After some deliberation, Dickie, one of our Ryeland tup lambs, was castrated by the vet on Thursday. He’s not good enough for breeding (Dickie, not the vet) and I just couldn’t eat him, so we’re keeping him as a companion for Li’l’ Bud, who won’t be able to run with the ewes for much longer. This will be the only year such sentimentality is allowed.

On Friday, we had a foot trimming session, for both ewes and lambs. We don’t turn them over now; Dan holds their heads and they stand quietly while I trim their feet as you would a horse. Although none of them were lame, some of their feet were quite long and they will be more comfortable now. We also took the opportunity to put in the lambs’ ear tags. I did try this on a lambing course, but the lambs there were a few days old, not like our bruisers. Anyway, it went pretty smoothly and, to be honest, it didn’t seem to bother the lambs at all. We did Bud first, and his first tag is the poorest but I got better with the rest. Next week, we’re going to wean the lambs and move the ewes to a different field. I never see the lambs suckle now and the ewes’ udders were soft when I checked them yesterday. The ewes are in pretty good condition, so I don’t want them getting over fat this year.

I’ve been to see two ewe lambs that I am interested in buying. They are half sisters to Lyra, which will make finding an unrelated tup easier, when the time comes.

The broody hen laid an egg this morning, so I reckoned she was ready to be relieved of her mothering duties. The chicks are now nearly six weeks old and will be fine without her, but they will be in an enclosed run for a few weeks yet. They would still be easy prey for crows, magpies and other predators. Both chicks are developing black collars, like Light Sussex. I hope they are both pullets. The Warrens and the Leghorns are now fully integrated and are ranging far and wide. The Leghorns are quite flighty but the Warrens are docile birds and are a bit put upon by the Black Rocks. Fortunately, they have plenty of room to run away, if need be.

The kittens are an absolute joy. We can mostly tell which is which, but it’s easier if they are both there. They’ve been allowed outside this week, while we’re around, and have had great fun. Bertie was on top of the shed, and Harry has scaled the garage roof successfully. The ranch fencing is very popular, too, since they are small enough to get between the two layers of rails. They fascinate Tess, one of our collies, – as all young things apart from children do – and she follows them around, tail wagging. The relationship got a little strained when one of the kittens tried to muscle in on Tess’s breakfast, but no harm was done. We had some torrential rain today, after a week of dry weather, and the kittens were running back and forth through the scullery door, in and out of the rain.

We picked the biggest of the “Forono" beetroot today and pickled it in red wine vinegar. I like the cylindrical beets for pickling, but also grow globe ones for roasting. The sheep loved the beetroot tops – even Jura!

We ate the last of our homegrown chickens tonight, with roast “Mayan Gold” potatoes, runner beans and peas. We’ve got another eight Hubbards about ten weeks old now, so they will be ready for slaughter in a couple of weeks. Previous batches have been all white and very uniform in size, but this batch is a variety of colours and various sizes, so they will be ready at different times.

The “Mayan Gold” potatoes are delicious steamed but they are hopeless for boiling – one second they are fine, the next you’ve got a pot of potato soup. Roast, they were delicious too, but a bit strange – the skin was crispy, but the inside seemed to have evaporated. That’s the last of them now, so it’s on to the “ordinary” spuds now. We planted “Desiree” and “Druid” – the former is a favourite of ours, the latter is new to us. We lifted some “Druid” a couple of weeks ago and roasted them – we were well impressed. I never thought potatoes could be so fascinating!

Update w/e 2nd August

I have to confess that it hasn’t been the most productive week here. It’s all the kittens’ fault – they are just so cute and such terrible timewasters. We can now tell the difference between them with reasonable certainty. Bertie is blacker and has a shorter, thicker coat than Harry, and is much bolder than his brother. Bertie blanks the dogs but Harry goes past them like a hairpin, tail like a lavvy brush and spitting. The dogs simply look bemused. They have been outside for the first time this weekend and are exhausted. Our garden is like a jungle (see below) so they have been very busy exploring.

Our garden is a bit of a jungle (see above). With more time now, I am resolved to make it into something I am less ashamed of. In my previous life, the Council’s Land Services Manager would ask me every year if I was entering the Garden Competition – was she having a laugh, or what? I don’t aspire to winning prizes but being sure that there are no families of pygmies living in it without our knowledge would be a start. Alas, the wildflower meadow is therefore doomed. It’s just in the wrong place and wildflowers grow all around our property. This year’s growth has been cut down and will be regularly (?) mown next year. Actually, the sheep will give it a good trim over the winter and they do an awfully good job round the clothes poles.

With my new found time and enthusiasm, I have spent a couple of days weeding, so have an array of scratches and stings. I’ve tidied up our east patio, removing the net from the new strawberry bed and the enormous thistle (circa 5 foot tall) from the honeysuckle. The strawberry plants are producing loads of runners, so I’ll be allowing these to root.

The patio is fenced to protect it from the hens; it faces south east and is quite sheltered, so that’s where the herbs, outdoor tomatoes and cucumber go. I also have two blueberry bushes in pots there – so far we’ve had five berries off one and three off the other. Muffins seem a forlorn hope. We used to have a table on the patio, but there’s no room now.

The little courtyard at the west end of the house has been swept up following the cutting of the hedge. Actually, it’s less weedy than normal – the debris formed a mulch, of sorts. The plants I put in a few years ago aren’t really suitable; some are too big and some aren’t thriving at all – so much success!, I hate throwing anything out, though, so I’ll need to identify somewhere for them to go before I remove them.

We are planning to increase the height of the fence round the vegetable garden to exclude the hens. They are so destructive in their foraging. You can see how they have decimated the comfrey. We usually net it but didn’t get round to it this year.

The new hens are now settled in and integrated with the rest of the flock. Hector, the cockerel, seems to consider them his “girls” now, if the flurry of feathers this morning was anything to go by. Some of the older hens are starting to moult – the hen house is full of white feathers, so it looks like the Light Sussex are leading the way. The Legbars look a bit tatty as well – their crests have all but disappeared.

The kittens are awake now, so must go and feed them.

Plea for British Rare Breeds

I'd like to make a plea on behalf of British rare breeds. Please support the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and maybe more importantly, use the breeds on the RBST watchlist. With support since the Watchlist was published in 1976, 13 breeds have moved from the watchlist to being Category 6 Other Native Breeds. But many more still need help - almost all the pig breeds, many of the horse and pony breeds, as well as cattle, sheep & goats and poultry.

See the RBST website for more information.

Update w/e 26th July 2009

The vegetable garden is really getting going now. We’ve managed to get a handful of runner beans, with the glut yet to come. The French beans are doing really well – next year, I’ll grow these instead of broad beans which neither Dan nor I really like. Peas are regularly contributing to plate and freezer – I wish I’d grown more of them. Beetroot and carrots are available as thinnings and we’ve had the first of the Minicole cabbage. The new netting has transformed the brassica bed – just hope the sprouts and the sprouting broccoli don’t get too high and pull it out.

For the first time, I’ve grown white turnip. It’s a variety called “Oasis” and it’s just ready now. It’s nice raw but we had it lightly steamed yesterday and it was lovely.

We’ve had some plums this week, from the “Opal” tree. They were quite small but very tasty. The raspberries are now finished, so this week, I’ve been cutting out the old canes and tying in the new ones. This is one of my favourite jobs – you start off with a mass of foliage and at the end, there are tidy rows of plants. Actually, a lot of the plants have died off, which confirms our decision to replant new raspberries this autumn. We need to identify a site, though, and there’s no obvious one. I’m planning to put in three varieties to give a spread of cropping season.

Two of our Ryeland ewes, and their tup lambs, are quite tame and will happily hand feed and have a scratch. Jura, the mother of our only ewe lamb, is not. In the 18 months we’ve had them, I’ve never been able to get her to take any food from my hand. Until this week and the peapods! Jura loves peapods (so do the others, of course), and loves them enough to take them from my hand and accept a scratch on the head. Swede tops seem to have the same attraction. Fortunately, we have quite a lot of swede and peas, so we might manage to tame her before the winter!

Half the field is topped – the rest will be done as soon as the contractor can fit us in. I want to leave it four weeks before I put my sheep on it, to reduce the worm burden a bit. It hasn’t been heavily grazed this year, but I’d rather give it a short break as a precaution.

I bought twelve new POL (point of lay) pullets on Wednesday – ten Warrens and two White Leghorns. The Leghorns lay lovely white eggs, and these two are producing two eggs a day at the moment. The Warrens are just coming into lay, so are laying mini eggs. These are the ones we get to eat, since I can’t sell them. They’re lovely but it’s hard to cut thin enough soldiers to get into the yolk.

The highlight of the week, and I make no apologies for boring you about this over the next few weeks, was the long awaited arrival of our new rodent controllers, Harry and Bertie. They are 13 weeks old and both black. I have checked for white hairs on both and there are none. However, their faces are quite different, Bertie is bigger and bolder and Harry is, well, a black tabby, I think. Bertie is definitely black, but Harry has lighter markings on his coat that look like tabby stripes. It will be interesting to see how they develop.

I brought them home on Friday night and I think they have been running on adrenalin since. They killed a cushion this morning, wrestling it off the sofa and chewing its tassels – seems they hunt as a pack, too! However, the adrenalin seemed to run out this afternoon and they are sound asleep on their sheepskin cushion.

I can’t tell you how cute they are – we’ve never had kittens before. Our other cats have been older cats from the rescue centre. The dogs are exhausted too; only Felix seems unaffected. He seemed delighted to have access to kitten food, but he’ll return to rugby ball shape if we’re not careful, so food dishes have been removed. He’s in his favourite spot as I type – playing computer games with Dan!

Update w/e 19th July 2009

The weather has continued to be changeable here. We’ve had some really heavy showers and our garage has flooded a few times – the drain is inadequate so I’m going to get a water butt to put on the downpipe to take the pressure off it. Fortunately, anything that could have been damaged was high enough off the floor to be safe.

In the garden, the French beans are ready – I’ve not grown these before but we had them for dinner yesterday and they are really tasty. Along with peas, carrots and new potatoes – all our Sunday vegetables were homegrown.

Two of our apple trees, Sunset and Dumelow’s Seedling, are groaning with apples; the Egremont Russet is a bit sparser. The Dumelow’s Seedling is a cooker and keeps brilliantly. I used the last of the 2008 crop about March 2009. The Victoria plums have a decent crop too, so I can see some chutney being made this year. The pear tree has two tiny pears on it; we planted a second pear tree last autumn, but it’s still very small and Li’l’ Bud did have a wee nibble at it. Hopefully next year it will come away.

As expected, I had a visit from Animal Health on Thursday. It was less traumatic than I expected. The two people, a vet and an Animal Health officer, were very nice and explained what they were doing and why. Apparently, we (Britain) have to prove to the EU, God love them, that we don’t have brucellosis or toxoplasmosis in the sheep flock, hence the routine survey testing. They took a blood sample from five of my six sheep – Jura wasn’t very co-operative! – and I will get the results in due course.

I also had a visit from an experienced Ryeland breeder to assess Li’l’ Bud. He certainly meets the breed standard for bite, horn buds etc but some of the other stuff comes down to taste, basically. However, that’s good enough for me, so I’m going to lend him to my chum, Carol, for the breeding season – he can have half a dozen ewes – then next year, I’ll show him then maybe sell him in the back end as a shearling ram. So that means that Dickie can be castrated and kept as a companion. I’m glad he’s going to have a useful role that doesn’t include BBQ!

I’m hoping to buy two ewe lambs this year, to run with Lyra. I will go to some of the auctions, but will try to buy privately, I think.

I have been given the use of the 6 acre field opposite our house to graze the sheep. This is wonderful news, as grazing was tight here. However, we had to start by excluding the sheep belonging to the neighbouring farm. So our fencers came down on Friday and added some additional wires to the existing fence, which was in pretty good condition, and tightened all the wires. Unfortunately, they fenced a few of the farmer’s sheep in our side!

There were two Blackface lambs and one Mule lamb. At the corner of the field, there is a bit of fence made of wooden rails, so we dismantled that to let them through. Of course, because they hadn’t come in that way, they didn’t recognize it as a way back. So after a few futile attempts to get them to go through – they run real fast, you know, even though they’re small – I suggested that we leave it open overnight, not in the hope that they would go through but hoping that some of the others would come through that way during the night and, therefore, know their way back when we asked them to leave in the morning.

It worked a treat. By morning, there was a dozen lambs in our field, most of which had come through “our” gap in the fence. It was relatively straightforward to gather them, point them in the right direction and let them make their way back to the right side of the fence. Dan nailed up the wooden rails and job done! Brains over brawn, I say.

We now need to get the field topped – the stragglers were fence in our side because the grass is so long, the boys couldn’t see them. I’m not sure if it’s too late to take a hay crop, but I’ll take advice on that.

The pigs are fine and growing on. They got new straw yesterday and that was a cause of great excitement and much nest building.

I’m going to get 12 new pullets on Wednesday – demand for eggs is outstripping supply, which is good. We’ve had no dog incursions this week, touch wood. The Hubbards are doing well as are the little chicks. They’re three weeks now – I think the broody might be getting a bit stir crazy, though.

On Sunday, Central Scotland Smallholders has a visit to Julie Hill and Bob Henderson www.henderson-hill-bordercollies.co.uk for a sheepdog masterclass. And what a masterclass it was! Julie and Bob are both very experienced and very successful trainers of sheepdogs – they are the real deal. With eighteen dogs, from two little puppies to vastly experienced trial dogs, they were able to show us dogs at different stages of training and also dogs of the same age, but with different styles, strengths and weaknesses and levels of maturity. Julie has written a book called “The Natural Way” (by Julie Simpson) which explains her method of using the dog’s natural behaviour to successfully train it. Everyone there thoroughly enjoyed it and we all went away with a better understanding of dog behavior generally, and I’m sure our relationships with our own dogs will benefit.

Update w/e 12th July 2009

We’ve had some fabulous weather this week – wonderful sunshine, but with some pretty heavy rain too, so things are growing well. Even the sweetcorn looks a bit perkier.

Most of the broad beans are now picked and frozen. The strawberries are still coming but the raspberries are almost finished. We’re planning to replant these this year, so I think we’ll have three varieties with successional harvest times. Now the peas and the blackcurrants are ready for harvesting – I find blackcurrants really tedious to pick, but it will be worth it (I tell myself). Actually, I've bribed Dan's mum and dad to come and pick them, in return for morning coffee and a Jacob fleece.

I got the Jacob fleece from a friend who keeps a small flock. Dan's dad is learning to spin and is keen to try different fleeces. The Jacob fleece is beautiful - shades of cream, brown and black.

We lifted our first new potatoes this week and they are delicious. It’s a variety called Mayan Gold; the seed potatoes are quite expensive so we grew them in pots on the patio. The pot we emptied yielded three pounds of potatoes from one seed potato, and they are lovely and clean. We have another four pots to empty over the next few weeks.

I was running a “Backyard Poultry Keeping” course on Saturday, so that was a spur to do those tidying jobs that are always bottom of the list. We kept the sheep on the lawn over winter, which was great for lots of reasons, but the downside was the self-seeded grasses from the hay we fed them on the patio. I spent several hours weeding it, then gave in and Dan strimmed it. The “wildflower meadow” needs cut as well but Dan will have to gird up his loins and look out his pith helmet and machete for that job. However, the buddleia is in full flower and we’re starting to see butterflies in the garden. We also have a pair of goldfinches feasting on the thistle heads.

I really enjoy the poultry courses. I’ve met some really nice people; many keep in touch and have joined the TAS forums or Central Scotland Smallholders’ Association, which is great.

I am expecting a visit from Animal Health on Thursday; I got a call to say I had been selected from the Sheep and Goat Census to have my sheep tested for brucellosis and toxoplasmosis, both of which cause abortion in sheep. I don’t routinely vaccinate my sheep for either.

I am also hoping to get a visit from an experienced Ryeland breeder to assess Li’l’ Bud. I think he looks really good, but I am a) inexperienced and b) biased so thought it would be good to get an expert eye to look at him. The Coloured Ryeland Breeders Group has been very helpful in this regard. I’ve also checked with the vet about the cost of getting Dickie castrated, so I can keep him as a companion for Li’l’ Bud, who can’t continue to run with the ewes for much longer. It’s a bit pathetic, but he’s so tame, I can’t eat him. I must be more focused next year, or we’ll be overrun with wether lambs!

Update w/e 5th July

As the strawberry harvest gets well underway, both Dan and I have made strawberry jam. Dan made his special “twice boiled” jam – because he couldn’t get it to set first time and was persuaded to tip it back into the pan and have another go. Actually, it’s very nice, better than mine, I think, but all will be revealed at the local Horticultural Society show in September. The raspberries are doing better than expected. We’re planning to replace them this year and they looked a bit neglected, but they are cropping well. If I could only grow one soft fruit, it would be raspberries. I love a handful, freshly picked, on my breakfast cereal.

The broad beans are ready for picking. We’ve some blackfly, so we’ll need to treat that. I did sow poached egg plant to attract lacewings, but I think I was too late for it to be effective. Following the top dressing of seaweed, the sweetcorn looks better but if it doesn’t get a spurt on, we’ll be harvesting in November! The peas are coming on, but the dry weather might reduce the crop. The weather's changed - it's been quite wet here on and off, which will help.

Trying to keep the place reasonably tidy is an endless task – Dan spent half a day weeding the comfrey bed and sweeping up the path. The hens have decimated the comfrey this year, which is a pity because the bees do love the flowers.If we'd planned things better, we'd have put all the fruit and vegetables, including the comfrey, inside a hen proof fence and just let them in during the winter. Next time!

We’ve decided to try for self-marinating chicken. A couple of pots of coriander had flowered and had a good covering of greenfly, so we stuck them in for the Hubbards. Boy, did they enjoy it. We might try sage next time! They are growing well - and we have a mixture of white and brown ones this time. They mature at different ages, but I can't remember what they are - and it doesn't really matter to us.

The broody hen hatched four chicks. Two, unfortunately, were dead but the remaining two seem as bright as buttons, and their Mommy loves them very much. They are really cute – doesn’t matter how many times I’ve had chicks, they still have the “Ahh” factor. One, the larger of the two, is quite bold and hops in and out of the nest box on its own, much to the hen's agitation. The other one is much shyer. I hope thay are both pullets.

We try to encourage wildlife in the garden and in our field. We don’t keep it too tidy (understatement and excuse) and a couple of years ago we put in a small pond. Now, it’s not quite right. It’s not level, so when it’s full at one side, the other side still shows above the water line, but the birds and insects seem to like it. And so, it seems, do a pair of toads. We found them when we upended the chicken ark I was in the throws of painting and rescued them quickly before the hens got there. We took the two toads into the long grass and released them into a pile of stones that we haven’t decided what to do with yet. This is the first year that the water lily has flowered and it’s very lovely. My photography skills do not do it justice.

The wildflower meadow has become a sea of cow parsley and drastic action will be required this year to "refurbish" it. It was lovely a couple of years ago, but it's just a mess now. The Land Services manager at the Council asked me if I was entering the garden competition - maybe next year.

On Saturday, we were at Doune and Dunblane Show with the Central Scotland Smallholders’ Association. It was a very pleasant day, in good company, but I’m not sure that it’s the greatest recruiting tool. The pitch cost £70; if we didn’t have Lottery funding, we wouldn’t be able to afford it. To be honest, I found it a bit disappointing; I haven't been to D&D for a number of years and it seemed much smaller than I remember. Maybe I'm just bigger.

While I haven’t got show fever, I thought I’d like to show Li’l’ Bud. There are very few classes for Ryelands, let alone Coloured Ryelands, around here so I would have to go for “Any Other Native Breed” classes, but the few local shows left either don’t have these classes or the closing date for entries is past. I may try again next year, either with him or one of next year’s lambs. I may be biased, but he’s a very handsome chap!

Update 27th June

Following our first strawberries last week, they are now ripening at a rate of knots. In fact, I think the jam pan will be on tonight! The gooseberries are being picked – Dan eats them raw, which gives me the heebie-jeebies. I prefer mine with a nice oaty crumble topping. We’ve had a real problem with sawfly, on both the gooseberries and the red and white currants. These little blighters can strip the leaves off a bush overnight. Sometimes, they can be controlled by hand stripping, but in bad cases, derris does the job.

I’ve bought four bags of calcified seaweed and, now that it’s rained, I’m going to top dress the sweetcorn, which is looking really miserable. I don’t think the bed that it’s in has the best soil, but it will get better as we get more organic matter into it.

The Hubbard chicks doing well – they’re now four weeks old and growing like weeds. Dan gave them a pot of bolted lettuce yesterday – that was great fun. Eat it then dust bathe in the compost.

The broody is still broody. Thursday 2nd July is Day 21 so by next weekend we’ll either have chicks or not. Our Cream Crested Legbar cockerel, Hugo, has settled into his new home and has found his voice – his new owner says it feels like she’s really in the country now.

Lyra seems to have recovered from whatever ailed her. I’m so glad. I feel almost confident enough to splash out £5 to register her. She was playing with Dickie last night which was good to see and was running around just for the fun of it. Then all the sheep joined in – even Juno, who is a little porky, was springing around will all four feet off the ground. You may have felt the tremors as she landed!

The pigs are now 16 weeks and on 12lb of food each day. We need to find a new supplier – our usual one has closed down, unfortunately. Add that to the “to do” list!

We’re expecting two new additions to the family in a few weeks – Harry and Bertie are two 9 week old black kittens, who are going to be our new rodent control, following the demise of Cassius in March. They were going to be called Merry and Pippin - before we had any cats, I wanted two tabby kittens that were going to be called Merry and Pippin after the hobbits in LOTR - but they didn't look like a Merry and a Pippin.

So why Harry and Bertie? Well, I looked at one kitten and the name “Harry” popped into me head, so that was that. We were then persuaded to go along a Harry Potter theme – Bertie has been provisionally Sirius, Dobby, Albus – he is now named after (as all Harry Potter fans will know) Bertie Bott, the maker of the famous All-flavour Beans. We can’t bring them home until they have their second vax, because Felix carries Feline Herpes Virus (cat flu). So 22nd July is the big day - I'm excited a bit anxious about how the dogs and Felix will react but it's too late now.

Update w/e 20th June

We’ve had another good growing week and the weeds are coming on a treat. We’ve had our first strawberries, though, which is very nice indeed. The gooseberries are also coming on well and the biggest are now ready for picking. The peas and broad beans are podding but the beans are still very small. I must try and find a good recipe for broad beans to get Dan to eat them - he suggested wrapping them in bacon and / or deep frying.

The Hubbard chicks are now outdoors. They seem to like the grass under their feet and are happily pecking away. The soil tray is still favourite entertainment though. I've topped up their mencore bed with straw - I do worry if it's a bit chilly. A further five have gone to a friend, leaving us with eight, as we had a dead one this week. I think it may have been trampled by the others as they have all been very healthy.

The broody is still, well, broody. Our Cream Crested Legbar cockerel, Hugo, is going to a new home where he will be the only cockerel. Here, he’s very much second fiddle to Hector, our Copper Black Maran (who’s about twice the size of Hugo) and I feel a bit sorry for him. So he’s off to pastures new with a nice wee flock of Black Rock virgins, where he can show off his prowess!

Last week, I was hoping that Lyra wouldn’t have a relapse, after her joint-ill episode. Well, she did. On Monday morning, Dan came in and said she was really unwell. I had a look and had to agree – although her legs seemed fine, she was clearly sick. She wouldn’t move unless forced to and seemed to be in pain around her abdomen. Off we went to the vet again, this time for intravenous painkiller and anti-inflammatory and more antibiotics. Again, the vet wasn’t entirely sure what the problem was, but he was clearly worried. And one again, she’s better – she’s had five days of an eight day course of antibiotics and she seems recovered. She’s grazing now and is hard to catch, which I’m viewing as positive. This time, I hope she really is out of the woods.

The pigs have been reintroduced to their snak-a-ball and love it. Apparently, the ball was invented for pigs at Easter Howgate (part of the University of Edinburgh) as a way of enriching the environment, was adopted for horses and now we’ve claimed it back for pigglies. It’s a great way to keep them amused and active. The pigs are looking nice and trim this year. Actually, the ball is a great way to distract them when they squeal for food when it’s not feeding time.

We took delivery of our calcified seaweed this week so I‘ll have to sort out the application. We put “new” horse poo on the garden last year and, in retrospect, I don’t think it was a good idea, so we’ve established a muck heap, where it can rot down. The hardest bit is keeping the hens out of the beds. Our raised beds of 8 years ago are now level with the path, because the hens have scraped so much soil over the side. Next time, it will be a 6 foot fence round the vegetable garden!

Update w/e 13th June

We’ve had the most fabulous growing week – warm and sunny, with some decent showers of rain. Dan's been busy in the garden, potting on and planting out. Weeding should be a daily task at the moment as they seem to grow faster than the plants. Tomatoes, peppers and cumcumber have been potted on and more herbs and salad sown. The purple sprouting broccoli is coming slowly; we don't need many - we haven't got room for many, to be honest. They weren't on "the plan" you see.

We have a climbing hydrangea on the north side of the house. It's been in for a few years now but it's never flowered as well as this year. This morning, it was moving with bees, which was really nice to see. The warm weather has also brought on the honeysuckle by the back door; the scent from it stopped me in my tracks yesterday evening. Sometimes, we're so busy that we don't appreciate these things.

The Hubbard chicks are starting to get their feathers, so the heat lamp is now turned off during the day and on at night. By next week, if the weather is good, I hope to have them off heat and outside. They have a and "enriched" environment with a straw bedded run, with ad lib chick crumbs and fresh water. Now that they are a bit bigger, they have their soil tray and this week, hanging greens. So far, they have had comfrey leaves and some spare cabbage plants – hung up at beak height (not on the floor where they will simply trample them into a green mush), the chicks spend ages pecking away at them. Good food, exercise AND entertainment all in one!

Hubbard chicks getting their greens from asmallholder on Vimeo.

I’ve seen Foxy again – looks like a vixen or youngster to me – but we’ve had no losses this week. Last week’s sick hen has now fully recovered; she’s not laying yet, but she’s otherwise back to normal. We have a broody Black Rock; I’m not convinced either of our cockerels are “working” so I’ve got some pure Light Sussex and some Light Sussex x ex battery hens eggs from a friend to put under her. She’s VERY happy in her broody coop. I make her go out for a few minutes three times a day to eat, drink and poop, but she’s always desperate to get back to her eggs again.

The sheep have not only been wormed, but sheared as well. They do look much happier, although I find it hard to tell them apart. Their fleeces are different colours but their skins are all black, so they much more alike now. Even their lambs didn’t recognize them! Things went from bad to worse with Lyra; by Tuesday, she couldn’t bend her back legs and was very stiff. The vet thought she had some kind of joint-ill and gave her a cocktail of antibiotics. By Friday, she was much better and got another shot then. She’s much better but not 100% so we’ll keep our fingers crossed for no relapse.

The pigs are spending a fair bit of time wallowing – all three are covered in mud and from the contented grunting, I think they are really enjoying it. Bananas and boiled potatoes are the trat of choice - our choice not theirs!

Unlike last week, Stirling Show had a lovely day yesterday. I didn’t manage along as the Smallholders Association had a grassland management course running through Oatridge College. It was very interesting and gave those who attended lots of food for thought. Grass is such an undervalued crop – sometimes it seems to be more bother than it’s worth – but it’s a very valuable crop for Scotland. The lecturer was able to give me some helpful pointers for our small area of grass – if you are very lucky, I will pass them on to you over the next few weeks and let you know if our grass is growing better.

Update w/e 6th June

Well, we’ve sure had the rain I was wishing for last week. The vegetable garden is now growing away nicely. The “plan” has been amended to include purple sprouting broccoli and kale. Normally, we don’t grow this because our fleece arrangement doesn’t cover it properly but our new hoops should be high enough to accommodate the plants.

The direct sown runner beans are through the ground and all the peas are showing – two more rows to sow this weekend, then we can stand back and wait for the harvest. And the weeds.

The Hubbard chicks are doing well. We lost one in the first few days – it looked like it had been squashed by the others, which is not something we’ve experienced before. They are still inside but they have a run with straw and tray of soil to scratch around in and a box to climb over. I put the box of soil in yesterday and last night they all had dirty feet. I hung some comfrey leaves as well, but they don't seem very interested in them - maybe too young.

Unfortunately, we had a visit from the fox this week. Dan caught the fox with a Black Rock in its mouth; surprised, it dropped the hen, which ran away, but we found it dead the following day, from shock, I expect. We found one dead Legbar, but a headcount revealed that a second Legbar and four more Black Rocks had been taken. These were all young, inexperienced hens and would have been an easy meal for Reynard.

I have a sick hen today. She’s a Copper Black Maran, and quite young. She’s not displaying any real symptoms apart from being generally unwell. I’ve got an antibiotic from the vet, so I hope that works quickly. She’s not eating and only drinking her water (laced with garlic) if encouraged to. I hope she survives, but I’m not very hopeful.

The sheep are being wormed this week. I’ll do another worm test to see if it works. If not, I’ll have to use a chemical wormer. One of the lambs is poorly – we’re doing our own version of “Animal Hospital” here – and has antibiotics. It’s Lyra, of course, our only ewe lamb. She's scouring a bit and has a watery mouth, so it will be some kind of stomach bug. She’s a big strong lamb, though, so hopefully she’ll put in a good recovery. The shearer is coming next week, weather permitting, so the ewes will be better able to cope with the predicted hot summer.

There was no heat at Central and West Fife Show on Saturday. Central Scotland Smallholders Association www.smallholders.info had a stand at the show to publicise the work of the Association and to attract new members. It was so cold; the rain was horizontal at times; keeping our gazebo on the ground was our main concern most of the time, because of the strength of the wind. We’re at Doune and Dunblane Show on 4th July if anyone wants to swing by and say hello. Hopefully, the long, hot summer will have started by then!

Update w/e 31st May

Well, summer seems to be here at last – even if only for a few days. Actually, I hate to say it, but we could really do with some rain.

In the vegetable garden, we’ve been mostly weeding. The broad beans are doing well and the peas are coming away. The runner beans that were started in the greenhouse are already shimmying up the canes but the direct sown ones have yet to make an appearance. Our gooseberries and redcurrant have fallen victim to sawfly and had a spray of derris. The redcurrant has almost no leaves left – and that happened almost overnight. Still, it has set plenty fruit, as have the gooseberries.

I picked up our Hubbard meat chicks on Saturday from Jamesfield Organic Centre near Abernethy. It’s the first time I’ve been there and I was sorry I hadn’t taken any cash. The centre sells all manner of organic produce in a purpose built shop. Much of what it sells is grown on the land around it and the folk I was buying the chicks from also produce ducks, guinea fowl, turkeys and geese fro meat plus organic eggs. I’m going to buy some point of lay pullets there next time I need some.

We’re keeping 10 Hubbards this time. They will be ready for slaughter at about 10 - 12 weeks. I’m going to “dilute” the pellets with mixed corn this time to try to slow the growth down a bit. It’s hard to believe when that these tiny bundles of fluff will be fully grown in a few weeks. They will have a heat lamp until they are feathered at three weeks or so, but I switched it off for a while this afternoon as they were all sunbathing.

The pigs moved into their second pen today to let the first one recover a bit. The grass in the new pen is so long, sometimes all we can see is moving stems to show where the pigs are. However, they will soon eat it down.

The sheep are on the third quarter of the field. The first quarter is starting to recover – but a bit of rain would certainly help. The worm test that we did last week came back as “medium” so I’ll worm them with Verm X this week then retest to check that it is working. They are feeling the heat and the new shed has been a Godsend, allowing them to lie in shade at the middle of the day. They will get such a shock when their fleeces come of at the end of the month.

Update w/e 24th May

Deep joy! I’ve been collecting poo samples from the sheep so that we can have worm egg counts done. I'm just a glorified toilet attendant and there's some debate about the "glorified" bit.

We don’t have a lot of land and four ewes will be about our maximum. It also means we have to manage what grazing we have. It was stressing me a bit but I now have a grazing plan that, if it works in practice, should allow each parcel of land to rest and recover for 6 months of the year.

I had to buy sheep tags for the first time this week. Not looking forward to the application - I remember what it was like getting my ears pierced.

Li’l’ Bud and Dickie got their first injection of Heptavac P Plus this week; a second will be administered in six weeks. It’s then an annual booster, if they are still around. Next sheep tasks are applying the tags; registering the two lambs we are retaining and organizing shearing.

We’ve also been busy in the vegetable garden. All the beans that we started in the greenhouse – broad beans, runner beans and dwarf French beans – plus the peas, have been planted out. The cabbages and sweetcorn aren’t quite ready. The Czar runner beans came to naught, despite two sowings, so I've direct sown more "White Lady". If they can avoid the weevils, they should be OK.

Update w/e 10th May

It’s been a quiet week here, mostly due to the inclement weather. On the positive side, the grass is now growing better and the area that we reseeded after the fencing and the new shed were put in is faintly green if you look at it from the correct angle.

Herbert, our second lamb, has been renamed Dickie after a well-known TV personality. Can you guess who? With the warmer weather, we’ll be treating the sheep this week to prevent fly strike. Jura had it last year but we noticed it very quickly and were able to treat it promptly. She seems none the worse for it but I’d rather avoid a repeat.

The pigs are now on 2lb of food each per day. I’ve taken out the trough and just feed them on the ground. They seem to prefer it that way. They don’t seem to be making much impact on the grass yet, but they are still only young. I inadvertently made them a wallow by forgetting to turn of the hose while filling their water trough. Much fun was had running in and out or the water and blowing snout bubbles.

We planted a willow hedge earlier in the year, on the riverbank. Partly this is for shade, for the sheep to browse, for wood and to stabilize the bank. Most seems to have taken really well, despite the rabbits’ best efforts. Dan also planted an apple tree out there. I thought it was past its best and was prepared to dispose of it, but Dan stuck it in with the willow and it’s covered in blossom. Naturally, he never says “I told you so”.

We’re off to the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society’s Smallholder and Garden Festival this weekend with some friends from Central Scotland Smallholders Association www.smallholders.info ; full report next week.

Bees

I've just enrolled with our local beekeepers association. I've missed this years training course but I'm going to go on the visits and pick up the theory from January, with a view to getting bees this time next year.

Because of our limited land area, bees seem like a good way of producing more food and increasing the fertility of the land - and they don't eat any grass!

First visit is on 24th May, so I'm looking forward to that.

Clearing the field

When we bought our house, there was a "hump" in the field. It was made of rubble and was the remains of what had been used to reclaim some land down to the river. Over the years, it has been used as a viewpoint for Dan and I, the dogs, the chickens and latterly the sheep. Since it was slightly horseshoe shaped, we also used it as a fire pit. At one time, we had plans to make it into some kind of garden feature.

However, the advent of the sheep and the need to make the most of what grazing we have sounded the death knell for the "hump". As part of the fencing and sheep shed erection exercise, the "hump" was relocated to the riverbank and planted with willow.

That left a big, stony bare patch in the middle of the field. And a big stony bare patch at the gate, caused by the JCB that moved the "hump". So today, we (Dan, his mum and dad and I) had a work party to clear them and prepare it for reseeding. Now, we could have used machinery, but we went for muscle power. It was slightly medieval - the four of us toiling in the field, with only hand tools and a wheelbarrow with a flat tyre (I know they didn't have wheelbarrows in the Middle Ages, at least not ones with rubber tyres). Why don't you find the flat until the barrow is full of stones?

Hector: Copper Black Maran Cockerel from asmallholder on Vimeo.

By 4pm, when the rain started to drizzle, we had finished the area at the gate and were probably a third of the way across the other area. We're going to hire a petrol scarifier to attack the mossy bits next weekend, but we will sow seed on the bare bits this week if the wind drops - if we'd sown it today, we'd have sent it to the four winds.

I've bought a mix for free range poultry from the Grass Seed Store; it has a herb content and should be quite hardwearing. If we can get it away now, the sheep can get on it later in the year.

So fingers crossed for a shower of rain and no wind!

Willow hedge

We planted some willow behind the garage a few years ago. Since then, it's just been left to grow. The hens like it.

When we had the new fence put in along the river bank, I was quite keen to put a willow bank behind it to help stabilise the bank, to provide some shelter and to provide firewood, eventually.

Dan's dad got to work yesterday and cut and planted dozens of willow whips. If only half of them take, we'll be fine. In any case, they didn't cost us any money and we like feeding the bunnies...

Livestock Day

It's only 1pm and I feel like I've done a full shift, but it's been very rewarding.

We moved the pigs from pen no.1 to pen no. 2, where there is some grass. I put a bale of straw in the hut, since the remaining straw was a bit flat, thenw e seeded pen no. 1 with grass, phacelia and buckwheat - really anything we had spare in the garage. The pigs are very excited with their new pen and their improved bed, and have been galloping in excited spurts round and round, before stopping to munch grass.

We moved the 6 Maran chicks into a run in the garage. They still have a heat lamp, but they need to start hardening off, so to speak. Anyway, we'll need the puppy cage for the Cream Legbars, which will hopefully hatch soon.

We applied louse powder to the hens - that needs to be a weekly job at this time of year. The RIR are worst affected. The Brown Leghorn never showed a single louse, but her feathers were quite different. We also moved the hen ark out of the orchard , further up the field. Round the ark gets dirty so this will give the ground time to clean up before we bring them back down in the winter, when it's good to have them close to the house.

Finally, we trimmed the sheeps' feet and gave them all a dose of Heptavac-P Plus. They are none to happy with us now, but I'm sure they will forgive us by tea-time!

So, off for a cup of tea and a biccie, then out into the garden!

Herbal wormer

We bought herbal wormer yesterday, for the sheep and the hens. Both products are used monthly - over three days for the chooks and seven for the sheep, so I'll start on Friday (since it's the 1st February). The wormer for the hens is liquid, so it can be put in water or on bread. I'm going for the latter because ours freerange and drink from puddles etc.

The sheep wormer is pellets and goes on their food - I don't think there will be any trouble getting them to eat it. They're getting a pedicure next weekend, too - so healthy, inside and out! I've got the vet coming to do Smokey's flu and tetanus next week, so I'm going to ask him about worm counts for the sheep, so I can check if it's working OK.

I'm also writing a "sheep timetable" - I've got a spreadsheet with the twelve months of the year, and I'm going to write up what's to be done when - it's terribly an*l, I know, but I'm much more comfortable if I have a plan, even if I don't exactly stick to it.

How to scare a fledgling smallholder.

Some folk like to scare themselves witless by watching horror movies. Some like to do it by going on huge fairground rides. Some do it by taking a "ghost wak". Me? I read a book about stock rearing!

I buy the "The Scottish Farmer" every week. It's written is a strange "farmer-speak" but I like to look at what's for sale. This week, it had a 16 page "Lambing Special", half of which was adverts for drenches and injections to prevent and cure diseases I haven't even heard of.

So I got out my sheep book and terrified myself. At one point the author says that sheep are either healthy or dead and it's generally quite easy to tell the difference! Although we're not lambing this year, I'm thinking ahead. To be honest the lambing itself is the least of my concerns - I'm more worried about grass and how to have enough. I'm also worried about liver fluke, coccidiosis, abortion, footroot and various skin parasites. If I treat them all, the girls will be like pin cushions!

However, I had a cup of tea and thought about it. The reason we got ewe lambs was to give us a "trial year" without the lambing issue. We'll have a better idea of how the grass stacks up by autumn next year - we can them make a judgement about whether it will support three ewes and lambs. I'm going to make a timetable (cribbed from my sheep book) of things to do and when to do them and deal with one thing at a time.

Then I looked out the window, and Juno, Jura and Jinx were lying on the lawn, quietly chewing their cud. Juno stood up, had a good stretch and settled down again. They seem quite content, so we'll go with that for now.

House Cow

No, not yet. But I know what we're getting when we get one - a Shetland!

I've been browsing the web and was intending to look up Dexter cattle, but opened the RBST website to discover that the Dexter isn't listed. So I looked up the Shetland instead and that's what we'll have!

It ticks all the boxes for me - size, nature, thrifty, dual purpose. More research, now.

Forth Valley and West Fife Smallholders' Association - meeting

the next meeting of FV&WF Smallholders' Association will take place on Wednesday 16th January at 7pm in Stirling Indoor Bowling Club, orth Street, Riverside, Stirling FK8 1UE.

Any smallholders or aspiring smallholders are very welcome.

New for 2008

We don't currently run our smallholding as a business. However, in 2008, I want to put it on a more business-like footing, at least keeping a better track of income and expenditure.

Last night, I decided to work out what the financial picture was for the pigs last year. We sold two half pigs and kept a whole pig for ourselves; I had a record of the purchase price of the weaners, the slaughterhouse and butchery charges; although I hadn't recorded all feed bought, I was able to make a fairly accurate calculation of the cost of feed. All in all, our whole pig cost us £120. We have to decide if that is OK - if not, then we need to have a think about making changes to the way we manage this "enterprise", especially with rising feed prices.

When Dan set up his business, we transferred certain assets to the business, so I also started to list the equipment or "assets" that we have purchased over the years for the smallholding. Because we are comparatively "cash rich, time poor", we have bought equipment rather than building our own. I haven't finished the list yet, but I was surprised at how much there is.

When the hens come back into lay and I'm selling eggs again, I'm going to keep the income seperate. I'm pretty sure we're subsidising egg production but we'll see.

At the moment, it's fine to be subsidising the smallholding - it's only a hobby, but if our circumstances were to change, then it might become more important to break even, if not generate cash from the smallholding, so I'd better start getting a handle on this now.

TAS video tour part 1

This morning I shot a little video tour of part the smallholding. As you'll see it was unscripted and I look like I've just woken up - too many early mornings!

The Accidental Smallholder tour from asmallholder on Vimeo.

Lazy Sunday?

It has been the most lovely day here - cold, light wind and sunny. Perfect for pottering in the garden. Or for killing chickens.

Yesterday, Dan and I had our annual trip to Glasgow. Before we had pets and livestock, we used to go to Glasgow regularly - bit of shopping, cinema, dinner, stay over, leisurely breakfast. Friday was our wedding anniversary, so we decided to have a day shoppping, lunch, cinema - by 3pm, I just wanted to come home. Anyway, the consequence of that (apart from my sore feet), is that we had lots to do today - but it was a perfect day for doing it!

You may recall that our cockerel, Hobbes, fell prey to the fox recently. Fortunately, we had three young cockerels, who were destined for the oven. One was therefore reprieved, since he was to replace Hobbes. We planned to kill the other two today. However, yesterday, a friend of ours called to ask if we still had the cockerels as he wanted one as a Christmas gift (Live!). A deal was struck so that left us with one to kill today. So this morning, our new cockerel (now called Horatio) was moved into the hens' ark; the second boy was penned for collection and No. 3 bit the dust. Dan will post seperately on this.

Horatio had risen to his new role admirably; he is certainly doing his duty with gusto and doesn't seem to be missing his brothers at all.

I then spent some time cleaning out the garage - I always want to clean at Christmas. I swept out the hay and other stuff on to the yard, where some of the hens had a rare time sorting through it.

Smokey demonstrated his "cut and shut" look - the "two horses in one" look! He and his mates had a great time racing around and munching the grass on the track. One of the Black Rocks joined them in the field and set about clearing the muck heap!

Now that the "batchelor pad" that housed the cockerels was no longer required, I cleaned it, and the hen ark, out. My cleaning kit includes a trug, dustpan and brush, paint scraper (for those interesting stuck on bits) and a scoop for cat litter, which is useful if I'm just "skipping out". I don't always sprinkle louse powder and red mite powder, but I did the "batchelor pad", since it won't be used for a few months.

Finally, I scraped the vegetation off the patio. When we had the patio laid, I asked Eddie to leave gaps between the slabs so that I could grow stuff in them. Oh, boy, did I grow stuff - mostly accidentally. Last summer, we MOWED the patio! I had lots of help - Meg sat with me, the hens investigated the weeds and the sheep joined me too. We let them on to the lawn if we're around - small poo, very tidy munching.

Oh, I also made a Christmas cake! Now, I'm going to make a cup of tea and watch "Cranford". Dan and Felix are computing - so I'll leave them to it.

Forth Valley and West Fife Smallholders Association - Inaugural Meeting

The inaugural meeting of the Forth Valley and West Fife Smallholders Association will take place on Thursday 29th November in the Theatre Bar, Alloa Town Hall at 7pm.

Diane Alderdice from Forth Valley Food Links will be the guest speaker.

Light refreshments will be available.

It would be helpful for catering purposes if you would let me know if you are attending and the names of those attedning in your party, so that I can do name badges.

Look forward to meeting you all on the 29th!

There is a forum on the website devoted to the Association on the Forums, too.

Managing grass

This is such a vexed issue - managing grass is rather difficult, I think. If you have the right amount in the summer, you don't have enough in the winter; if you have enough in winter, you've far too much in summer ( especially if you have no easy way on conserving it).

Yesterday, we split the horses' field in two. They are all being wormed this weekend and I'm clearing the half they aren't on - picking poo and cutting thistles (well, Dan's cutting thistles). Once the wormer has worked (48 hours or so), they're going on to the clean field and I'll try and keep it clean. Chris is then going to harrow the top half - not ideal at this time of year, I know - cut the thistles and we'll rest it for as long as we can.

Hopefully, we won't have to worm again or at worst, infrequently. And the grass will get better. Here's hoping!

Calling smallholders in central Scotland

Are there any smallholders or aspiring smallholders in Forth Valley / West Fife who would be inetersted in setting up / joining a smallholders group? I don't think there is anything similar in this area, although there is a group in Ayrshire, going under Scottish Smallholders.

I thought if there was interest, we could get a group together with a view to having social gatherings, maybe invite speakers / demos, support and advise each other, maybe swap / share seeds and seedlings, take a stall at a Farmers' Market to sell surpluses, have a machinery / equipment pool (as you see the ideas get more complicated).

Diane Allerdice from Forth Valley Food Links is going to put a note out to FVFL members / subscribers, to assess interest. If you are interested, can you email me and let me kow, including where you are and if there is sufficint interest, I'll organise a meeting somewhere central.

New arrivals

We are expecting three new arrivals at Longcarse in the next few weeks. We've bought three coloured Ryeland ewe lambs. This is the fulfillment of a long held ambition for me - a flock, albeit small, of pedigree sheep!

I've been a non-flock owning member of the Ryeland Flock Book Society for a couple of years - now I get to upgrade! Hopefully, someone from the Society will get back to me sooner rather than later and tell me how to register our new flock.

It all worked in rather well (apart from the FMD). I was intending to go to Lanark next week to the Rare Breeds sale and had sent off for a catalogue. However, I have to attend a meeting at work on the same day, so I was trying to work out how I could be in two places at the same time.

A friend of mine, who lives locally, has a small flock of Ryelands but she's been retaining her ewe lambs to increase her flock size. Dan suggested I give her a call on the offchance that she was selling this year. And she was! She had five ewe lambs for sale - two were going to Lanark and the best three were going to Carlisle in September. So we've bought the three bound for Carlisle.

I now have to think of names. When you register a Ryeland ram, you have to give it a name starting with a different letter each year (ewes just get a number!). The letter for 2007 is J, so in that spirit, I think the three girls should have names beginning with J. As you can guess, since they are getting names, we're not planning to eat them. We will eat their babies though...

I'll put up some photos when they arrive here - one is a lovely chocolate brown; the other two are lighter, more "latte" than "espresso".

Rare Breed Sale, Inverurie

Just a reminder that there is a sale of rare and minority breeds at Aberdeen and Northern Marts Thainstone Centre at Inverurie on Saturday 5th May. The catalogue is available to download from the ANM website.

If I'm not too tired after the election count on Thursday night, I might have a run up. Only looking, you understand.

Run, rabbit, run

On Friday, Dan became the proud owner of a new air rifle, with which he intends to curb the local rabbit population. When he gets time, no doubt he will post something technical. As usual, the web was a great source of information.

Dan never does things by halves, which is one of the things I love about him. Killing things isn't something he relishes but he is determined to ensure that he at least ensures a swift death. So he had sheets of paper with a drawing of a rabbit to use as a target and spent Saturday morning setting up the sights on the rifle and practising. After an hour or so, he was scoring head shots the vast majority of the time. I suggested that we could pin the tattered paper target to our boundary fence with a warning to rabbits "This could be you!". Actually, the rabbits round here are so brazen that he coudl probably club them with the rifle butt and save pellets! (Joke)

Anyway, when I came back from the stables, we were two rabbits less, despatched by one head shot each. Dan said he was worried that he hadn't made a clean kill when the victim twitched a lot, but an investigation on the web confirmed that this was quite normal because of the high level of energy in the muscles.

We didn't keep these two, but I now need to learn how to clean them. Either we'll eat them or the dogs and cats will. Either way, the bunnies will not die in vain.

New Year plans

Well, as the bells approach, we're planning for 2006.

Hopefully, we've got two Tamworth boars coming in March (don't want to count my pigs before they are hatched!) and I think we've got our new hens sorted too. If the plan works, we'll be getting 6 Light Sussex pullets and a Buff Sussex cockerel. The pullets are only eight weeks at present so we've asked the breeder if he can hold on to them until they can go outside (they're still under low heat at the moment). They won't come into lay for another three months, but our current lot should start laying again soon. Photos of the new arrivals to follow, of course.

We've also had a sort out of the seed box and got our order in to the Organic Catalogue. Some of the varieties we've ordered are ones we've tried before; some are new to us.

Tomato Supersweet 100 and Ailsa Craig
Cucumber Rocky F1 (we don't usually grow cucumber, but this is a mini variety)
Pepper Jumbo
Broad bean Stereo (remember to pick them early this year)
French beans Canadian Wonder (for eating fresh or drying)
Beetroot Forono and Red Ace
Cabbage Minicole (another mini variety)
Cabbage Savoy Vertus
Carrot Autumn King and Resistafly F1 (to be lifted and stored before the rabbits eat them)
Leek Bandit and Pandora
Lettuces Various
Onions Red Baron and Turbo
Rocket
Shallots Longor
Sweetcorn Sweet Nugget (brilliant in 2005)
Potato Red Duke of York, Desiree (my favourite), Maris Peer
Herbs Coriander, Sage, Parsley, Mint, Basil and Thyme

I'm planning to grow all new herbs this year and only ones we actually use.
We've got some seeds left from last year - parsnip, runner beans, peas - that we'll use this year. In fact we're going to sow some salad this weekend, just to get us started.

So, here's to 2006 - may you all have a peaceful and prosperous year!

Radio 5

Following our monumentous move into radio earlier this year (both listeners emailed us to say they enjoyed the programme), last week I got a call from a very nice lady at BBC Radio 5 asking if I'd be willing to record some stuff for a programme about blogging. She caught me on the hop so the answer was 'yes', and as a result I spent my lunchtime today in a very small BBC studio at Stirling University recording some snippets from the TAS diary.

To be honest I felt a bit of a fraud, since I've been terribly negligent of the site lately, and since most of the stuff I read was from the distant past. What I'm hoping is that the pressure of the thought of three or four more visitors in the new year (when the programme is likely to be aired) will give me the boot up the backside I clearly need to get back into the habit of 'writing' (I use the term loosely).

In the meantime we've only just managed to get hold of a tape of the Grassroots programme, so I'm going to have a bash at getting an MP3 of the show on the site, so the reader who didn't hear the show can have the dubious pleasure...

Rare Breed Sale 17th September

The 13th Annual Carlisle Show and Sale of Rare, Minority and Traditional Breeds takes place at Borderway Mart, Carlisle on 16th and 17th September. The auctioneers are Harrison and Hetherington. The catalogue is available from H&H for �3 but is probably available on-line.

Carol, Graeme and I are planning to go down on the 17th, with our pocket money. Dan has threatened to immediately kill and eat anything I bring back! Bit harsh, I thought. We're taking my Ford Focus, so not much chance of bringing much back.

There are pigs, sheep, cattle, poultry and waterfowl for sale. I'm just going to look and note prices.

Honest.

TAS on air

Well, we had our first (and probably last) foray into the world of media today.

Nancy Nicolson, from BBC Scotland, came to record some stuff for "Grassroots". She was really nice and made it all seem easy - I suspect that there will be a lot of skill in the editing, though.

The hens took stagefright and skedaddled when Nancy tried to record some hen chatter. Cassius came and sat on my lap while we were recording but had to be removed when he started to throw up. No wonder it's said that you should never work with children and animals.

In the wrap (that's the technical term for "the end"), I got to say "This is Rosemary Champion for the BBC, Alloa". It will probably be cut but for a moment I was right up there with Kate Adie.

The programme will go out on Saturday 27th August at 6.30am, if you want to listen in.

TAS On Air

Next Tuesday we're expecting a visit from Nancy Nicolson, presenter of BBC Radio Scotland's Grassroots, a rural affairs and community programme. She's going to interview us for a programme about smallholding to be broadcast on Saturday 27th August (you can also listen on line, live and after the event).

To be honest we don't really know what to expect. I've been on the radio before, when ClacksWeb won a national award in 2002, but that was a brief 5 minute interview in a studio. So we'll just play it by ear, be ourselves and no doubt cringe when we listen in. I always said Rosemary had a good face for radio...

A new season begins

Well, the new season has begun. This weekend has been wonderful. The weather has been superb - dry and sunny and tolerably warm if you were working.

Our new strawberry plants arrived, along with the redcurrant and whitecurrant bushes, onion and shallot sets and a pile of seeds. For obvious reasons, the live plants were the priority. On Saturday, Dan built a new raised bed and filled it with top soil. The hens gave it a good going over before the plants were put in and netted. We're putting in two varieties of strawberries - Pegasus (midseason) and Florence (late). We chose these varieties (from The Organic Catalogue) because of their resistance to a number of diseases, as well as good yields of well flavoured fruit. We're planting ten of each variety - Pegasus this weekend and Florence when they arrive.

The redcurrant is Redstart, chosen because it flowers late and shoudl be OK in these northern climes. The white currant is White transparent, again a late flowering variety.

The shallots will go in next weekend. The variety we're using this year is Longor, a traditional French shallot with a lovely mild flavour (I quote). We always pickle shallots (courtesy of Delia Smith's Christmas book) and use them when pickling beetroot (also a la Delia). We've bought a kilo of sets- about 50 sets. We expect to get 5-6 shallots from each set. If we get a good crop, we'll save some for cooking, but the pickles come first.

Dan completed the extension of the second of four large raised beds on Sunday. We'll get topsoil delivered this week, and once it's in the bedds, give it a good load of FYM or compost. In fact, it must almost be time for Dan and his Dad to make another trip to the stables...

We've also been doing some work on the fruit trees. Dan's done a bit of pruning - we left it too late last year and some of the trees looked a bit odd. I took the tree guards off to let the hens have aroot around, then cleared the grass from around the tree, top dressed with bonemeal, added a good mulch of bark and replaced the guards. Even in the few days the guards were off, the bunnies had a good nibble. We've 13 trees - one died last year - and I got four done, so I'll get the rest done next weekend.

The hens are looking well apart from one who seems to be moulting, and she seems fine apart from looking a bit dishevelled. We'll have to think about additions soon.

Other than that, I had a bit of a tidy up, sweeping and pruning. One of our climbing roses was hammered in the recent gales, so it's been tidied up.

It was still light (ish) tonight at 5.30pm, so things are looking up. Soon we'll be able to get an hour in after work. So at least we'll have something to post on the website!!

Land Rover for sale

No, we're not dead, just busy! We've also decided to take something of a sabattical from the smallholding next year, to allow us to concentrate on other things - Rosemary endurance hosre-riding, me the Lisbon Marathon in April.

So, we're looking to sell our beloved Land Rover so we can buy something more practical for longer distances. (Not that it doesn't do long distances, just that it doesn't do them particularly quickly or cheaply!)

I've knocked up a page with details of the Landy together with a few photos - the rain was lashing down when I took them so they're not the best. If anyone is interested in what we think is a bargain (but then we would say that!) please contact us.

It's been a while...

Boy we've been slack around here! Over two weeks since our last post just isn't good enough - must try harder.

We've been busy though. Lifting and drying hundreds of onions (all that's needed now is the will to plait them), picking and shelling endless pea pods, dealing with what could only be described as a jungle of docks, lifting and drying mounds of spuds and preparing the garden for the local garden competition (we're in the 'biodiversity', or 'scruffy howff' category) in the little spare time we have had.

This morning we had a breakfast party with some friends - almost completely home produced, with scrambled eggs, streaky smoked bacon, herb sausages, grilled tomatoes and fried potatoes. If only I'd lifted those field mushrooms last week we could have done the whole shebang...

Taking a breather

We had a 'To Do' weekend this weekend, something I missed off of the long list of things needing done was work on this site - I've got a load of gallery images and recipes to add and there's been plenty happening which should have been logged here (if only for our own reference). It just seems to be a time of year when there's so much to do outside.

Anyway, I'm taking the time now over lunch for a quick update.

First up the belly pork which has been in brine for the past 72 hours was rinsed this morning and left in fresh, clean cold water where it will stay for 24 hours. Then it'll be hung to dry for 24 hours, then hopefully smoked for the same period. Then it'll hopefully be bacon :O)

The 2 joints in the Wiltshire cure look fantastic (we see them every time I change the cooler blocks which are keeping the temperature down). A deep, dark brown, almost black in fact. These will be removed from the cure tomorrow morning, then I'm undecided what to do with them. One for smoking maybe, the other left to dry then glazed and baked.

Yesterday we made sausages, and it was an unqualified success. The butcher had conveniently cubed all of the meat suitable for sausages, and the addition of some back fat, salt, pepper and breadcrumbs was all that was needed. We had a couple of sausage sandwiched at lunchtime just to test them, and they were fab. If I were a perfectionist I'd say they are still a tad lean, so we added a bit more fat for the second batch, which used oatmeal for rusk instead of breadcrumbs, and included a load of sage and thyme from the garden.

Things that are cropping heavily just now:

• Peas. The Pilot are nearly finished, but the Greenshaft are proving to be incredibly productive. We spent an hour on Saturday shelling peas, and I spent another hour this morning before work. I don't think we've picked even 10% of the total crop yet. The mangetout are also cropping faster than we can pick them.


• Raspberries continue to crop heavily too, but there aren't that many left now. My mother made some very good jam with a load, and the rest are in the freezer.


• The last of the blackcurrants were picked on Saturday, and Rosemary made about 10 jars of jam. There are some left and we're going to try mixing them with raspberries for an experiemental jam, tonight or tomorrow.


• The courgettes (Defender) are coming into full crop, and welcome they are too. We used to make a wonderful Brie and Courgette soup, but the year before last seriously overdid it and neither of us has fancied it since! Give it a couple of years and we might get a taste for it again.


• My potatoes are exceeding all expectations. Massive crops of Red Duke of York and Pink Fir Apple, and what looks like a good crop of Desiree to come. All the spuds are growing on land which was inhabited by pigs last year, so I think all that manure has been good for them.

Other crops on the horizon include tomatoes (the first super sweet 100 are just ripening), maincrop onions, which look to have done well, sprouting brocolli (the first sprouts are just about ready to taste) and beetroot.

It is a lot of work at this time of year, but with a lot of produce being frozen, pickled or preserved in some other way it's a good investment for the leaner months to come in autumn and winter.

Weekend update

It's been a busy few days, and an update here is overdue. A quick summary of activity:

Sown in the greenhouse: Catnep, sweetcorn, tarragon, more hungarian hot wax & sweet nardello (a bit late but we'll see how they do), sprouting brocolli (red spear & Spike), cabbages (vertus, savoy best of all & Holsteiner Platter), Courgette Defender.

Sown outside: Parnsip Tender & True, Carrots Parabel & Cubic, Peas (Greenshaft & Sugar Snap Norli), spuds Desiree. The early spuds are starting to show now.

Lots more to do tomorrow, when hopefully the rest of the spuds will get planted.

Have potted on tomatoes and peppers, and Rosemary planted out a load of lettuce. Most of the fruit trees are in blossom, ranging from bright white on the Morello cherry to a deep rose pink on one of the apples.

Pigs are doing well, they had a can and a half of Guiness and a pint of yoghurt tonight for a treat, both went down very well, if a little messily...

Wholesome Food Association

A part of our smallholding activities involves selling produce like eggs and pork to colleagues, friends and associates. Although we practice organic principles, using no chemicals anywhere and feeding only organic, gm-free feed, it just wouldn't be worth our while at the moment to consider organic certification. Enter stage left the Wholesome Food Association (thanks to the Smallholders On-line newsletter for the prompt).

Now, I've not taken the time yet to read through everything affiliation with the association involves, but at first glance it looks like an ideal alternative to organic certification for small-scale producers like ourselves, and would enable us to advertise the way we produce without risking trouble from the organic bodies. We'll do a bit more research and report back here.

The Beautifulest Gate

If this site had a strapline it would be "If we can do it, anyone can". As a child I was officially The Least Practical Boy in the World. Anything to do with using my hands that didn't involve a keyboard, joystick or mouse was beyond me, and my family despaired. But now behold my gate, crafted this morning by my own fair hands from the raw materials. It's not perfect, and I made a couple of elementary errors, but I'm proud of myself nonetheless.

The reason I was outside at 8am building said gate is that the pigs are going to be moving in the next few days, since they've done so well in their first pen. It's only a temporary move, to allow them to get some more grazing, and they will be moving back to their current pen in a couple of weeks. But it will allow me to fork over the current pen to expose the roots of the grass, and to loosen the pan that is already developing. So I better get on. The gate was just the first step, there are fence rails to be nailed and sheep netting to be pinned before the boys can pack up their belongings and flit.

Mad March

The inclement weather has kept us out of the garden today, with high, cold winds and torrential rain limiting activity to the greenhouse. The pigs have also taken to shelter, spending most of the day (apart from feeding time of course) in their ark. We've big plans for tomorrow though, weather permitting - the planting of several hundred onion sets, sowing of various herbs in the greenhouse and the blocking on of some tomato and pepper seedlings from 3/4 inch to 2 inch soil blocks.

Unfortunately my seed potatoes are struggling badly in the shed. In previous years they have been chitted in the house, but this year the redecoration of the front hall made me seek an alternative location. I think it's just been too cold at times in the unheated, uninsulated shed, and many of the shoots from the spuds have withered, and other tubers show signs of rot. I'll move them indoors tomorrow in the hope of rescuing some of them, but I'm resigned to buying more seed - very frustrating but I've learned an important lesson - ignore the cosmetic effect of chitting spuds indoors!

This morning I confined myself to the kitchen to prepare some lunch for a couple of (vegetarian) friends who were coming to see the pigs. The New Covent Garden Soup Company books provided the fare - Puy Lentil and Thyme soup, and a fantastic loaf of bread made with yoghurt which required no proving and was so simple to make. It's likely to become a regular!

I did find time this week to take some root cuttings from our most mature comfrey plant, and they have now been planted in the bed beside the permanent veg garden, so we now have 16 or so comfrey plants from which to make liquid feed and to act as a compost activator. We plan to sell the liquid feed and comfrey root cuttings in the future, so further expansion is likely later in the year once I've prepared a suitable site. http://www.comfrey.biz will be put to real use soon!

Bereavements

Today we had two departures from the smallholding. Sadly the first was one of our new hens. We discovered a trail of feathers this morning leading from our shed along the hedge, under which we found the dead hen. It was most likely a fox, and we think the hen failed to roost with the other hens for some reason, and when we shut them in at about 9pm she was probably under the shed, where the hens have established dust baths. We stopped counting the hens in their ark at night once the new arrivals had settled in - we'll now start doing so again. This is the 2nd hen we've lost this year to a suspected fox, and we need to be more vigilant to prevent it happening again.

The second loss was our old apple tree, which was here when we moved in. It was riddled with canker, and I think was responsible for it spreading to one of our new apple trees about 40 yards downwind in the orchard. Since canker is wind-bourne we couldn't risk it spreading further, so the chainsaw got a wee run this afternoon. The birds still have plenty of places to perch - the tree was right next to a mature hawthorn hedge - and there's a rowan tree we planted a couple of years ago nearby which is getting large enough for the smaller birds to start using it.

Weekend past

Well, another glorious but cold weekend passes, and we're a little closer to being ready for our new pigs which we collect in 3 weeks. On Saturday we finished the fencing, stapling sheep netting to the rails, and on Sunday gave the pig ark and the old chook ark a coat of water-based preservative. They'll get at least one more coat in the next few weeks, and if we have the time and will another before the autumn.

Although the ground remains too hard to sow direct, meaning the parsnips still aren't in, the aubergines (Long Purple) were sown yesterday in soil blocks in the greenhouse. This morning the temperature in the greenhouse was -3.5 degrees C, the lowest it's been this winter, so everythign tender is on a heated pad, which doesn't really effect the ambient temperature but does provide sufficient bottom heat to prevent damage to seedlings.

Finally we detected a few common poultry louse on a couple of hens, so all were treated with powder on Saturday, to be repeated every week for the next month. We had a similar problem last year, which we're certain was imported on 3 new hens we bought, but it's not serious and does mean the hens get used to being handled, which is no bad thing.

On the palm of my hand there's a blister

What a glorious day it was today in Central Scotland. The sun shone, warming the greenhouse to over 22 degrees, Rosemary and I spent the morning walking the dogs, taking Cas to the vet for a booster, and visiting the Farmers Market in Stirling where we bought:

• Veggies - carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, butternut squash
• Kippers
• Steak pies
• Soft cheese with smoked garlic, and smoked mature Scottish Cheddar
• A rabbit and some venison

This last will go nicely with the pheasant breasts and legs we have in the freezer, which we swapped for some pork chops. What we actually got were 4 entire pheasants, and the nice chap we bartered with kindly showed me how to extract the breasts and remove the legs quickly and easily.

In the late morning and all afternoon we worked outside, R clearing and tidying flower beds, pruning shrubs and potting up some flowers. I hired a rotavator and got last year's pig pen turned over ready for the sowing of seeds starting next month. Despite breaking the reverse cable and ending up with a large, painful blister on the palm of my right hand from the handle it proved very effective. One last trip round tomorrow (without reverse gear!) and a couple of weeks of the chooks roaming over it should see it in ideal condition for the growing season.

All in all a productive St. Valentines Day, and tomorrow promises more labour and hopefully a victory over Arsenal in the FA Cup!

Oh, and just for Armin here's tonight's fantastic sunset over the Campsie Hills:

Early morning spuds

Yesterday morning I managed to get an hour outside from 7am before getting ready for work. I love that time of day and am so happy that with every passing day we're getting extra minutes of light in the morning. It's strange that I seem to achieve more around the smallholding in the early hours than at any other time, yet at work I get my best results after about 4pm.

Anyway, I used the time productively and apart from getting the worms successfully into their new home I also moved the potatoes from their dark resting place into the light of our potting shed. In previous years during the months of February and March I've taken over the front hall of our cottage with egg boxes full of sprouting spuds, but this autumn we had the hall redecorated and I think Rosemary would flip if I filled it with spuds now.

The solution was an old, empty chest of drawers in our garage. The seed potatoes had been resting in the drawers in egg boxes for a couple of weeks, and on investigation yesterday were seen to have wee shoots emerging. That's the sign that they need to be moved from the dark to the light, and it was an easy task to remove the drawers from the chest and carry them into the shed where they'll be in the perfect environment to develop the strong shoots needed to give us a bumper crop.

A satisfactory weekend

There have been times on a winter's Sunday evening when I've looked back at the weekend past and reflected on how little I've achieved in the smallholding. There were some good reasons - inclement weather, family commitments, work commitments - but there were also bad excuses, and plain laziness. Since we both work full-time I tell myself that it's important to get some rest at the weekend, and I'm sure that's true, but it's always disappointing when you achieve less than you feel you should have, in whatever field.

No such worries this weekend. Yesterday as planned we hired a van, drove to Perth through the blizzards and found our way to McCash's Country Store. We'd never been before and I can highly recommend it to anyone in the area looking for anything for the outdoors, horses or pets. We collected our new hen ark, 4 bales of Hemcore to try as bedding for the hens and Smokey, and various other bits and pieces of clothing, horse treats and confectionary (they sell it all!). Drove home through the blizzards and found that Beatsons had delivered the sand, cement and gravel I'd ordered on Friday.

Today I got tore into the concrete mixing and got all but 3 of the fence posts for the new pig pen cemented in. Then it was inside to watch Chelsea beat Blackburn 3-2, the Arsenal beat Man City 2-1, a bath, some tea and an hour with Homer planning the vegetable beds for this coming year (he's improving quickly and when relaxed is a lovely cat). So tonight I have a sense of quiet satisfaction. Hopefully I can pull it off again next weekend - would another Chelsea win be too much to ask for too?

Winter chores

Today was the first opportunity for a good month that I've had to get outside and catch up on a few small jobs which have been lingering on the 'To Do' list. A great chance to blow away a few Xmas cobwebs too, and work off some of the excess calories from the past few days.

I'm growing autumn-planted onion sets for the first time (just 100 or so as an experiment) and they seem to be doing well. Weeded them, and the netting covering them was getting ragged, so some reshaping of the wire hoops and renetting was needed.

Moved a load of well-rotted horse manure onto the pen vacated by the pigs in October with the intention of turning it in with a rotavator next week, in preparation for vegetables this spring.

In March 2002 I planted several hundred feet of native hedging - dog rose, blackthorn and quickthorn, alder, hazel - which has been doing well on our northern and eastern boundaries. Pruned them down to about 2 1/2 feet this morning.