the accidental smallholder :: diary archives

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.