Tag Archives: smallholding life

Bidding 2018 a fond farewell

Sixteenth century poet and farmer, Thomas Tusser was right, dear Reader – Christmas really does come but once a year and this one seems to have been and gone in a flash. A blur of feasting and wrapping, cooking and chatting, drinking and games by the fire. The farmhouse always outdoes itself this time of year. Feelings of cosiness abound and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Good job too as there’s the small matter of who would feed and water the animals if we decided to up sticks for the Caribbean. I know I’d hate it, dear Reader. Really I would.

So what did a second Christmas at the farmhouse have in store for us? Well, it saw a homegrown goose gracing the table for the first time. Sadly there were no sprouts from the kitchen garden as the caterpillars got there first – better luck next year on the veg front I hope. I can’t deny that I was dreading the lead up to Christmas with the whole ‘Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat’ but although the geese weren’t nearly fat enough (too much free ranging and not enough slouching on the sofa watching a box set – the geese that is), they tasted rather marvellous. Raising a Christmas goose was a very steep learning curve but you know me, dear Reader, I like a challenge and this year’s efforts certainly haven’t put us off. However, I’ve jotted down a few things to remember. Not least sticking to plucking birds outside, dear Reader. I’m still finding feathers all over the house a week later and the slightest hum of a Michael Buble’s tune will see me reliving the horror of being covered head to toe in feathers and NOT in a Swan Lake Darcey Bussell kind of way. Spitting feathers has taken on a new literal meaning for me.

As much as I love Christmas and all its twinkly lights and feasting, my favourite part of this time of year comes between Christmas and New Year – the slow in-betweens, twixtmas, the lull. The time when I live on a diet of Christmas cake and tea, marmite toast and sloe gin negronis. The time when I shut out the outside world and nestle down with Jerry and the girls, losing myself in a haze of cosy fires and good books. It’s when I remember what I’m grateful for the most.

When we drag ourselves away from the fire, we’ve also been spending a fair bit of time with our three new girls – Betsy, Molly and Meryl. I think that everyone thought it utter madness to get Shetland sheep (they are not known for their ability to cooperate or stay put) but these wily woollies have cast a spell on us all. Even Jerry. As they rush to greet us every time we walk up to the field, I can’t help but feel that sheep at the farmhouse is the icing on the Christmas cake, dear Reader. As with all the arrivals on our smallholding, I can’t imagine the place without them. There’ll be more excitement in the New Year when one more ewe will join us – Myrtle – and we’ll see the bouncing and bleating of our own tiny lambs in 2019.

On the whole, 2018 has been good to us. More renovations, more writing for me. Primrose turning 10, Poppy reaching 7. I must speak to the management. The time just keeps ticking away with no regard for a mother’s need to hit the pause button occasionally, dear Reader. Despite numerous attempts to test whether dogs actually share the whole cat nine lives thing, Monty has managed to survive 2018 relatively unscathed whilst Dora has perfected the art of the withering look to cope with his daily idiocy. The ducks have escaped a cassoulet, the hens seem to love Roger the cockerel and last but by no means least, Jerry retains his title as ‘the most patient man in the universe’ even though his wife tests him with her farmhouse schemes weekly. If you’ve any wishes for 2019 going spare, do offer them up for Jerry. I’ve asked for another dog, dear Reader……

Finally, there’s you. A hearty thanks to all those who still read this little blog, who follow on Instagram or Twitter, champion my scribblings in various mags and share them on social media. It really does mean a lot so thank you. Without further ado, I’m off to begin bribing Jerry with a martini and ushering in another year with a large gin – well you wouldn’t expect anything less, would you? So from me to you, here’s to 2019 – may it be the best yet for us all. Happy New Year, dearest Reader!

Summer’s end

You’ll have to forgive me, dear Reader.  Honestly I only crept through the door in the back of the wardrobe for five minutes for a little peace and quiet and next thing I know, spring has sprung and summer was giving us a last hurrah.  I didn’t mean to stay in Narnia so long but somehow the longer I stayed away, the more I was able to focus on the most important things or rather people in my life.  I’ve been working on a series of new projects at the writing desk and at the farmhouse too so the outside world has been lost to me for a time.  Too often I forget to just enjoy the moment.  Taking an extended break from the blog was not really part of the plan initially but I think it’s helped me to focus on what I do want to achieve and not worry about dividing myself into thousands of parts in order to get things done.  To be honest I wasn’t sure that if the blog was perhaps relevant any more or whether or not it would be missed if it just slipped away quietly.  A crisis of confidence shall we say, dear Reader.  So this little break has made me have a long hard think about where I’d like to be and how I move forward with my writing.  In short it’s been good for me.  Before I knew it, the time whooshed past and I’d no idea what or if I’d missed anything important in the land of blogs and social media and magazine columns or life in little Insta squares.  So thank you for bearing with me.  I promise not to be away again for so long.

I am sure you are wondering what’s been happening at the farmhouse?  Well we’ve had a few new arrivals and we reached our first milestone – 1 year at the farmhouse.  I still can’t quite believe it but somehow this beautiful little plot and house are ours and although we still have a long way to do in terms of renovating it, we are all so very happy.  Oh the things I have to tell you, dear Reader.

Since the ducks arrived, there has been nothing but trouble.  They are bonkers and such excellent time wasters.  Luckily they are so adorable otherwise I’d envisage crispy duck on the horizon.  On the hen front, we lost our lovely Cream Legbar hen Marj and we decided to go in search of another blue egg hen, ending up with Minnie and her husband Winston.

Things didn’t turn out so well with Winston sadly and he began attacking everyone and everything in sight, resulting in drawing blood almost every day from one of us.  The children were too terrified to even collect the eggs.  So he had to go.  With no hope of rehoming him because of his aggression, he ended up in the pot.  Not an easy decision but a necessary one.  I remain ever in awe of our girls that they aren’t horrified by the idea of animals loved and cared for becoming food for the table.  Who would have thought that Margot and Jerry could produce such country folklings?

Then came the geese.  Three plump Embden beauties we thought we’d call George, Lucy and Martha.  As seems to now be the way of all things Margot and Jerry HQ, we ended popping over to see our log man and leaving the wood yard with more livestock.  I seem to be on speed dial for rehoming animals.  Turns out that Martha was actually an Arthur and Lucy more of a Luke.  So we have renamed them the Three Tenors – Luciano, Placido and Jose.  Much more fitting when they offer up a merry honk every time someone appears on the driveway!  They are all looking rather less muddy these days and have been a welcome addition to the pond.  Although the ducks are rather less keen on their daily raids on the feeder and bolshy teenage gosling antics.  We had hoped for the tiny splish of webbed feet when Daisy our most maternal duck sat on her eggs for a week or two.  Overnight, she lost them all to a rather cunning rat or stoat.  A rather sad end to spring but I’ve come to accept that nature is all part of farmhouse life.  We’ve promised Poppy and Primrose an incubator for next year.

The lavender harvest was a wonderful success and I am eternally thankful to all who purchased wreaths and bunches from us this summer.  It’s true what they say about small business owners – we do do a little dance every time someone buys something from us.  I couldn’t have managed cutting rows and rows all by hand without a lot of help from friends and family and it has made me more determined than ever to see this little farmhouse business idea succeed.

I’ve also formed a lovely partnership with the talented Saskia from Saskia’s Flower Essences and this year, she took some of our lavender to distill into oil and hydrosol to make her wonderful Easy Sleep spray.  I’m a great believer in the power of plants and flowers and this has certainly been a hit in our household – think This Works but better.  Saskia has a magic touch.

There’ll be a little more before Christmas with some firelighters and a few other bits and bobs but for now, lavender season is well and truly at an end.  The four of us have breathed a huge sign of relief not to have to pick, make wreaths or handle lavender for a wee while.  Watch this space as we develop a new website for Cricket Lavender next year.

Carrying on the countryside capers, our new kitchen garden has been a stonking success.  I’m quite certain that Jerry and I might not have been quite so grumpy about the back breaking work of turning a patch of turf into a vegetable garden if we’d known just how much one small patch could produce.  We’ve had enough to feed half the village, dear Reader!

From wonky carrots and mammoth marrows to leaks of another kind and time travel.  As the house renovations rumble on, we experienced our usual chaos when the attic was cleared to make way for new insulation.  Turns out that all our ancient pipes are in desperate need of replacing and as the attic was cleared, a rather large leak was found that we’re lucky hadn’t brought down the ceilings.  Goodness only knows how many years it had been gushing water.  Emergency plumber drafted in, I prayed that our attic related calamities might be at an end.  However, the farmhouse had other plans, dear Reader.  In the space of a few hours, to add to the Cluedo-esque lead piping, we battled with a couple of loose cannon hornets as well as accidentally scooping up two live bumblebee nests.  The silver lining?  A miraculously intact copy of the Daily Mail from 3rd October 1923 was found, complete with front page story featuring a certain moustached German politician by the name of Hitler alongside another headline about a cow rampaging through a village and injuring three people.  A Cow’s Day Out indeed.  The paper has been framed and will be hung in the downstairs loo for posterity, joining another find in the form of  a yellowing edition of The Sun from July 1980 with the headline Russian Spy Plot.  You’ll be pleased to hear that the bumblebees made a great escape too and were collected by a bee man under cover of darkness to be rehomed in a local copse, dear Reader.

In short as you can see, dear Reader, the last few months have been eventful in many ways.  As autumn creeps in, I am back at the writing desk and the house is quiet except for dogs snoring.  Don’t tell Poppy and Primrose but I do miss them when we are back to our old routines of school and work.  However I know that September always brings new adventures, dear Reader and I’m ready for them.

PS – if you’re on Instagram, I’ve started a little hashtag to curate all the mists and mellow fruitfulness of autumn.  I’d love you to join in too – just add #usheringautumnin  to your post and I’ll choose favourites each week to share on a Friday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bee Happy

With whisps of autumn in the air and summer sun now a distant memory (oh the irony when we had a mostly wet August, dear Reader…..), I can’t help but miss the heady scent of our lavender.  After what felt like a lifetime of picking, we still didn’t quite manage to harvest the whole field before the rain set in for the rest of summer.  However, the hard work was worth it and early mornings picking are now a distant memory until the purple spires appear again next year.  I did get the chance to daydream about the field looking like we had stepped into Provence one last time though when the lovely new quarterly journal Creative Countryside asked me to write a little something on lavender and its folklore before I begin to pen all things autumnal.

From the spoils of our harvest, we’ve managed to keep a fair bit in the shed where it’s been left hung out to dry.  Its soothing powers will last a little longer in the form of the homemade lavender wreaths we sold to friends and family as well as lavender bags to hang in our moth-ridden cupboards.  There’s even a batch of my very bath salts to enjoy once hot baths are back on the agenda following the instalment of the new boiler, not forgetting the leftover flowers we’ve reserved for lavender tea.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I’m already planning a few other little lavender strings to my bow for next year.  Our first harvest from the field also got me thinking about getting started on a long held smallholding ambition of mine too, dear Reader.  Keeping bees.

One of the best things about walking through the field was listening to the hum of the huge numbers of bees that visited our garden daily.  Everything I read of late seems to point towards encouraging more bees into the garden – whether it’s planting bee borders or sowing wild flower meadows, installing nest boxes for solitary species of bees or rescuing thirsty and hungry bees with sugar syrup.  Since bees do so much for us, it only seems fair that we return the favour, dear Reader.  My father was an amateur beekeeper in his youth and Poppy and Primrose love hearing the stories he tells of how he used to take his friend’s bees for a holiday to the heather moorland on the roof rack of his car.  I think they were even stopped by the police, on one occasion, who quickly got back into their Panda when they realised the potentially angry cargo being transported.  Travelling bees aside, his beekeeping tales have always made me wish for my own hive and moving to our own little farmhouse has given us a great opportunity to expand our smallholding repertoire, dear Reader.

Enter Sara Ward from Hen Corner, all round lover of the good life, keeper of bees and hens, vegetable grower and urban farmer.  Sara and I have known each other through the powers of Twitter and Instagram since I began my blog properly in….gulp…2013 and after rather a lot of tweets, advice on hens, growing veg and a good deal of mutual blog post sharing, it has taken us nearly 4 years to meet in person!  So imagine my joy when Sara sent us an invitation to come to one of her Bees for Children courses in the summer.

Sara’s urban smallholding at Hen Corner is a marvel.  With 20 hens, 2 colonies of bees, a plentiful vegetable and fruit garden and micro-bakery producing bread for sale in her local community, Sara and her family make the good life look easy from their Victorian terrace in West London.  You really wouldn’t think sitting in Sara’s back garden that you were in London at all.  It’s a real testament to just how much you can achieve in a small urban outdoor space.

So whether you want to learn the art of wood carving, to make your own preserves, bake bread, keep hens or learn to charm bees, Sara runs a whole host of courses and workshops helping to encourage others to give smallholding life a go regardless of how large or small their plot is.  What I love most about her is her determination and commitment to encouraging the younger generation to think ‘big’ when it comes to urban farming and she spends a lot of her time as a regular feature in local school programmes.

Brilliantly hands-on, Sara’s Bees for Children course aims to get children up, close and personal with nature’s buzzy little friends.  Sara explains how the bees live and work, their importance when it comes to our own food, how honey is made and how to handle bees as well as how to spot the queen.

Fully kitted out in mini beekeeping suits and rubber gloves, Poppy and Primrose were encouraged to hold a frame and check it over with Sara’s help but if you don’t want to get that close, there are plenty of other bee activities to keep your children entertained as well as the all important honey taste testing.  Now who wouldn’t want the chance to scoff a load of award-winning honey, dear Reader?!

We all thoroughly enjoyed it and got to try some of Just Bees’ new deliciously infused spring water drinks too – all made with, yes you guessed it dear Reader, a drop of honey.  If you’re looking for a way to encourage bees in your garden, then the wonderful people at Just Bee Drinks have started a campaign to help save Britain’s bees with a free bee-friendly planting guide for your garden and free bee friendly wild flower seeds to sow – all you have to do is fill in a simple form online and they’ll send you all you need to claim your free seeds.  Quick, easy and so good for all those bees out there – they need more of us to do it, it would seem.  So get buzzy, dear Reader!

With bees on the brain all the way home, we are determined to get some of our own bees next year.  I’ve been looking into local beekeeping courses already so I can learn more of the nitty gritty I’ll need to start out on my own.  Do look Hen Corner up if you are looking for a fun day out with the children, dear Reader.  The girls loved it and I shall definitely be popping back to visit Sara again soon.  Hive fives all round I’d say….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thyme for action

Every since we moved in, Jerry and I have been chomping at the bit to get started in the garden. Unable to really tackle much inside the house by ourselves until the bigger works have been done, the jungle surrounding our flint and brick beauty seemed a good place to start, especially as we were beginning to lose the children amongst the foliage.  The first job – tackling knee high grass.  Typically, as soon as we started using the sit on mower we inherited, it proved to be beyond repair and so with 3.5 acres of grass to mow, it was time to bite a rather expensive bullet.  Jerry fell in love with a green and yellow number in two seconds flat when he heard the word ‘mulch’, having only just finished professing undying love for an old Massey Ferguson which belongs to a neighbour.  Honestly, he’ll be coveting their combine next, dear Reader!

First step, turning the paddocks back into….well….paddocks.  Our lovely farming neighbours helped out with that one since we didn’t have any clue as to how and when to bale.  It was a race against time to get it all topped, dried and then baled before the rains came and we were hugely grateful for all their help.  “Bale in June…silver spoon”.  With a rather long list of repair jobs to be done inside and out, we could do with it raining a bit of silver.  Answers on a postcard as to how long you’re supposed to wait until that happens, dear Reader…..

We bid a sad farewell to the giant 100 year old willow tree that was growing into the water course, burrowing under the house and blocking out all the light.  Never easy to make the decision to fell a beautiful tree but the damage it would continue to do if allowed would mean that our poor little house might not stay upright for very long.

Fret not dear Reader, we will be planting more trees elsewhere to honour its passing and the hundreds of logs we now have as a result will keep us warm and cosy for years to come, once seasoned.  All part of the countryside cycle.

Raspberries were found in the undergrowth and quickly gobbled up by Poppy and Primrose, alongside literally baskets full of gooseberries – traces of a long lost fruit cage.

Squirrels moved in shortly after this discovery and stripped all the apples, plums and one lonely pear from the elderly fruit trees.  I asked neighbours what to do about them, thinking they’d have some ancient country wisdom to impart such as burying hair at the base of each trunk which features in a battered countryside almanac I found in an old bookshop.  The resounding answer to dealing the squirrel issue?  An air rifle.  It seems that that may well be next on the list, dear Reader.

Then there was the small matter of a whole field of lavender just outside the back door.  At first glance, the mounds buried under large patches of grass looked altogether done in.  Cue, Margot’s new toy.  A shiny strimmer.  Well Jerry can’t have all the fun, dear Reader!  Two weeks of daily strimming later and the lavender finally started to look more like a lavender field again. I can’t tell you the joy of seeing it all turn varying hues of purple and blue.  I’d better not mention the fact that not a lot else got done in those two weeks….including all the work I was supposed to be doing.  Let’s not dwell on that too much, dear Reader, or the fact that I very nearly strimmed my legs off at several points as the soporific heady scent in the midday sun reduced me to what I am now calling ‘strimmer’s coma’.  I did however perfect a new summer look…..farmer’s arms.  It’s all about the swings and roundabouts, isn’t it, dear Reader?

So with the lavender now well on its way to becoming a slice of Provence in Hampshire, we’ve taken to picnicking in the rows at tea time.  Heavenly hours spent in the sunshine with bees buzzing and butterflies wafting around us.  I am trying not to think about the harvest, dear Reader.  It would be fair to say that so far lavender bags will be featuring heavily under the Christmas tree this year.

A timely day out from the slog of the garden work at the launch of the Hampshire Food Festival with Hampshire Fare saw Jerry and I green with envy at the marvellous kitchen garden at Chewton Glen.

With a month of events to enjoy, producers and suppliers to go and visit and tours of vineyards, breweries orchards and farms on the menu, make sure if you’re in Hampshire that you get out and about to enjoy our county’s fabulous bounty.  With canapés with Masterchef’s Jane Devonshire and Juanita Hennessey on offer as well as Gin masterclasses at Berry Bros & Rudd or four courses in a Riverside Yurt, there’s something for everyone.  Still to come and top of my list?

Vineyards of Hampshire 5th Annual Wine Festival

Pop up Picture House with Rick Stein

Cherry Orchard Tours and Cherry Market at Blackmoor Estate

‘Sausage and Mash’ at  Parsonage Farm Charcuterie  and  

Hampshire Summer Fizz at Gilbert White

With the last two weeks of the Festival left, get your diary out and book away, dear Reader!

Inspired by Chewton Glen’s marvellous veg patch, I now have even grander plans for our own.  I seem to have spent half my life recently trawling through Pinterest thinking of ways to create a pretty allotment patch for our new smallholding life!  You can imagine Jerry rolling his eyes already, can’t you dear Reader? Grand schemes afoot, the hens are doing a sterling job of preparing the land for us already.   Scratching up moss and laying the foundations of good soil with their manure.  I would like to say that we’ll be digging the soil pretty soon, ready for planting up with some autumn and winter vegetable seedlings but Jerry tells me that this is wishful thinking.  To be honest, getting the earth moving will be a much needed distraction in the next month as the scaffolding goes up and roof repair work begins.  Jerry and I won’t have any hair or nails left at this rate.  The last few days of monsoon weather have had us reaching for the buckets and umbrellas inside again.

To keep up with our five-a-day habit in the meantime, a lovely local supplier Brimfields have been impressing us with stunning veg boxes full to bursting with deliciously fresh fruit and vegetables. Such a plentiful box for £12 had me whooping with delight when Ross from Brimfields delivered it to our front door for the first time – seasonal, fresh, local and the perfect amount for the week without the need to top up as I’ve often found with veg box schemes in the past.  I’m not sure Ross was quite as delighted to encounter a Margot with no makeup and a towel on my head having just stepped out of the shower though!

Brimfields deliver in and around Winchester but if you’re not on their delivery route, then pop down to their Veg Shed in Kings Worthy, at the King Charles pub just off Lovedon Lane, to stock up.

They are open two days a week – Wednesdays from 08:30 until 12:30pm and Fridays from the same times.  There you’ll find fresh local free-range eggs, fresh bread as well as lots of lovely local produce like Hill Farm Apple Juice and The Tomato Company passata, ketchup, chutney, relish and juice, alongside local jam, honey and cakes.  Well worth a visit.

Summer holidays in full swing, I shall have Poppy and Primrose joining the ground force team at HQ – that’s if I can tear them away from their latest den building expedition.  It looks like I shall have to bribe them with a few more of these if I’m ever going to get them to help me pick the lavender, dear Reader.

As for my motivation?  I’m already plotting something altogether more Margot, dear Reader….. Anyone for lavender gin?