Category Archives: growing

Winter

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We have had a truly exceptional winter this year, heavy snow, – 16, rivers freezing over, challenging and delightful.

We adore the snow, it seems to tap into a childlike desire to run around, slide down hills, instigate battles, dive into it… It is also so dramatic and the landscape is altered  incredibly, wiping away familiar landmarks. Another magical transformation was at night when no torch was required simply because of the bright moon and the snow creating a monochrome day light.

The honorary Tamsin bench

The cold and dark of winter creates a number of challenges for us, including keeping the fire in over night, limited lighting, frozen water pipes, keeping the chicken’s water liquid..but it’s all a challenge and you go to the river and get water for the chickens from there, and you go back to the old washing round the neighbours again..

It has been bitter however the yurt has continued to keep us very warm and provided us with all the shelter we need really.

Our veg garden, on a slightly less optimistic note, is looking a tad sad. Plenty has died in the polytunnel which in previous years has seen us through, including our kale. The brassicas outside have turned to moosh from being under all that snow. The celeriac appear to have survived and the Jerusalem artichokes seem to be thriving…

The cats ..(especially for my aunt Judy!) are doing well.. Rusty is currently sat on my lap, leaking an odious smell one end and a purr the other.. Gilbert is also doing well.. he has had a bad eye all year from diving into the long grass (idiot) but this seems to be finally healing.

Finally onto the build.. we are currently waiting for the weather to be just a little bit kinder and to sort out the bottom of the drive before we proceed with the build. This winter has however been one of optimism and talking about woodburning stoves, back boilers, hydroelectric, underfloor heating, solar water heating, pantries, kitchens, sunrooms, floors…etc etc!

An update for the summer

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Well time has just flown by and now it’s almost the end of the summer. We’ve had an incredibly dry one, though the last month has seen a bit of rain. The place is looking great though with the vegetable beds really coming into their own and there is a ridiculous amount of food coming out of them. The squash have been very good this year, we tried a sunshine squash, which is a lovely yellow and has a really sweet flavour, also we tried something different with the butternut squash this year and put them at the front of the polytunnel, they are the best looking ones we’ve ever had! This year we have also had a real success with the tomatoes, we really suffered from blight the last couple of years, but not so this time round and we… well I am really enjoying sweet juicy tomatoes with olive oil.

Our system of piling cut grass on the beds seems to be an effective way of mulching the beds, we have found that the soil has managed to retain some of its moisture at least.

Our orchard is doing ok, though the pesky crows and magpies are ripping the fruit to shreds, I think we will have to net it next year. The blackbirds have also discovered the delights of our rasberries, however we had so many it really has not been a problem. For one glorious month we couldn’t keep up with our strawberries, even though the deer had eaten the leaves back to the ground, they recovered astonishingly well and produced a fantastic crop. What was a lovely surprise was the old apple trees, which we assumed were dying gracefully, have produced a huge amount of fruit this year. We have laid the hedges around them and clearly they had just been struggling for a bit of light.

Theknapweed in the meadow meadow has really come into its own this year, the whole field is humming with life, about 50 goldfinches are living off it at the moment, they hang from the knapweeds like little jewels, a fantastic sight. As you walk through clouds of insects such as bees and hoverflies are humming away whilst the grasshoppers sing in the undergrowth.

We also have a new kitten, he turned up in the log pile a few weeks back, with oil on his face and looking pretty sorry for himself, he’s currently playing round my feet and trying to climb up my top. Looks like he’s staying, though our other cat is not entirely sure about the whole thing.

And finally James has had time to sort out his website for his work www.seren-it.co.uk – the poor thing has been working ridiculous hours.

June in the Vegetable Garden

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Well it’s been a little while since our last blog update, but the explosion of  life that has happened out there in the meanitime has kept us a little distracted.  It serves me right really. I remember saying in May how good it was that, this year we were on top of things, after two hard years of getting the land back into  shape. And then things really started to grow. Which is great, obviously. When  you’re managing the land for both wildlife and food production, things growing is  clearly a good thing. But all the stuff growing where you don’t need it to grow,  takes up as much, if not more, of our time as the things we’re nurturing. With a vegetable patch the size of ours, even just mowing the paths in between the raised beds takes a while.

The potatoes and asparagus that we planted at Easter are now doing really well,  despite the pretty serious lack of rain in the meantime and the late frost that  nipped the tops of some of the spuds that decided to make an early dash for it.  The leeks that we planted seem to be settling in nicely too.Whereas in previous  years here, we haven’t had to worry about watering outside, we are having to do a  bit. The newly planted asparagus crowns probably would have died without a bit of  water early on. And now that some of the potatoes are starting to flower, it’s  worth thinking about watering them to help the tuber growth. It’s good to pick the  flowers off too. For the most part we are using the water out of the ducks’ pond,  which is quite rich in nitrogen because of, well you know what, but we have had to  get the hose out as well. Our approach is generally to try to restrict watering to  the early growth stages and then to give things an occasional really good soak.  This allows the water to deeply penetrate the soil and encourages the plants’  roots to follow it down.

Most of our onions have been harvested now. Lots of shallots. Lyndsey has been  curing them over the last week. That’s essentially involved spreading the whole  plants out in wooden crates and letting them dry naturally on the dining table in  the yurt. The onions were dried slighltly differently. They were gently lifted and  just left to sit on the ground until the stems went dry. I think we may well now  have just about enough onions to last until the next lot are ready. The garlic  that we planted in the Autumn is looking nice and plump now. We couldn’t resist  and picked one recently, but it wasn’t quite ready. The cloves hadn’t fully  separated, but it was really tasty nonetheless. Won’t be long.

We’ve planted purple sprouting broccoli outside; a favourite of ours that will  produce its lovely florets around March next year. We’ll probably plant some salad  leaves amongst the broccoli; it’s a good use of the space while the broccoli is  still relatively small, yet large enough to provide some protection to the tender  lettuce leaves. We’ve also planted a couple of varieties of summer squash outside,  hoping that we have more favourable conditions for them than last year.

Our strawberries have been a big success this year, despite the ones outside  having been chewed to the ground by the herd of red deer that pass through  occasionally. Having created a mesh cloche to protect them, they’ve made a good  recovery and produce enough fruit for us to have a good handful each every day. The currants, both red and black, are just beginning to ripen, and it won’t be  long before the gooseberries are sweet enough to pick. There are loads of summer  raspberries forming now and the bees have really loved their flowers this year,  though they are still some way off being ready. Soooo looking forward to that!

Wow, all that great produce and I haven’t even mentioned the polytunnel…