Happy 2018!

Hello everyone!
I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. It's scary how quickly that passed by, and now almost half of January is gone already...

Well, since my last post we've had pretty much everything go wrong. Bad luck is meant to come in threes, but we've had more than this so we've obviously upset somebody!
Our washing machine broke...multiple times, and has just decided to again after we thought it was fixed, so that's annoying. On a positive note, it was still just about in warranty, usually things wait until about a week past the date, so that's a bit of a silver lining I suppose. Lots of other smaller things went wrong as well, such as the chainsaw and lawnmower etc, but the biggest thing which has made life quite stressful has been the power failing.

Random picture of some of our bulbs sprouting to add a note of positivity!

For reasons unknown to us so far, the power has been pants. We think the batteries might be fried, but also the inverter is playing up. Whether that's due to the batteries or not I don't know. Now, this alone wouldn't be the end of the world, however, our back up generator is also broken...sigh.
Again, no idea why, it's been taken apart and put back together by various people and had money thrown at it, but despite seeming in tip top condition, it's being a moo. Even worse, it sometimes starts and sometimes doesn't, it sometimes runs for an hour and then turns off for no reason that we can see. It's being very temperamental.

It's been a very long and tedious month, and the problems aren't solved yet, so I think we'll have a bit more stress to come, but I'll just say thank you to everyone who has been helping us either try to fix things, through moral support or by giving us a rest by feeding us and doing our washing! Thank you, we love you and appreciate you very much. :)

In amongst fixing things (or trying to) and cursing, we've been starting a few jobs. Not many are finished due to interruptions of things failing, but it's nice to have some progress anyway.

We've finally covered the polytunnel! We started to think that would never happen, so that feels like a nice achievement. Thank you Hilary for helping with that. We've made one door, but need to make another for the other end, but this at least can be fitted in as and when, unlike covering the hoops where we needed a still, dry day, so I'm happy we can do it now. :)

Polytunnel with plastic covering

We've also been pruning back the established trees. This will be good for the trees as they had some rubbing branches and will mean they can better survive strong winds, but also gives us some firewood once it's seasoned. There's still a lot more to do on this front, but I think we're making good progress.

Field maple having a haircut

We thought this was also a good time to look at our wood storage, as we've whittled down our supply a fair bit, so have room to shift things about. The way we currently stack logs is brilliant for seasoning and drying the wood, it's proved to be a lot more effective than we thought, so I'm feeling quite proud in that sense. One problem with it though, it that the wood isn't near the house. Until it was icy outside, this hadn't been an issue, but the bad weather made us re-think the idea of a wood store right by the back door. (We've been contemplating this since we moved in, but it hadn't been a priority).

Now, we could continue stacking the wood as we are, and then move the logs into a store we build once they're seasoned, but this does mean stacking the logs more than once and so is unnecessary work when we already have too much to do. We decided we don't want to add to the workload, so how about a stacking system where you can move the pile of logs as an entirety into the store, then simply pop a new lot in the slot once it's run out...

This brought us to the idea of wire cages on wheels;

New log storage idea

So we've bought a few old supermarket trolley things. :)

They're strong enough to hold loads of logs, but have good airflow to allow the logs to season inside. We'll then build a log store outside our house which is big enough to house one trolley and switch it out for a new one when we need to. I just hope I'm strong enough to wheel it when it's full!

Wildlife wise, it's been very noisy with the swans around! It's nice to see them flying over our land in little groups and hear them honking away to each other, we are lucky to live near a lovely river. :)

We also had a little vole keep us company whilst we had a bonfire, he was very cute. The silly thing kept trying to go towards the fire and we lost sight of it in the end, so I hope it didn't do anything daft.

I've not seen Barney for a while again, maybe we've been too noisy with trying to start the generator and things. Hopefully he's still around and about, I still want to get a good photo!

River by our house looking very full

Well, I hope everyone else has had better luck to start the year with, and I also hope our luck improves soon, I'll let you know next month!

Snow way!

During this last month we had a bit of deja vu. We had a wren visitor inside the house, just like last year! This time the poor thing somehow managed to come inside without us noticing just before we went to visit family for a few days. Terrible timing for the wee thing to have an explore. Luckily, I still keep my watering can in the kitchen to save water, and it was full, so the wren had access to water, and we had lots of spiders for it to eat. It had also found a butterfly which it had munched on, we must have some trying to hibernate in the house again. This meant that we came home to a very healthy looking bird, but lots of little bird poos and munched insects around the house! I'm so glad it was OK though, phew!

Poor butterfly eaten by the wren

The weather has been pretty windy which has meant the wind turbine has come into its own again. :) We'd have been pretty stuck without it on some days where it's been so grey there's been negligible solar. We've also had quite a lot of snow! It hardly ever snowed where we used to live, so it's quite exciting for us, although it does mean extra fuel for the fire is needed. We'll probably have to cut some trees back for next years firewood soon.

Snow!!!

I've been spending spare time making firelighters in various forms. It's quite a nice meditative activity to do when I'm too tired to do bigger jobs, but is still a lot more useful than sitting and watching TV.
These are some of the things I've found to be best at starting fires;

• Pinecones (Thank you Hilary for collecting these for us!)
• Bundles of very thin sticks and conifer fronds tied together with waxy string
• Egg boxes filled with sawdust and melted wax, then cut into segments
• Rolls of cardboard into log shapes
• Toilet roll tubes stuffed with newspaper

Waxy sawdust-filled eggbox firestarters

With the cold weather, the birds have been grateful for the food we're leaving them. One bird feeder wasn't getting depleted as fast as the others and I was wondering why, as it used to be a popular spot. It turns out a little robin is being very territorial and guarding it from the other birds! Greedy thing!

During a lot of the miserable days, I've been hiding indoors and decorating. It's the bedroom's turn this time. After painting (something I seem to have done an awful lot of lately...) Iain and I managed to fit a carpet successfully by ourselves, we feel quite proud! It's lovely having a gradually more homely house to come back to after a day in the field. :)

Fitting our bedroom carpet

To cause maximum disruption and to ensure that the rest of our house is a big mess, at the same time as bedroom decoration, we're also building a conservatory. Our bungalow is quite a small L shape, so we're filling in the corner with another room. We're hoping it'll be warm enough to have a table out there, so then we can have more space in the kitchen, as that's far too cramped for a working farmhouse.

Amazingly, despite the bad weather, we still have some veg! Not much, but the chard and carrots are still doing well which I wasn't expecting this late in the year so I'm feeling very chuffed. Something has been nibbling the tops of the carrots, probably mice, as there are lots of them about, but it's not affecting the root so we all win :)

Purple carrots still doing well in December

Now I think it's time for me to think about preparing for Christmas! I've done pretty much nothing so far, except bring our living tree into a workshop so it isn't too shocked by the warmth of the house... lots of presents to buy and make, wreaths to make and decorations to put up. I hope you're all a lot more organised than I am!

Merry Christmas everyone! :)

A year on...

We've now been living in our new home for a whole year! It's hard to believe as time has gone so fast, yet at the same time, this has become very much our home and it feels like we've been here for a long time.

Walking around the house and land, it has changed quite a bit during our time here, even though sometimes it feels like progress has been slow. There's still a lot to do, but then this is a lifetime project, so really we're doing OK. :) Sometimes, I suppose, it's good to take that step back to really look at things from a different perspective.

This last month has really seen a drop in temperature and we're now well into Autumn. A good time for bonfires to burn weeds!

Enjoying a weed-burning session, complete with melting marshmallows!

We've had our first frost and then some, so that's seen the end of some of our crops. The lettuce we managed to eat the last of about a week before the frost, so that was good timing! The courgettes and squash died off, so I quickly picked the unripe fruit to have as baby veg. I counted up all the big butternuts and we have enough for one squash a week until spring, so that's not bad going! (Now we'll see if they last that long... yumyumyum!)

A few more squash before the frosts came.

The chard is still going strong, and there are still lots of purple carrots as well as nasturtiums, so we've not reached hungry stage yet. Although I'll be sad to say goodbye to the beans.
As a lot of the crops have died back, there's now a lot of empty space waiting to be re-planted. I thought this would make a good opportunity to talk a bit about crop rotation.

There are a few ways to rotate your crops, depending on what you want to grow, and how much etc. I'm choosing a 4 year rotation system. This means that each bed will be growing the same crop in year 5 as it grew in year 1. This is generally long enough to discourage any pests or diseases which may otherwise hide in the soil, ready to attack the crops the following year. It also means nutrients don't get depleted, as different veg use different proportions of minerals to grow.

There is an exception to the rotation system, which is long term crops which come back year after year. I have a few of these, such as rhubarb, asparagus and raspberries. These have beds of their own and so are ignored when rotating crops.

The other 4 beds are divided as follows;

1. Brassicas These are vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and turnips. 
2. Roots These are potatoes, carrots and parsnips etc, it also includes veg such as tomatoes and aubergines as, although they're not root crops, they're closely related to potatoes and so share many of the same diseases, such as blight.
3. Onions This group includes leeks and garlic and also courgettes and squashes, as these are prone to similar diseases, such as mildew.
4. Legumes These are beans and peas etc. This group is particularly useful to grow in poor soil, or before hungry plants, such as brassicas, as they 'fix' nitrogen in the soil, actually improving the ground, rather than depleting it.

Newly planted beds 

I've now begun my rotation, by planting out a few hundred onions, I went for about twice as many as last year, as that wasn't nearly enough, we'll see how this lot do! They went where there were some tomatoes and potatoes in the first place, so hopefully they'll be happy and disease free. :)

I've also planted some broad beans, which I saved from my crop earlier this year, where the onions and lettuce were. I've just got some peas to put somewhere and I think that's all I'll be planting this Autumn, the rest can wait until Spring when the weather will be warmer for them.

Sunset

Meanwhile, I'd better make the most of the light, days are getting rapidly shorter again. At least this means I get to enjoy sunrises and sunsets every day without having to interrupt precious sleep. :) Stay warm everyone!

Green tomato chutney

As Autumn hits the UK, there comes the possibility of frosts. When growing Mediterranean fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, they aren't used to such cold temperatures and will die off at this time of year.

If you still have lots of unripened fruit on your tomato vines when a frost is due, then you can either pick them green and try to ripen them indoors (you can place them by ripe tomatoes, or by bananas to achieve this) or you can do what I do and make delicious green tomato chutney. :)

Green tomatoes chopped and ready to become chutney

When cooking I don't tend to follow recipes, but go largely on memory and following instincts, so although I've written it as a recipe, you can take it as guidelines and adjust to suit tastes or fit what ingredients you have around you.
I had enough green tomatoes to produce about 4 jars (or in my case, 2 large jars) of chutney, so that's how much this recipe will make. If you have more tomatoes, just multiply up the other ingredients accordingly.

Ingredients

• 1 tsp sunflower oil
• 500g green tomatoes
• 250g white onion (2 medium sixed onions)
• 250ml white wine vinegar
• Handful raisins
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp cardamon

Tomatoes, onion, raisins and spices simmering in vinegar and sugar

Method

1. Finely chop the onion and lightly fry in the oil in a large pan, finely chop the tomatoes whilst this turns transparent.
2. Add the tomatoes to the onion along with the vinegar and simmer on a low heat. Add the sugar and stir until it's dissolved to avoid it burning on the bottom of the pan.
3. Add the raisins and the spices, give a good stir and pop a lid on the pan to let it simmer away for about an hour, or until it looks like the ingredients have all softened and it's become thicker.
4. Whilst the chutney is cooking, wash and sterilise a few jars, always prepare more than you think you'll need in case there's more than you think, or in case of breakages. I sterilise the jars in a low oven and poor freshly boiled water over the lids in a bowl. You could use chemicals if you prefer, but I always worry it might affect the taste of the produce. If using chemicals, rinse thoroughly.
5. Once the chutney is cooked, carefully fill the jars to the brim whilst it's still hot and seal them. The chutney will be best eaten if you wait  a month for the flavours to infuse. Although if you're impatient, like me, it can be eaten straight away!

Green tomato Chutney

Tips

As the mixture cools, the volume of the air will decrease inside the jars, creating a tight seal. If any lids 'pop up' it means they weren't tightened properly, or the mixture was cool when the jars were filled. Eat these soon, as they won't keep. The properly sealed ones will keep for months or even years as long as they were sterilised properly.

Autumn

This month has been mostly catching up on jobs which got out of hand during the Summer, especially weeding... I feel like I've been pretty much non-stop weeding! It's been quite nice to not have any big projects to do, so the smaller jobs can finally get a bit of attention that they deserve.

The vegetables have still been doing very well, so we're largely eating home grown veg. We still have crazy courgettes, although they're starting to slow to a pace where we can eat them all! We have runner beans still, although they're also slowing down. I've just harvested the last of the tomatoes and beetroot...must plant more of those next year. Lettuce and chard are still producing more than we can eat, so they're making their way into a lot of our meals! We still have loads of carrots and some turnips, and nasturtiums along with a few radish pods, so our diet is staying nice and varied.

Lettuce still going strong and some of the last tiny tomatoes

There were a few tomatoes which hadn't ripened yet, but I picked them in case frosts come, as I do love a bit of green tomato chutney. I'll put an extra post with a recipe for this when I get around to making it. :)

Unripe tomatoes to be used for chutney

One new veg which is taking over on the crazy front is butternut squash. I ventured into the mad tangle of vines to see how they were getting on and was over the moon to find 6 ridiculously massive fruits and a few normal sized ones, and many more which are close to being ready as well as lots and lots of babies... Looks like we'll be feasting on squash for a good few months now! Yumyumyum...

Butternut Squash and beautiful Dahlias from Ruth!

This month I've also been doing a thorough check on our trees. Through the Summer I'd done the odd bit of looking to see how they were getting on, but never felt I was getting round to them all, so it's been nice to go around and weed round each tree to give them less competition and to see just how well they're taking. Some have died off, as to be expected (it would be a minor miracle if 800 trees all survived!). But the vast majority are still alive, and many are thriving and so tall already! I've even been given a few extra trees from my Dad which he accidentally grew in his garden, so hopefully we'll end up with a similar amount to what we planted anyway.

Rowan tree growing big and strong in our field

I will miss the long days of sunshine, but Autumn is one of my favourite seasons with the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets (which often are too early and late to enjoy during the Summer!) and the beautiful, colour-changing foliage everywhere. It's hard not to be happy when living in a place like this. :)

Gorgeous sunrise over our main field

Swimming in vegetables!

This time of year is fantastic in a smallholding. You can really reap the rewards of hard work earlier in the year with a constant supply of a good variety of vegetables. :)

The weeds are also still growing like mad, so there's still a lot to be done, but there's nothing better than deciding what you want for dinner and picking it fresh from the field!

Having previously lived in chalky, flinty soil, the vegetable that has me most excited at the moment is carrots. They never grew well where I used to live, even the best gardeners I knew didn't bother trying anymore. So to have delicious, big, juicy carrots we grew ourselves is amazing!

Purple carrot with legs :)

We've also been enjoying runner beans (as long as my forearm!), french beans and mange tout. We've had the most enormous chard plants which we can't keep up with, and courgettes which I've resorted to turning into chutney (which I'll thank myself for later).

Courgette and apple chutney

Lettuce has been brilliant, especially as the plants looked like they'd died whilst I was away for a few days, luckily they somehow came back from the dead and are making very nice salads along with our cherry tomatoes.

Runner beans, delicious and beautiful

I now only have one onion left from the field...note to self, plant at least 3 times as many next year! I didn't realise I ate quite so many onions...it's a wonder anyone dares come near me...

Along with the courgette chutney, I've also made some cucumber pickle and crab apple jelly, and we've also bottled up the elderflower wine, exciting! It's a good thing I don't have any new veg to plant out this month as it's been too busy in the kitchen!

Cucumber pickle and crab apple jelly

Gorgeous crab apple jelly, I love the colour and clarity, not to mention it's scrummy!

We have, in a way, been preparing for winter vegetables though, and are in the middle of constructing a polytunnel. This will mean we can (hopefully) grow food throughout the year and also start some veggies off a month or so earlier than we otherwise could outdoors. We've built 4 raised beds inside, this means I can still do my crop rotations within the polytunnel to prevent the spread of diseases, and also prevent each bed becoming depleted of certain nutrients.

Polytunnel in progress, with raised beds

For example, growing tomatoes uses an awful lot of nutrients, especially nitrogen and potassium, so if you were to grow them in the same bed multiple years running, you'd find the tomatoes would become less flavoursome, smaller and there would be fewer of them, plus the plants would be far more likely to get a disease such as blight. By rotating to a different family entirely you prevent this problem. If you grew peas or beans it would, in fact, replace nitrogen which had been lost through tomato growing. This is because of a special symbiotic relationship the legumes (beans/peas/clover etc) have with a certain bacteria which is found on their roots. The bacteria brings nitrogen out of the air and fixes it into the soil...clever eh? :)

What's missing this month...oh, something big and destructive, full of noise and dust. Ok we'll knock the chimney down in our house then. Yes, yes we are indeed doing another big house project at the same time as trying to juggle everything else, because life here is never dull.

Living room fire and chimney

So we've been umming and erring over the chimney in the living room for a while now, not deciding whether to do it up nicely or remove it and have more space. Well, we finally decided that, whilst a fire is nice to have, we do live in a pretty small space, and we do have another fire, so really this one is redundant. Our heating all seems to be working nicely now, so we don't need it for warmth, just a pretty thing to look at, so more space it is! We'll keep the stove and use it in a future project. :)

Half a chimney...

...Chimney completely gone and everything levelled!

The room seems a lot bigger now, and hopefully with a bit of paint and a nice, new carpet, it'll be a cosy room for us to relax in after a hard days work. :)

Heating Water in Summer

Well this last month has seen a lot of changeable weather, back to the standard for the UK. It's been very nice having some rain to water the plants and top up water collectors, but good to still have warm, sunny days to enjoy as well. :)

We've been busy on a number of jobs this last month. We've fitted new guttering to the workshop, so rain is no longer pouring in front of the door and along the passageway. We joined this to a downpipe and then into a tank, so we have another source of rainwater in future droughts. We also fixed a water butt to one of the house downpipes, and have another that we'll put on another downpipe soon too. It's all slowly coming together for rainwater collection!
We also sorted the uneven ground here with a gravel path and fixed broken wooden slats in the workshop walls and painted it, so it's a lot more waterproof now.

Water tank collecting rainwater from workshop roof (the downpipe looks less crazy since this photo!)

We've started a lot of jobs that aren't finished yet, but they're all pretty big jobs so will take a while. We've (with a lot of hard work!) dug a hole (in the pouring rain) and half buried a telegraph pole as a gate post in the entrance to our field. We then (with great difficulty) removed some brackets from a pole in our barn and used them to fix a gate to said post. We now need to find the strength and will power to put another gate post on the other side of the gate.

New gate at field entrance

Whilst avoiding this task, we started another task of beginning to erect a polytunnel. We have the frame up after lots of measuring and banging in of poles (hmm...thinking about it, this is a similar job to the one we were avoiding!) we now need to build door frames, and dig trenches to bury polythene and stretch it nice and taut over the frame. We need it to stop being windy for this bit, so perhaps the gate post job will be re-visited!

Polytunnel frame

Harvest-wise this month has been pretty good! We've been getting runner beans and french beans to replace the broad beans which have now finished. I harvested the rest of the broad beans as dried pods to save seeds for next year.

Drying broad bean pods to save as seeds.

We've harvested our first carrots and potatoes, our first turnip and beetroot as well as lettuce and radish pods, oh and the last few radishes too. We still have chard feeding us well, mange tout and courgettes are starting to supply us with veg, and the onions and garlic are all ready and drying out for storage (although to be honest, we've eaten a lot of the onions already, so they might not last us through winter...note to self, grow a lot more onions next year!).

First potato harvest

Beans, baby carrots and radish pods

As well as vegetables, our new lavender plants have been producing flowers, which is very exciting as I thought I might have to wait until next year!

Some lavender from our new plants

The biggest job and biggest change this last month has been the installation of an air source heat pump and a new water cylinder.

This has all been very complicated with our off-grid set up, and it isn't working 100% correctly yet, but I think it will get there soon. We've kept our stove heating system, so that in the winter we can heat the house and water in the same way we were, which doesn't need lots of electricity (we'll have far less solar then). But in the summer, when we have more power, we won't need to light fires which heat the house when all you want is a shower or to do the washing up! Instead, the extra solar will run the heat pump to compress outside air, which creates heat, so only the water is warmed.

Air source heat pump

It's a brillaintly clever system. It's a shame that installation of these things never seems to be straightforward! 

We had our first friends to camp in our field this month. (Unfortunately, due to heating delays, the pump was fitted whilst they stayed, but they were very patient with bathroom disruptions and lack of hot water!) It was very exciting having the field used in this way, and we celebrated with a campfire, melting marshmallows and stargazing with bats flying about our heads! Barnie even turned up and silently swooped overhead, it was very magical. :)

The camping and dining in the field turned out to be a good thing, as the workmen somehow managed to empty our big gas bottles when moving them to make way for our new water tank. Goodness knows how they managed that, but fingers crossed it's all ok now, we have new gas bottles which seem to be working without leaks (we'll get someone to check them over to be safe). They caused themselves bother too though, as it meant they couldn't have any tea or coffee! I wonder if we'll ever find any skilled workmen...

On a very positive note, this last month has also seen the birth of my nephew and also our friend's daughter, so aside from all the normal bits and bobs, I've found time to squish in a bit of crocheting for baby gifts. :) Congratulations and welcome to the world Jonty and Lyris!

Crocheted bunny for Lyris

I wonder what exciting things the next month will have in store...