Camping out

I had a few days booked off work this week because it was both mine and Isobel's birthdays, so Dan and I decided to pitch the tent at the smallholding and camp out on the Thursday night, as the children were all at their Dad's.  We were expecting rain so pitched the tent in the morning. Nothing worse than putting up a tent in the hammering rain.

We had the most fantastic evening; we had a bonfire, music, a BBQ, plenty of alcohol and a reasonably cosy bed(was bloody cold at 2am though).

The dawn chorus started at around 4am and I have never heard anything like it, the birds were so loud! A nice way to wake up on my 33rd birthday though.

Green Shoots

We have green things.  Actual, growing green things!
We have;                        
                                                                          Potatoes

Rocket

Lettuce

Beans and Peas

And a sea of buttercups!

Planting

After Dan spent a week doing the back breaking task of taking off the turf with a spade for the 30 foot x 30 foot veg patch, our friend Sue managed to borrow a rotavator and we got to work chopping it all up and digging compost in.  Not surprisingly, it didn't take a week with machinery to hand!

Edging boards are almost all in place now, and salad seeds and onion sets and seed potatoes were all planted and watered.

We still have pea, bean, tomato and sweetcorn seedlings and a whole array of herbs to build the herb garden at some point in the next few days.  We've had plenty of sun and rain, and we haven't been up there for a week, so maybe we'll have some little green shoots peeking through when we visit.

I really have no idea when on earth we are going to actually get our pigs, as we still haven't built their pen, which is saddening.  I want them in for the summer really so we need to get cracking but I just can't seem to find the time or the money this month.  Maybe we'll go for chickens first as they are easier and cheaper to get started with.