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.

Finally getting things moving

We've been waiting...and waiting...and waiting some more, for the awful weather to pass.  We had snow, then rain, then more snow.  Our original vegetable patch, in the sunniest part of the plot, is also where all the water runoff collects, so it just turned itself into a duck pond as soon as Daniel dug it.  On the plus side, we are going to get some ducks to go in it!  May as well turn it into an actual pond.

So after much consternation and debate, we've moved the veg patch to the other side of the meadow, and Dan has worked his little socks off getting it done before the end of April as panic is setting in about getting the potatoes in.

So we shall be starting an extensive catch-up planting session on Wednesday morning, I just hope we're not too late to get a decent amount of growing in and still get a good harvest in the autumn.

We've also had a bit of a bumper few weeks with finding scraps of wood and fencing.  We are going to be building a LOT of fencing this month, and the less we have to pay for, the better.  We've found fence panels, pallets and scaffolding boards.

Introductions

This is my first blog post about Runwell Glebe. This week we have gotten our first animal. Our aim is to have pigs, chickens, turkeys and possibly ducks for our first year at the Glebe, so we went out and got ourselves…..

A dog.

A lovely silly smelly Borzoi called Ivan.

As you can probably guess this wasn't in our immediate plans for the small holding lifestyle but our dream dog of a Borzoi became available.

Borzoi’s are Russian Wolf hounds and look like the bastard offspring of a llama and a greyhound. They are classed as a giant dog and reach around 30” at the shoulder. Borzoi’s traditionally have been very popular with Royalty and the aristocracy so we’re hoping he can make us act in a more genteel way, although I'm not sure how genteel we can be shovelling pig poo!

As far as the rest of the work at the Glebe goes, we have planted our first 5 trees and are hoping to plant potatoes this week.

Enjoy the beginning’s of spring,  Daniel. ( boyfriend / lackey )

Overgrown hedges

Well quite a lot has changed since my last blog post.  Lots of interesting changes that have taken up quite a bit of my time so the smallholding has taken a bit of a back seat, for now anyway, but not for long because WE(yes, we) have big plans.

I met someone and we hit it off in quite a big way.  We met completely unexpectedly through a mutual friend, discovered that not only do we really like each other but have all the same passions and goals, and our lives have just kind of evolved seamlessly into one another.  I spent quite a lot of my free time staying at his flat at first which took up all my spare time and money, so plans were shelved temporarily, but its evolved a bit recently and we've met each others children now and it went swimmingly, so he stays here a lot now.

Back to the smallholding, we had a letter asking us to cut back the overgrown bushes as they were restricting the view of the road.  I got myself into a bit of a panic about it as I hate getting in trouble, but when we got there to assess the scale of the problem it wasn't as bad as I'd feared.  We got it chopped and cleared in about an hour. Having a big strong man helps of course.

I've kept all the horrible Blackthorn branches to make natural fencing with at a later date(something I actually  know how to do - yay for hedge laying skills!)

So next plan of action is to get the stock fencing built and get the vegetable patch dug out asap with a hired rotavator. 

Slight change of plan

It's all happening here.  Maybe faster than I'd originally thought too.  I was going to concentrate on the pigs first; getting fences built and the pigs on the land by Christmas.  Then a friend called to say someone online was trying to find a home for a huge chicken run and house, with approximately 10 chickens(some of which are ex-battery hens) and a cockerel.  I wasn't quite ready for chickens, I was planning on waiting until spring, but life has a funny way of throwing things in your direction when you least expect it.

I've been discussing the big move with the woman that owns them, so once the logistics are sorted these guys will be coming to live with me!