What you sow

Do you remember the story of the Little Red Hen? Apparently it's a Russian morality tale, but I'm only acquainted with the illustrated Golden Book version from my childhood. You know the story: hen finds a grain of wheat and asks the other animals in the farmyard if they would like to help her plant and tend the wheat, harvest the grains and bake them into bread. The other animals, all being workshy, decline until it comes to eating the bread. The hen tells them they didn't help so no bread for them.

Even as a child I found the hen a bit sanctimonious. As an adult with my own seeds to tend, I find out that I'm both hen and lazy farm animals. Now that it's harvest time, I'm reaping the rewards where I put in the work, and suffering deficiencies where I put in hours in front of the TV.

We've started harvesting our game. Our first partridge shoot was last Thursday and we put 219 birds in the game dealer's larder. None of the dogs are fit enough to work a whole day in Indian summer temperatures. Dulcie, who was sidelined last year with a ligament repair, is back on good form. Determined to prove her worth, she overheated and had to be revived with a sugary treat but I'm glad to report no other injuries.

More roe deer need to find their way into my freezer - or 'Ice Camp' as Kate calls it, a term we've taken to our hearts. Feeding the horses on dark one night, I saw two bucks in the orchard. They were in range and standing side on, in front of a perfect backstop. Had I brought the rifle we wouldn't be having this conversation, and the shoot staff wouldn't be having carrot and coriander soup for lunch Monday instead of venison casserole.

I am harvesting a bumper crop of carrots. And beans. I've pickled both. They make nearly healthy accompaniments on nights when I'm too lazy to cook extra vegetable side dishes. In England, 'Meat and Two Veg' is the national meal. Sometimes in our house it's just meat, leftover fried potato, and pickled vegetables.

I was overjoyed with my onions, and I spent yesterday engrossed in my favorite harvest activity: plaiting the storage onions. Space is limited so they're going to be stored in the same place they dried: the spare bedroom. It isn't really a bedroom. as there's no bed in it, and in spring I use the room for incubating and hatching chickens. Onions are hygienic by comparison. But heavy. I hung the plaits on the curtain pole, eyeing up the ever-increasing bend, wondering if the pole would hold up.

It didn't. The pole pulled out of the wall sometime around 2a.m. but it's come to rest on top of the bookshelf, so my onions are still hanging in there. The whole balancing act can stay that way until we've eaten enough to lighten the load, then I'll screw it back in the wall.

A lot of the onions have already found their way into some batches of apple chutney. Apples are a big part of the harvest right now. I can't take credit for the bounty, I just try and make good use of it. We go through chutney like drinking water and however much I make it's never enough.

Pickled beans and six jars of chutney

It's the same with jam, although I had some trouble with mould in last year's supply. Instead of re-using jars, as is tradition in England, I ordered some Ball jars with the sealable lids to see if that would solve the problem. I just put up two jars of blackberry-apple-elderberry jelly, and heard the satisfying plink of the vacuum seal. I hope to reap the rewards of good canning practice.

I feel somewhat less rewarded that the sum total of my morning's work picking blackberries resulted in two meagre jars' worth of jelly. Even after I bulked it out with apples. I can't resist the lure of free, ripe, (did I mention free?) berries in the hedgerows - I collected buckets of elderberries, a basket of sloes, Tupperware tubs full of blackberries. My fingers are permanently stained during the month of September. Also a good time not to lend me any books unless you want them returned with purple fingerprints on the pages (My sincere apologies, Colette - only page 210, I promise).

Quincy came with me for her first blackberry picking outing. It's strange to think that she's only been on this earth for ten months. She's learned so much in that short space of time. Having paid the price for training shortcuts with other dogs, I am putting the hours into her. The commands I plant now, I will harvest when Quincy starts her first season in the shooting field.

Quincy doesn't worry about personal space

Oh! I just heard the second jar go plink. If it sets midway between liquid ooze and ballistic gel, it's a winner.

Since my lamentable start to the lambing season, I have been checking the ewes regularly enough to be a nuisance to them. I make up for it by picking a few apples which are out of their reach, and tossing them each a treat.

Sharing the fruits of the harvest

Like they need to be fatter, I know. Looking at their bellies, I have a terrible feeling that there are going to be more singles than twins this year. Had I made sure their nutrition was right before I put them to the ram, I would be cropping twins. I will add that to my ever-growing list of lessons learned. A big single lamb can mean a difficult birth, so now I have to be extra-vigilant.

It's not a huge harvest but I have enough to keep all of us, including our little red hens, fed through the winter.

Pottering

Mike and I managed to take half a day off yesterday. A whole six hours. We squandered it watching the last in the Harry Potter series of films. In the middle of the day. I even had a glass of wine at lunch, which felt very badass. OK, it was Pizza Hut's house wine, but it was the best (and absolute worst) glass of wine I've had in forever. The food just tasted manufactured and unsophisticated, but a waitress brought it to me and no one interrupted our lunch. At home, the phone and the door would be going at the same time. We both left our mobile phones at home. There was a lot of giggling.

Before we set off for the big town and multiplex cinema, I made an effort to tidy myself up. I slapped on some cover-the-grey dye, and while that was working its magic (Griseum Obscura!) I had time to mix up cement and patch the holes in the kennels where Quincy has excavated loose concrete. Mike built more release pens for his pheasants, but found clean jeans - no holes, no blood - for trip to town. Our rare trips to town are the only time that there isn't a dog in the truck with us, either curled up on the floor, spaniel-style or sprawled out on the seats, lab-style.

We're not so rural that mixing with crowds should be unnerving, but it is. There is so much noise from people and traffic that I feel disoriented. There are TV screens everywhere, and music and sound. In the movie theatre, the sound was turned up so loud, even with my impaired hearing it hurt my ears. I think it was to drown out the sounds of other patrons eating popcorn and rustling wrappers.

At home I can hear a flock of house sparrows noisily invade a shrub near the bird feeder. I can hear a green woodpecker call. I can hear wind rustling leaves, which is altogether more comforting that candy wrappers. I can hear the dog snoring. When the cockerels start crowing I know it's after 5pm. There's so much going on, so why is it less of an assault on my nerves than sound and light in town?

I got home with enough light to spare that I went deer stalking. Maurading deer are still eating the cider orchard. A couple of hours sitting quietly yielded a yearling for the larder -

Mike talked me through a better gralloching technique too -

It's going to be a short cold summer and I'm taking stock of my vegetable harvest. The carrots are going to be plentiful -

And the apple crop too -

However, my tomatoes and sweetcorn could really use an Engorgio spell.

Spring chickens. And quail.

Spring is nearly here, the signs are everywhere. The blossom is falling off the blackthorn trees, and the bluebells are flowering. Vixens have gone to ground to have their cubs. I saw my first swallow this morning, picking insects out of the air. I picked my own insects: the first tick of the season off of Quincy.

Well, technically a tick is an arachnid, but why split hairs.

The weather has been so favorable, from a gardener's perspective, that for the first time ever I'm caught up with my sowing and planting. That's my slapdash comprehensive garden plan for this year, scrawled on the back of an envelope -

And you can put your seed packets and notes inside the envelope so you don't lose them. Genius.

I'm using a four-plot rotation system, and companion planting. The garden is dug, manured, fed, and sown with everything but the late-season and tender plants. I've even remembered to put down enviromesh to prevent a repeat of last year's carrot root fly problem -

I was so on top of things, that I broke out the lawn chairs and cooked dinner in the chiminea - grilled mackerel and pheasant burgers, the gamekeeper version of surf & turf.

You'll have to allow me this moment of almost-smug success. It didn't last long, as you'll see.

Spring sap's not just rising in the plants. The cockerels - pheasant, chicken, and quail - have colored up and are beginning to vie for female attention. And fight. Cockerels love to fight. Even our heavyweight Buff Orpington cockerel was sporting a bruised eye, closed and puffy from a fight with featherweight Lloyd the pekin cockerel, a third the Buff's size. I'm not even sure how Lloyd reached that high.

But the quail seem to be the pugilists of the poultry world. The aviary has turned into Madison Square Garden. The weaker males have bloodied heads, and the females are missing the feathers from the back of their necks from frequent male attention. I knew it was time to put some quail in the freezer.

The sad truth of farm life is fewer males are needed than females. One ram can serve fifty ewes, a pheasant cockerel can easily hold ten hens. If a male isn't good enough for breeding stock, then he's only good enough for the freezer. If you're a male born on a farm, it's either the stud or the abbatoir for you: heaven or hell, so to speak.

When I sexed the quail, I had three hens and eight cocks, which explains all the fighting. I kept one cock for breeding and the rest I've started to process.

In case any reader is interesting in vent sexing quail - and who wouldn't be? - it's very easy to do. Start by turning your quail on its back, and gently push the tail up to expose the vent. If a small ball of foam comes out, it's a boy -

Once plucked, you can see that, just above the vent, the male has a swollen bottom -

It only swells during breeding season, and the foam is only produced at this time too. However, I find that vent sexing is a more definitive method for sexing quail than colour.

I processed three quail this morning, saving the feathers for a local fly fisherman. Apparently they make good fly-tying material. Spud and Lily kept me company through the laborious task of plucking. The skin on quail is very thin and tears easily when plucking. The finished birds couldn't have looked worse if I'd let the dogs chew the feathers off.

Well, I processed two birds and all was going well. I hung them on the back of the truck where they would be out of reach of dogs playing in the garden. I had just dispatched the third when my spidey senses started tingling. Where was Quincy?

Behind the shed eating a bag of rat poison she excavated from a hole, that's where.

She came out with the empty bag on her head.

I didn't waste any time. I removed the bag from her head, bundled her into the truck, and drove straight to the vets, which is thankfully only ten minutes away.

I forgot the dead, plucked quail were still hanging from the rear of the truck until I was halfway through the centre of town and looked in my rearview mirror. There they were - swinging left, then right as I navigated the turns to the vets - completely naked except for their feathered heads.

(I'd put the just-dispatched bird I was holding when I caught Quincy into the nearest recepticle, which happened to be the metal bin we use as a mail box. I came home and found the mail left on top of the dead bird. Thank goodness for country post men, nothing phases them.)

Quincy got the same treatment that Spud got when she ate the poisoned rat. All signs for recovery look good as we got the poison out quickly. With some gentle persuasion from his wife (i.e. I showed him the vet's bill), Mike has agreed to go back to trapping the rats, at least until Quincy gets older.

Quincy found the bag because of her exceptional gun dog nose. I know her scenting ability is already well-developed, even if her judgement isn't.

  Finished quail

Quincy - on the couch and on the mend

Oh, deer...

It's a busy time of year for us. I probably say that a lot, but it's true this time, honest. The weather is warming up and the mud is drying up. Milkweed has been harrowed to flatten out hoof prints. Early vegetables seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse, and the magnolia is in bloom -

 

The chickens love eating the fallen blossoms when I first let them out in the morning. It seems an odd choice for breakfast. I would like to think that the chickens know what they need to eat to lay the best eggs, but I've seen them eating Styrofoam so the jury's out on chicken logic.

I've finished netting over my expanded vegetable patch -

I'm nearly finished manuring and digging the two new beds now. A continuous fortnight of good weather has helped. I had to stop digging after I went to a Zumba class. The class looked like fun and I figured I could use the cardio to balance out my muscle bulk from activities like flipping sheep and digging. My sciatic nerve didn't agree and now I can't sit down without causing a shooting pain up my leg. I'm writing this post standing up at the kitchen counter, and my onions are definitely going to get planted late this year.

The upside of not sitting down is that lots of little jobs are getting done, where I would normally flop down in front of the television and squander that time watching re-runs of 'Columbo'. The dogs get extra long walks, and I even found time to slap a coat of fresh paint on the cupboards in the kitchen, which is also my temporary study until I get better.

The quail have started laying and I have to hunt for their well-camouflaged eggs hidden in the deep straw bedding -

quail egg compared to chicken egg

Susan is broody. I replaced her clutch with five Buff Orpington eggs -

I don't mind hatching a few more dual purpose chickens. A few days ago my neighbor Simon asked me to dispatch Trevor, his Buff Orpington cockerel.  He brought round a bit of the cooked bird for us to try last night. There wasn't a huge amount of breast meat but the legs were large and the bird was very tasty. A bit gamey even. Simon says that was probably a reflection of Trevor's personality. I won't mind so much now if a few boys hatch out in Susan's brood.

The pheasants have started laying in their pens, and we began collecting the eggs this week. There are 32 pens, each pen holds 65 hens and 8 cocks. I'll save you the math: 2,080 laying hen, 256 breeding cocks. The pens stretch the length of the field -

My sheep are currently grazing the grass on the laying field, and they follow me from pen to pen, watching me put eggs in a basket.

I think that the egg basket resembles a feed bucket, if you're a sheep.

Quincy is growing like a spring weed. Lily the chocolate lab has been an energetic and tolerant playmate for Quincy. The more they play together, the more Quincy learns and, more importantly, the less she chews my shoes.

Lily has started spending weekdays at her new home, with her new owner. We all look forward to seeing her back on the weekends. No one more than Spud, who gets stuck with puppy duties when Lily's not here. Spud spends most of her weekends recuperating -

On top of vegetable plots, egg picking, and dog wrestling matches, there are still deer to harvest. Thursday was the end of doe season, and Friday was the start of roe buck season. I still had one more doe to account for, and I went out every night this past week to try and bag her.

A deer ride through the woods - a good starting place

 

I don't think I've ever had such a dry spell. The first night I saw the back end of one disappear into the covert. The second night out, I saw nothing. Third night, I decided to take the dogs for a walk and didn't carry a gun. Of course, I saw two decent cull animals in range. The fourth night, I found this -

A fresh pile of deer scat, still warm (yes I touched it...) I walked on and hoped to run into the beast, but saw nothing. In desperation, I sat above a deer trail with good views and a good back stop (for the rifle bullet, should I miss). I sat until it got dark and the pain from sitting got the better of me -

You can just make out the path - look through the top centre square

Nothing. No does before the end of the season. I will have to tack that one onto next season's cull plan. I hope I have better luck with roe bucks this week.

I did find something else, something disturbing and unwelcome -

It's a home made ball bearing. I found it under a tree where pheasants roost. Poachers shine a light into treetops, to spot pheasants roosting. They use catapults to fire heavy ball bearings at the pheasants, knocking them off their perch, dead or close to it. No gun shot to give yourself away, and minimal disturbance to all the pheasants which can be noisy when alarmed. Poachers can develop frightening accuracy with a catapult.

We've found other ball bearings in the same area, so we'll be extra vigilant now. I'm happy to stand watch. Anything to avoid sitting down.

Communication Breakdown

I'm sorry that I've been incommunicado for a few weeks. It's not because I've run out of rambling stories to share with you all (heaven forfend!) but rather a complete technological failure this end. Only days after the oven blew, my ancient laptop refused to run the Internet any longer, something about virtual memory being too low. Then Mike accidentally knocked the (equally aged) digital camera onto the floor and it stopped working. I retired them both, but had to find funds to acquire new equipment, and the skills to use them.

The funds were easy. My father felt, after his last visit spent slumming it in front of our 20" TV without a working remote, that we needed a new one. He kindly sent me the money to purchase one with the stipulation that we do so before his next visit. I'm not sure how to break the news to him that I've redistributed those funds. As a small concession, I bought a working remote control for the existing TV. And the new oven has a glass door, so he can always sit and watch the morning's loaf of bread rise.

The skills were harder to find. I stuck with the old machines even though they were limited because I knew the real limitation lay with their user. Aside from a few emails and a blog post now and then, I don't live much of my life online. I haven't got the requisite skills, evidenced by the fact it took me an entire day to set up my new laptop. And it came with the software on it and all my old files already transferred.

The camera was easier. I bought a newer version of the old model figuring I could intuit most of the buttons. What I didn't know is that memory cards are sold separately, like batteries in Christmas toys. Until a card comes via the good folks at Amazon, I can only take and store 3 pictures at a time. I have to download them to the blog post, delete them from the camera, and pop outside to take 3 more.

And it's damn cold here. Winter is holding fast. The wood burner is stoked up and there's soup on the stove. My toes haven't warmed up since we rode the horses from Milkweed to their summer paddock a few days ago. They're not even starting to shed their winter coats yet.

I just finished another cardigan, the first one spun from my own flock's wool -



The grey wool is my left over handspun Jacob from the estate's sheep, but the white wool is pure Dorset. I appreciate that, fashion-wise, pairing it with the rubber dungarees is more akin to Björk dressing for the Oscars. But until spring comes, I'm all about the warmth. The dungarees are windproof and the cardigan is so insulating, I know why the sheep still have frost on their backs when I check them in the morning.

I'm running out of time to get the greenhouse and the garden ready for spring. I pulled down the old panels from around the greenhouse, and put in a rail fence -



It lets more light in, but prevents dogs from accidentally running through a pane of glass when they come bursting out of their kennels for a walk. And I still have somewhere to hang the horse rugs out to dry.

I've harvested the last of the overwintered vegetables, and begun to dig over the soil. I borrowed the RTV and filled the flatbed with horse manure. All the hay and feed bills are a little easier to accept when I consider that I get a crop out of the horses - black gold for the garden. The chickens help me by removing the weed seeds and worms, and spreading the dung -

Technically, that's another crop from the dung: chicken snacks. We just took on another half dozen laying hens, ex-battery chickens from a commercial egg farmer. They're already scavenging like free-range pros. 

 
I still have to find time to double the vegetable patch and to extend the net cover. I only just sent off my seed order yesterday. I need at least another two loads of manure. And half of the meat chickens need dispatching in the next day or two, before they run to fat.
 
I almost forgot the Hazel update. She's settled in with our friends Matt and Julie who are absolutely thrilled to have her. Hazel has the undivided attention of two young boys, loves being a house pet and gets on well with their old shepherd.  In summer, Matt plays cricket for his local team. Players' dogs act as fielders, retrieving the long balls. Hazel was born for that job. She's so well placed now that it's hard to miss her, though of course we do.
 
With so much to relay after a few weeks away, I'm in danger of my own communication breakdown. I'll save the pheasant update for another time. We're pigeon shooting tonight, taking them as they come in to roost. Armed with my new camera, I can promise you at least 3 photos of that activity for the next blog post.

The Food Chain

After admitting my mashed potato sandwich shame, I hope to redeem myself with this, my first completely home grown meal out of the vegetable patch -

It's only a small harvest, but I hope it will be the first of many.

Vegetables are forever miraculous to me. Plant a seed and pay it even a small amount of attention and hey presto - food! It's extra miraculous this year considering I did all the wrong things: planted late into not-very-well prepared soil, planted too close together, watered sporadically, and weeded only occasionally. I'm paying the price now. The cucurbits have powdery mildew, the lettuce bolted, pigeons got my early peas, tomatoes have split, and the potatoes have scab.

And yet there's still stuff to eat. The vegetable patch produces despite my haphazard and random interventions.

And, not only is there enough for our dinner, but there's enough to share with the animals. The dogs like the carrot and bean ends, the horses like the carrot tops and some of the beet leaves in their evening meal. The chickens share the beet leaves with the horses and enjoy any tomatoes that are too squishy for us. Peelings go out in the compost for a final once-over by the chickens, and the worms eat the rest.

Add to the harvest some home raised leftover chicken and it's a wholesome meal. More provencale than cordon bleu but respectable. And we won't starve. Nor will the animals. At least until the first frost.

Speaking of mouths that need feeding, we have a new chicken. Our friends Tim and Megan had adopted some ex-laying hens from a battery unit. Over time each died of old age and only Flossie was left. She was a lonely chicken. When they came for lunch last Sunday, they brought her along to join our flock.

Flossie had other ideas -

She flatly refused to go to bed with the other brown hens. I came in from my evening chores to find her "roosting" next to Mike's chair. As I've never known a chicken that would use a litter tray, Flossie had to be carried out to the hen house where she could sleep, and poop with reckless abandon. She's not quite accepted her new outdoor living arrangements, but she has got smarter at roosting where she wouldn't be noticed -

Behind the porch door. For the moment we're compromising. Flossie goes to bed behind the door and when it gets dark and all the other chickens are in the hen house, I carry her out and place her on a perch where she stays with the others until morning.

It's getting dark so I'd better move her now, on my way out to walk the dogs. Then I want to make dessert - zucchini bread with the zucchini from today's harvest. The dogs can have the crusts and there will be enough left over for the gamekeepers' coffee break tomorrow. Everyone's happy.

What's Happening in the Garden

I've finally finished my small but perfectly chicken-proofed vegetable garden. Actually I think the term "garden" is a bit grand for two small squares of denuded soil where the chickens houses once sat. I think I go with "patch" instead.

There are a few tomatoes in the greenhouse, and some potatoes and peas in pots as well. It's the first proper gardening I've done in two years, since I was made redundant post-accident. I always had surplus vegetables from the estate's kitchen garden and had no reason (or time) to grow my own outside of my job. I've found this little patch immensely more satisfying. I had lost my enthusiasm for gardening, but now that I can experiment with techniques and vegetable varieties of my choosing, it's no longer a job but just another happy part of our life. The "two veg" to go with our meat.

Speaking of which, I collected my share of the meat chicks today from underkeeper Pete. They are off heat but still need shelter and food. LOTS of food. You've never seen anything eat the quantities these 'bred for meat' chickens do.

We're trying a range of birds for the table, to see which we prefer. The winner will be the bird we produce for ourselves and possibly a small local market. This bird comes from a friend who supplies KFC, so it's the same breed that fast food outlets use in their products. The difference will be in their diet, and access to pasture and greens. I hope this is enough difference to put a tasty bird on the table.

They've only been here a few hours and already I can't envision a farmyard of these dullards. They loll about hanging a head in the food trough to eat, clump together in random corners and don't want to walk the two feet from house to the grass area. I still think a slower-growing dual purpose heritage breed will be the way forward.

I also re-homed my first brood of mixed bantams - I swapped them for two great sides of smoked trout. The chickens have a fancy new A-frame and doting owner to care for them. There are only 4 more chicks to sell this year. It hasn't been fruitful on the chicken breeding front. Barbara the Silkie hen is broody again - like Old Faithful she is - so I think there will be a late hatch of something pretty.

Some of the lavender Pekin chicks are frizzles!

This is what he/she will look like when grown (only lavender instead of white) -

Courtesy of pekincorner.co.uk

It might be an acquired taste, but I think they look comical tottering around the garden. My chickens are for eggs and my amusement. I admire the little pekins, and they're great mothers. I wonder if they can trap more heat in their permed plumage to keep chicks warm?

We have officially finished pheasant egg collecting today and plan to celebrate with a bottle of cider and leftovers for dinner. I wondered what I was going to do with the extra free time but I expect tending the garden and the meat chickens will fill it quickly. As it's tick season again I can use the time to go over the dogs and pick ticks off them. (Are you envying me my glamorous lifestyle yet?) We're up to 9 dogs this week as we have a visitor to stay -

Old Bracken. She belongs to one of the local landowners who shoots here. She was a spectacular working dog and even in her dotage comes out to pick up a bird or two. Mike trained Bracken for her owner, so she still shares a special bond with him. And with my dirty green sock apparently. She's been snoring away on the old sheepskin since she arrived, and the house dogs are respectful and don't disturb her. She's deaf as a stump, which is common in old gun dogs (and some of the owners) from all the gunshot I suppose. She'll get some old lady pampering - bath, nails done, tick check - before she goes home. Then Pip can have her sheepskin back. Pip's making do with my bed, so don't go feeling too sorry for her.

Note to self: tick check BEFORE bed tonight...

Hedgerows

Nigel and Bertie have been laying the hedges around our house. They were in pretty desperate need of doing. Hedgelaying is both a skill and an art. I had to lay hedges as part of my gardening degree but I can't profess to have much skill or artistic flair for it. I remember as a general rule to lay the hedge uphill and work with someone who is the same-handed as you, whether right or left, or you can get in a muddle with your cuts. And I remember it's bloody hard work.

Nigel had to call it quits Friday when the rain was making his billhook too slippery; he would take a swing at a pleacher and the tool would fly out of his hand, mostly missing Bertie. Not wanting to go home and explain to Mrs Bertie why her husband had a billhook sticking out of his leg, they had a quick cup of tea and promised to return Tuesday. Here's the pre-laid hedge:

Very spindly and not very stock-proof.

Here's the hedge after laying:

It's still not stock-proof yet, but the view is much improved.

The hedge will double in height each time it's laid. When spring comes its shoots will grow vertically and we'll be back to a spindly hedge ready for laying again. Eventually it will be thick enough that the fence behind can come down. With the screen gone, I expect we will have a lot of cattle hanging over the fence to watch the activity in the garden - cows are nosy creatures, but I find their bovine placidness relaxing. I'll have an audience when I'm hanging out the washing.

Surprisingly, Nigel and Bertie didn't find any hidden clutches of eggs in the hedgerow. The hens haven't been laying in their houses and my egg supply has dwindled. I thought maybe they were hiding them in the hedges. I stumbled across a fresh nest in the greenhouse but that was less than a dozen. C'mon girls, Christmas is coming. I bristle at the thought of paying for eggs when I have over 40 chickens in my garden, a few of whom should still be providing even now. No matter. I will salve my soul with our new and improved view.

The first step is admitting you have a problem

I've noticed that the underlying theme of most of my posts is food - animal or vegetable, but always edible. I hope it's because this is harvest season, not because I am overly obsessed with eating. Or food. Or because I read and re-read cookbooks and our next meal is always on my mind. I'm wondering if I need to seek out a support group.

I might as well admit now that I went blackberry picking again, and made another 5 jars of jelly. I was doing some puppy training and it seemed efficient to multi-task as Spud needs less of my attention on walks. She used to look like this -


Just a fast moving blur. But she's beginning to look like this -

Although not usually that wet. But she's just worked out that she can fit her top half into the water bucket. I guess the tastiest water is at the bottom.














The weatherman has predicted a possible ground frost for tonight - our first - so I cleaned the greenhouse of the last of our tomato crop.

What a mess. Every year I promise to keep a tidy, disease-free crop of tomatoes and every year I let it run rampant. We had an excellent crop considering I failed to feed or water the plants regularly.



Once I stared pulling out plants I found examples of water staining, splitting, blossom end rot, blight, and a virus which was mutating the shape of the tomatoes. Oh, and a rat hole to round off the pest parade.


But no matter. There were plenty of tomatoes -


And the greenhouse is now clean for next year -

For the first time that I can remember, I enjoyed gardening again. They say never make your hobby your life's work and when I was head gardener, gardening was nothing but work. Growing my own tomatoes just for me, and tidying my own (albeit tiny) greenhouse felt really great. Different than gardening for a paycheck. It's revitalised my love of growing things.

Dakota agrees. She always keeps watch from somewhere where she can see if anyone is coming up the driveway, and it's comforting. She's excellent company as well as an effective 'early warning system'.














The greenhouse will get a final cleaning from the chickens. I left the door open and the chickens were already investigating, eating a few fallen tomatoes and hopefully any nasty bugs that may be in there. Chickens are both a blessing and a curse to the gardener. For all the good they do in the greenhouse now, they are also the reason I can't grow flowers in pots - once that was a Clematis, now it's their personal dustbath.

I also found a tub of potatoes that I forgot to dig up lurking behind the greenhouse , so I have another harvest of Pink Fir Apple potatoes to cook with. A good excuse for looking in the cookbooks again. I also have to find a recipe to use up my harvest of green tomatoes - anyone have any suggestions other than my 'fried' or 'chutney' options?