Richard – Page 26 – Small Plot, Big Ideas

Another step closer to the move

The deed is done

House for sale! So our current house is on the market with a local estate agent now even though the decorator is still finishing off some painting in the kitchen. As seems common in this situation we have high hopes of early interest but don’t know whether buyers are out there and we can expect any serious offers.

It would be nice to have a couple of acceptable offers to choose from but in the current UK housing market I’d probably settle for just one that came somewhere close to a reasonable figure.

Luckily we are in a great position and it doesn’t look like we will be completely dependent on a specific sale figure to buy somewhere with land. Obviously that may change according to the offers we receive but the more money we can get on the sale the better!

Potential Shortlist

We have managed to build up a list of around 5 places which meet many of our original requirements but sadly (and unsurprisingly) none of them meet all the points! Now is the time for some serious property viewing, detailed note taking and extensive internet research so that we’re ready to make our move when a buyer is found for our house!

Without giving too much away, here is a brief summary of our current favourites but this list changes regularly according to our mood:

A “real” smallholding with all facilities in place but only 3 acres
A small farm (5-10 acres) with easier holiday let potential
Another small farm (under 5 acres) with possible holiday let to develop
A rural bungalow with land (under 5 acres) with some facilities in place
An “ordinary” house with 2-3 acres on the edge of a village

We’ve already seen and rejected quite a few cheaper fixer-uppers on the internet as we’re not quite brave enough for that. However this quote that I came across in many places on the web still seems very apt:

It is an exciting time where the only limits you have are the size of your ideas and the degree of your dedication

However perhaps the more obvious quote I should use is this (see http://www.epicurus.net/en/carpediem.html):

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
(Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future)

Farewell to the new potatoes

With a final flourish of flavour and texture this year’s harvest of new potatoes has now been completed. There were a few leftovers from the last meal but they won’t last long as I plan to fry them up soon unless they get eaten by someone else before then!

Overall the yields from the handful of plants were quite impressive and if I’m honest probably better than I expected. The plants managed fairly well but it wasn’t an ideal location due to some overhanging growth from next door. The occasional heavy rain also didn’t help and some plants were quite badly beaten into submission in the end.

Half of their veg bed is already taken up with some runner beans and some more of the hand-me-down broccoli seedlings because I’m trying to make the best of my limited space. I’m sure there will be a couple of potatoes that turn up when I dig over the remaining part of the bed before putting in something else.

The most likely candidates to fill this space are some extra carrots which could be ready for planting out by early August. These are a fast growing variety so they should be ready for a harvest before the northern autumn weather sets in (I hope).

More eggs than at Easter!

From time to time our fridge fills up with eggs even though we only have 3 chickens and there are 3 grown adults in our house. Some days we open the fridge door and there are eggs wedged in almost every available space – in fact it’s amazing they don’t fall out!

I know we could probably pass some on to No.1 or No.2 daughter and they would be glad of some free food but somehow that doesn’t always happen. It might be a lack of egg cartons or just simple forgetfulness but the result is 3 more eggs in the morning and the fridge soon fills up.

Obviously we must be more efficient in our egg handouts I guess and we should ~~palm them off~~ give some to work colleagues, friends and neighbours as well. However my first reaction when this glut appears is to wonder what other options are available for cooking with eggs.

On many occasions we have an excess of eggs simply because we’re bored with scrambled, poached or boiled!

This led me to http://www.eggrecipes.co.uk/ and an interesting recipe for Ham And Egg Cobbler which looks very quick and simple to prepare although perhaps a little plain. I like “quick and simple” as much as the next person but when I attempt this recipe I will probably be adding some extra ingredients to add “interest”.

Ideally I would like to work with something from the garden but I’m not sure that carrots would go with this and I don’t have time to wait for the leeks to get bigger. However I could try an early harvest of some garlic and even an onion perhaps to liven things up.

Some other good general links I found were the Good Food Channel from UKTV and the BBC Good Food site but something I’ve definitely noted for future reference is this Scotch Egg recipe from The Guardian website.

Please let me know about any other good egg recipe ideas and watch this space…

Baking better bread

Last night I had another go a bread baking with a few minor tweaks to the basic recipe and I managed to turn out a couple of truly majestic tasting but diminutive white loaves. Each of my attempts at bread making yield slightly different results, some of which are better than others but this most recent effort was generally considered an excellent batch.

Each time I like to vary the approach slightly to get a better understanding of how that affects the results so this time I decided to split the resulting dough between two loaf tins not using a single tin as normal.

Another variation was the use of Allinson Premium White Very Strong Bread Flour which I hadn’t tried before. Maybe this explains the good results but I’m not giving up all the credit just yet.

Also while leaving the dough to prove for an hour or so in the tins before baking, I decided to put them in the oven which had retained a little heat from use earlier in the evening.

The oven wasn’t by any means hot but just warmer than the kitchen and I believe this also influenced the results. I can’t let Allinson’s get all the glory!

If there is a downside to this batch of bread I would have to say it was the loaf size. I know we should value quality rather than quantity but I would have prefered both in equal amounts!

Next time I think I will increase the quantities used by about 50% so that each loaf is visually just that little more impressive.

Another planned future variation will be to experiment with adding seeds (e.g. pumpkin, poppy etc) or other flavourings before baking.

I’m always on the look out for good bread recipes though so please pass them on to me!

Second helpings of cabbage

I knew I had read about this somewhere but I couldn’t remember where until I checked just now. When I first harvested some of the over wintered cabbages some weeks ago I just went ahead and left the plant in the ground with just a short stem showing.

I couldn’t remember the exact recommended procedure but it seemed to be worth a try. After a bit of searching on the web this evening I think that I must have got this from the RHS website originally because I found the following extract on their cabbage page:

Cabbages are harvested by cutting through the stem just above ground level with a sharp knife. Cut a 13mm (1/2in) deep cross in the stump of spring and summer cabbages and you’ll be rewarded with a second crop of much smaller cabbages.

via Cabbages / RHS Gardening.

Cabbage stump with new growth

Slightly to my surprise I have now found out that this actually works but I realise now that I didn’t do things exactly as recommended.

As can be seen in this picture, I forgot about cutting a cross into the stump but even my incompetence didn’t stop this from working.

Obviously in future I will always do exactly what the RHS tell me just in case the vegetable police come around to check !

Uncertain about the (unplanned) broccoli

Back in the spring I “inherited” a few pots which contained what were described at the time as broccoli seedlings. There were no plans to grow broccoli as I only had limited space but I’m unable to resist a few seedlings and I was curious to see how they would turn out.

Eventually I potted them on when they needed it and then planted them out in the garden. However I have no idea whether they really are broccoli, how/what I should do to encourage them nor is it clear how I can tell when it’s harvest time!

At the moment I quite like the dainty yellow flowers but I have a nasty feeling that perhaps they are a bad sign? In reality these seedlings were only planted in some spare flower bed space so it doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things but I’d still like to understand this a little better.

As far as I can tell this might be either broccoli or calabrese but none of the online information I’ve read so far tells me when it should be harvested. I think I read somewhere that one of the two is an over-wintering crop while the other isn’t so maybe I’ll just leave them alone for a while and see what happens towards the end of summer.

Here is a picture of a couple of the plants in case anyone can provide some better information to clear up my confusion…

Late Update:

Oh dear… After another quick search around the web just before posting this I think I’ve missed a trick with this broccoli. Oh well, at least the flowers look nice!

The time to cut your first `spear` or flower shoot is when they are well formed but the tiny flower buds have not yet opened. Letting them flower will render the spear tasteless.

via Growing Broccoli For Best Results – Vegetable Growing Tips and Pictures.

Reviewing: A Farmers Life for Me – Jimmy Doherty

A Farmer’s Life for Me: How to live sustainably, Jimmy’s way (from Amazon)

This book caught my eye in the local library while I was looking for something about chickens or pigs. Needless to say there wasn’t much in a small suburban library that suited my original needs but I decided to give this book a try anyway.

My first reaction was that this would be just another one of “those” books that just skim the surface of the subject without giving enough detail. Despite this it seemed a good idea to give it a go because the recent TV programs showed that his approach and opinions are not so far from my own.

In some ways this does skim the surface exactly as expected because it just isn’t possible to cover the range of topics in detail without producing a multi-volume epic.

However this book also manages to give better information (or perhaps the same information in a better way) so that I felt I was getting more out of it. As a result this has turned out to be one of the few books that I am able to reread and get more out each time.

There is a wealth of useful information on both growing produce and rearing livestock but the inclusion of the recipes add a little something extra which I think helps to tie the whole book together.

This will certainly be purchased in the near future so that I have it available for future reference at all times. It will be placed up on the book shelf next to the other smallholding books I’ve gathered so far – the obvious book by John Seymour plus one by Dick / James Strawbridge (as discussed elsewhere) and the Haynes Smallholding Manual which is the most recent addition.

Each of these books contribute something to my overall knowledge and together they will hopefully ease my passage while preventing any costly or painful mistakes!

Another chaotic week or two…

Just lately things have been overtaken by the preparations for the recent wedding for No.2 daughter so the blog has suffered quite a bit. This situation was not helped by a crashed disk drive with lots of fairly important data which has now proved to be unrecoverable (hardware failure).

On top of all that we had some proper monsoon conditions here in the North East last Thursday (28 June) but I’m very conscious that some other people had a worse time with houses flooded and power outages.

Here is a picture of the garden at about the worst point last Thursday evening (the day before the wedding!)…

And less than a week later here is roughly the same view now:

Luckily the wedding was generally unaffected by all this chaos and everything went very smoothly on the day. Normal life can now be resumed!

Real life can slow you down

There haven’t been enough updates lately mostly due to a change of job, preparations for a wedding (No.2 daughter) and at times some atrocious weather! However that will soon change now that normality is slowly returning and other plans can start to move forward.

New job in easy commuting distance

After 2 weeks in the new job things are beginning to settle into a new routine rather than with the old job which involved travelling away quite a bit. There is also the added benefit that the garden and veg beds can get some attention after work.

Unfortunately in the last 2 weeks the weather has veered wildly between two extremes with some lovely sunny days but plenty of grey, damp, miserable ones too.

The big wedding day

The impending wedding is now only a week away and should be a great event over a couple of days. However this also means that the whole thing will all be over by the end of next weekend and our lives can move on to other things.

Smallholding plans

In particular I’m impatient to get some progress with the house sale and the other general changes needed to get us closer to the smallholding idea. There has been some slow and careful progress with our future plans but we are still not completely clear on the best way forward or how much can sensibly be achieved

First things first

This weekend I need to get a few hours in the garden to assess the progress with the veg beds because the potatoes are starting to show signs of flowers. According to my information this is quite a crucial phase and it won’t be long before I can check the results. Initial checks on a plant which had suffered some damage shows a poor yield but maybe it’s too early to tell?

I also need to take a closer look at the chickens because one of them has occasionally laid a “rubbery” egg recently and is looking a little off-colour. However these phases only last a few days before she apparently returns to normal for a week or so – It’s time to study some more chicken books and ask around on the various forums.

A belated growing update

What a busy couple of weeks! A change of job to work nearer home, ongoing preparations for the impending wedding for No.2 daughter, Open University assignments and of course the work needed in the garden.

Recently planted runner bean seedlings Finally I think I have managed to find time to update the blog with a few key pictures to show the progress made.

Newly planted

It was fast becoming clear that my plan to follow the potatoes with the runner beans was not going to work. Mainly down to my impatience and planting the beans a bit early.

As a result I had some healthy looking runner bean seedlings desperate for planting out and nowhere to put them.

A quick trip to the local pound shop soon solved this problem with a large tub so now i have the canes in place and the first batch of runner beans in.

Limited space

Onions in pots among the flower border

There is something of a common theme developing as time goes on now with a distinct lack of space for the many big ideas – hardly surprising though given the name of my blog!

This means that I have assorted veg plants all over the place and a very good example of this are the onions in a range of spare pots that I have managed to sneak in among the flower borders.

I have previously avoided plants in pots because they are higher maintenance with care and watering but this time there wasn’t much choice with the amount of plants I wanted to get in the ground.

Pride and Joy

Potatoes nearly ready, just waiting for flowers to appear

I am most proud of my potatoes though and to my untrained eye they look as if they are doing really well.

I noted on a comment made on Gardeners World this week that watering is not needed until the flowers appear but with our recent damp weather that hasn’t been a concern.

I might be deluding myself but I’m sure that on closer inspection there are some early signs of flowers…

A mean brew

Ginger wine successfully bottled

And finally the ginger wine has now been bottled. Obviously it needed a quick taste beforehand just to check the quality and it’s a mean brew with quite a kick on it!

I’ve got no idea if its supposed to be cloudy like this but im just impressed that something vaguely drinkable came out of all my efforts.

Not a bad result after 3 weeks of fairly low-key effort on my part but then I haven’t tried more than a couple of sips.

I’m a little worried that this may have the potential to take paint off the woodwork and disinfect the kitchen floor.

We won’t know until we try some but I leave that for later this week…