May is drifting by lazily in a haze of sunshine and soil. My hands are blistered from wielding garden forks and walling hammers. Slowly, the veg patch takes shape. Some evenings we walk around the lanes, and the last of the sunlight lighting up the cow parsley makes us feel like we're in a story. The days are long, and the weeks feel timeless, with nowhere to go and nobody to see. We've not yet driven anywhere for exercise, and we have plenty of outside space of our own so no need to sunbathe elsewhere. This strange new world is starting to take its toll in unexpected ways. I'm starting to worry about how I'll fit everything back in when life starts to turn back towards normality. My days are full now, and while of course it will be lovely to see people again, and be able to pop to a cafe, I will miss the long gardening hours. Would the veg patch have progressed as much as it has this month if I'd been able to pop into town whenever I wanted, or meet up with friends, or idle away the mornings in a cafe? I wouldn't have chosen this time (who would?) but I've tried to use it well. Not by taking up the bassoon, or learning to speak another language, but by slowing down. Not taking up new things, but spending more time doing the old things, the things I already enjoyed but often didn't leave time for. Nurturing seedlings. Long weekend mornings of reading. Writing letters. Eating tea in the garden. It's looking like I won't be returning to work in my office until after Christmas. I can't say I'm sad about that. I like my job, and miss some of my colleagues, but I haven't stopped working, and often worked at home anyway, so I can easily live without my physical office space (which at any rate is just a desk in a large open plan room). I've not been in my office since 27th February anyway, so already it feels like a place that doesn't really exist any more. My world has become small, in some ways at least. I'm grateful for not having to navigate city streets and busy parks right now, but I've seen so few faces since this began. I wonder how many faces we do see each day in normal times, just going about our normal business? Hundreds? Thousands? Anyway, no new faces for me, not for a while. Peter of course, and the postman, and the farmer checking on his cows. An occasional neighbour on a ramble around the lanes. The woman who runs the village shop. Those will have to suffice for now. It's like going back in time (aside from a fortnightly supermarket trip, of course, although I'd happily do away with that too). Anyway. It's easy to forget as the days roll by that there are still things to do. With what feels like endless tomorrows, it's easy to put things off. Today I'm back at work after a long weekend, and within five minutes the day won't feel endless, it will feel like the normal round of jumping between projects and trying to get things finished. But come five o clock I'll be back outside in the veg patch, the evening stretching out ahead, the sun (hopefully) still shining.
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I've finally made a start on growing some veg. Somehow I never quite get round to sowing seeds until the end of April, and that does feel quite late, but we're pretty exposed up here on the hillside so I tell myself I'm not too far behind. For the last couple of years, I've been trying to use up some of the stash of seeds I've acquired rather than too many new. Last year I got sidetracked (by what? I can't even remember) and barely grew anything, but this year I've got several things on the go and am determined to make at least some of them work. Those above are rainbow chard and curly kale, and I've also sowed leeks, beetroot, and turnips. These are my stash from the Heritage Seed Library membership my sister bought for my birthday. They're all in now except for the carrots. I've not grown carrots before and have in my head they're rather picky, so I'm going to sow them directly into large pots I think, rather than our pretty heavy soil. I need to work on my recording system - these photographs are the only current record I have of which seeds are which, and if I start moving trays round or repotting I'll have no idea. I think I can sense a 'garden organisation' project coming on next winter... Also in the greenhouse is the fig tree that was also part of my birthday present from my sister. I'm hoping I don't kill it. I've now fitted plastic replacements for the three glass panels that broke, so it's nice and warm in there. Fingers crossed. Outside the greenhouse, I'm preparing the beds. The first year we were here I tried to grow food up in the corner of the meadow, and where the edible windbreak is now. Last year I made beds in the garden area (but then never really planted much in them). This year I'm making more of an effort. I've laid out a square where the old beds were, and surrounded it with chicken wire. We'll have a gate on two of the corners (for easy access from both the house and garden seating area, and from the greenhouse and water butt), but these will be kept closed once the plants are in to keep out the chickens, and also hares, rabbits, and occasional stray sheep. The fence is just chicken wire, but if necessary we can always attach wind barrier fabric to create a bit more shelter. I'm not planning to do that just yet, but we'll see. I'm very much a fan of no dig gardening (not least because it involves me not having to dig), and ideally I would have created this area last autumn and mulched the whole lot, and now be looking at nice rich soil. Sadly, I didn't, and I'm looking at a thick thatch of grass and dandelions. So we're taking the grass off and removing most of the roots, but not doing any kind of deep digging. You'd think the chickens would be a help at this stage, and they do a little bit of scratching, but mostly they just stand with their heads exactly where you want to put the fork, so the whole thing proceeds rather slowly when they're around. Still, we are making some progress, with two beds cleared now, the fence finished (no gates yet), and stones put round part of the outside to block the gap between the fence and the ground. I'll put stones round the edges of the beds too once we've cleared them (not for any good reason other than distinguishing them from the path, and because we have a lot of stones), and I'll top dress with some mulch of whatever kind I can find or make (compost, wood chippings, old hay etc).
It feels good to have a dedicated space to grow food, and I'm currently thinking of it a bit like a mini allotment out in the garden. I've got some flowers growing in various tubs that I'm going to plant in here too, and some herbs. I might try to grow sweet peas up one fence, and actual peas up another. I'm looking forward to having a defined growing space that I can (hopefully) keep in some kind of order, and I'm also hoping that keeping the chickens out, at least until the plants are bigger, will mean that things have a chance to grow without interference. As always though, we'll see. I can't quite believe I'm having to say this, but just three weeks after we lost Mildred, Maud has gone too. Gentle, kind Maud. I never once saw her peck anyone, or anyone else peck her. It was like she was outside of the pecking order, and the others followed her lead because she was so sensible, not because they had to (although a swift peck from Mildred was often forthcoming if they didn't). Maud never pestered for food, never pushed to the front, she understood there would always be enough. Our little flock gravitated around her, always heading back to wherever she was. She was the least treat-oriented chicken, eating a balanced, sensible diet at all times - although this did mean she could not be easily bribed, and between us we have spent hours trying to reason with her when she didn't want to go back into the run. Like Mildred, she didn't like being picked up, and unlike the younger chickens, wouldn't usually jump on your knee in the hope of an apple core. But if you sat on the grass in the sunshine she'd often join you for an afternoon nap and a bit of a preen. I have barely any pictures of her without Mildred. The two were inseparable after the stoat attack that killed our other two original chickens. We nursed them back to health, and while they eventually accepted the three new chickens, they spent most of their time together. When Mildred was ill, Maud spent all her time sitting by her side, and looking back we wonder if she just didn't feel too good herself. She's always been slower than the others, more sedate, less likely to run at you from the other end of the garden. Whenever we brought Mildred into the house, Maud came too and the pair of them could nap in the living room for hours at a time towards the end, occasionally waking up for a bit of food. Chickens are good at hiding when they're ill, and for a week or two after Mildred died we thought she was just sad at the loss of her old friend. Eventually though we took her to the vets, who confirmed our suspicions that she was ill herself. She didn't respond to steroids or antibiotics, and slowly got more and more sleepy as (we think) her liver failed. On her last evening, after a day in the house with us, being plied with treats (most of which she ignored, but she did perk up for a bit of yogurt), we took her up to the run with the others. They went over to greet her, and she had a bit of a peck around with them, and then took herself off to her favourite spot in the hen house. When I went to close the door an hour later, she was still there, head under her wing (with one eye peeking out at me), the others surrounding her in a cosy feathery pile. She didn't make it through the night, and I found her in the same place in the morning, head resting on the wall. We buried her under the fruit trees near Mildred, Hermione and Luna, all four of our original chickens back together. It's strange being down to three chickens. The hen house feels very empty, and I keep casting my eyes around looking for the rest. When we first got our new ladies, five seemed so many more than four, and so much harder to count, but three seems such a small number.
I think we'll get more when the British Hen Welfare Trust starts rehoming again, whenever that might be. Yes, we get upset when they go, and yes, it would be nice to go for an impromptu weekend (or even week!) away like the old days, without worrying about them. But the amount of fun we have getting to know their little beaky personalities and their favourite treats, knowing we've given them a chance to know a different life to the one they've had before, outweighs all that. In the meantime, the three remaining chickens have been informed that they are not to get ill, as we just can't take any more chicken tragedies right now. April has passed in a flurry of daffodils. I love April. It's my birthday month, but it's not just that. April is when it warms up enough to spend time in the garden most days, to sit outside with a cup of tea with the chickens, and to start planting seeds. I've planted seeds that I already had, some out of date. Rainbow chard, curly kale, leeks, turnips and beetroot so far, and my sister bought me membership to the Heritage Seed Library for my birthday so I now have several others to plant too - carrots, swedes, peppers, celeriac, radish, and something else that I now can't recall. In other garden news, I've mowed the grass a couple of times - I'm trying to keep on top of it with the push mower this year, but it means getting out there a couple of times a week or it gets too long. And finally I finished the compost bin. While I had the wood preserver out, I re-coated the table and benches, and the most exposed parts of the chicken run. The plum blossom is out (and so far still on the trees), and the apple blossom has started to emerge too. Inside the house I've been cleaning. And yesterday we acquired a dehydrator, so we're looking forward to a summer of preparing and preserving more food. Of course, we lost Mildred chicken over the Easter weekend, and now it's looking like we'll lose her old pal Maud too, the last of our original chickens. We're devastated. Mostly though, April has been taken up with walling. This field wall fell down over a year ago, and I finally got round to stripping out the fallen stone early this year. In April I started rebuilding, and while it feels never-ending, I have made good progress. I'm planning to finish this short stretch before I go back to work on Monday, but there's still a gap of twice the size of this to do.
What's in store for May? I'm hoping this wall will be finished, and we should see the arrival of some new pregnant cows from the local dairy farm. I've bought a fence to keep the chickens out of the veg beds, so I need to put that up, and create the beds themselves. I hope there will be some plants ready to plant out in June. |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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