Oh Tomatoes!

I forgot tomatoes!
I'll be growing tomatoes. I'll be focusing on cherry toms for this growing season as I don't have as much light as I'd like. CURSE YOU GIANT TREE NEXT DOOR!!
I'll have a mixture of yellows and reds.  I love yellow tomatoes!!
I'll be getting my regular sized toms from my dads garden. Yes he knows. :P

Peas!

I can't stop thinking about peas, I think I've even been dreaming about them! At this rate I'm going to have nothing but peas growing in the garden next year.
Even if its just peas and potatoes I guess that's not bad nutritionally. Man oh man I need more growing space. Somewhere that isn't shaded by that dreadful tree next door. :/

Next years veg I'm hopefully growing:
Peas,
Potatoes,
rhubarb,
raspberries,
strawberries,
broad beans,
carrots,
parsnips,
beetroot if I find space
Chard.
Chinese cabbage,
Barlotti beans.

I'm finally getting an egg a day from my two hens again. Yey! (Not sure if I mentioned I sold my Sebright rooster and hen)
I'm looking after the baby chickens over Christmas, that normally live at the school. I might get quite a few eggies for Christmas. :)

Flowers I'm hoping to grow.
Rudbeckia,
Nasturtiums,
pot marigolds,
aquilegia,
forget me nots,
Possibly some dahlias.

If space allows I'll be adding much more but its only a little garden so I'll probably struggle to fit it all in.

That time of year again.

Its that time of year again. cold, wet weather, very little day light. Depression at the wet horrible state of the garden. So I spend my time looking at gardening videos, photographs, seed packets and trying to talk the puppy out of pulling down the Christmas tree, just to have the cat pull the angel off the top of the tree when I'm detracted with the puppy.

Edit: Plus, I found out this morning that my chickens are still laying eggs but the little shits  dickens's have been eating them.

Warm rice with parsnip and squash.

I must find a better subject  matter than chicken treats.

Yet more chicken porridge.

We should be getting new chickens any day now, to keep our old girls company. Ignore the teabags. :P

Today.

Well, that's the dogs taken on their insane 2 and a half hour walk. Trouble was quite good. She sniffed her first horse and met a lot of new dogs. Unfortunately she got overly friendly with their owners and coated them in muddy foot prints. Sorry dog owners. :S At least she's started coming back when I call her now. Niche was really struggling, I don't normally walk her that far any more, but I couldn't bring myself to walk them separately today.
I've cleaned out both chicken coops. Quite a feat as I had to move their straw and wood shavings from the house to the bottom of the garden they are very heavy. I cleaned out their waterers (yes I do it most days and check them every day) checked their feed and hand picked the bedding out of it as they do seem to like burying their food.
I've done some washing, applied for a new job, fed the cat twice, the puppy once, washed the pots and put some home-made pie filling in the slow cooker (national pie day). I'm having a cup of tea, and then hopefully I'll hoover downstairs. Then I'm going to play video games!!!

Trying to cheer up the chickens.

Trying to cheer up the chickens in this weather. A vain hope?

I think I've given it a good go.

Doesn't she look like a pony. :P

 The dogs aren't that impressed either. I'd been walking them in the rain for three hours straight. I walked them separately, as Trouble needed a much bigger walk than Niche could cope with today.
My water proof coat let the rain through and I was soaked to the skin. My trainers were full of water.

 I wish it would stop raining!! Please stop raining.

My black Friday shopping.

Chicken breakfast.

They need something to cheer them up in this nasty weather.

Dog walk. Trouble isn't necessarily to be trusted off the lead. She's getting better though. 

She walks pretty well on the lead now. :)

This is the chicken bedding to keep us going over Christmas. 

And last but not least. Sheep!

Insomnia.

I think with all that's happening in the world right now, and with the fact that I'm coming down with something,  I am struggling to sleep.
I am wiling away the dark hours going through a book of plants and planing out the front garden.
As the garden is really rather shaded I have so far decided upon:

Asplenium scolopendrium which is an evergreen harts tongue fern. height 70cm/ spread 60cm.

 not my picture.

Athyrium niponicum var. Pictum. Japanese painted fern. height 38 cm/spread 35cm.

 not my picture

Aquilegia canadensis. Columbine. height 90cm/spread 30cm.


not my picture.

Digitalis Purpurea. Foxglove. height 6 feet/spread 50cm.


not my picture.

If anyone can think of anything else that goes well with dry shade then do comment.

Proud.

Proud >_<

I grew a very large, perfect parsnip. :D

I've grown bigger parsnips, but they've always looked like sea monsters. This is the biggest parsnip I've ever grown that actually looked like a parsnip.

These are my two sebright chicks. One boy and one girl. I am selling them. If anyone wants to buy them feel free to comment.

Cold climate permaculture design and farming

This is Awesome. Someone do this with me?

As I sit here from my invalid bed.

Yes. I'm holed up at the minute with a badly sprained ankle with my foot up on pillows with the express orders, from the BF, not to do anything physically demanding. I get the feeling I'm going to be very bored and very frustrated for the next few days. I'm not the sort of person that enjoys sitting for long periods of time. :/ I have things to do. The dogs are going to be nuts. They didn't go for a walk yesterday and they probably won't get to go out tomorrow either. I'm holding out hope for Saturday though.
I slept very badly during the night. Possibly due to the pain in my ankle, possibly due to the nightmares. Perhaps they were linked?

The garden is looking past its best now due to the colder weather. The greenhouse needs clearing, the beds need weeding. The paths need  weed suppressant laying and wood chip going over the top.
I need to spread the compost onto the beds and clear out the compost heap area ready for next year. Sigh. Everything I need to do and I have to sit here with my leg up.

Hens.

I have ordered three new battery hens from a local man that rescues them and so should be getting a bigger flock before the really cold weather starts. Hopefully they'll keep each other warm. I can't wait and it doesn't help that I don't know when the farmer is going to be "getting rid" of his batch of hens.

In other news I have also started a website. I'll be adding to it if I get any interest in my project.

http://jopanpop1.wix.com/backtotheearth

Sad news.

I'm afraid our ex-battery hen Blue died today. :'(

We'll miss you Blue. You were an evil little bugger to the other chickens but nice to us.

I know I've mentioned this before.

I know I've mentioned this before but I really would like people to sign this partition or donate some money to this guy. 50 ducks in a bathtub.

Its all for a good cause and lets remember before anyone gets upset that I was vegetarian for 6 years, but these ducks have led the happiest life possible and they will freeze to death if this doesn't get sorted out on time.

A bit of charity.

My twin sister is raising money for a very worthy cause. She's going to Nepal to walk across the Himalayas to raise money for the Alzheimers society. She's doing so very well, she's almost raised £3000 so far.

A bit of progress.

Well. The last of my potatoes are up, it was actually less then the first lot but I'm pretty pleased with the overall amount. Especially as the haulms died down so early.
The broad beans Aquadulce Claudia have gone into the potato bed now. I must buy more, I've run out now.
The spiders this year are nuts, they are everywhere! I watched the chickens eat one this morning that had attached itself to their water bucket in the two minutes I'd been filling it. I also watched the Puppy walk straight into a massive web, with the massive spider still attached. it ended up on her face. She ended up punching herself in the face.

Talking of spiders.

I dropped my mobile phone down behind the sofa last night and when I was trying to retrieve it, armed with an old axe handle, I moved the sofa back after much effort and out jumped a spider that was as big or bigger than my palm! I almost soiled myself I can tell you. And no I didn't kill it. I don't kill spiders. Its still out there somewhere... Waiting.  

quick update.

I've only got time for a short post today as I'm at work soon.
My Garlic from the garlic farm finally arrived yesterday to much excitement from me. :) Its quite funny to he honest. The post lady has been delivering lots of parcels for my OH and I said Why on earth does he keep ordering all of this stuff, to her before she left. About 2 minutes later she turns up saying I knew I had something else for you and it was for ME! :)  My garlic. four bulbs of two different types. A hard neck and a soft neck.

If the nice weather finally coincides with my time off work I will dig up the rest of the potatoes, sow the broad beans in the bed and then take a look at the new garlic bed. Its going to be a few weeks before I plant the garlic I think. I need to wait for the pumpkin and sweetcorn to ripen or die off before I will clear the bed of this years stuff.

Stuck at home.

Runner bean, carrot and quorn sausage toad in the hole. It was pretty incredible to be honest. Just that with gravy.

The puppy really, really likes these dog chews. Might have something to do with their size. They're called 'pudding sticks' for some insane reason. 

I'm stuck at home waiting for a delivery to arrive and I'm going stir crazy. I'd normally be taking the dogs on their second walk by now but I can't, so I've been trying to keep busy cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, cleaning all of the chicken pots and topping up their bedding. 

I would be doing stuff in the greenhouse but I can't get in it. Its covered in loads of the biggest, fattest spiders I've ever seen in my life. And their webs are all at face height. I've tried removing them with the handle of the rake and hopefully I've got them all, but I'm all spidered out for the time being, so I don't want to go back in.

In fact I've just thought of something I could be doing. Cleaning the chick brooder.

Chuffed. :)

I walked to Wilkos today. At first I was disappointed as they had removed all of the gardening stuff to replace it all with Halloween and domdomdom... Christmas stuff. But I found all of the remaining plant and flower seeds for half price AND buy three for two!!! I bought seven packets for £2.50 :D :D :D

I bought kale, French climbing beans, dwarf sunflower, chard, Rudbeckia, cress (for growing inside) and I think I bought some sweet peas. Can't remember and I'm not going to look. :p Very pleased about all of that for £2.50.

Mucking about with the camera.

mayan gold potatoes.

This is about 40% of this years potatoes. I'm not too unhappy with it. The leaves died back really early this year so I am actually quite pleased. Its a five feet by five feet raised bed so its not a lot of space. I'll be putting broad beans in the ground as soon as I've removed the tatoes. The beans should be out in time for the squash to go in the ground in June next year. Look how organised I am :)

Trouble today at seven months old.

She's definitely taking after her mum, the collie side.

This is a very nice bread I made yesterday. a mixture of light and dark flour 

Look at that crumb. It tastes really good. :D 

I'm in the mood to make a pudding. I just need to decide which one. I'm thinking a boiled syrup pudding.  

Monday.

We have our new chicken coop up and running now.

Its been in use for about four days and despite a few teething troubles with the gangway, the chickens love it. They have loads of space and its way more cosy than the old coop.
Happily the old coop found a new home, housing our next door neighbours guinea pigs.  :D

Trouble seems to have stopped growing now, I'm not sure if she's reached her full height yet but at seven months old she can't be too far off. She's a little bit obsessed with our chicks at the minute. We've been keeping the chicks in our small original coop during the warmer parts of the day just until they're used to/old enough to be outside. Trouble will lie next to their run all afternoon if I let her.
I've discovered that two forty minute walks per day and a day full of chicken guarding is what is called for to get her to sleep at night.

Today has been an exhausting one for me.
I've walked the dogs twice, walked into town, picked up six Kilos of chicken feed, dog flea stuff, wormer and baking essentials, (including chocolate) walked back. By God it nearly killed me.
Deep cleaned the big chicken coop ready for the lady next door to have it. Made soup with home grown patty pan (not mine- a guerilla gardeners) carrot, runner beans and shop bought squash. I cleaned out the incubator ready for some eggs that I thought would arrive today, but instead I got a call from the lady who I ordered them from saying that she was unable to get the eggs I wanted. :'( Never mind though. I'll be getting three Dutch Hamburg eggs (so cute) and three frizzled bantams instead of the two frizzled bantams, two Dutch Hamburgs, one Lemon pencilled Friesian and a Speckledy.
Now in all honesty I didn't need to have the speckledy. I wasn't that fussed about the speckledy, but I really, really wanted the Friesian. Never-mind though. I can get some when we've moved house and gained a bigger garden, or when I've got an allotment.
I prepared a slow cooker meal requested by my OH, flea'd the dogs, moved the chicks and their paraphernalia out of the house, and then in again, cleaned their paraphernalia too, and moved the big coop next door.

I will sleep well tonight.  

five weeks old.

My chicks are five weeks old now.

aren't they cute? >_<

Look at their little faces. 

Trouble being adorable.

Butters the snake. I can't believe how big he is now.

Mrs wiggle, who's even bigger now.

 And both with nice clean snake vivs.

149 Ducklings Move Day To The Barn #56 Hatching Duck & Goose Eggs

These videos are my new obsession. Check them out. They're wonderful.

gardening update.

Well, I can't truthfully say that the veg growing has gone well this year. I don't think the weather has been ideal, I am very unhappy with how shady my garden has turned out to be. I've not had time to weed/water/feed like I would have liked, what with having a new puppy, two jobs, and my first house to try and keep clean (this is the one that's killing me - I hate, hate, hate cleaning, and its always a mess) I don't have a social life so no-one can blame that. The puppy and cat shitting all over it hasn't helped and has certainly made me unwilling to eat anything.

Things I want to do to improve things for next year. 

• I want to mulch the soil with the lovely chicken poop and greens compost. I don't think the soil has ever been fed. I have a horrible feeling that the old man that owned the house before, only used chemicals to keep things going. D:

• I want to finally get the paths between the raised beds covered with weed suppressant. I'm thinking of covering the left side of the garden with grass to give the dogs more pooping space. The puppy seems to poo 5 times a day and my garden seems to be always full of poo even though she does 2 poops on her walks. (I know, sorry. I'm talking about poo) and I poo pick weekly.

• I need to trim the hedge that runs the length of my garden, which actually belongs to my next door neighbour. I personally would like to burn it, I hate hedges.

• I would like to fence off my beds to keep shit faced puppy off of them. Can you tell she's driving me insane. 

• And I would like to grow more flowers next year. I've felt no joy for my garden this year. I'm hoping things will be better in the next growing season as the puppy should be a little bit better behaved. So I want the garden to be beautiful as well as productive.    

• I will also see if the neighbours on the other side will chop down that 60ft bloody tree sitting smack bang in the middle of their yard, that shades all of my garden. 

The peas and potatoes have done pretty darn well this year. Not one lot of pea moth larvae. The broad beans did very well. The runner beans, although very late to start, are looking good. And the achocha is massive and starting to produce little achochas that I might actually be able to try before the frosts arrive. Hopefully I can have one to try and one to ripen for more seeds. The nasturtiums are lovely and trailing everywhere and my pumpkins are looking good. So its not all a total failure.   

Chicken update.

My three week old golden seabright chicks.

Its very hard to take a picture through dirty glass. :p

This is Blue. She was looking very puffed up and sad in the corner, so I've tried to give her a bath encase she's egg bound. Its hard to bathe a large chicken in a sink. I can't wait until we finally get ourselves a bath. 

We're getting a lot of eggs right now. Too many really. I've given the dogs some scrambled eggs today to get rid of some.

Discussion.

Ok. I know I'm a bit gloomy and depressing. Try living inside my head. But I really think its time that the house prices situation was addressed.

I think that I can safely say that the UK has one of, or even, the highest house prices in the world.
To add insult to injury though, the UK houses are tiny, ugly, grubby buildings with tiny parcels of land attached called gardens. Houses that are built cheek by jowl, with no privacy and  which are made with inferior building materials. And we're paying extortionate prices for them.
The building materials are not what are making the house prices so unreasonable, its the price of land. I really think that land prices should go down, and a lot, but the regulations for house building should be stricter with the main focus being on keeping environmental damage to a minimum. I think they should increase the size of the average back garden and increase the privacy of the individual home owner.

I am aware that we are a very small country with a very large population, which is why the price of land is very high. Perhaps if an effort to reduce our overall population were made it would make living here a little bit more comfortable.

A bit extreme I know but I think we would even benefit from a one child policy like the one in china, maybe if we encouraged people to move to the larger land masses, like America and places in Europe it would reduce the strain to the UK.
 I know this is controversial but we need to reduce the amount of immigrants we allow into the country. I am aware that there are a lot of people out there that need help, but we can't afford to help everyone and the ship of England, Scotland and Wales is going to capsize if we don't stop taking on cargo.

I didn't mean for this post to be so political, it kinda ran away from me a little bit. Its just so hard to take when two people. One a scientist working full time, and the other working 25 hours a week in any job that will have her, are struggling so very. very much to afford a tiny two bedroom ex-council house in a town that no ones even heard of.

How would a person living on their own survive? People in retail and other minimum wage jobs can't afford to buy their own house and have to rent for their entire lives. How is this fair? No wonder we have such a problem with people on the dole, with people feeling like things are hopeless and what's the point of even trying. Something has to change in this country, and before its too late.

Peas.

I did a good hour of weeding in the garden today. That's quite impressive as I hate weeding. I've also picked all of my giant peas, I've podded them and they are having a couple of minutes in boiling water before I freeze um.

By gum they took a long time to pod. 

That's half of my crop (the stuff that made it to the house) should be 5 or 6 feeds. :)

Giant spuds.

I dug up some potatoes today. I pulled a turnip and carrot on my way back to the house too. This is the second lot of tatoes and I've only just finished the first row. I ate the carrot just a second ago. It was pretty nice but not the best carrot ever. This was the first time I've grown caracus carrots. Not sure what I'm going to do with the turnip but I'm baking the biggest spuds. 

Those are some massive first early potatoes.

Better in the morning.

I've been exhausted for months now. I'm really, really struggling to work two jobs, do the garden and sort out the chickens. At the moment I've got three groups of chickens. The ex-batts, two of the babies that went to live at the school (here for a holiday) and two 9 day old chicks. 2 chicks from 6 I might add. I've never had such unhealthy little chicks. The constant attempts, seemingly in vain, to keep the house clean, and keeping the house stocked up with food, toothpaste etc. And all of the other chores like baking the bread, getting keys cut and cleaning out the snakes/snails etc. It's just really, really hard and repetitive, especially as I can't drive or afford buses, and I'm struggling and I'm just so fed up of it all. I'm really considering selling my chickens and putting all of the garden to lawn.

Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

CHICKS!

Blah.

Well, Other than topping up the chickens water and filling up lots of little containers with water for them I've just not left the house since getting back from work at 8:30 AM . The concrete burns your feet! I took a step outside the back door to fill up the spare dog water bowl in the garden and I couldn't stand to keep my feet on the path. I guess the dogs won't be going out until the evening then.

We had a rather nasty thunder storm at about lunch time. It was the puppy's first ever. I don't think she liked it very much. She hide behind the door with half her body on the TV stand shelf.

Being trapped inside has meant I've been able to catch up on my sleep though. I didn't sleep well at all last night due to the heat. So I had a couple of hours kip on the sofa.

Home-made pizza.

I made the bases out of sour-dough and they turned out so GOOD!

The top one was mine. Its BBQ sauce, with squash, onion scapes and like 6 different cheeses.

The second one is the BFs, its BBQ sauce, six different cheeses and kebab. 

First new potatoes of the year picked and eaten 27th June.

And boy were they good. :) I had new potatoes, freshly picked cut and come again lettuce, Wensleydale cheese, and home-made bread with garlicky cream cheese. It was totally delicious.


If you haven't noticed I'm back from my holiday and I feel really refreshed. The garden has gone mad and it looks more like i was gone a month not a week. I'm trying not to feel overwhelmed by it all but its kinda difficult.

The first plant I dug up only had four potatoes but it only needed to feed me.

It was so nice. >_<