The event of the gardening calendar...

...why, it's none other than the Whitchurch potato fair! For the second year in a row we made a quick trip to Hampshire to get our seed potatoes for the year. Last year we were growing them for the first time so didn't really know what to look for but we've tried to be much more strategic about it this time.

Having more space is going to be great - we're using 2 of the beds on the allotment for spuds, one for first early, one second early and one maincrop. We got 8-10 of each variety and will have two varieties in each bed. This is what we chose:

First earlies - Swift and Chopin
Second earlies - Kondor and Kestrel
Maincrop - Majestic and Navan



There really were so many to choose from, as you can see from this picture (each coloured label is a different variety) but we tried to get ones which were quite disease resistant and useful (last year we had some that just fell apart when boiled - completely pointless!). We mainly use potatoes boiled, mashed or chipped so we have some of each includign some lovely looking salad potatoes. Can't wait until they're ready!



Quite ridiculously for chicken keepers we have a shortage of egg boxes so we've just started chitting the first earlies. The others will have to wait a little.



In other news...since we found out that the chicken that we have been buying from the farm shop isn't free range we've pretty much stopped shopping there. Which is such a shame because it was lovely in other ways. Once we're over the shock we might go back for dried goods. But, it has brought one good thing. We have started getting a veg box delivered again, which we haven't done since we left London. This isn't just any veg box, it's a Kentish veg box (all produce is grown in Kent. Amazing!), from these people. We met the owner last year at a game cooking demonstration and he was so passionate about what he does that we thought we would give them a go. We haven't been dissapointed so far, it's been great, even if we are coming into the hunger gap. He keeps his customers up to date with a little newsletter each week, including a recipe and some information about what we can expect coming soon (tomatoes in February...from Kent! I kid you not).

The reason that I'm telling you this is because we made some good use of the root veg that we've been getting this weekend in some vegetable pasties. Yes, they were as good as they look.





I think that's all for now. The chickens are settling down (although Blue is still being a bit bullied) and we did a little bit of digging on the allotment this weekend but the ground was quite frozen so we just have to be patient.

January's egg count to follow some time this week...