Kentshire Life

Bringing in the harvest down at Jimmy's

2010-09-15T20:51:00.009+01:00

Jimmy Doherty is an absolute hero of mine. We went to Jimmy's Farm a few years back when Matt had bought me a tour of the farm and lunch with Jimmy himself and he is such an inspirational chap. So, imagine our delight when we discovered that he was hosting a food and music festival.

In case you don't know who Jimmy is, this is he (holding his month old baby in a carrier...aaaah):

We booked tickets months and months ago before we knew the line up so I was soooo excited to discover that my favourite band (The Futureheads) were playing. The music was brilliant, of course, and the atmosphere fantastic:

The food was also brilliant. On the first night I had dinner from Wahaca, the Mexican "street food" restaurant set up by Tomasina Myers who won masterchef a few years back. I've been to the restaurant in London a few times and it never disapoints - it's just my kind of food! On Sunday we had some Greek-style salad from the "farmers market" area, and a pasty from Jimmy's shop. Being such a small festival it was a great place to just see people. We watched The Hairy Bikers do a cooking demo and they were jolly funny and just as entertaining as on TV:

(a speeding biker)

(bikers in action)

Last, and by no means least, my gardening guru, Alys Fowler was there! Matt said I was all red every time I saw her and I saw her lots - she clearly wanted to be my friend because she queued next to me for breakfast and sat behind us at Wahaca:

She talked about wild food and some unusual ideas for preserving and pickling, which was fascinating, and we even won a prize from her of some walnuts that she had collected on her drive down from Birmingham. Brilliant!

I was a bit of a loser and asked for her autograph (I never do that, but I just couldn't not!) and talked to her about flea beetles, a very important subject I'm sure you'll agree.

Finally, a visit to Jimmy's Farm wouldn't be complete without a mention of the pigs. We had a lovely talk from a pig expert about the different breeds and they all came out to show themselves off:

Gloucester Old Spot

Large Black

Tamworth

Wessex/Saddleback

I thought this chap was an Essex but he's clearly not so he's nameless

Middle White

It was just running around pigs that kept us amused either, there was plenty of piggy to fill our tummies (Katy, don't scroll down)...

Pass me the apple sauce!

Produce update

2010-09-15T20:43:00.004+01:00

I haven't done an update on the food that we're getting from our garden for a while so I thought it was about time...

A couple of weeks ago we went down to the allotment, basket in hand, and had a good old harvest. The peas are pretty much spent so we picked the last of those (I think we've had over 4 months of peas, which is great considering I only successionally sowed twice and we had pea moth larvae). Some of the squash had also gone orange and hadn't grown in a few weeks so I decided to pick those. I'm glad I did because we now have a load more femal flowers fruiting, which is very exciting. We obviously had some courgettes (who doesn't?!) and the first of our tomatillos were ready so I picked some of those. I collected a jar of raspberries and I have also presented, harvest festival style, some of our chillis here. We've had over 15 chillis now from our 3 plants (and a good few to ripen yet) and 1 chilli is hot enough for a good kick in 4 portions of chilli!

To celebrate our bounty, I roasted a squash, some courgettes, tomatillos and a chilli (which was a bit too hot!) with some of my mum's garlic and some thyme form the garden and we had it for a few meals with couscous.

We are also continuing to get a continuous crop of tomatoes, although no new ones are growing now as you would expect. I picked a small punnet's worth today to add to a paella that I'm cooking for friends on Friday night. Despite it not being a traditional paella ingredient, I am going to see if I can hide some courgette in there!

We all need some...preservation

2010-09-15T20:24:00.006+01:00

It's been a while since I've updated the blog as you will see (once again I blame it on weddings, festivals and a PhD) so I have quite a bit to update on.

Following on from the tomato ketchup success (it really is very delicious) i got the preserving bug.

Firstly, I emptied the fridge of summer fruit so made a "summer fruit jam" which contained various quantities of blueberries, blackcurrants, raspberries and some alpine strawberries. It's quite delicious and has a lovely tart edge from the blackcurrants:

Secondly, in true self-sufficientish style, I swapped half a dozen eggs for 1.5kg of plums from a lady at work. I kept some aside to grill with sugar and serve with ice cream but the rest I made into little jars of spiced plum chutney, which is yummy, and should be good for Christmas - I think it'll go well with turkey, or with my special Boxing day sprout and sweed sarnies (yummm!).

Unfortunately I haven't taken any photos of the chitney jars so here is a montage of some of our produce:

Finally, I walk in the gate every day and brush past the lovely bushy mint bush and it makes me long for mojitos so i decided to do something useful with some of the mint and make some mint jelly. My mummy made some delicious mint jelly when I was younger, which had lots of sugar and was like minty-jam. So, I decided to immitate this and make some lovely sweet mint jelly. It's very sticky but very nice and goes well with potatoes (and, I imagine, the aforementioned sprout and and sweed sanger):

So we have well stocked cupbopards for the winter...as long as our diet consists only of preserves!

Ketchup catch up

2010-08-30T22:19:00.003+01:00

We went to the market on Saturday morning and, on the veg stall, they were giving away 4kg boxes of very ripe cherry toms for £2! Not ones to pass on a bargain, we snapped it up to make some ketchup!

Here's a summary of the process, which took quite a lot of time because of the volume!

The finished product, 5 bottles of ketchup and 2 of chilli ketchup...

and I have to say, it's absolutely delicious!

It's all over!

2010-08-15T21:13:00.004+01:00

At last, after 3 weekends of work, the pergola and paving is complete! We finish the weekend once again, absolutely knackered, but satisfied to be done!

Here it is:

We're so pleased with it, even if it does look a bit orange at the moment! I have planted the hop on the right, with the fig tree in front as well as some wild strawberries which I had in pots but I thought would be lovely rambling around the base of the fig once they get the chance. I can't wait to see how it develops over the years as the greenery takes over. I have ordered our grape vine (Kentish Claret) to go on the left hand side. I can't wait to get a little bench to go underneath it...hopefully next weekend!

As you can see, the lawn has taken a bit of a battering so I have sowed some grass seed and hopefully it'll recover in no time.

Other news of the day is that our beautiful Hollyhock took a battering in the wind today and sadly one of the stalks snapped. Sad for the front garden but happy for the house because I stripped the flowers off and filled a couple of vases. Lovely!

It's got to be bedtime soon. It's been such an active weekend with all of the digging and two outings on my new bike. I'm so glad I'm working from home tomorrow - lie in!

I want to ride my bicycle

2010-08-14T14:21:00.003+01:00

Tonbridge, despite being a small town, has 3 bike shops! The best, in my humble opinion is a little shed crammed full of second hand bikes run by a man who, we are told, as a further 200 in his garden at home as well as a load more in a lock up! For some time we have been pondering whether to get a bike so, finding ourselves with a free Saturday morning, we paid him a visit.

We were seriously tempted by the tandem he had standing there but decided that it might not be very practical! So, I am now the proud owner of a very lovely metallic orange Puch Sprint...

Isn't she beeeeeooootiful? I immediately popped down to one of the other bike shops (somewhat larger!) and got her a basket which I think she wears very well indeed.

I haven't really riden a bike for at least a decade but was pleased with how well I got on. I did a turn of the park, discovering a little village of barges on the river which I didn't know existed. I let Matt have a go too. The bike man is going to see if he has any vintagy men's bikes at home so we will pop back next Saturday to find out and, fingers crossed, we can both have one!

1 more of our 52 meals

2010-08-09T20:33:00.005+01:00

We managed to have another of our 52 meals to save the planet (from Home Farmer magazine - aiming to grow enough to make 1 meal a week from your own produce) last week - stuffed courgette (stuffed with breadcrumbs, nuts, tomatoes, courgettes flesh and cheese)with new potatoes and salad. All from the garden! (apart from some of the stuffing)

Very excitingly, we are also getting loads of ripe tomatoes. We have always suffered from Blight in the past and, as such, have always had to make do with green tomatoes but tihs year we have red! We have just had some for dinner with cheese and ham on toast - yummmm!

Wild flower meadow

2010-08-09T20:28:00.004+01:00

For Christmas my sister, Katy, gave me a couple of packets of wild flowers, one of which I scattered down the back of the allotment where nothing else will grow and they've done remarkably well. Here is a selection:

Pergola shangrila

2010-08-09T20:23:00.002+01:00

On Saturday night I had my last hen night of the year (number 5!) and Matt his penultimate wedding (number 4) so we went our seperate ways to eat drink and be merry. This made it doubly difficult to get up early on Sunday morning to lay a patio but lay we did...for 11 hours! We cam frustratingly close but the weather and the final episode of Sherlock conspired against us so we put it on hold and have just now finished.

The garden looks like a building site still, and the poor grass is suffering but by the weekend (in which we have nothing to do - hurrah!) we will have it all cleared and I will be spending Saturday digging a nice big hole for the giant pot I've bought for the fig tree while Matt finishes the patio edges and we attach the trellis. I might make a trip to the garden centre to get some nice shade loving plants for the back of the patio, where this is a little strip of mud.

After we finished there was nothing else to do that have a celebratory cheese cake and shandy. A meal fit for royalty!

A Blue day

2010-08-09T20:13:00.003+01:00

Saturday was an emotional day for us as we said goodbye to our little Blue. Poor thing has always, in the 7 months that we've had her, been sickly, and has been laying softies for a couple of months. She hadn't eaten for days so we took her to the vet and he confirmed what we thought - egg peritonitis. It's fatal 99% of the time and although she looked perky we decided it would be cruel to keep her alive just for our benefit so the very nice vet let us say goodbye and off she went. We know we did the right thing but still sad to see her go - we always love the under-chicken and she was certainly that!

Pergola-la-la

2010-08-05T21:47:00.007+01:00

I have been thinking about a pergola for some time. An odd thing to think about I'm sure you'll agree but I have been certain that our garden really lacked it. Our neighbours gardens are so empty of plants etc (although one side is getting better) that we don't get anything filling any space so it makes our garden feel even emptier! So I decided a pergola was the answer...

This weekend just gone we took a couple of days off so we had some time to get it done. We took our little car down to the local timber merchants and placed our order, which they prepared straight away (very nice chaps) - we managed to fit it all in the car and get it home without losing any out of the open boot (phew!).

Two very hot and sweaty days later we got the main posts up:

I'm afraid I don't have a photo of the finished product yet. The cross beams are now on (not in this photo). We are also going to put some trellis panels on the left and right hand side (to the left and right of the main posts) for the grape and hop to grow up. The fig tree is also going to go into the ground in front of the right hand side.

We also still have the patio to finish. We tried to get some nice reclaimed tiles from the local reclamation yard but were shocked to discover that they were £3.50 each (we would have needed 250!), which is considerably more expensive than those that we've seen before so plan B was Homebase where we found some nice-ish brick tiles. Not perfect but they'll do! We need over 200 of them so I did 2 shifts bringing them home in the car so that it wasn't too heavy. I still have one or two more loads to go but couldn't face it this weekend so I will need to get up early on Saturday to get them while Matt starts preparing the ground for laying them.

The chickens decided that we needed some assistance with the pergola. This is Rom, who decided that a pile of bricks would be a good place to sit (she just hopped up there. Isn't she clever!)

Blue, who is still quite ill and having antibiotics, was also trying to help Matt by removing bugs and worms from below the ladder. Isn't she good.

Having dug out the post holes, and some of the paving area, we made a nice pile of soil on some tarpaulin ready to go down to the allotment. The girls, however, had different ideas. Apparently a neat pile is not the done thing and a nice flat dusty spread across the lawn would be much better:

Ground Force

2010-07-26T21:29:00.004+01:00

I have been feeling rather down about our garden recently - the grass is looking a bit scraggy (I refuse to water it), and the chickens went on a rampage last week and flattened lots of plants. I have also been neglecting the beds a little bit recently (working and doing a PhD doesn't leave much time for gardening!) and we are planning on building a pergola so it feels a little bit in limbo.

In order to make myself feel a bit better me and my mummy went plant shopping at the weekend - spending some of my birthday money from grandma.

A lovely Hibiscus ("red heart") - with big white flowers with a dark red centre, which I have put near the back and hoping it will fill out nicely over the next few months and years.

I managed to find a white Hollyhock which I was delighted about, being one of my favourite flowering plants. It's gone in at the back in the hope that it will spread and get nice and tall in future years. Katy has also given me a pink one which she has grown from seed from one of her plants so hopefully we will get some nice big spikes of flower next year to add to the "family"!

The most gorgeous Delphinium (Guardian Blue) with flowers which look blue but are actually a mixture of blue and purple. Again, at the back, and there are plenty of buds which I'm hoping will open.

Coreopsis (grandiflora Sunfire), which has amazing yellow flowers with a red centre, and has tonnes of flowers, which I am hoping I can keep going by deadheading and picking for cut flowers - the bees seem to love it!

Next to the bright yellow sunfire, I have a Catanache (blue), which has silvery foliage which lots of purple flowers on tall stems. They close up in the evening so I don't have a photo, but they are very pretty and make a lovely rustling sound in the wind.

I also got some little plants to go at the front of the bed - a lovely little yellow poppy, which again has lots of buds which I am hoping will open. It looks everso delecate so I am hoping I don't kill it!

Also at the front is this very pretty Sanvitalia (Inca), which has tiny yellow daisy like flowers. I think it should spread nicely under the larger plants.

Finally, these lovely evergreen bedding plants (Lysimachia Aurea), on the right, which has beautiful light green foliage which looks like it will spread across the ground and provide some nice winter colour.

The produce that we have in the garden is also doing really well. We have some cayenne chillis in the greenhouse, which has HUGE chillis on them. I've done so much better this year at watering and tending them and it really shows. I just need to keep it up now! The tomatoes, which I hadn't intended to grow but just popped up out of mummy's compost! I'm glad they did though, and hopefully August will be sunny enough to ripen them.

All in all I think the garden looks a lot better. Not perfect, I still have a lot that I want to do, not least build the the pergola. I would also like to fill it with more plants including some climbing up the fences on either side to make it feel more lush.

No potato famine here!

2010-07-26T21:14:00.004+01:00

This Sunday, Matt had his family visiting while I went off to a friend's wedding. Normally you would expect a family visit to involve tea, maybe a nice dinner or some wine. But oh no, Matt put them to work on the allotment, they had to earn their keep!

They filled the water butt (well needed!), pulled up the spent beans and dug up the early potatoes. The potatoes have suffered from the lack of water and too much heat somewhat and the first earlies were hit by frost so we were sure that we wouldn't get much of a crop. How wrong we were!

The first earlies, which looked very pathetic, produced a nice little crop of new potatoes (Chopin):

The second earlies were more impressive. The kestrels in particular, with their lovely purple splodges, produced some whoppers! One of them will provide us with a nice sized jacket potato to share!

The Condors have produced some lovely red potatoes, which I reckon will be good for fat chips. Yummmmmm!

We need to sort them and store them to make sure they don't go mouldy (we are a bit rubbish at storing produce normally!). Excitingly, we still have a bed of maincrops, which have lots of foliage, so fingers crossed they will produce some good sturdy potatoes for storing. We'll leave them in the ground for a bit longer and keep our fingers crossed that the Blight stays away.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

2010-07-21T23:01:00.006+01:00

July is always a busy month for us. Not least because it starts with my birthday and I do like to celebrate as many times as I can (I figure I'm getting to get older no matter what so I might as well have a party!).

Matt and I don't buy each other gifts for birthdays, we buy "experiences"! This year he treated me a trip to the Kentish seaside town of Whitstable to celebrate the final year of my 20s. I have wanted to go for ages and it's only 45 minutes away so perfect for a day out.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather, it was a beautiful sunny day (dare I say a little too hot!) so we really made the most of it. We wondered around the lovely little non-chain shops (bliss!) - Frank is a gorgeous shop with wonderful little gifts, the cheese shop where we bought a selection of Kentish cheeses to take home, Sundae, Sundae which does delicious flavoured ice cream in little boats, and numerous other lovely shops.

We visited the seafood market and treated ourselves to some fish and chips:

We spent a good while wondering along the beach and even went for a swim in the sea!

Here are some of the other highlights:

If you haven't been I would urge you to, particularly on a sunny day, it really is lovely!

Egg count - June

2010-07-05T11:59:00.003+01:00

Start of a new month so time for another egg count. We've seen a bit of a dip this month:

This can be mainly explained by Blue, who was laying the most regular beautiful brown eggs, is having a bit of a tough time. A lot of hers come out soft and are gobbled up by the "old girls" in seconds, and the rest of the time she is laying tiny brown eggs with no yolk. She seems fine apart from this so we will just need to keep an eye on her as always. The others seem to be doing ok though, we have 2/3 most days. It's also probably down to the hot weather - I wouldn't fancy trying to squeeze one of those things out in this heat, would you?!

We can't really complain with this month's figure, which averages out as more than 2 a day. We are still selling them relatively regularly which is paying for their food. All you can ask really considering their poor start in life so well done girls!

Broad bean and pea falafel

2010-07-04T21:39:00.004+01:00

We have the inevitable glut of peas and broad beans at the moment and we've now had our fill of pea and bean salads. We had our first pea and bean risotto of the season this week, which until now has been my favourite early summer dish, but not any more!

Courtesy of Jamie at Home we discovered the recipe of broad bean falafel, and I have adapted it slightly to use some peas by including a pea and mint dip.

For the Falafel

1kg broad beans (add smoe peas if you don't have enough)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 chilli
1 tsp cumin
1 small bunch mint
1 sprig coriander
1 tbsp flour

Blend all of the above, adding the flour last. Once blended make into dumpling shape falafel, 8-10 of them. Cook them in a deep pan of oil until brown on the outside.

For the dip

Some peas (couple of handfuls probably - I can't remember how many I used!)
Half small bunch mint
Small pot natural yoghurt
Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
splash of olive oil

Blend everything except the oil together, adding more or less pea/mint to taste, and a bit of salt and pepper. Splosh oil in at the end.

Serve with pitta and salad, like this:

Absolutely delicious! Try it!

We are doing so well at making home produced meals - we've at least 5 now which are almost entirely from our own garden/allotment. Hurrah!

Cheesemaking

2010-07-04T21:22:00.005+01:00

We had our second attempt at cheesemaking today and it was much more successful than the first.

In our first attempt we made lemon cheese, which was fae too lemony so a bit bitter, this time we tried curd cheese. Yesterday we got it going, heating 4 pints of whole milk and the curd cheese starter in our cheese kit, which started the process of seperating the curds from the whey.

Last night we cut the curd and poured it into the cheese cloth, and hung it to drain it. We left it until this evening et voila, curd cheese! It is just like ricotta and absolutely delicious!

We didn't want to hang around to taste our new creation so hot footed it down to the allotment and picked some mini-courgettes with flowers. We stuffed the flowers with the ricotta mix, battered them and fried them (healthy!). Jolly delicious!

Meg the Moggy

2010-06-20T10:13:00.005+01:00

Well, here she is, our car for 2 days a couple of weeks ago. As she's a Moggy we named her Meg, and what a lovely character she was. hard work to drive - crunchy gears, massive steering wheel with no power steering, and an indicator that I kept forgetting to turn off. But, oh wasn't she fun! Pootling around the Cotswolds was just lovely, we even managed to get the top down a couple of times, and it was lovely to hear so many people comment on her - a real pinup!

2 days is definitely not enough for the Cotswolds but we managed to make the most of it, with National trust properties, pretty towns and villages, and the Domestic Fowl Trust!

Garden of England

2010-06-20T10:01:00.003+01:00

Yesterday saw the annual Slade in Bloom gardening competition - run by our residents association - and judged by a senior lecturer at Hadlow College (our local agricultural college). I entered for the first this year, front and back garden, and had a mad panic yesterday morning to get everything ready. This would have been a slight challenge on any normal day but on Friday night I had done a little too good a job of drowning my sorrows at England's abysmal World Cup campaign to date that it was even tougher!

That said, I was quite delighted with how both gardens looked in the end. I'm quite realistic about the fact that we have some very tough competition in this area and it's unlikely that I'll win but it was fun to enter anyway.

Here's the front garden, absolutely stocked full of plants:

Front left is one of my favourites, Ligularia, with massive leaves with dark purple undersides. Front right is a lovely lavender which is ready to burst into flower. The Iris are now finished in the middle but back left are the Crocosmia which should give us lots of colour for the summer. Back right, standing tall, are the Hollyhocks, which aremy favourite flowers in the garden - lovely vintagey cream colour, with dark pink stamen. Vase at the ready!

This is the back garden:

It was really nice, when the judges asked me, to reflect on everything that we've done in 2 years. When we moved in it was just a strip of grass with a scraggy bush at the side and now look at it! It's still in transition - we will be putting a pergola up in front of the girls' run with a patio underneath, and the bare grass patch cunningly hidden under the table and chairs will be returfed with the turf we remove from the patio area. The flower bed is looking really nice, although it's in a bit of a gap between the Spring flowering and summer flowering plants. The judging was bad timing!

Harvest time

2010-06-20T09:51:00.003+01:00

What a bounty we are now getting from our allotment and garden, and it's on June! We are now getting quite a good supply of peas and strawbs and our broad beans are ready for harvesting.

Last week we managed to have our first meal almost solely from our own produce: Salad from the garden, with our own peas and eggs from the girls. The only thing that we added that wasn't was the tomatoes, which were Kentish nevertheless. So satisfying to have our first meal towards our 52 meals challenge (trying to grow enough to have one meal a week from our own produce).

This morning we are having our second meal - strawberries with yoghurt for breakfast - delicious!

Here's a summary of our recent harvest:

I hope soon to be able to show you a pea and bean risotto - my favourite meal of the season!

Egg Count - May

2010-06-07T09:26:00.004+01:00

As the end of the month has passed it's now time for another egg count. I think I forgot to do April so you won't have seen the massive spike in activity - they were obviously enjoying the Spring weather!

May saw a bit of a dip (although certainly not anything to complain about). In April we were regularly getting 4 a day but in May we had a number of problems - the egg eating started which we think was brought on by some soft shelled eggs. Luckily it looks as though it hasn't turned into a bad habit and they only eat the soft shelled ones, which are must less frequent this month. We think they happening partly because the older girls are getting on a bit and because of their battery farm days they probably don't have much more laying in them - but we also think it might have been because we were feeding them too many treats. In the worst type of parenting technique we kept giving them corn and kitchen scraps to shut them up if there were wingey. We're now being much more harsh and they're not getting treats until evening and only a little, and that seems to be much better.

At the moment we are getting 3 a day most days, athough they don't seem to like this weather and we have had a little dip again.

So concludes your monthly egg report!

Garden and Allotment News

2010-06-07T09:15:00.005+01:00

As promised, I got myself organised and went down to the allotment to take a photo or our newly erected fruit cage, built entirely from pallets. if this doesn't keep the birds off, I don't know what will!

We also harvested our first proper veg last night. I was making Thai Green Curry so popped down and picked some peas a mangetout and they were yummy (although not as yummy as when the pods are full of peas!). Hopefully this early harvest along with all of the rain and sun we're getting will encourage plenty of peas to form:

On our jaunt out yesterday we bought a new addition to our plat family - this is Hoppy, he's a Hop! It's a Fuggles variety, famous for it's beer making qualities. Once we have got around to building our pergola in the garden he will climb up one side. We're not intending to use it for beer making (although maybe one day!) it's more orgnamental with a nod to traditional Kentish produce.

Our garden if now full of Iris of all shapes and sizes - the smaller ones being my favourites - but we have a few medium sized ones which are also lovely just popping up. I thought they were all purple until the heavy rain encouraged this little lady to pop our head out, isn't she lovely:

I have been talking for ages about wanting a Fig tree to give the garden some exciting texture and my mum and Nick took a cuttting from their plant. I wasn't sure how it would do and for the first couple of weeks didn't show much sign of life until I potted it up and this happened. Hurrah! This weather is perfect to encourage growth so hopefully he'll keep on growing:

Sissinghurst Castle Gardens

2010-06-07T08:56:00.008+01:00

We have the week off this week - primarily to head to the Cotswolds for a couple of days to drive around in our temporary little Moggy - but also just to relax and enjoy some time to ourselves. So yesterday we headed off to Sissinghurst Castle Gardens, something which we have been intending to do for ages having not been for years despite iot being just down the road.

We didn't go in the house but just concentrated on the gardens and I have to say they were even more beautiful that I remembered - it's like a fairy tale house and I didn't want to leave!

True to form, our favourite places were the vegetable garden (I didn't take photos - more functional that beautiful!) and the cottage garden, which is simply amazing:

The range of flowers is breathtaking - with so many Iris of all shapes and sizes out at this time of year it really must be the best time to go

They also had a rainbow of Aquilegas the like of which I didn't know existed!

The peaceful flower meadow, next to a little river, complete with bee hives and the odd Grecian Urn gives wonderful views over the house and makes you just want to stay forever lying in the long grass reading a book:

if you happen to be in West Kent over the summer I implore you to go and visit - it really is amazing and if a certain sister of mine reading this blog wants to visit it (you would love it!)you know where we are...

So many things!

2010-06-05T19:50:00.006+01:00

Well, where do I start. I think I've been rather tardy again and it's been a month since my last post so plenty of things to update on.

In the garden the flower bed is looking wonderful - full of colour with bees buzzing around all over the place. We have two giant Iris as well as a host of Alliums on one side of the bed (the purple side!) and an amazingly successful Lupin on the other side fighting for space with the Acer, which also looks lovely at the moment.

The girls are also doing well - we're getting three eggs most days and today they produced 4 just to impress our visitors from Basingstoke. They have taken a liking to lemon balm (which is fine by me because I dug it up last year and it refuses to go!) which they are all enjoying in this photo:

Now to the allotment and boy have we been busy. The broad beans are all in flower (and are now being attacked by black fly - grrr - which the ladybirds are doing their best to keep under control), as are the peas. The first early potatoes are a dissapointment but the second earlies and maincrop are doing well. We also has courgette, squash, cabbage, cauli, purple sprouting and calbrese, celery and a whole host of fruit (strawbs, rasps, red and blackcurrant, goosberry and tayberry). Much excitement this week when we had our first peas (one pod each!) and strawberry - we were so eager to eat them that I didn't get a photo but I do have these as a bit of a summary:

We've also been doing some building work on the plot with avengance - we've built ourselves a fruit cage. I foolishly discovered that I haven't yet taken a photo of it but needless to say it's great (!) - made entirely from pallets, we only had to buy the netting and the nails so we have a 5x2 metre fruit cage for only £40 - bargain! I will try to post a photo soon but my "parent blog" (te he) is slightly suicker than I am so you're likely to see it here more quickly. In the meantime though, I can show you this rather smart brassica cage that Matt made as well as him posing as "man about the allotment":

So much to say!

2010-05-04T21:18:00.014+01:00

I've had a request for a blog update because I've been a bit tardy once again! Part of the reason that I haven't updated recently is because the garden and allotment is just so full or things to be done and these, along with working and trying to fit in a PhD as well as about a billion weddings and hen dos leaves very little time!

But I really can't complain because everything is looking so lovely with Spring well and truly here!

Here's a summary of the goings on in the garden. Now, I want you to start singing the tune from The Gallery as you look through these:

I love this plant but can't for the life of me remember what it's called. We got it last year from the Tonbridge garden fair, which has sadly been cancelled this year. This year it's so much bigger than last, it's just lovely:

The bed is getting nice and full as the perennials from last year come back to life again:

The 100 Allium bulbs that I planter are starting to flower, which is so exciting because I LOVE alliums:

Gavin The Apple is flowering nicely, although his sister Laxtons is being a bit rubbish and hasn't flowered yet. Last year Laxton provided all of our 2 apples so looks like Gavin is trying to prove he's up to the job!

Not to be out-done, the girls also wanted to say hello. Hythe does like to stand up as high as she can so that she can see what I'm up to, so here she is on her favourite perch. The other girls never get the chance to perch while she's around! We are having a mini-chicken crisis at the moment - we caught Hythe and Bell eating an egg the other day and, as our copy of Home Farmer which arrived today told us, this is a habit which is hard to beat, and they basically recommend culling any chickens that pick the habit up! We obviously won't be doing this so we are just going to keep an eye on the situation and play it by ear but we are more than a little concerned. I'll keep you posted.

Down on the allotment, the flowers are also blooming, with these lovely blue (and pink!) bells welcoming us in:

Our peas are starting to get nice and big and strong, so we're constructing a climbing frame for them! This hazel and wire structure is going to be strung up for the peas to clamber up:

We've also taken the risk and planted out some of our Spring/Summer cabbages (keeping some in the greenhouse, just in case!) and given them a pigeon proof cage!

We've also put two of our courgette plants out, under a little glass shelter. We visited them today after a chilly morning and they seem to be doing ok, but we also have some plants in the greenhouse at home to see how they get on:

Finally, the stuff that has been on the plot for a good while now is all doing well. the Broad Beans are looking strong:

...and the fruit is all doing brilliantly. This is one of the tonnes of strawberry plants that we have that originated from our 2 "parent" plants which we got about 4 years ago. They are all flowering like mad! This is why they call it The Garden of England!

Generally, the allotment is going really well. We have made all but one of the beds and have been digging like crazy to reduce the clay and increase the soil! We found a stash of top soil near the river and have been ferrying claggy clay out and nice top soil in. It's really making all the difference. I just can't wait until it all starts growing properly!

Small, Far Away

2010-04-18T20:32:00.003+01:00

After the giant egg of the other week, we've now gone to the other extreme. Blue delivered this tiny little egg for us this week. I didn't want you to think that this was just a normal egg from a distance (an easy mistake to make!) so I have put a normal one next to it for scale. It's the size of a quail's egg and soooo cute:

Floral Dance

2010-04-18T19:49:00.009+01:00

My post this week is going to be mainly flower themed, just because I have been so overwhelmed by the sudden burst of colour everywhere! Our garden is really coming to life now and, after a lawn cut and some new bedding plants, it looks just lovely (if you ignore the patches where we need to re-turf!).

Here are a few of my favourite flowers from the garden:

The greenhouse is also full of seedlings waiting to become vegetables (you can see courgette, peas, cabbages, lettuce, sweet peas, leeks and celery in this photo):

And one of our apple trees, Gavin (that's the actual name of the variety and the reason I chose it. Brilliant!), has some blossom:

The blueberries are also looking really promising, with masses of flowers about to burst open, fingers crossed they will all become berries!

On the allotment, our peas and broad beans are doing really well and the fruit cage (sans cage at the moment, but it will have by the time the fruit appears) is bursting with life - the blackcurrant that we've had for a few years so is well established has tonnes of buds. Our work on the allotment this weekend has been mainly maintenance but we have fashioned this rather lovely greenhouse to protect the peas from our unpredictable weather/dust!

We also had a little trip out today, just down the road to Broadview Gardens at Hadlow Agricultural College (like Sparsholt for the Hampshire readers!). The early and late Spring bulbs have all come out together because of the hard winter so there was a riot of colour to behold:

Egg-citing news!

2010-04-05T21:24:00.004+01:00

Sorry, I just couldn't resist the pun...it is Easter after all...and don't our girls know it - today, for the first time, we've had 4 eggs in one day! Well done girls! It's the first evidence that we have that they are all laying and we are very proud parents.

We aren't 100% sure who lays what but we know that Blue lays lovely dark, caramel coloured eggs (bottom left) and Hythe lays very light ones (top right, I think).

As we've reached the end of the month it is also time for an egg count and, again, the girls are doing us proud. 65 eggs this month compared to last month's 41 - wow! Luckily I have found some buyers at work so we actually have a waiting list but if they keep this up I should have no problem fulfilling all of the orders!

With the long weekend we've also finally been able to get down to the allotment - it was once again a complete quagmire so we still haven't planted anything else but we did get some soil added to some beds and finished our cold frame (made from the old kitchen cupboard) which looks great!

The allotments are a hive of activity and so much is being done by everyone so we are spending next weekend trying to fill the rest of the beds to get them ready for planting out some of our seedlings in the not too distant future.

We also went to the auction on Friday - it was absolutely packed and Heckfield village hall, where it's held, is tiny. This meant no real bargains but we did get two boxes of "stuff" - highlights being a load of kilner jars, some baskets, and some mixing bowls (including one from TG Green like my mum's which I have been coveting for a while!). Matt also got some Victorian oil lamps - one of which we are keeping and the rest are being sold on. Photos to follow of these at some point soon.

We apologise for the disruption to your service...

2010-04-01T18:56:00.010+01:00

...but time just seems to be going at a million miles an hour at the moment - I can't believe its April! So, quite a few updates from me:

The garden is coming to life at last - we have loads of little daffs dotted around the garden and we have got some new willow edging - it was from the 99p store so it's not the best quality but once the grass has recovered from the wet winter and the plants have grown up I think it will look nice.

The veg has also started growing - peas an broad beans on the allotment and these super fast growing peas in the greenhouse. We have also put up a second mini-greenhouse so will be sowing lots more crops over the Easter weekend.

The front garden is also starting to look good:

The helebores that we planted last year have established and there are loads more flowers than last year. They look great:

I haven't managed to get to the allotment for a couple of weeks - we had a wedding last weekend and I have been working lots in between but the weekend before last I had a friend to visit so we took her down for some hard labour and we rustled up this bench:

The chickens are also doing well. the two new girls, who have now been with us for a couple of months, are much more like chickens now and are both laying. We think it was one of them that produced this monstrosity, poor love must have been in agony:

Blue, who we were so worried about when she first arrived, has really got bold and has developed an unhealthy obsession for corn. Here she is feeding from my hand:

The most exciting update though is in the house. After ripping off our wall cupboards we have FINALLY got around to putting in the shelves. The walls aren't quite finished in this photo but the shelves are up and they look brilliant. I don't think this photo does it justice but you'll just have to take me word for it - brilliant!

I think that's all for now but we're off to an auction tomorrow so I'm hoping we'll have more to post later in the weekend!

Spring has sprung at last!

2010-03-17T21:58:00.004Z

To start us off today, I have some pretty spring flower pictures. Snowdrops on the allotment and some cute little narcissi in the garden. Spring at last!

I don't have any new photos from the allotment but it's all action down there! We went down on Sunday and it was a hive of activity - about 5/6 groups of people digging on their plots. I transplanted all of the strawberries from the garden into what will be the fruit cage, sowed some broad beans and some peas into the beds. I also sowed a load of things in the greenhouse at the house - cabbages, leeks, celery, chillis (2 types) and rocket. Our first early potatoes are well chitted now so are also ready to go in and we have a bed ready so that's for next weekend.

Back at the house, we have done a very typical Bex'n'Matt activity of suddenly ripping the cupboards off the walls in the kitchen. This happened just over a week ago and have only just had the opportunity to do anything about it so have spent the evening stripping wallpaper (Matt) and painting shelf brackets (Bex). But we still have a fair amount to do, as you can see:

The most striking difference in this photo from our kitchen a week ago is the lack of fridge freezer. We decided that we didn't need the big fridge freezer just for the two of us so we went and bought a small, cheap fridge with an ice box and it has really openend up the kitchen. Once the walls are painted and shelves up it'll look lovely I think!

More antiquey goodness

2010-02-28T10:26:00.007Z

I've been slightly blog lazy over the past few weeks. It's been Matt's 30th birthday and last weekend I was on a hen do in Birmingham and this weekend it's Matt's turn - he's with the stag, also in Birmingham, so we've been jolly busy! While it is nice to have a little bit of time to myself (I rented the most recent Star Trek film last night. Matt isn't interested so I got to indulge and it was BRILLIANT!), I'm also not very good at it. It's my natural tendency for talking - I always end up talking to myself by the end of the weekend if he's been away! But this weekend I was lucky - it just happened to fall on a Detling antique fair weekend so my mum and Nick came over to keep me company for some antique shopping.

The weather was pretty miserable yesterday (although not quite as bad as today - we have some very soggy chickens outside!) so there were much fewer stall holders than normal but I still managed to pick up a few odds and ends.

This wooden drying rack, needed badly at this time of the year, was a bargain at £5:

I also managed to find some iron brackets for £5. These are normally £20 minimum and I've seen them as much as £75! Shown here with a kilner jar which I got for £2.

We sold a load of stuff on ebay last week and raised £150 towards re-doing the kitchen. The plan is to rip off the wall cupboards and replace them with shelves of scaffold boards on iron brackets. We did one shelf ages ago (see it here) and it looks brilliant so I've very excited about getting more done.

I also wanted to share a couple of things which joined our household recently. Firstly, this lovely chair was a find by my mum which she stripped down from a hideous black and white colour (here). Once it was done she decided that it would look more in-keeping in our house than hers and I have to say i didn't argue, it looks lovely! Shown here with a blanket that she made and a cushion from Ikea:

I also got given these absolutely beautiful Orla Kiely mugs from Simrat, who I used to work with, when I left my last job. I missed my last day because of the snow so only got to see her in January and these were such a lovely surprise - she knows me so well!

Finally, these flowers just caught my eye as I walked through the dining room just now. We got them from Sainsbury's a couple of weeks ago, which we do try to avoid as much as possible, but there were grown in Holland rather than Kenya so it alleviated my eco-guilt ever so slightly and they do make the room look lovely:

As I said, it was Matt's big-30 a couple of weeks ago so I obviously needed to pull something good out of the bag present-wise. We don't really do tangible birthday presents, but try to find a good "experience" instead. So, after much deliberation and google-based research I came up with this: We will be getting the train to Redditch, from where we will pick up our very own Moggy for the week:

Then we'll spend a couple of days traversing the A-roads of the Cotswolds, picnic basket in tow, hopefully with the top down (we're going in June). We're staying in this B&B, which really appealed to me because they have chickens and pigs. I think Matt is really pleased and I have to say I am unbelievably excited! Roll on June!

Egg Count - January 2010

2010-02-06T14:32:00.003Z

Slightly deceptive this month because of course we have 2 more hens so it is probably more like 31 for comparison purposes but Bell has got off to a stonking start.

Blue still doesn't appear to be laying but is eating plenty so we are keeping our fingers crossed that she'll gain some confidence soon. We had 3 eggs today, from Rom, Hythe and Bell. We also had egg sandwiches for breakfast with lovely golden yolks.

P.S. Much excitement this week as our new copy of Home Farmer arrived and there, on page 41, was a quote from yours truly! I had commented on their blog about growing enough food for 52 meals a year and they obviously liked what I said. Hurrah!

The event of the gardening calendar...

2010-02-02T20:13:00.007Z

...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...

In the garden and on the allotment

2010-01-24T13:40:00.009Z

Our aim for this weekend has been to get the chickens together in harmony. We knew it wasn't going to be easy so we just braced ourselves. On Saturday morning we let them all out in the garden together, to give them space. There was a fair bit of fighting and each pair stayed at a good distance from the other but gradually they came together.

The "new girls" decided to explore the main run and we gradually herded them all in together.

You can see in this picture that they still stayed quite seperate for a while. The two "old girls" perching very helpfully at the front here to demonstrate.

They all got into the house together last night without any help and with relatively little bother. Rom and Hythe were very wingey this morning, I don't think they like having interlopers in their home, but they settled down. I am in the dining room and keep hearing little squarks from outside as Rom asserts her authority over Blue - which is quite mean as Rom is the biggest and Blue the smallest of the flock.

After her initial aggression Bell seems to have settled a little and, as promised, we managed to get a photo of her. The difference between them is the way their combs flop - Matt can't remember who is who so just calls them Left Flop and Right Flop at the moment. Bell is Left Flop:

In this photo she is taking after her older sisters and has taken a liking to digging in the strawberry bed, which is not very helpful.

The other update is on the allotment. We found some time to pop down there this afternoon. In fact, Matt is still there but I pulled my back this morning so have had to come home.

As you can see, we now have 6 raised beds and the fruit bed at the back as well as our "utility" area with the compost and water butt.

6

These are the fruit bushes that we have put in. Raspberries on the left (about 8) then red goosberry, 2 blackcurrants and a red currant. Not as evenly spread as I would have liked because some of the bed is waterlogged but this might help with harvesting later on.

We also took down the first of our stuff for composting - 1 week of kitchen waste and 3 weeks of chicken waste on a twiggy base to make sure it gets plenty of air. I think this should give our first compost batch a great start!

Quick allotment update

2010-01-17T17:59:00.002Z

The other news of the weekend is from the allotment. We spent a lovely sunny few hours down there today - I took the raspberry canes and blackcurrant bush from the garden and planted them, along with a new blackcurrent, red current and red goosberry, into what will be our fruit cage. I was amazed that the 3 raspberry canes that we arrived in Tonbridge with are now 8!

I also dug a bit of compost into two of the beds to get them ready for potatoes in a couple of months.

Matt meanwhile built two more raised beds from pallet slats that we had salvaged from the back of Homebase (it was broken, honest guv) - we now have 6 raised beds (and the fruit cage space) and room for 4 more. We have also left some room in the middle for a bench and some cold frames - one of our neighbours is having some windows replaced next week so she is going to share her old windows with us as long as help her to build some cold frames too. fair deal I say!

I didn't take the camera so don't have any photos I'm afraid but I will try to get down there to take some next weekend.

When 2 became 4

2010-01-17T17:35:00.006Z

Well, what an exciting weekend we've had. At 2.30 on Saturday afternoon we made our way down the A25 to Biggin Hill and Foal Farm which, according to it's google listing is a rescue centre for "dogs, cats, kittens and puppies" but this weekend was home to a Battery Hen Welfare Trust re-homing day.

We were there to collect 2 more hens for our little flock. You may remember that our first hens were named after the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway so it was only fitting that our second brood kept the railway theme and were to be named Blue and Bell after the Bluebell railway so imagine our delight when this sign greeted us on the way in to the farm:

We were lucky to get the hens because there had been a 2 hour delay bringing the bulk of the "delivery" down from Coventry but we had the first collection time so ours had already been at the farm for 3 weeks. Matt helped the woman but them into their box while I kept a rather inquisitive goat at bay and we started our journey home.

We got them safely home and left them largely to their own devices yesterday to settle in - they were eating and drinking straight away but needed some help getting into bed last night but obviously had a good night's sleep because we were greeted with an egg this morning!

Once I was able to get a good look at them it was really obvious how far Rom and Hythe have come on. Blue and Bell are really pale and have loads of feathers missing and look generally a bit scraggy.

My first attempt to get a photo of them this afternoon didn't work out that well:

I managed to get Blue (who is the quieter and paler of the two) to stay still to get this shot:

but Bell has discovered the joy of digging do didn't stay still long enough so I'll have to get a photo at a later date.

I also wanted to get a photo to compare RomHythe to BlueBell (it's easier this way - like Brangelina) but this is the best I could get which does at least show size and colour differences which is quite striking:

Now, I know you're going to be judging me for not trying harder but there is a good reason that I couldn't get a better shot...just after this photo was taken Bell started squaring up to Rom (which is bold because she is a big girl) and before we knew it they had their beaks locked on each others necks. I think we're going to have trouble with these two. We know that we're going to have to go through some pecking while the pecking order is re-established but we decided that, for now, Bell has ideas above her station so we are going to seperate them for a week so that she can properly get her strength up then next weekend let them face each other in the garden again and hope they don't make as much noise about it this time (it was mainly Hythe who I am sure was squarking something like "fight! fight! fight!").

Egg Count - December

2010-01-09T14:42:00.002Z

New month...new egg count! The girls are struggling with the cold and lack of daylight so aren't laying much any more, although in December we still had on average just over 1 a day so we certainly can't complain! I think January, with all this snow, is going to be considerably less. Bu then, that's the excitement of egg counting!

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

2010-01-09T13:43:00.009Z

Finally I have remember to take a camera out and about in Tonbridge to take some photos of it in the snow.

This is poor Resiwick in the snow (I took this from bed, which is the best place to be on a snowy day in my opinion!)

The garden is looking very snowy indeed, I think being so narrow is protects the snow that lands from melting so it's really been building up over the last few days:

I left my gloves on the train yesterday and hadn't managed to get out to buy some new ones yet so my attempt at a snowman was this little chap on top of the girls' old coop. his eyes are made from bird seeds and his arms from dead chilli plants!

We also tried to coax the girls out into the snow to see how they dealt with it. Corn encouraged them a little way but not for long, they soon retreated back under their cover:

These photos should show you why we are not intending to take the car out today. Out little house does look lovely in the snow

Tonbridge also looks really lovely in the snow. We didn't go to any of the really pretty bits to take photos today but even around the river and park it looked pretty:

Cheese Making

2010-01-09T09:24:00.006Z

Matt's main present from me was a cheesemaking starter kit. It provided everything that you need to make soft cheese including starters for curd cheese, soft cheese and mozarella (which I am VERY excited about!).

For his first attempt Matt made a basic lemon cheese, which doesn't actually use the kit but is a great way to get to grips with the basic process.

To do this you need:

1 litre of milk
Juice of 2 lemons
Salt

1. Heat the milk to 38 degrees C

2. Add the juice of two lemons to make it curdle

3. Leave for half an hour

4. Strain through cheese cloth, keeping the curds (solid bit) and rinsing out the whey

5. Salt to taste

6. Eat the cheese! This first attempt cheese as a really interesting flavour - tart and lemony and quite salty (Matt likes things more salty than I do!)

We haven't eaten it all yet but Matt made some pasta and made some ravioli just to test it.

I think it would be nice in ravioli with some sundried toms so that mght be a job for today. This is also very similar to how you make the Indian cheese paneer, which I absolutely love, so that's Matt's next job!

Christmas present round-up

2010-01-09T09:00:00.007Z

We both got some brilliant presents this year so I thought I would share a quick summary of some of them (I'm not going to say "favourites" because that would be unfair to the other presents!). While you're reading this I want you to be humming the tune from "the gallery" (think Tony Hart)

This lovely Country Living jug came with the utensils. Beautiful AND practical:

This jug was sneakily purchased under my very nose. It was made by the Hadlow pottery, run by adults with learning disabilities just down the road from here and I've been admiring it for ages. It's a pastoral scene and so beautiful with the fields wrapping around the jug:

This is a cider jug. Beautifully "rustic" and one day might hold our very own cider! (that's it for jugs now, I promise!)

Although the butter churn has had an outing in another post it deserves a mention in all it's glory so here it is:

This lovely cast iron cockerel door stop, now taking pride of place in our dining room:

A plethora of Cath Kidston books. The two big books have a project in each (both bags - one tote and one handbag) and the little book is stickers which I can't wait to use but also don't want to because they'll all go!

Hoe, Hoe, Hoe! Once all of this snow has gone and the soil has warmed up a little bit this handy tool will do brilliantly at preparing the soil for all of our summer sowing!

For the allotment we also got a rhino runner which we didn't manage to fit in the car so we will have to collect or have dropped off later. It's like this:

Katy also got us some wild flower seeds, which I think I am going to try to sow on the slope at the back of the allotment. There are brambles there so we'll have to try to keep them at bay but it would be great to have some wild flowers to pick. We also got a garden planner so that'll be great for planning out our plot.

We're all going on a...chicken holiday

2010-01-09T08:27:00.008Z

The chickens had a special treat this Christmas...they got to travel round the M25 in a box! Lucky them! As we were spending 9 days away from home this Christmas and new year we obviously couldn't leave the poor chickens all on their own so we took them to visit their Grandma and Grandad in Hampshire!!

They had a lovely little holiday home, although the neighbours were a bit noisy...lots of quacking! But they loved it, and whenver they were let out they went on a bit of a rampage around the garden...

And they were even naughtier when we left them on their own for a few days...

...while we were enjoying ourselves in Devon in absolute luxury:

Looking at the photos of the girls makes me realise just how much they've grown over the past 9 months.

This is Hythe:

This is Romney:

This will be even more obvious when, next weekend, we get them two more sisters! All being well weather wise we are going to collect two more ex-batts next weekend and i think we'll be shocked at how skinny and featherless they are. I just hope the snow goes by then or we might have to knit them some woolly jumpers!

Butter making

2010-01-09T08:13:00.005Z

One of Matt's Christmas presents was a lovely jar butter churn with wooden paddles for butter churning. Obviously he was keen to test it straight away so we hot-footed it to Tesco to buy a load of double cream (which was reduced post-Christmas).

We may have been slightly over ambitious with how much we poured in so by the time the cream has got to whipped stage the churn wouldn't move any more...

So we had to decant it into smaller jars for the old tried and tested shake-it-like-you-mean-it method! This worked a charm (even if my arms, which we already aching from excessive Wii-ing, did feel like they were going to fall off by the end!)

...et voila, we got some butter!

It made not only these three ramekins but also a large one (this is about half of the total butter) so very worthwhile indeed.

Egg count

2009-12-06T21:05:00.003Z

Inspired by Blagger, we have been keeping a monthly egg count since August and we've now had enough months to do a little graph. Everyone loves a little graph!

Deck the halls...

2009-12-06T19:00:00.007Z

Since my last post we've made some progress on the allotment - we managed to find two more pallets so last weekend went down to the plot to build two more raised beds. Here's Matt making the finishing touches in the failing light.

Christmas has also arrived in Tonbridge. We took a day off in the week to go to the Wealden Timea Midwinter Fair - which was so lovely but a little pricey for our pockets but we did come home with locally grown rapeseed oil and mayonaise, which are absolutely delicious. We also got some local blue brie and some local apple juice! We never say no to local food!

We also got our Christmas tree, which was grown locally (of course!!) in Rolvenden and have adorned it with our homemade decorations from last year. Matt made his paper tinsle and I have to say it looks just lovely.

I also finished off the stockings that I started last year. I didn't manage to get the letters on last year so have just finished, and I'm so pleased with the final product.

I've been at my friend's house today being fitted for a bridesmaid dress and came home to the lovely smell of freshly baked bread. Matt baked two loaves which we've sliced and will freeze for later.

That's all of our news for now.

The inaugural planting

2009-11-22T16:29:00.006Z

We have, at last, had some free time to work on the allotment and it finally feels like we're making some progress. Last weekend we found (out the back of Homebase) some broken pallets which we liberated to make some raised beds but found that we didn't have nails big enough. So, early yesterday morning we popped to B&Q and to get some and then down to the allotment to put them together and here's the result:

At the very back of the plot we have left a 1 metre strip for the water butt and compost bin then there is a 2m deep bed which we are going to use for soft fruit - initially we'll make a raised bed with the view to building a fruit cage there in the Spring. The raspberries and blackcurrant from the garden will go in there and we will buy some more currant bushes to add.

Then, after a 1/2 metre path are the raised beds that you can see - 1.8m x 1.8m (the size of the boards). There should be room for 12 of these altogether so should be plenty of room to grow a good crop.

As we were making the beds and doing a bit of digging I started to notice that there were random broad beans popping up all over the place. We can only assume that the birds have pinched these from our neighbours who have already sown and buried them in our plot - we have a resident Jay who we think could be to blame. So I moved all of the ones that I could find and put them in the bed:

We then went down just now and added two more rows of seeds and covered the sprouting beans with chicken wire to protect them from pigeons. We can also cover this in fleece once the frost starts.

Back at home, Matt has been hankering for a while to try butter making. We have just subscribed to Home Farmer magazine (which is brilliant!) which included a free gift of The Bread and Butter book which told him how to do it just using a jar or bottle from double cream. We bought some cream from the farm shop and away he went. I was surprised at just how quick it was - he just shook the cream in a bottle for about 10 minutes and the butter and buttermilk seperated to this, which he rinsed and salted:

Then, using the butter pats that he picked up from our local junk/antique shop a while back he shaped the butter:

It really is great and I was surprised at just how much butter came our of 250ml of cream. So, now we have a dish of homemade organic butter (its from the cream from our favourite local farm - Bore Place) and, although the cream cost more than butter would so isn't viable like this, it's incredibly satisfying to see how easy it was!

The final exciting news is that I've been offered a new job, which is a step up and sounds really exciting. They have also agreed that I can work 4 days a week, which means I can managed my PhD better and have more time to do exciting things like this on the weekend. I think I'm going to take it. It would make life so much easier!

Chicken Ritz and Fencing Fun!

2009-11-01T19:24:00.009Z

About a month ago we started making a new coop and run for the girls so that they would have more space to run around and we wouldn't have to let them out in the garden (so that we can actually grow some flowers!)

The weather and lack of daylight have been conspiring against us so it's taken a lot longer than we had hoped but, at last, we have finished!

The girls were ever so "helpful":

...but they seemed delighted when the they explored their new run and coop for the first time:

We finished late this afternoon and here is the finished product:

As you can see, they have a lovely new sage green coop, a big run with deep bark chippings for them to dig in and a big branch for them to jump and perch on. They were reluctant to go to bed this evening, I think because they were so excited and were jumping and flapping all over the place once we put the branch in there. It's lovely to see them with so much space and, once we finish painting the run (it was too wet today) it will also look nice in the garden and we can reclaim some of our lawn!

The reason that we have been able to find the space for their new super-size run is because we have decided to give up one of the raised beds because we have plenty of space at the allotment, which brings me to my next update...

On Saturday the core group of allotmenteers got together to take the final important step in finalising the Slade Area Community Allotment...we put up a fence! It was a real team effort, which made it all the more satisfying when we finished:

We finally have a permanent home for our sign and, I think you'll agree, it finally looks like an allotment!

We haven't managed to get anything in the ground yet but we're getting there and are hoping to sew some broad beans and garlic next weekend.

One of the trees at the allotment is showing some beautiful autumnal colour. I couldn't believe that one tree could be so many colours at once so I had to share:

Finally, I walked in the back door to find that we'd had a break-in! I couldn't believe it, I'd only turned my back for five minutes. They did leave some evidence, but I just can't think who it could have been...

(a word of warning to any aspiring "backyard" chicken keeper...never leave the back door open!

Groeten van Brugge!

2009-11-01T19:01:00.006Z

("Greetings from Bruges!" in Dutch)

One of the reasons that I have been quiet for a few months is that we spent last weekend in the beautiful city of Bruges - a special trip to celebrate our fifth anniversary.

We got the Eurostar from St Pancras at 6.30am (thankfully we have friends who live near there so we stayed at their house - otherwise we would have had to get the first train form Tonbridge...at 4.30am!) and were in Bruges my midday.

Our hotel was on a canal in the centre of Bruges:

We didn't do all of the touristy things, preferring to avoid the crowds, but we did go on a boat tour and spent a lot of time wandering around the old city streets and sitting in old bars drinking trappist beer - which is delicious! Here are some of the highlights in pictures:

It really is a beautiful city and 2 nights wasn't really long enough - hopefully we'll be able to go again soon.

Woodland Wonderment

2009-10-03T17:44:00.014+01:00

We spent a wonderful day today at the Woodland Workshop day at Bore Place, a local organic dairy farm. We've been to two of their open days before and they always deliver wonderful things.

I chose to do a morning workshop making besom brooms. These photos show the broom making in progress:

and here is the finished product:

I'm delighted with it because I've wanted an outdoor broom for ages and this will do just the trick. Now that I know how to make them I can also mend this broom if it loses bristles, which will be ever so useful.

Matt spent the morning building a woodland shelter and proudly told me that his team won the best shelter award (I don't have photos because I had the camera).

We then had an absolutely delicious lunch in the paddock. Wild boar sausages, jacket potatoes and tomato soup cooked over a camp fire. All local and organic, deeeeelicious!

We also took some time during lunch to watch the heavy horses at work, shifting logs in the wood. The horses were magnificent:

We also had a look around the craft displays which were there and both had a go on the lathe. Here's Matt in action:

We bought a lovely wooden dibber (which you can see in the broom photo above) from this chap, which will be perfect for the 100 free allium bulbs that arrived today!

We joined forces in the afternoon for some willow weaving and were delighted to see that one of our allotment group was also doing it. We made bugs, which was great fun. Here we are mid-bug:

(no comments about how much more photogenic Matt is than me please!)

...and here is the finished article (this is my one, which we both agree is the best!):

We haven't decided what to do with them yet but they'll be displayed pride of place somewhere!

At home today I also harvested some of our garden produce. We had yet more raspberries (although I think they're coming to an end) and a lovely little handful of red chillis:

There are quite a few green ones that I'll leave a bit longer to ripen so hopefully, once dried, these should last us a few months like last year.

My final job of the day was to make the long awaited needle purse. I re-read my last blog and realised that I hadn't made it, which is very lazy of me, so I've just finished. I'm so pleased with it, and it only cost £1.45 to make (£5 Cath Kidston? No thank you!):

I now have to wake up a snoozing Matthew because we have to head into London for our third 30th birthday celebration of the month. Tis the season to be 30 it seems!

Slacking blogger

2009-09-27T21:10:00.010+01:00

I was told off by some of my blog followers today for not posting for a while so I'll try to catch-up with everything in this one. My studying means that the last couple of weeks haven't been particularly note-worthy, unless you want to hear about motivation theory, which I doubt, but I'll try my best to give you some interesting things...

The week before last I was part of a contingent from work who took a trip to over Trafalgar Square to welcome Eddie Izzard back from his mammoth 43 marathons in a row that he ran in aid of Sport Relief. Absolutely phenomenal I think you'll agree. It was absolutely bucketing it down but plenty of people still came out to cheer him on. I managed to sneak relatively close to him but the best photo I got was this one of his rather sweaty ear:

If you haven't done it yet (I'm sure just because you forgot!) you can still sponsor him here: http://www.comicrelief.com/donate/eddie

Closer to home we had some visitors the weekend before last in the shape of my mum, her partner Nick and my sister Katy. Katy hadn't seen the house for a while or met the girls so it was great to show her around and remember how much has changed in the past year (it's so easy to forget!). On the day of their visit the Tonbridge Medieval Fair was on in the castle, which was actually really good, if a little bit small. I forgot to take my camera but luckily mummy did so you can read about it on her blog, here.

On the house-front, we have finally managed to find a number for our front door that we like. We've only managed to find rip-off Parisian numbers until now but this is just what we wanted:

...now we just need to find a door for it to go on! We are thinking of getting a four-panelled wooden door which we'll probably paint a matt box-tree green with some nice door furniture. Knowing us it'll take us ages to find one we like but I'll keep you posted.

The garden is looking a bit straggly now but we are still enjoying some autumn flowers. The hollyhocks and anemone are absolutely beautiful and make lovely cut flowers (I just love these, I keep pausing as I wander past to look at them):

We are also still getting plenty of Rudbekia to brighten the living room but I think they might be coming to an end soon:

This weekend we took a trip over to Basingstoke to visit my mum and Nick. Mummy and I went to the fabric shop today to get the final bits for my handbag pattern so hopefully I'll have that to show you soon. I also got some felt, ready for Christmas decoration making (I know, I know, but I don't have a local fabric shop!) and to make a little needle purse which I hope to make this week. I sadly didn't have time to make either of these this evening but I tackled something much quicker - I saw a lovely flowery box file in Cath Kidston a few weeks ago for the extortionate price of £15 and I was inspired so I covered a plain box file with soem Cath Kidston wallpaper samples:

I'm going to use it to store my house-related magazine cuttings (I have a lot!).

Finally, the allotment. We popped down this evening to have a look and pulled up a few brambles. It's looking really good and we're meeting this week to talk about spending the money that we won in our bid so we should hopefully have a fence soon. At least we have a sign now:

I think that's everything for now. I promise I'll try to keep it up to date more often! Next weekend we are off to the Autumn woodland workshop day at Bore Place, a local organic farm, where I'm signed up for willow weaving and learning to make a besom broom...very exciting so hopefully I'll have more to say then.

Two Go Mad at Detling!

2009-09-06T20:38:00.014+01:00

I have been slightly lack with my blog updates for the last couple of weeks - I don't know quite what we've been doing but it seems to have gone jolly fast!

The garden is looking good - we continue to get lots of potatoes and now have a good crop of chillis coming on. These three little fellas I picked for dinner earlier in the week (I know they're not supposed to be wonky but I'm not a very consistent waterer!)

We also have the girls a little more under control, with their smart new movable run. This means that they aren't digging up the flower beds as much but they are giving this patch of lawn a good go, but they seem to really like it and it means that we don't have to keep an eye on them all of the time:

The biggest update, however, comes from indoors, where we have been spending some of our hard earned cash on some lovely bargains. Firstly, last weekend, we had a trip to Northcote Road in Clapham which has loads of lovely little shops and antique markets. Being Clapham they are a little over-priced so we resisted and only got one thing, this lovely tablecloth from Susie Watson Designs:

Our other purchase of the week were a couple of lovely serving plates from our local antique/junk shop:

This weekend we stayed in Kent and paid another trip to the Antique Fair at the Kent County Showground in Detling. The last couple of times we haven't really found much but really made up for it this time!

We managed to pick up a good range of crockery. A lady convinced us to buy some spotty plates that I had been admiring for some time and (I think accidentally) threw in two TG Green Domnino sugar bowls. The bowls themselves should have been £12 each so this was brilliant for £20 for the whole lot! Also in this picture you can see some lovely jelly moulds, a little tin which I am going to use for paperclips, some cornishware plates (which we also got for a bargain £7 for the lot!) and a cornishware butter dish - the dish itself we've had for some time but we managed to find a very elusive lid for it, which we were delighted about:

With all of this new crockery we needed somewhere to store it so what luck that we came upon a lovely plate rack. We see them all the time for over £100, which seems far too expensive, so were chuffed with this one for £60:

We have also been looking for quite a while for an old telephone but they are ridiculously overpriced so were delighted with an absolute bargain for £30 which is in full working order, shown here below the plate rack:

We have also been looking for a bakelite radio for a while, which we want to use to hide an ipod dock so that we can be 21st century without ruining the look of the house! We were delighted to find this one:

Until, that is, that we walked around the corner and saw an even nicer one for the same price! So, we had to getg that one too and we'll just ebay the first. Still a bargain at £30 because we think this one might actually work once we replace a valve. It looks perfect in the living room:

Our other finds, were a very nice and very cheap wooden egg rack:

a stair-basket, for no other reason that it was cute and only £4:

Right, must dash. We popped down to visit the allotment site this evening and bumped into our neighbour who insisted on giving us a marrow and some cooking apples (which was very nice of her) so I am making some chutney. We took her some eggs in exchange - the allotment is creating such a lovely community, we can't wait to get going on our plot number 5:

A little inspiration

2009-08-23T19:37:00.010+01:00

I am feeling a little worse for wear today after spending yesterday out in Soho with my friend, Sarah, who I am a bridesmaid for in May next year along with her two other bridesmaids - we were shopping for the fabric for the dresses, which Sarah is making herself. They are all natural greens - mine is a beautiful light-ish colour with hints of gold. I'm very excited about seeing the final version. Going around all of the fabric shops inspired me too and so this morning, whilst nursing my hangover I ordered this pattern, which I have had my eye on for a while:

I have never made anything from a pattern before so I am both excited and nervous about how it's turn out so watch this space! My mum also sent me a photo of the pencil case I made for her, which she is acutually using as a travel tapestry bag so that she can take her sewing to the allotment with her but, looking at it now, I'm rather pleased with myself and looking forward to making mine once my zips arrive:

My mum also sent me a photo of this lovely serving plate/charger - we've been looking for one for a while but haven't quite found one that we like but this one is lovely and apparently belonged to my Great, great grandmother (or possibly even her mother) and is definately from before 1904 by the back-stamp. She's offered it to us and I am delighted:

On another plate-related topic - a few weeks ago we popped in to see my mum and she had some plates which she had got from an auction and was going to chop up to make mosaic - I thought they were too lovely for such an end so I pilfered them and they are now proudly living with our crockery so I wanted to share them:

Finally to the garden - the back garden is mainly green at the moment, most of the flowers having finished (apart from some more sweet pease but the front garden, being shadier and therefore later, is really coming into it's own. Our hollyhocks are finally out and they are the most beautiful colour - I have taken some photos so that I can try to colour match this for somewhere in the house because the dusty cream and deep pink of the flowers really is wonderful:

The Japanese Anemone is also flowering, which is one of my favourites, and so lovely to have in the garden:

Jammy Dodger

2009-08-19T21:10:00.011+01:00

Last weekend we spent some time clearing the allotment site and what progress we've all made!

This picture gives you some indication of what the site was like before we started the clearance:

and here it is this weekend:

There is only really one big bramble patch left to go and we have now marked out one plot, which is great to see on the ground. Hopefully we should have plots divided within a couple of weeks and we can claim a bit for our own, which will be lovely!

The other bonus of having cleared all of the brambles (to compensate for the cuts all over my arms!) is lots of blackberries! I used just a fraction of the ones that we're collected and made this much jam:

I has also this evening been cooking up some of the fruit from our garden and made Summer Fruit jam, which strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants, all from our garden:

Unfortunately, I was also cooking dinner at the time so I got a little distracted and it cooked a little too long (like mother like daughter!) so it's more like tough jelly sweet in a jar than jam! Hopefully I'll be able to use some of it in my porridge once winter arrives...I might have to use a sledgehammer!

My final piece of handiwork this week was a couple of lavender pillows made from dried lavender from the garden - one to go in the trunk where we keep our spare bedding and one slightly wonky heart to hand on my side of the bed to help me sleep. Just lovely.

Morris Dancing, Ostrich eating and plenty of potatoes

2009-08-10T21:17:00.010+01:00

What a busy week we've had again so plenty to update on...

This weekend we went to "Puzzlebury" - which is a mini-festival run by my friend's mum in the Forest of Dean. We went last year and it really is so much fun. She has the most amazing house and garden - it's an old mining house and has a big plot of land with it - complete with lake!

She puts on such a good party - there's a big water slide down the hill, a swimming pool, lots of lovely food and drink (the cider was a little too potent and I had an unfortunate run in with a bramble patch and am still removing the splinters!). We had a visit from some morris dancers on the Saturday who taught us some moves. I don't have a photo of us dancing but this is the troupe (The Widders):

There were also bands and DJ's on the Saturday night as well as a bonfire and, although we were boring/hungover from Friday and went to bed early a good time was had by all! One of the highlights was the Ostrich which was roasted in a pit with hot rocks all night and served up for lunch on Sunday:

We also had 6 Ostrich eggs, which took two people with a drill to get into:

Sadly, we had to leave before the scrambled egg was ready but I'm told it was delicious!

We came home on Sunday afternoon because I had a job interview on Monday morning. I haven't actively been looking but this would be a part-time job which would make my PhD (which starts in a month - aaaah!) more do-able so I thought I would go for it. I now really want the job but have to wait until Wednesday to find out. I think they've got 2 other strong candidates so I'm not thatg hopeful but we'll see! Fingers crossed!

We had already booked Monday off it did mean that we got to spend the day doing house stuff. Matt dug up some potatoes, which Hythe very kindly decided to give him a hand with:

As well as their pesky garden antics the girls are also determined to get into the kitchen at every opportunity:

So, I have this afternoon ordered some temporary netting to fence them into a little area of the garden so that they can run out when we're at home without making a nuisance of themselves!

We also managed to do some things in the house today, including clearing the spare room to a be a sewing/craft room. It's a difficult room to photo but this shows the new mirror on the wall and furniture layout:

On the garden front, we are still getting a good crop of raspberries, and have just dug up our second lot of potatoes. The first harvest made a delicious cottage pie and this lot are doing to be fish cakes with plenty left over for the rest of the week and into next.

The allotment site, which we have now started clearing with a vengeance is also starting to take shape. The group are meeting on Wednesday to discuss next steps and I'm going to encourage them towards dividing up plots so that we can all get going in time for Spring!

So that was our week. I have all my fingers and toes crossed for this job so I really hope to have good news for my next post.

Busy July and a sad goodbye

2009-07-28T20:57:00.008+01:00

It seems like such a long time since my last post. July, as always, is proving to be a very busy month indeed!

The weekend after my birthday we went to Latitude Festival, which was our first full weekend festival experience and it was so lovely! Nicknamed "Latte-tude" because it's a very nice middle-class Guardian-reading type festival, which was pretty much us to a T! Not only were there some big music stages, they also had a theatre and comedy stages, literature and poetry tents, a stage on the lake which had mainly opera and dance as well as little stages in the woods with everything from shakespeare to early 90's dance music. Plus, loads of quirky little touches like multi coloured sheep and a childrens arena which loads of fun looking things in it (I was very jealous!). We came back feeling very chilled out and not very enthusiastic about going back to work!

Then, this weekend just gone, my mum and her partner, Nick, came to visit. Nick and Matt went off to the War and Peace show at the Hop Farm just down the road. Not really our kind of thing so my mum and I went to the antique fair at Detling. Sadly we didn't getg anything apart from this brilliantly tacky tin for my buttons. It has a picture of a boy collecting stamps with his pet rabbit. Totally bizarre and utterly brilliant!

Then, on Sunday, we headed off to Ben and Jerry's Sundae on the common in Clapham with some friends. Sadly it was a bit rainy and much busier than in previous years so not as good as it could have been but we scoffed plenty of free ice cream and I got to see The Futureheads, who I love.

(The Futureheads)

Our weekend sadly didn't end very well. When we got home on Sunday night poor little Dymchurch was lying in the run, having not been able to make it up the ramp. Luckily Matt saw her first and brought her inside into the box that she's been staying in which we've been nursing her. She's not been well for a while and we had tried everything that we could think of but to no avail. On Monday morning she'd given us and gone to the big chard patch in the sky (chard was her favourite food). So, we are now a two chicken household and we have vowed to pay extra attention to Hythe and Romney and try to learn from our mistakes but we are very sad to lose our little Dym, who was our favourite. At least she had a happy 4 months of life since she "escaped" the farm.

(our little Dymchurch)

Strangely enough, Tinyholder, whose blog we are avid followers of, also lost one of her hens this week and my mum and Nick lost Apple, one of their ducks last week. Not a good week for poultry it seems.

I have also been doing some arts and crafts this week. I made a pencil case for my mum's birthday and I have to say i was jolly proud of it. I forgot to take a photo, but I will definately be making myself one for when I start studying again.

Summer Daze

2009-07-09T12:00:00.009+01:00

What a busy week it's been!

Take That really were brilliant - we were old ladies and sat down at the back rather than joining the crush standing but what an amazing show they put on:

The 1st Tonbridge Beer Festival was also excellent - we had 8 friends come and visit for the day and we spent a day sitting in the sun and enjoying real ales and beers. I started with some Hampshire brews, which were as good as ever and moved over to Kent but I think the Hogs Back Brewery offerings from Surrey (which is the closest brewery to where I grew up) provided the most drinkable of the day. We ended up drinking for 12 hours but as we were we sipping halves rather than glugging pints we didn't overdo it too much. We were really lucky with the weather too, these beautiful clouds were on show in the early evening:

Then, on Sunday, off to Devon. We stayed in a wonderful farm B&B on the first night - we had a cream tea to greet us on arrival, a wonderfully comfortable room in which to watch the Wimbledon final then off to a local pub for some fantastic grub - I had home made chicken pie with piccalilli and chips. Bliss! For the next two nights we stayed in a farmhouse near Budleigh Salterton with my dad, step-mum, brother and grandad who were visiting from Germany for the week. What a lovely area it was and we found this little gem of a mill (Otterton Mill) which had a bakery, cafe and art galleries/shops - Matt and I treated ourselves to tea and cakes and my dad bought me a ring for my birthday, which is just lovely. The mill was so beautiful we could have stayed all day:

We travelled home yesterday and it was so lovely to get home to our little house and see the girls, we missed them! I wondered around the garden and picked two bunches of flowers:

I am really enjoying our house in the summer, it's so welcoming.

So, it's been a busy week and it's not done yet - today is my birthday so I had a wonderful smoked salmon and scrambled egg bagel in bed this morning and we're off to Tunbridge Wells in a while shopping then tomorrow Matt has a surprise day planned for me which is very exciting. The week then ends with our summer party - 20-odd people will descend on our house dressed as scouts and brownies to celebrate the Jamboree! We always have a theme to our parties and everyone embraces it so well!

Beautiful Bouquets and Sunbathing Chickens

2009-07-01T10:14:00.008+01:00

I have today off work because I'm going to see Take That at Wembley this afternoon (eeek!) so this morning I am catching up with the garden jobs that I've been neglecting for a long time.

Summer has truely arrived - it is so hot outside today I've had to come indoors already and it's only 10am, i can't imagine how hot Wembley Stadium is going to be later! The exciting this about summer being here is that we have our first flowers from the garden. I've never grown anything which could be used as cut flowers before so this is very exciting. This is the bouquet I put together this morning. Hardly award winning but very fragrant and really brightens up the dining room:

The chickens are also a little bit lethargic in this heat, which makes them much more manageable to keep off the beds and Dymchurch has taken to sunbathing:

Last night we had a meeting about our community allotment. The agreement for the land is very nearly finalised so we're hoping that we can start clearing the site before the summer is out and perhaps get some things planted for over-wintering, which is very exciting indeeed! Our plot is going to be about 4x10 metres so not massive but big enough! I'm starting to plan the planting already.

Broad Beaning and Blue Berrying

2009-06-28T15:43:00.008+01:00

I have had such a busy week at work so haven't been getting home until late so have really missed the garden and spending time with the girls so I'm trying to make up for it today so thought it would be a good chance for an update.

We are finally seeing the first fruits of labours, mainly in the form of the mighty broad bean. We have TONNES, despite the best efforts of the aphids who multiply at a ridiculous rate. I bought some ladybirds from The Green Gardener and they were supposed to keep the bugs at bay but they all seem to have disappeared so sadly we are still stuck with tonnes of the little blighters.

So I've just harvested the first lot. Matt is having a little nap after a heavy night yesterday so I've just eaten a lunch for one and what a lunch it was! Broad bean and pea salad with feta. As you can, I tipped too many peas into the pan (ours aren't ready yet so these are frozen ones) so the broad beans got lost but it was still delicious. I made a dressing of olive oil, lemon and mint and it felt so summery!

The good news is that we have loads more so plenty of risottos and salads to come ovet the next few weeks.

Our other produce of the week were some delicious blueberries. We've had these bushes for about 3/4 years and at last they are bearing fruit and plenty of it. I came home from work one day this week to find Matt cooking some pancakes from some buttermilk which our local farm shop was giving away free as a tester. They wanted to see how we liked it and when I went in today I gave them an update - we had the most delicious pancakes I've evr eaten and filled them with freshly picked blueberries, creme fraiche and honey. So, so delicious! I would highly recommend it. Luckily we have loads more blueberries left on the bushes so we'll have plenty more blueberry dinners.

The other news from the garden is an update on the chickens. Dymchurch seems better although still isn't laying so we're keeping an eye on her but they are all starting their summer moult so there are little feathers everywhere! I have been neglecting the lawn somewhat since they first arrive so decided to see how they like the lawnmower. The answer? They don't! Poor girls were very traumatised so I'm going to put them in a box in the dining room while I mow later on. Matt spoils them with seeds, and they know it, so Hythe in particular has taken to running around after him waiting for him to feed her! It's very funny:

We're off on holiday the week after next for a few days, then have a couple of weekens away in July and August so I sent a plea out to the member of the Slade Area Garden Enthusiasts (SAGE) group that we're part of and two of our neighbours volunteered. Lory is chicken-sitting for the first period so came over to visit them last week and loved them! I'm so grateful that people have volunteered to help out, I was really worried that we wouldn't be able to go away or that we'd have to leave them untended. We've done it for 1 night but I'd be concerned doing it for 3. It's so nice to have friendly helpful neighbours!

Pesky chickens on an exciting day

2009-06-16T18:20:00.004+01:00

Well, Dym is now on the mend it seems - thank goodness! We took her to the vet who gave us some antibiotics which seem to be doing the trick. She's moving around a lot more and eating which is lovely to see after she was so sleepy and mopey before. I've been wandering around the garden trying to get a picture of her but she won't keep still so this is the best that I've got but she does look much better:

What this does mean though is that she's also back to her mischievous self! I've just been battling to keep her away from her beloved swiss chard and was sat here very pelased with myself for having made a makeshift fence only to turn around and see her munching on raspberries! It is nice to see her back to "normal" though.

The reason that I'm sat at home in the garden at 6.30 on a weekday is because I had the afternoon off work to have an interview for my PhD. It all went very well and when i got home I had an email from my now supervisor to say "congratulations - you're in!" which is brilliant news. So, 6 years of work starting in September. Very exciting and also scary, the girls had better learn to behave themselves by then or there'll be trouble!

and now Romney has just eaten my newly planted cabbages! Right, back in the run for these three...

Poorly Dym

2009-06-13T08:04:00.004+01:00

Well, what a week we've had! It started off ok - we finished off the elderflower cordial, which made 5 litres! Matt has taken a liking to it with vodka and lemonade and I took some into work yesterday and it went down very well with some fizzy water. One of my work colleagues also asked me to make some for her wedding, which was very flattering. I'm so pleased it turned out so well:

But, on the down side, Dymchurch has not been very well. It started last weekend really - she has a very red bottom which is bare because her feathers haven't yet grown back - and she's been increasingly out of sorts. We thought she might be egg bound so we put her into a warm soapy bath which she seemed to enjoy a bit and kept her inside on Thursday night. On Friday we had to put her back into the run as we went to work and it was obvious that she was very uncomfortable and kep away from the others and wasn't eating so we brought her inside again last night and she's currently napping in the spare bedroom! We think she might have an infection of some kind so we are taking her to the vet this morning and hoping to get some antibiotics which will hopefully sort out whatever it is. We're everso worried about her so really hoping that the vet can help. This is her asleep this morning (it's not a very good photo because I couldn't use the flash):

We really hope the vet can help, hopefully next time I post it'll be good news!

Farm Sunday and Wild Food adventures

2009-06-07T19:50:00.004+01:00

What a lovely day we've had today. Today was Farm Sunday, a fantastic initiative to encourage people to learn about farms and farming where loads of farms open their doors for the day. We managed to visit three farms.

Two were further afield, near Uckfield in East Sussex. Both of which were brilliant - we got to see chickens and bantams (which I now want!), pygmy goats (adorable), pigs, sheep being sheared. We also had some delicious burgers and sausages and bought some locally produced Halloumi cheese which we've just had for dinner.

The first farm though was just up the road. It was set up just 5 years ago and was such an inspiration - they went from a blank canvas and now have ducks, goats, cows and pigs living in the woods. They are pretty small scale but it was lovely to see what they've achieved and definately made us more than ever want to pursue our smallholding dream! One day maybe...

When we got home we went out for a walk to pick some elderflowers. Someone from work brought in some homemade elderflower cordial last week and it was delicious! This inspired me so we went and picked 40 flowerheads which should make a fair amount to fill the bottles that I bought in Ikea yesterday. Fingers crossed the recipe works, we're using this one from Sophie Grigson.

Until we get the lemons and citric acid the elderflowers are sitting in wait:

My very first blog post

2009-06-06T23:04:00.000+01:00

Having been a guest blogger for some time on my mum's blog I thought it was about time I set up my own. Especially as I seem to have so much to say at the moment!

June is upon us and the garden is thriving - we've started getting a good supply of strawberries (which I'm freezing to make jam once I have a good supply), raspberries, blueberries and blackcurrants as well as a few little apples, which were very unexpected as this is the first year. Our broad beans are also battling through the aphid infestation and have started producing beans so I'm hoping for a good summer crop. Add to this our mass of potato plants and sneaky jerusalem artichoke that I must have missed when digging them up last year, and we have the potential for a good vegetable-y summer!

We've now had our ex-battery hens (Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch) for two weeks, and what a difference it's made! When they arrived they were very scraggy looking but they're looking much better already. This is them on their first free range in the garden and this was a week ago:

Since then they have got even more feathers. Romney has asserted herself as the ruler of the roost with Dym and Hyth occasionally fighting for second and third but, apart from one day last week where they fought like mad, they've really settled down now and seem to be getting on well. We've also had over 2 dozen eggs since they arrived, with 3 on most days it seems.

On another, although quite different, chicken related subject...Last week Matt ordered some chichen livers from the farm shop so that he could make some pate. He ordered 400g which cost the princely sum of £1.80 and made 3 good sized pots of pate! All very exciting although perhaps not that good for our waistlines. When we went to the farm shop today the woman asked how we had been getting on with it and was delighted to hear it was a success. It's so lovely to be recognised in the farm shop - makes us feel like we've really made it in Tonbridge - and amazing that we manage to do most of our shopping there every week. Something we always hoped for but never expected would happen.

In the house we've also been busy and, during our week off a couple of weeks ago, we pulled up the carpet, sanded and painted the stairs and they do look lovely. It's slightly frustrating that there is a hole in each step because we could happily keep them without carpet but as it is I think we're going to look at a runner for it.

Matt has been out with the boys today so I went to Ikea with Sarah to look at kitchens and fabric, which let Matt off the hook - even the promise of meatballs isn't enough to buy fabric-time! I got some lovely fabrics - some stripy ones to make placemats, a lovely dark patterned one which I'm going to make a pencil case out of for when I start studying again in October, and another light and colourful patterned one which I'm going to use to make a bag. They also had a little set of crocheted flowers and, as I haven't yet attempted crocheting, thought they would be an excellent addition to my over-flowing fabric basket.

That's all I can think of for now without babbling on about the garden so I'll sign-off and take some more photos for my next post.