Floral Dance

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!

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...

...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!

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

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

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...

...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...