Month 2; Visitors, Mizuna and Trello

Our second month at the smallholding, a slightly soggy August with a sprinkling of long sunny days on the decking, seems to have flown by with 3 sets of visitors and a trip back to Hertfordshire for a family wedding. Having guests so soon after taking on the property was at first a daunting prospect with the house partially undecorated, outbuildings full of discarded furniture and items left by previous owners and the land overgrown and soggy, but having guests turned out to be liberating. Their tales of the life we have behind reminded us of why we opted for a change of lifestyle and their enjoyment at discovering hidden gems of equipment and tools in the workshop and barns reminded us that we had bought an Aladdin's cave of farming history.

The odd sunny day, saw good friends help us with some chores around the farm, including moving the trailer and horse box to higher/drier ground and repairing holes in the stock fencing (you can always rely on golden retrievers to find weaknesses in the perimeter fencing). We watched our friends who had arrived stressed and tired, leave rested and refreshed impressed at the quiet and the “proper dark” nights.

From the long list of tasks our bigger task this month was clearing the old vegetable patch of bracken, brambles and some of the tallest/thickest nettles we have ever seen, in preparation for pigs in the Spring using a combination of mower, lawn tractor (sit-on mower) and scythes. The grandson of one of the property’s previous owners told us that this area was known to the family as “maes moch bach” or “little pig field”. It feels good to know that not only will the pigs have fun digging up any root vegetables left in the ground but our choice of area for them was spot on with the traditional smallholder. We were also told that the hills behind the house were used for sheep. I said that we had planned on goats which we knew were not traditional in Wales but he confirmed that his aunt who had inherited the farm from his grandfather drank only goats milk for health reasons.

So we won’t be run out of the hills just yet.

The polytunnel has rewarded us with an abundance of spinach beet, radishes, pak choi, chervil and mizuna despite the damp weather. We had not come across mizuna before which was included in one of our mixed salad seed packets but we are now fans of this tasty oriental leaf. The seeds sown at the end of July have provided several weeks of salad and there is still more to be picked. While seedlings of beetroot, broccoli, butternut squash, dwarf beans, kale, mixed salad, pak choi, radish and spinach beet grow well in the polytunnel along with potatoes planted in a clean waste bin, carrots and turnips have been sown directly in prepared beds, and in the potting shed cabbage, cauliflower, chilli, fennel, kohl rabi, spinach and rocket have been sown along with culinary herbs basil, chives, coriander, parsley, oregano and rosemary and medicinal herbs calendula, lavender, St John’s Wort and yarrow. Keeping track of when to sow, seeds sown and when to transplant seedlings is becoming a full time job in itself and Trello has taken place of the old notebook proving to be a useful tool for keeping track of all projects on the farm.

Our next project will be adapting one of the stables for chickens. We had kept ex-battery hens in Hertfordshire and keeping laying birds seems to be a no-brainer. Long term we plan to breed our own birds, keeping the hens for laying and the cockerels for meat. We have no experience of raising chickens for meat so decided to attend an advanced chicken course focusing on ‘getting more out of keeping chickens” at a local farm hosted by Lewis Wescott aka Dr Chicken (a vet specializing in avian medicine). The course included breeding, hatching chicks, common ailments, good husbandry, dispatch, plucking and gutting. The dispatch was not something we were looking forward to, but the broomstick method was straightforward and the course matter of fact. This is the reality of eating meat and we found ourselves being more mindful of the bird that we had dispatched, plucked and gutted ourselves and each mouthful was savoured. Since moving to our smallholding we have been eating much less meat, and although not immediately thinking of becoming vegetarian we feel that meat will be more of a treat and each animal respected through a good free range life and humane dispatch. Having said this we have come away focusing on hens for laying and looking at dual purpose Ixworth or Light Sussex as a longer term project.

September 8th, 2017