A Smallholder's Diary, Week 3 (6th-12th July 2021)

6^th July 2021
I get down with sunlight still bleeding on the western horizon. The same Copper Black as has been out the last two nights is on top of the coop; I shoo her off. Odd.
 
8 eggs
 
7^th July 2021
Allotment Club, with two families as well as ours. Sunny, humid. Buckets of harvest, and as a side to our lunch I pick onion greens. Joe loves them; they’re spicy but luscious, fresh, ripe. The onions are nearly ready themselves – we should get enough for most of the next year. The first courgette flowers are out.
 
A couple of weak bean tillers are snapped off as the children harvest; this is somewhat inevitable, but the grubby-handed smallholder in me is really frustrated by the loss of, perhaps, 30 pods. That’s maybe a half-pound. On the other hand, I should consider it an education cost – the kids have to learn how to pick beans, and there were always going to be casualties en route to their expertise.
 
Later, we host friends for dinner. We use up all the home-grown lettuce left in the fridge, both Gem and Beauregard – and I think: this stuff is just toxic roadside nonsense. We took it and tamed it, like you break a colt, and turned it into something edible and useful...and so varied! The Gem is crunchy, juicy, with pine-dark green leaves; the Beauregard is more delicate, an almost papery leaf in duck-egg green, peppery to taste. The ancient farmer was as close to a wonderworker as any modern geneticist.
 
I sow carrot seed in the evening (late, should have done it last month, but the weather early in the year has knocked everything back). I also check on the potatoes; as well as the 25 Early plants, there are now 19 or so Maincrop plants showing above ground. We may recover the potato harvest yet!
 
The Copper Black goes inside normally; weird streak broken.
 
I hear the progress of the England-Denmark game by listening to the village; the shouts as England score their second goal rise from different points and join, forming a victorious chorus, like a roaring sea. There’s a timeless element here, somehow – of course people are watching on TV, but I am not, and hear news travel by acclamation across the silent land.
 
But that piece of news is trumped as I walk to get some water: a hedgehog! First I’ve seen in years. One of our many declining animal populations, suffering as so many from busier roads, more heavily broken up by human development, the rest of it.
 
The hog watches me pass, and is gone by the time I return. A snuffling mascot for a land-healing ministry.
 
6 eggs, 3oz Meteor peas, 3.75lbs Aquadulce beans (1lb shelled), 3 rhubarb stalks (other stalks were brought home but had withered by the time they were processed)
 
8^th July 2021
Only briefly at the allotment, but later, when walking home from a friend’s birthday BBQ, I see another hedgehog. Is this the reverse of the ravens leaving the tower?
 
7 eggs
 
9^th July 2021
I enjoy a therapeutic hour in the evening working at the allotment. I spread wood shaving over the chicken yard to help with the mud; by next winter I want to have it woodchipped. This will produces us good compost, help with absorbency, and the chickens will enjoy hunting for bugs amongst the chips.
 
I top up their bedding – we basically “deep bed” them until there’s not room and then clear some of the rubbish out. This is perfectly hygienic – the new bedding covers the old waste and helps the composting process, which also produces a little ambient heat for the chickens. Especially good in winter.
 
I feed and water them. We use layers pellets, plus a little corn and grit. Not organic – I’d rather be grazing them on grass and topping up with minerals, but organic feed is twice the price and so as they’re static we compromise.
 
There is something cleansing about being here; it is not that one is mindless in working. Indeed, doing manual labour allows the mind to wander and reflect more than clerical work. But there is something grounding, reality-setting – yes, I have many worries; yes, there are burdens and obstacles; but here, now, “at the still point of the turning world”, I am present, and able to achieve something, no matter how small.
 
The chickens are fed. The young rhubarb and the cabbages are flourishing. The bean harvest continues apace. If I die tomorrow, I will have served my day.
 
7 eggs
 
10^th July 2021
I don’t go down today, having too much other work to do; I miss it.
 
7 eggs, 1 head of Beauregard lettuce, 1 Meteor peapod (0.2oz)
 
11^th July 2021
We see a sparrowhawk take out a pigeon on the way down for Sunday School. It watches the whole crowd of us gawking. Another pigeon watches, too, seemingly more confused than distressed.
 
In the evening I come down and discover the chicken yard door had been left open, and the little monsters had gone out on to the allotment in style. The chard and cauliflowers have been thoroughly gobbled (but hopefully can still recover), and other plants have been unearthed. Somehow worst of all, the chickens had all then gone back in to their yard! I spend time replanting plants and covering vulnerable specimens.
 
6 eggs, 1 head of Beauregard lettuce
 
12^th July 2021
We have tomato pasta with our own broad beans and lettuce. This is satisfying, of course – but also nutritious! The broad beans are stuffed with easy calories, protein, and minerals, whilst the lettuce is very good for both vitamins and minerals. And this is all very easy to grow – both have basically grown themselves with just a bit of weeding, a single string round the beans, and slug-hunting for the lettuce. Scores of bean seeds, hundreds of lettuce seeds – they cost a pound or two each. Virtually free, easy to grow, nutritious.
 
7 eggs