A Smallholder's Diary, Week 8: 10th-16th August 2021

10^th August 2021
A visiting friend comes down to see the allotment. He has just moved house, and grew strawberries and vegetables in his old garden; the landlady’s “gardeners” had destroyed the last of his harvest as he left by dumping cut grass and branches on the strawberries, and had cut down growing potato plants. There is something strongly metaphoric here – a man rents a patch, improves it, grows a harvest, but ultimately is not allowed to have ownership over the land he improves. Loss of the commons and enclosure come to mind.
5 eggs, 2 large Golden Zucchinis, 2 French Breakfast radishes, 1.75oz Ruby Lights chard

11^th August 2021
The tomatoes have had a late surge in pollination – suddenly dozens of extra fruit have appeared! Despite being in a north-facing yard, they are doing reasonably – the warmth of the adjacent house helps. My estimates of how many fruits we’ll end up with have gone from more, say, 30-40, up to 60 or so – from disappointing (but breaking even) to beginning to profit on seeds sown, even if only by a little.
 
6 eggs, 1 large Golden Zucchini, 1 small De Nizza courgette

12^th August 2021
Twilight working, with the harvest continuing to roll in. The Golden Ranger hen is very broody, and often sitting on the eggs – that is, she gathers them and sits on them in the middle of the coop, not even in the nestbox! We may have to deal with this, as broody hens can cause problems for the other hens laying.
 
Earlier in the day, Joe (4) picks his first radish from the pot of radish and lettuce he and Zeb (2) sowed last month.
 
7 eggs, 1 French Breakfast radish, 2.1oz Welsh onions, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 1 large Golden Zucchini, misc onions, 1.8oz Meteor peas (0.6oz shelled), 1.2oz blackberries
 
13^th August 2021
The blackberries continue to beg to be picked, and the branches lie heavy on the bushes. We have several that overhang only our patch, which are therefore solely our crop – shared with the birds, of course. Given the relative value of soft fruit, this is an incredibly efficient activity. A few minutes for an ounce, say – 28g. 150g costs £2 at Tesco. 15 minutes for £2 – pretty much minimum wage, but of course this is all off your own back, with the food going directly to your table or freezer.
 
I also spot some uncovered Earlies, and set straight to – leaving them till tomorrow means losing more to green weight.
 
4 eggs, 5lbs8.375oz Early potatoes, 1.64oz blackberries, 0.25oz raspberries
 
14^th August 2021
A few poor condition courgettes come home – every chance they’ll both end up going to the chickens – but one is our first of whatever the Scallop variety we grew. I also pick a very small but ripe strawberry from the plants at the allotment – the ones at home have both struggled from drouth but also, as far as I can tell, pollinated very poorly, so even where fruit developed there were basically no seed-cells to grow to fruit. Exciting to think that next year we should have a healthy crop of fruit.
 
5 eggs, 1lbs11.5oz Early potatoes, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 1 very small Scallop courgette, 1.375oz blackberries, 1 small strawberry
 
15^th August 2021
A second hen (the bantam) has started to brood on the eggs. We really need to dip their bottoms in water and discourage this.
 
4 eggs, 0.63oz blackberries
 
16^th August 2021
Our 4-year-old comes down with me after dinner and works with me for an hour and a half. Some of this is self-directed – he starts to fill a hole in the perennial bed (a job that needed doing, actually), he uses some grass shears to cut weeds – whilst some is under direct instruction (he sows radish seeds with me; he helps herd the chickens to bed; he cuts chard under my direction). Why shouldn’t he both contribute to the household now and gain competencies and confidence?
 
In time we want to give the kids their own chance at “businesses” – next year, perhaps, we’ll set up a quail shed and work on it with our 4-year-old, at first – he can collect eggs and help with feeding and cleaning, and in time (when he’s 6 or 7, say) take it over fully. We can then sell the eggs, and he (and any siblings who join him) can split the profits with us.
 
We drop off a food box to the family who sometimes work the allotment with us: 15 eggs, 2 courgettes, half a bag of chard, 5 radishes, a couple of heads of lettuce. Abundance.
 
5 eggs, 4.5 Beauregard lettuce heads, 1 large De Nizza courgette, 1 large Golden Zucchini, 5 French Breakfast radishes, 1 bag of Ruby chard, 0.77oz Meteor peas (0.28oz shelled), 1lbs1oz Early potatoes, 3.84oz blackberries, 1.5oz Welsh onions

A Smallholder's Diary, Week 7: 3rd-9th August 2021

 3^rd August 2021
Twilight working (and darker than that by the end!). Even when facing challenges, working outside is usually so therapeutic. The feedback loops on the land are direct and comprehensible; some are slow, yes, but none are utterly abstruse, as so many human interactions can be. The seed goes in to the ground, and grows or fails to grow. You can narrow it down to a few possible causes – next time, you can mitigate against them, if imperfectly.
 
Weeds grow because the soil is fertile and the crop does not totally dominate it – so you must act as a browser (feeding your compost or your chickens) to preserve your harvest.
 
Insects and birds and moulds attack in fairly predictable ways and at fairly predictable times (though the wild seasons of 2021 have been their own challenge). You cannot prevent their partial success, but you can work symbiotically with your gardens to further your joint existence – food for you, space for the crops.
 
And the result of this travail is, by the grace of God, harvest. Tonight was a harvest night. A De Nizza courgette, really turned to marrow; several smaller cucurbits; all the remaining small lettuce plants (with the remaining heads being larger than a shop-bought one!); and a basket full of radishes, some as big as a cricket ball.
 
Some, like the radishes, have taken virtually no effort or care – sow, weed, water, repeat. The lettuce needs protecting from slugs too. The courgettes have gone from seed tray to bigger pots to beds here, and need ongoing aid beyond the usual – management of damaged stems, keeping fruit off the ground, and so forth. But of course, it’s fair to say the general value of the harvest goes up alongside – radishes are very tasty fresh, but are chiefly really a chop-in vegetable for stir frys or roast veg trays thereafter; lettuce is fresh and tasty but light; courgettes, on the other hand, can provide real bulk to a meal, all whilst tasting rich and luxurious.
 
By electric light I continue work at home in the yard, trying to help our tomatoes along. Despite poor pollination – widely reported by other growers this year – I think we are still on course to turn a comfortable, if not large, profit on our seeds. Tomatoes are hard, but given they can grow to maturity in the North-East of England, they can’t be that hard! We’ve avoided blight this year, too, which ruined our crop last year. However, we need some sun now to ripen the harvest. I help by trimming dying branches and leaves, and I even pot up some small but fruitful plants (very late in the season, I know!) to help them with their nitrogen needs. The mini-greenhouse plants have grown vigorously, but have struggled even more with pollination than the main crop; I identify only one sizable fruit on any of the ten or so plants, though I imagine a couple more will come through in time.
 
6 eggs, 2 cherry Tomatoes (0.4oz), 1 very large De Nizza squash, 2 small De Nizza squash, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 4 Beauregard lettuce heads (equivalent), 15 French Breakfast radishes
 
4^th August 2021
I spend another therapeutic time at the allotment, though shorter this time. I shuffle the Golden Ranger – and this time find an egg! So she is not eggbound, just slow in production. Partly the weather will be a factor, but I really rather suspect her historic injury has left her less vigorous.
 
I also find a miracle bean! Low on one of the (mostly dead) plants I find a rusted bean pod with a very thick centre. At home, sure enough, the outer beans are tiny and shrivelled from infection, but the central pod has grown an absolutely enormous bean. I’ll count it as a little redemption.
 
The potatoes today are mostly brown, but need picking as the earth erodes round the dying plant.
 
6 eggs, 17 raspberries (42.5g), 14oz potatoes (green weight included), 0.56oz Aquadulce broad beans (0.1oz shelled)
 
5^th August 2021
Helen brings in a healthy harvest today, including another very large De Nizza, really a small marrow.
 
Brief trip to encourage the chickens to bed in the evening. Fewer eggs today than normal; part coincidence, perhaps, but also reflective of consistently grey weather. I also take the first blackberry of the year – still slightly sharp.
 
4 eggs, 2 large Black Beauty courgettes, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 1 very large De Nizza squash, 1 large De Nizza squash, 1 small De Nizza squash, 7 raspberries (17.5g), 1 blackberry
 
6^th August 2021
Again I go to the chickens to chivvy them to bed after finishing work in the evening. I shore up a potato ridge – I’ll need to harvest some of those tomorrow to prevent greening. With the plants having died back, the ridges are eroding, and the most exposed potatoes are no longer covered by the plant’s leaves.
 
7 eggs
 
7^th August 2021
I harvest a lot of the remaining Early potatoes, with very little green weight (the only ones really suffering are tiny nodules which had, at any rate, begun to sprout; I might even keep the biggest of these as a sample seed for next year).
 
The sheer weight – 9.6kg, 21lbs – is encouraging. Concentrated carbohydrates to bring us through the winter. But potatoes – like virtually all harvested foods – has expiry risks, so I’ve bought some hessian sacks for storage under the stairs to prevent greening and sprouting.
 
4 eggs, 21lbs 3.3oz Early potatoes
 
8^th August 2021
Aside from collecting eggs and chivvying chickens, I go and pick up most of the remaining peapods. They’re still going, though – there are even still a few flowers. Peas keep flowering as long as you crop them – it’s why sweetpeas are a “renewable” flowering plant for decorative purposes. I’m pleased with the peas this year – though we only sowed a relative few, and as a dwarf variety they don’t exactly get big and burgeoning, the way I think of it is this: if for the equivalent of pennies, and a couple of square feet, we get the equivalent of a bag or two of peas, we’ve turned a profit in an exceptionally efficient manner.
 
5 eggs, 0.9oz Meteor peas (0.28oz shelled)
 
9^th August 2021
An afternoon trip for the chickens and to make a list. So much to catch up on and to do. Final sowings (some overdue), plant out spare plantlings, weed, harvest.
 
Helen uses a pound of foraged blackberries and raspberries out of the freezer from last year, and there is plenty more where that comes from. Crazy to think of the abundance still in store – for free!
 
I head down in the evening, in rapidly failing light, and hurry through some work, including sowing some carrot seeds – over a month late. Sometimes, though, it’s worth trying something, especially if on a small scale, to see what happens. If they’ll be ready at roughly 3-4 months, we can realistically harvest them at the end of October – and our autumns are usually mild and often sunny and warm (September is often better then August).
 
I finish the evening’s work at home on the July accounts. “Income” below does not include onions, which have been drying, but does include a pro rata guess at the actual value of the Early potatoes harvested in July, bearing in mind the relatively high green content. The (*) represents using a complimentary voucher and reducing the price.
 
INCOME (equivalent £££ saved): £66.71 (Meteor peas 70p, Beauregard lettuce £14, eggs £34, Aquadulce beans £7.50, rhubarb £1.37, Welsh onions 4p, Cherry tomatoes 30p, French Breakfast radishes 60p, Early potatoes £2.30, Black Beauty courgettes £2.40, Golden Zucchini courgettes 20p, raspberries £1.50, De Nizza courgette 80p)
 
EXPENSES: £15.38 (2 bags Layer’s Pellets £14, cabbage mesh £1.38*)
 
£51.33 effective profit, which renders the two months so far in net profit, with 2-3 big income months still to go for the year. The plan has to be to have a good harvest, and then plan winter projects in relation to the effective profit for the summer/autumn, so that by the end of next May we’re breaking even. Then next year can be an outright profit year.
 
7 eggs, 1 French Breakfast radish, 6 heads of Beauregard lettuce, misc onions

A Smallholder's Diary, Week 6: 27th July-2nd August 2021

27^th July 2021
There are constant small victories and losses on the smallholding. Yesterday the first potatoes came up half-green in a salvage job, and the beans were rotten, but at least the radishes and lettuce were good. Today is all victory. We give some friends some eggs, radishes, and lettuce heads. It is joyful to share abundance. Why else should we grow but to give – to ourselves and others? Grace is designed to overflow.
 
We also begin to see the courgette harvest come in earnest, with two mature Black Beauties, long and glossy black-green, like a dark aubergine, and one Golden Zucchini – a small one, but fully mature, the first off its plant. Picking them regularly naturally encourages growth elsewhere. Helen reports seeing some of our scallop-shaped ones coming through, too.
 
7 eggs, 2 large Black Beauty courgettes, 1 small Golden Zucchini, 0.35oz raspberries
 
28^th July 2021
I don’t go down today.
 
7 eggs

29^th July 2021
I go down with a friend and the boys, and we bring back a basketful of courgettes and raspberries and peas! The first De Nizza – a green-grey bell-shaped squash or courgette – comes off the vine, and we take a bevy of Black Beauties, which ripen to a gloss black finish.
 
It is a blessing to share the land. Virtually no-one does not enjoy coming down to the allotment – albeit they do not share the hard days in mud – and it is plainly vivifying, to them and me. This renders it the more distressing that we simply do not share land in a general sense. I don’t mean public ownership – I mean social cooperation.
 
The drift from the land had its effects on employment and on rhythms of life at the time, of course, but the greatest long-term impact (I am convinced) is to our sense of rootedness, our connection with natural things, our sense of the rhythms of the land itself. The farming community is closed off, often both literally and metaphorically endogamous – what little public agricultural land (allotments) we have are ever under threat from the temptation of development money – our nature preserves are fragile and lopsided – our greenbelt is often largely in private hands, and sterile to boot.
 
4 eggs, 2 large Black Beauty courgettes, 2 small Black Beauty courgettes, 1 large De Nizza courgette, 30 raspberries (2.64oz), 0.5oz Meteor peas (0.25oz shelled)
 
30^th July 2021
Brief trip before bed, and I collect some potatoes!
 
5 eggs, 10 raspberries (0.88oz), 7lbs6oz Early potatoes
 
31^st July 2021
I take my dad and the boys down on the way out to play softball. There’s something glorious in generational sharing of the land, even such a small patch. My father’s father, Grandpa Joe, had an allotment – I particularly remember his potatoes and beans, tomatoes from the greenhouse. That legacy has always stayed with me very strongly. It was a bias towards allotment keeping long before I got into permaculture. It’s an inheritance in itself, as sure as the woolly jumpers passed down from him that I still wear. (He died 14 years ago, so they’re doing pretty well to get to this stage!)
 
6 eggs
 
1^st August 2021
The briefest of trips to collect eggs and sort out the chickens, after a long and busy day. The Golden Ranger is very broody, but not laying; she doesn’t seem eggbound, though, as she is mobile and happy during the day.
 
6 eggs
 
2^nd August 2021
Helen reports that we have strawberries at the allotment bed! Given our losses in the yard, this is encouraging. She’s put out straw to help with moisture and rotting issues.
 
Quick trip to put the chickens to bed. It was probably wise to let them stay out when it was around 20 Celsius overnight – but they need to be encouraged to be wise. Like children, in that respect.
 
I need to find more time to plant out remaining spare seedlings and weed the rhubarb and asparagus. The new rhubarb, particularly, is doing very well; we’ll very likely not take any this summer, as it’s late in its season, and we want the strength to be returned to the crown for next year.
 
6 eggs, 8 raspberries (0.7oz)