Please let it rain soon!

The current dry weather conditions are playing havoc with our plans at Bressingham (the old allotment) In February I couldn't dig because the soil is so clay-y I couldn't stand up straight on it, pushing on a spade merely propelled me backwards through the slip. I missed the nanosecond when the weather dried up and the soil was in peak digging condition and, minutes later, it had dried out and set so rock hard that even jumping two footed onto the spade won't drive it into the ground.

My plan was to dig up the grassed area where the kids play, give them horsetail corner for playing instead, and transfer the strawberries to the rather more fecund original play area. Adam complained that digging up the turf in the compacted, played on soil, was heavy going so we put Roundup down thinking dead grass would be easier to grub up than living. By the time the Roundup had worked, the soil had set rock hard so we decided to wait for rain before we continued digging.

We waited, and waited and waited .......

8 weeks later we've only had one small shower of rain. The play area is still only half dug, the strawberries are snug in their original home and are now flowering determinedly, the broad bean seeds have died and the purple sprouting broccoli is running to seed and needs digging up but everything is locked into the concrete soil.

By contrast, the soil at the new allotment on Louie's Lane is a joy. It's like fine sand, free draining and easily heaped over the potatoes (the Ulster Sceptre are doing fine), seed drills are drawn in the blink of an eye (rather than seeds slipping down between huge cobbles) but walking over it is hard on the calves (my legs, there are no baby cows there) but other than that it's allotmenteering heaven.

The 2011 season is beginning in earnest now as my seedlings are slowly emerging from their coldframe home and being planted out in the big wide world of the allotment. The next few weeks will be hard work as I mollycoddle them into life but once they've got a toehold I should find out if my split site strategy will work and I actually have the resources to manage 2 allotments - oh and not forgetting the Diss Community Farm pig rearing project!

AB Seedy

Had to get that pun in somewhere as I'm so proud of it! It's my suggestion for the name of the seed growing 'club' that a couple of friends and I have formed. The idea being we would co-ordinate our planting (eg, I do courgettes, Anna does lettuce), grow a few extra seedlings and then do a vegetal runaround, swapping excess plants. Of course this makes my germination rates uncomfortably public. In the past I would be quite sanguine about failures and just buy garden centre plants to fill any gaps. I really should have remembered that I did that with tomatoes for a couple of years on the run, last year was the first year I gave up and just went straight to the garden centre.

I think you've probably guessed where this is going already .....

Most of the seedlings are going well. I have a germination rate of over 50% for the sweetcorn which isn't too shabby. Borlotti beans more or less 100%, ditto courgettes, various squashes, chard, Cavelo Nero, calabrese etc etc

And my tomatoes? The ones which are supposed to be bounteous? Enough to share with friends? The value adding obscure varieties? Nada. Zip. Absolutely nothing. A handful of Tumbling Toms are struggling up but Mr Stripy are stubbornly staying soil bound.

In the meantime, I've taken my first delivery of leek seedlings from David. I had to share his seed tray idea in the photo above, I thought the cut off milk bottle was genius. Of course the size of the donation (the bottle in the photo, plus one more, plus a full conventional seed tray) causes me even more embaressment in having no tomatoes to give in return, let's just hope he likes courgettes ......

Purple Sprouting to Piggies.

Wow, I finally have an hour to myself (just mistyped that as 'my elf', but I've paid him no attention either) Life has suddenly become overwhelmingly busy as the Norfolk Kitchen empire expands. As you probably know I have 2 allotments for the first time this season. I keep telling myself it's not as daunting as it sounds as both plots are half the traditional size so, really, it's just one plot. That's not too bad is it? Really? It'll be all right won't it??

I took advantage of the glorious weather and visited the Bressingham allotment (the old one) yesterday. Sadly, I forgot my camera which means I couldn't capture the blossom on the fruit trees or the glorious, glowing, shimmering purple of the sprouting broccoli. I photographed it at home but it's just not the same as when it's bathed in sunlight. I'm uncommon pleased with the purple sprouting, I bought a few spare plants from a fellow allotmenteer for 20p, stuck them in the soil and ignored them til now and suddenly, unexpectedly, I have this gourmet treat (stir fried in olive oil with anchovies by the way)

When I'd finished swinging a matock while sweat dripped off my nose in an attempt to dig over the sun hardened clay of the ex-Cavolo Nero bed, I called at the new allotment to check out the rotavating a friend did for me. The soil is beautiful, as fine a tilth as sand. I surveyed my blistered hands and could've wept!

Added to the extra land I've taken on 3 extra chickens making a total of 5, plus I'm getting quite heavily involved in the Diss Community Farm Livestock project. The Community Farm is basically a co-operative of local people, we're hoping to rent some land, work on it ourselves, share the produce and have a few laughs along the way. It's a huge project to get off the ground and lots of people are working very hard on it. The hope is that the Farm will become a reality next year and in the meantime we're running a couple of small pilot projects to test our plans and procedures. The vegetable growing project I'm leaving alone (see above) but the Project Piggy is a different matter ....

A local landowner has agreed to lease us an area of woodland of about 2 acres for a peppercorn rent and a side of pork, our plan is to keep a few pigs and some nice fierce geese to keep them safe from marauding teenagers. If all goes well we can scale up for the farm proper.

We're holding a Family Cream Tea this Sunday, 10th April, at Roydon Village Hall at 3pm. Please come along if you'd like to find out a bit more about our project or get involved. And if you're very lucky, you may even get to sample a little Norfolk Kitchen jam (but not the courgette and ginger which was very firmly rejected!)

Xanthe's Mud Pie Kitchen

Ta-daaa! So here it is, Xanthe's Mud Pie kitchen. At the grand old age of 4, Xanthe is already an allotment veteran. We've reached the stage where miniature tool sets and packets of seeds have waned in the excitement stakes and every announcement of an allotment visit is met with loud howls of protest.

I've been avoiding this flashpoint by only visiting the allotment when Xanthe is at nursery but as demands on my precious child free time grow this is becoming impractical. The issue of keeping Xanthe amused and engaged feels even more important at the new allotment where our plots aren't fenced and the neighbours are the neat and tidy straight lines types who wouldn't fancy small feet tramping over the border.

I appealed for ideas on Twitter and Facebook and got some great suggestions including making scarecrows, flower pot mud castles (like sandcastles only muddier), flower pot stilts and cardboard tractors. All of which are fab ideas I have squirreled away for future use. The lovely Rachel, she of the transplaneted courgette, came up with the Rolls Royce solution: A Mud Pie Kitchen.

An hour in the charity shops of Diss produced a wooden wine rack which a dab of glue, 2 cheap hob covers and 2 big red buttons turned into a cooker. We added in a variety of charity shop utensils and the job was done. So far, it's proving to be a huge success. It's spent the last 48 hrs sitting in the living room, waiting for today's allotment trip, where it has already facilitated Xanthe's hamster stew ("pretend we're cats cooking hamsters!")

We took it to the plot today where Xanthe put it through it's muddy paces. For the first time in this family's allotment career, Xanthe was so absorbed in her mud and weeds cookery it took all my powers of persuasion to get her to leave and Willow's in a sulk because she hasn't seen the kitchen in situ yet. My ears are ringing to a new and unfamiliar refrain "But Muuuuum, when are we going to the allotment? I haven't been for aaaaages!"

Chickenopolis

Wow, what a chickeny weekend we have had. We decided to buy a bigger new coop so that we could put non-laying Feathers out to retirement and replace her with 3 new point of lay hens. The coop was ordered when I received a call asking if we had space for a few ex-batts someone was collecting. I immediately agreed to take 3, now that we'd had a bit of chicken keeping experience I felt more confident about taking on chickens who potentially could have some problems, plus there's the fuzzy glow of doing something good, plus, well, umm, they're free so I've saved the best part of £60.

Once the new coop was assembled we realised that we had room to keep the old coop too so our plans expanded, we would go from owning 1 coop stocked with 2 hens so 2 coops with a combined total of 5 hens. The pre-existing Crispy plus 3 ex-batts meant we only had to buy 1 extra hen.

Sunday dawned cold and sunny and our day of avian runaround began.

Feathers was taken to her retirement home, namely a work mate of Adam's who adopts waif and stray birds from bantams to barn owls. He agreed to make a chicken sized space for Feathers who will no doubt thinks she's suddenly grown a foot overnight after being introduced to the bantams.

Next we sped off to collect the ex-batts. I've never seen one before so was a bit shocked, not at the lack of feathers so much, but their wilty combs and anaemic appearance. The lady who'd rescued them told me they actually had more feathers than most ex-batts so I think I'd expected them to be a bit more conventional looking.

Back home, we had a minor escapage during our complicated re-cooping schedule which resulted in Crispy and the ex-batts coming beak to beak a bit sooner than planned and, completely unexpectedly, Crispy turned into Rambo Hen. Making a growling noise I've never heard before, she launched herself ruthlessly at a hapless ex-batt, stamping on her neck and pecking viciously at her head. Naturally, we quickly separated them so we now have the 3 ex-batts in the new coop and Crispy the Bully is on her own in the old coop. She won't be alone for long as I'm getting her a brand new point of lay playmate tomorrow, I'm hoping that if we follow conventional rules, introduce the new hen after Crispy has gone to bed and get a newby that bears a passing resemblance to Feathers, Crispy will accept her a bit more readily.

Meanwhile, the ex-batts have been named. They're Spark, Katie (after the singer in the Ting Tings) and Lady Gaga (believe me, not my choice, but I suppose she's wearing about as many feathers as Lady Gaga wears clothes) and they seem really happy. They've made themselves at home and are really curious about us, coming out to line up and stare out at us from the run every time we come out of the house. And the icing on the cake (not literally) this morning, less than 24hrs after arriving, all 3 had laid an egg!

So hurrah for the Bash Street Hens, although they do have really long claws, does anyone have any experience of trimming chicken claws? Is it easy to do?

Potato Madness

I finally got hold of my Ulster Sceptre seed potatoes thanks to the 2011 East Anglian Potato Day. It was the first time I've been to one of their events and it was an education! I envisaged a market stall type set up and as I only wanted a small number of one variety I thought it would be fairly easy to quickly drop by and pick up what I wanted.

It was a shock to the system then, to arrive at Stonham Barns and be faced with actual queues of traffic waiting to get in. I finally parked and was directed to the marquee by a helpful car park attendant who admired my parking spot and cheerfully exclaimed "At least you won't get stuck in the mud like the others!". Outside the marquee, I tagged on to the end of a huge queue of people in wellies with that outdoorsy sheen of mud and rude health about them and shuffled patiently towards the door. Apparently those in the know get there early and start to queue before the tent's even open.

Inside I was faced with a frantically busy potato jumble sale, complete with steely eye glints and sharp elbows. Rows of seed potatoes were laid out in alphabetical order, punters fill paper bags with their required varieties and then commence the arcane payment procedure which involves a two stage tally ("Did you not count them?") and pay ("Did you not write the name on the bag?") system.

I paid 12p per potato plus my £1.50 entry fee. For my small haul that worked out at roughly the same as garden centre prices but clearly, further hauls would have yielded greater savings. Indeed, I was mildly surprised to see people tottering under the weight of bags of life stuffed to the brim. The only reason I was so restrained quantity wise is the gift of two bags of seed potatoes (Arran Pilot and Nadine) I was given by a fellow allotmenteer which I already have tucked away at home.

It took much longer than anticipated to make my small purchase but what a great event! I love the fact that there are so many people out there who are obviously bonkers enough about potatoes to stage the event, to queue happily in the mud and to eagerly anticipate Potato Day each year. And thank goodness they do, I've no idea where I would have got my Ulster Sceptre otherwise.

I'm going in for potatoes in a bigger way than I'd planned this year thanks to the seed potato presents I've got but it'll be interesting to test the Ulster Sceptre against a more standard variety and see if there's any taste difference. It would be even more interesting to test them against Ulster Sceptre grown in Cheshire to see if there's any truth in the claim that it's the salty Cheshire soil that makes them taste special.

I'm especially happy to have got through a whole post about potatoes without once saying "the humble spud". Cliche neatly side stepped I think.

How far can a straight line take me?

That's not an entirely rhetorical question. You may remember that over the winter, while the veg patch sleeps, I've been exploring the world of the haberdasher. My sewing skills are limited, I've never followed a pattern, never sewed in a zip or made a button hole. In fact my one and only skill is my ability to sew in a straight line. It's true I've dabbled in a three stitch zig zag on prone to fraying raw edges but, to be honest, it makes me anxious. So straight lines it is.

Sewing is supposed to be a thrifty activity but it doesn't take long to discover that the mainstream approach of purchasing fabric and patterns from the local haberdasher is more expensive than you might think, so I've been rather enjoying the challenge of finding alternative means of sourcing cheap materials.

Charity shops are an obvious first stop. My local Oxfam sells bundles of about 5 roughly fat quarter sized pieces for 99p as well as cards of buttons presumably snipped from clothes destined for the rag bag. Zips (which are beyond my capabilities) seem to be a perennial charity shop favourite too at 50p a pop. It's also worth keeping an eye on the Lidl website for their twice weekly specials which a few times a year throw up bargain sewing machines, boxes of thread and well stocked sewing boxes.

I'm also lucky enough to live relatively close to the heart of the silk weaving industry. (Sudbury, seeing as you ask, it was news to me too) I know of two silk mill factory shops, Vanners and Stephen Walters. I drove over to Sudbury just after Christmas, unfortunately Vanners was closed (Thank You chap on the phone who assured me they would be open on Tuesday but he actually meant Thursday. Still, they both begin with 'T', an easy mistake to make, what's a two hour futile round trip between friends? Tsk) but, happily, I unwittingly walked in on the first day of the Stephen Walters January Sale. I came away with about 6 meters of brightly coloured silk destined for tie making plus a couple of bumper patchwork bags of satisfyingly heavy, seriously good quality fabric for £19. If anyone knows of any other silk/fabric mills with factory shops, please let us know.

Oh, and I think we all know Ebay is our friend, especially for bulk buying ribbon, cord, buttons, trimmings etc. And another obvious one, there are lots of free patterns and tutorials out there on the net.

So, how far have I got with my bargain materials and a straight line?

I'm quite proud of myself actually. I mentioned in a previous post that I made 2 fleece backed patchwork quilts for the living room. I have also made a crazy patchwork table runner, a curtain to hide the toy shelves in the living room, Christmas stockings, a dog glove puppet, 2 drop bags and 2 drawstring bags for the children to keep their toys in and a series of 'pockets' to go along the side of Xanthe's new bed to keep her treasures in. Next on the list is a Nintendo DS pouch for Willow. Then we bring out the big guns - an actual pattern (eek) to make some soft toys and cushions for the kitchen chairs with (bated breath) zips! Does this mean I've come to the end of the straight line??

Update! Talk about timely, Lidl are stocking some sewing materials, yarns, needles etc on Monday 10th Feb.