The Good Life gets closer!

Our goal of expanding the Norfolk Kitchen empire into livestock by raising our own rare breed piggies in a local woodland is moving closer to reality.

You may remember back in April I talked about my involvement with Diss Community Farm. It's a community project a group of us have put together, initially in the hope of opening a community run farm next year. Things moved quicker than we anticipated though as we were offered 2 small plots of land, one for a vegetable growing pilot project and one for a pork raising pilot. I'm not personally involved with the vegetable project as I'm pretty much set up for my veggie needs with my allotments but I'm throwing my full enthusiasm behind the livestock project.

We've now formally launched the piggy project, we have about 16 people signed up to pay for the meat and to help look after the pigs. The big news is that we've secured a grant from a local company which will pay for our set up costs of things like fencing, pig arcs, feed bins etc This means that it's all systems go on the shopping front and we have a few days of hard work in front of us to get materials on site and to build the fences. (the photo is one of our members carrying one of about 60 pallets to the woods to be re-cycled as fencing)

It's really exciting to be actually moving forward at last. The land we're using is a small woodland of about 2.5 acres bordered by the River Waveney on one side, so it's a fantastic natural environment for the pigs and for small children too! The girls love playing in the woods, climbing trees and splashing in the river. I have to admit that buying into this kind of lifestyle for the children has been a major factor in my motivation for being involved in this project (that and making my own sausages and bacon) I'm really looking forward to a long, hot summer of visiting the pigs and playing in the woods.

By the way, if you're interested in what we're doing, we're having an open day at the vegetable growing pilot on Sunday.

"The time has come" the gardener said,

"to talk of many things, of sheds and hoes and summer squash, of cabbages in spring" (with apologies to Lewis Carol)

I got a phone call last night from the secretary of the allotment association at our new Diss plot. We're not allowed our own sheds down there but instead have to rent one of the block of Council built sheds for the princely sum of £2 per year. The only trouble is that since the plots were divided in half there are half as many sheds as plots so there's a waiting list to get a shed. I've been waiting since I took on the plot in October and the phone call last night let me know I'd finally got to the top of the list so the upshot is - I have a shed!

This morning I went to investigate and transfer numerous things from our garage to the shed - including my treasured wheel hoe. It's much more convenient to keep it on site but I am a bit nervous about security, I'd be very upset if it was stolen. Not so much for the monetary value but the difficulty of getting hold of a replacement.

Now, I may not be cabbage looking but the purple sprouting broccoli certainly is. I bought a tray of seedlings from a car boot sale a couple of months ago, planted 5 of them, 4 have come up as broccoli but one has turned into a cabbage! Quite what my fellow allotmenteers make of me growing a single cabbage I don't know. Probably not as much as me growing enough summer squash to feed an army.

Talking of which - one of my growing goals this year was a basket of mixed summer squash and today I achieved it. I picked my first Patty Pan squash, aren't they amazing? I've not grown them before and I think I may have let these ones grow too big. I was waiting for them to turn snowy white like the picture on the seed packet but they're stayed vaguely green tinged, I'll probably pick them smaller in future. But look, Patty Pan squash, yellow courgettes and stripy courgettes, crook neck squash to come in the near future. This is why I have an allotment, you can't buy a basket like that in Tesco - I've got mixed tomatoes in my sights for next year.

Drink your own Garden!

Just a brief post to admire the colour of the Yellow Bullace wine Adam made last year, although it's not as beautiful as I remember thinking it was after drinking half a glass last night. It's really not bad for home brew especially considering Adam's 'chuck it in the bucket and see what happens' approach to winemaking.

I'm consulting the splendidly named charity shop find 'Drink your own Garden' for further wine making ideas although it talks about stuff like Camden tablets (for attracting Goths?) and wine nutrient. We've only ever bought sugar and yeast to add to the wild fruit/nettles/elderflowers we use and haven't died yet, although I am a bit reluctant to drink last year's batch of cider as it's a bit too sweet.

I'm not sure I'd want to drink our garden anyway what with all the chicken poo, I'm thinking I may drink the hedgerow though. Elderberry and blackberry wine for Autumn evenings 2012 I think.

The Wheeled Push Hoe

A few weeks ago I went on a Diss Community Farm visit to Oak Tree Low Carbon Farm in Ipswich and there I made the discovery which could change the course of my allotment career!

Joanne at Oak Tree showed us her wheeled push hoe. This is basically a wheel on a stick which pulls a loop of sharpened metal just under the surface of the soil, thereby chopping the green tops off the weeds and aerating the soil in the process. (The photo at the bottom gives a back view of the blade.)

Once the rains started back home and our Diss plot filled up with tiny annual weed seedlings I realised that we had the ideal conditions for this bit of kit. The downside is that they're expensive, the one Joanne had was about £400 so I was delighted to find an Ebay shop selling them for £65 delivered.

It arrived yesterday and today I took it for a test drive. I love the look of it, like it's come virtually unchanged from the 19th Century. I had been a bit concerned that it might be too cheap and a bit flimsy but it's certainly sturdy enough for keeping on top of an allotment sized piece of land. The conditions at Diss are perfect for the wheel hoe, the soil is light and free flowing and there aren't any large perennial weeds with thick stems. It was really easy to use, the blade slipped through the soil like butter, decimating the weed population in it's path.

It comes with blades in 3 widths, I used the narrowest to enable me to get between rows of plants without disturbing them. It also has a pointy attachment which I assume is a tiller for making seed drills or earthing up potatoes etc this should be great for turning the soil over at the end of the season in preparation for over winter manuring.

I think the nature of the soil is probably key to the success of this hoe. I'm not sure how good it would be on heavy, clay soil like Bressingham. Certainly there's no way it could've smashed through during the dry spell but I may take it after some rain when the soil's soft and see how we get on. Likewise, even the light Diss soil may be too much after the rain when it's stickier.

But all in all, this is a fabulous tool for the allotmenteer and I'm mystified as to why they're not on the shelves of every garden centre in the land. Particularly at this price, they bridge the gap between a hand hoe and a rotavator nicely. I think this and the push mower at Bressingham are going to be the items that make my 2 allotments manageable.

This year's tomatoes.

2011 is the year I actually pay attention to my tomatoes. For the last 3 years or so I've bought a few garden centre plants, put the Gardener's Delight in the mini greenhouse and the Tumbling Toms in hanging baskets, watered them but little else.

A friend of mine called round last summer and expressed loud dismay at the state of my greenhouse whose plastic seams were creaking with the effort of containing plants of Little Shop of Horrors proportions. I did have a decent yield of tomatoes, enough to use fresh plus home made ketchup and green tomato chutney, but the tomatoes were all tiny and I'm greedy so if I can get more bang for my buck then so be it.

This year I have decided to pinch out in the approved way in the hope of getting bigger tomatoes. I'm finding all the greenhouse fiddling a bit tedious to be honest and the blasted things insist on growing every 5 minutes, it's housework outdoors really. I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it considering I had enough last year but we'll see. Maybe next year I should stick to bushy varieties and leave them to their own devices.

I'm also a bit worried about a couple of plants who seem to be yellowing excessively. I know it's usual to yellow around the bottom but it's usually later in the season and this time only a couple of plants are affected. As far as I can tell they're adequately watered and fed. One of the plants in question is pictured below so any opinions on the cause will be gratefully received.

My tomato Holy Grail is a tomato salad like the one Jamie Oliver made in his 'At Home' series which featured loads of different types of tomatoes, yellow, green, stripy, purple etc etc. I've hopefully gone some way towards it this year, I've got Gardener's Delight (seeds free from Mumsnet!), Mr Stripy (bought seeds), Tumbling Toms (bought seeds), Roma (plants donated by a friend) and hopefully some yellow ones (plants donated by another friend who thinks she may have got her seedlings mixed up)

Ideally, if I had, say, 9 plants, I'd like them to be 9 different varieties. The problem with this is that I'd have to buy 9 packs of seed as I wouldn't get 9 varieties of plants in my local garden centres. From the 9 packs of seeds I'd only use a few then what would happen to the rest? Would they keep long enough to use the next year? Or would they go to waste? This is all starting to look a bit expensive too ....

But look what I found yesterday! Packets of mixed seeds! With a picture looking like Jamie's salad! Now if only I could find courgettes packed in the same way, I'd be a happy bunny!

Normal for Norfolk is ....

.... being held up on the nursery run by a tractor convoy (pictured)

.... going to the pub and coming home with a courgette in your pocket

.... attempting to drive around a man in a bee keeping outfit on a tricycle towing a trailer loaded with 3 bee hives

.... popping to the shop and there's a tractor with two wheels on the pavement outside

.... waking up to find a gypsy horse on the front lawn

..... carefully avoiding driving over a turkey strolling across the road

This is the point where someone normally comments along the lines of "That's nothing, in Devon the chickens actually run the Post Office" or somesuch (if that's not the sound of a gauntlet hitting the ground I don't know what is!)

On the Value of Neighbours.

Life with 5 chickens agrees with us. Currently we're getting 5 eggs per day which is a nice amount, enough for all our egg eating/cake baking needs with some left over for random gifts for friends and neighbours - which is just as well given the latest developments.

The hens live in 2 coops in the back garden and they free range in the front garden. We do have a persistent escape problem though. Our Omlet chicken proof fence is anything but, not only can the chooks stroll through the squares in the fence at will but they can hop over it in one leap. Next door's large shrubs are a magnetic draw for them providing the ideal foraging/perching/dust bathing environment. Once they get bored in our garden, they vault the fence into next door's chicken paradise.

To date, we've been able to bring them back with a shake of the sunflower seed jar, as soon as they hear that they come thundering back down the path in anticipation of a tasty snack.

Until yesterday that is ......

One ex-batt stubbornly fixed me with a beady stare and hunkered down into the dust in a defiant fashion. Have you ever tried to out-wit a chicken inside a thick hedge? It's depressingly difficult but after some scratches and swearing I managed to bring her home.

We have lovely, lovely neighbours who claim to be charmed by the persistent dust bath holes under the shrubs and scratched up flower beds ("They do a good job of raking the weeds out!"). They say they appreciate the softly clucking company as they weed and mow their garden. Personally I think they're taking 'polite' to a whole new level but nonetheless, I'm very grateful for their relaxed attitude. I'm giving them our excess eggs as a thank you, if they're having the disadvantages of chicken ownership they may as well share in the benefits too.

Now listen up chooks - if you want to keep your free ranging rights you really are going to have to consider the neighbours and come back when you're called, I think you've pushed them far enough!