Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label agriculture. Show all posts

Monday, 13 May 2013

Allotment Notes

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The ground on our allotment is evil. Pure evil. A clay soil that just keeps on breaking your back season after season. We're more than sure that this must have been a river bed thousands of years ago. There is no way it could not have been. And what we battle with is soil too heavy to work when wet and absolutely impossible to break when sun baked. If we don't keep on top of it we will cry later.

We're making plans on how we hope to change our soil, over time, on this land of ours. There will be hard work initially and hopefully some pay-off further down the line.

For now we do what we can. The garlic is in, and we'll do our official garlic for over-wintering with the leeks and onions, but we'll see what we can get until then. Beans in, although to be fair the ground might be a bit too cold... we're experimenting here. The wild area is going to be seeded next week insha'allah. For now, we've added a tub for a pond and hopefully something will spawn there when the rainwater fills it up. This is the boys nature reserve really. I know the eldest will plant himself there at some point and fill his boots with what he learns.

Potatoes - in! Cabbage and kale and brassicas - in!. Gooseberries have flowered a little and behind a big lump of bramble on our new patch of allotment the boys discovered a fox run and rhubarb. A nice little spring bonus.

Still so much to do. Because it never really ends. It's a circle of life kinda thing... I feel a song coming on...

Monday, 15 October 2012

The Fun of the Fair

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Thankyou to everyone who took the time to comment and/or email in response to my last post. I've got a grip now. I spat my dummy, had my temper tantrum, steam came out of my ears and the pressure guage in my noggin slowly fell out of the red back close to zero again. Sorry you had to witness it, but we're all friends here, right? If a grown woman can't have a hissy fit on her own blog in front of friends, then when can she? Eh? Indeed.

So moving on.

The weekend saw the return of one of our favourite annual events - the autumn agricultural fair. We missed it last year due to illness and were keen to re-establish the tradition again. We were blessed with crisp (read 'blooming freezing') weather and did all the things we looked forward to doing here - saw the dogs in their agility competitions (and after becoming dog-ophiles this was now a pleasurable rather than stressful experience - hurrah); we went around all the barns to see the animals; we chatted to some smallholders; we oohed and ahhed at giant vegetables and we enjoyed the sheep dog and his man herd geese, ducks and chucks into crates. But the bit the boys enjoyed the most is without doubt the rides and games they got to play.

The boys declare I am the best mummy ever (actually, the eldest declares I'm the best organism ever created...) and they went home full of chatter (none-stop none-stop chatter) and smiles and heads full of adventure.

I went home pining after a flock of sheep, some buff orpingtons and a milk goat, wishing against wish that I could be a shepherdess. Again.

And we happily settled into an evening of contentment. Tired, but happy. Alhamdulillah.