H&C

“It feels distinctly autumnal this week. The light has changed and it's cooler; the leaves on the trees have barely started to change, but it feels different. I love autumn - it's my favourite time of year. I hope we get some good weather, since our barbeque summer didn't quite happen. It's been lovely today (Monday), especially when the breeze dropped. It was the kind of day when you just HAD to be outside, putting things in order. Dan cut the grass in the garden, the vegetable garden and the orchard - hopefully that will do it this year, since we bring the sheep on to it in the winter. I've been weeding and brushing up - our garden looks almost respectable, for once. I might buy some bedding plants tomorrow and really go for it and fill some pots and tubs for early colour. That's the easy bit - keeping the hens off it is the challenge! We brought our new coloured Ryeland lambs home today. They are half sisters to our own three and are called Lucy and Luna. They seem to have settled in OK. Lucy is a triplet, but she's huge, with a great back end. If I ever get round to getting them halter trained, I might show her next year. I think our two cheeps might be hens. That would be good and unusually lucky for us. I'm pretty sure they are both the same sex and they look too fine to be cockerels. Fingers crossed. They also look like Light Sussex; the cockerel was Light Sussex and the hen either Light Sussex or ex battery, but I suspect the former. They're only six-weeks-old, so will be in their run for a while yet. We lifted the garlic, onions and shallots today. The garlic was planted late but has done well; the onions are poor - "something" got under the netting and took off all the foliage quite early on; the shallots are pretty good. We lifted the remains of the broad beans and gave them to the pigs, who loved them. We're not growing them next year - we don't like them much. We've grown French beans this year and we do like them a lot, so we'll grow more next year. We'll need to pick the last of them and freeze them in the next few days before they get too coarse. The peas are finished and need to come out. The runner beans are still in full production! I'd like to get a green manure in, if possible, so I’ve brought to seed box in for a recce. Two of the apple trees are groaning; in fact one has split its trunk so Dan's having to do some repairs. The Egremont Russet is poorer this year, but Sunset and Dumelow's Seedling have done really well. The Victoria plums are ripening; I picked some today and plan to make Old Dowerhouse Chutney this week. Dan's dad gave us a tree from his garden, where it was fan trained on a fence; in our orchard, it's a 2-D tree. I think it will need some prudent pruning to make it look ‘normal’.” Editor’s note: Leave your comments for the Accidential Smallholder by clicking the ‘Comments’ tab below.

“Well, we’ve seen the end of an era here this week. Our old Rhode Island Red hen finally fell off the perch, literally. We bought her as part of a batch of eight point of lay pullets in 2003 and she was the only one left. She did look old, but she was fine right up until the end, except she couldn’t manage to get up on the roosting perches the night she died. Dan found her in the morning, stiff as a board. We’ll miss her – although she wasn’t really tame, she knew that hanging round the kitchen door was good way to get any treats going. She was also Hector’s “enforcer” and could put all the younger hens in their place. Dickie seems to be fine after his operation. We checked him again this week and he seems to have healed completely. Juno needed dagging – removing soiled wool from around her back end to prevent fly strike – so that was a rare treat for us all. We’ll check her again later in the week. I’ll do a worm egg count and review our worming strategy. We’ve weaned the two male lambs. Naturally, it wasn’t without incident. We decided to put the ewes in the rented field across the road and leave the lambs on new grass in the top half of the orchard, where there are no fruit trees for them to eat, using the electric fence. The moves went smoothly but when I went out about 15-minutes later, Dickie and Jura were back in the orchard. Dickie was munching on plums, not having any of his own anymore! So, we put them all back in the river field and started again, after adding a strand to the electric fence. If they can clear that, they’re going to Hickstead! The lambs and ewes can see each other and there was some nose touching through the fence yesterday but, to be honest, the lambs don’t care – it’s the ewes doing the bleating. I thought they would be glad to see the back of them, but apparently not. We’ve left Lyra, Jura’s ewe lamb, with the ewes – she’s the youngest and Jura the most troublesome, so we’ll let the boys and their mothers settle, then move Lyra. She needs to get her second dose of Heptavac P Plus this week anyway. I’ve bought two more ewe lambs and will pick them up next weekend. They are half sisters to Lyra, which will make finding an unrelated tup easier, when the time comes. Both are registered – but we’ll have to choose names for them, starting with the letter “L”. I am taking up a post next month as Project Co-ordinator for Forth Valley Countryside Initiative, working for the Royal Highland Education Trust. I will be working with schools and farmers to improve links to the countryside including organising school visits to farms and farmer visits to schools. It’s initially for one year and I’m really looking forward to it. It was the Central Scotland Smallholders’ Association annual barbeque on Saturday. Our secretary and her husband hosted the event at their smallholding in Fife. It stayed dry but was very windy, especially on their hilltop site. A good afternoon was enjoyed by everyone – Graham had organized a “Show what you grow” event, including classes for best nettle, best dock and best thistle, so we all had a chance to compete, regardless of our gardening skill. Dan won the “Best Rude Vegetable” with his “bottomato”. I don’t know if he’ll be able to repeat that success next year!” Editor’s note: Don’t forget to leave your comments for the Accidental Smallholder by clicking the ‘Comments’ tab below.

“I have to confess that it hasn’t been the most productive week here. It’s all the kittens’ fault – they are just so cute and such terrible timewasters. We can now tell the difference between them with reasonable certainty. Bertie is blacker and has a shorter, thicker coat than Harry, and is much bolder than his brother. Bertie blanks the dogs but Harry goes past them like a hairpin, tail like a lavvy brush and spitting. The dogs simply look bemused. They have been outside for the first time this weekend and are exhausted. Our garden is like a jungle so they have been very busy exploring. About our jungle/garden: with more time now, I am resolved to make it into something I am less ashamed of. In my previous life, the Council’s Land Services Manager would ask me every year if I was entering the Garden Competition – was she having a laugh, or what? I don’t aspire to winning prizes but being sure that there are no families of pygmies living in it without our knowledge would be a start. Alas, the wildflower meadow is therefore doomed. It’s just in the wrong place and wildflowers grow all around our property. This year’s growth has been cut down and will be regularly mown next year. Actually, the sheep will give it a good trim over the winter and they do an awfully good job round the clothes poles. With my new found time and enthusiasm, I have spent a couple of days weeding, so have an array of scratches and stings. I’ve tidied up our east patio, removing the net from the new strawberry bed and the enormous thistle (circa five feet tall) from the honeysuckle. The strawberry plants are producing loads of runners, so I’ll be allowing these to root. The patio is fenced to protect it from the hens; it faces south east and is quite sheltered, so that’s where the herbs, outdoor tomatoes and cucumber go. I also have two blueberry bushes in pots there – so far we’ve had five berries off one and three off the other. Muffins seem a forlorn hope. We used to have a table on the patio, but there’s no room now. The little courtyard at the west end of the house has been swept up following the cutting of the hedge. Actually, it’s less weedy than normal – the debris formed a mulch, of sorts. The plants I put in a few years ago aren’t really suitable; some are too big and some aren’t thriving at all – so much success!, I hate throwing anything out, though, so I’ll need to identify somewhere for them to go before I remove them. We are planning to increase the height of the fence round the vegetable garden to exclude the hens. They are so destructive in their foraging. You can see how they have decimated the comfrey. We usually net it but didn’t get round to it this year. The new hens are now settled in and integrated with the rest of the flock. Hector, the cockerel, seems to consider them his “girls” now, if the flurry of feathers this morning was anything to go by. Some of the older hens are starting to moult – the hen house is full of white feathers, so it looks like the Light Sussex are leading the way. The Legbars look a bit tatty as well – their crests have all but disappeared. The kittens are awake now, so must go and feed them.”

"Hi, all The vegetable garden is really getting going now. We’ve managed to get a handful of runner beans, with the glut yet to come. The French beans are doing really well – next year, I’ll grow these instead of broad beans which neither Dan nor I really like. Peas are regularly contributing to plate and freezer – I wish I’d grown more of them. Beetroot and carrots are available as thinnings and we’ve had the first of the Minicole cabbage. The new netting has transformed the brassica bed – just hope the sprouts and the sprouting broccoli don’t get too high and pull it out. For the first time, I’ve grown white turnip. It’s a variety called “Oasis” and it’s just ready now. It’s nice raw but we had it lightly steamed yesterday and it was lovely. We’ve had some plums this week, from the “Opal” tree. They were quite small but very tasty. The raspberries are now finished, so this week, I’ve been cutting out the old canes and tying in the new ones. This is one of my favourite jobs – you start off with a mass of foliage and at the end, there are tidy rows of plants. Actually, a lot of the plants have died off, which confirms our decision to replant new raspberries this autumn. We need to identify a site, though, and there’s no obvious one. I’m planning to put in three varieties to give a spread of cropping season. Two of our Ryeland ewes, and their tup lambs, are quite tame and will happily hand feed and have a scratch. Jura, the mother of our only ewe lamb, is not. In the 18 months we’ve had them, I’ve never been able to get her to take any food from my hand. Until this week and the peapods! Jura loves peapods (so do the others, of course), and loves them enough to take them from my hand and accept a scratch on the head. Swede tops seem to have the same attraction. Fortunately, we have quite a lot of swede and peas, so we might manage to tame her before the winter! Half the field is topped – the rest will be done as soon as the contractor can fit us in. I want to leave it four weeks before I put my sheep on it, to reduce the worm burden a bit. It hasn’t been heavily grazed this year, but I’d rather give it a short break as a precaution. I bought twelve new POL (point of lay) pullets on Wednesday – ten Warrens and two White Leghorns. The Leghorns lay lovely white eggs, and these two are producing two eggs a day at the moment. The Warrens are just coming into lay, so are laying mini eggs. These are the ones we get to eat, since I can’t sell them. They’re lovely but it’s hard to cut thin enough soldiers to get into the yolk. The highlight of the week, and I make no apologies for boring you about this over the next few weeks, was the long awaited arrival of our new rodent controllers, Harry and Bertie. They are 13 weeks old and both black. I have checked for white hairs on both and there are none. However, their faces are quite different, Bertie is bigger and bolder and Harry is, well, a black tabby, I think. Bertie is definitely black, but Harry has lighter markings on his coat that look like tabby stripes. It will be interesting to see how they develop. I brought them home on Friday night and I think they have been running on adrenalin since. They killed a cushion this morning, wrestling it off the sofa and chewing its tassels – seems they hunt as a pack, too! However, the adrenalin seemed to run out this afternoon and they are sound asleep on their sheepskin cushion. I can’t tell you how cute they are – we’ve never had kittens before. Our other cats have been older cats from the rescue centre. The dogs are exhausted too; only Felix seems unaffected. He seemed delighted to have access to kitten food, but he’ll return to rugby ball shape if we’re not careful, so food dishes have been removed. He’s in his favourite spot as I type – playing computer games with Dan!"