An Early Spring Smallholding Week

What I love about working on the smallholding is the rich variety of jobs. So, by way of a bit of a catch up, here's a quick overview of a week here on Swallow Farm.

Thursday 15th February 2018
I started the day by jointing the ducks I recently dispatched and plucked - I am getting better and better at getting all the meat off the bone, which is great as I hate to waste anything when it is an animal's life we are talking about.
Hazel Coppicing
A trip to the vets for standard pet supplies hurt the wallet as usual, but we stopped off at a fellow smallholder's place on the way back to help coppice some hazel. Just one tree for this year but it gave us a fair haul of useable poles. They are a bit rustic but should be ok for what I have in mind, which is to make some hazel and willow hurdles. I had forgotten that the willow needs to be cut for a couple of weeks before it can be sufficiently bent without snapping, so that job has gone on the list.

I would normally cut all the growth at ground level, leaving sloped edges to shed water,

but the owner wanted this year's growth left - which made cutting a lot, lot trickier.

Friday 16th February 2018

The large water butt (an IBC - Intermediate Bulk Container) has been working well as a reservoir from the gutter to the wildlife pond. But the best laid plans... today I just needed to move it about 4 feet to make room for something else.
Willow harvesting

The job went more smoothly than I imagined, so I got straight on with harvesting the remaining willows. For the moment they can lay in neat piles until they have weathered enough to use for hurdle making.

Let there be light in the polytunnel
With jobs falling thick and fast, I made hay while the sun shone and cleaned the polytunnel. I have bought a new long-handled squeegee and soft broom for this and all was going well until a small plastic protrusion went straight through the polytunnel plastic. Fortunately I had a couple of foot of repair tape left over. More has been ordered as this is one thing you want in stock on the rare occasions when it is needed.

The monster chicks foraging in the rhubarb bed.

The upturned bins are for forcing pink rhubarb.

Saturday 17th February 2018

Rhubarb forcing

Not much done today, though I did place a couple of plastic dustbins over two of my rhubarb crowns in the hope that I can get a small crop of forced rhubarb this year. We'll see how it goes.

Sunday 18th February 2018

Grow-Your-Own Motivation

A day spent with the Grow-Your-Own group. I have handed over the reins of this group as I have taken on being Chair of the Smallholders Club and that is taking up quite enough of my time.

Our subject for the day was succession planting and we had a very informative discussion. I showed off my seed organisation system, which I can't show you as it is patent pending (actually it's not, but it should be).

More importantly we enjoyed a high quality bring and share meal. Then there was more club business. Four of the Grow-Your-Own group are now committee members of the Fenland Smallholders Club and we informed the others that the group had volunteered to organise the April club meeting. As this would be the first I had been in charge of as Chair, I want to make it a good one.

Lots of ideas flew about and I think we will put on quite a show.

I always come back from the Grow-our-Own group feeling inspired and reinvigorated.

Monday 19th February

Early Crops

Finally the polytunnel is ready for me to start planting. (I discovered that the old soft broom head fitted the new gubbins I've bought, making for the perfect polytunnel cleaning set up).

In went ten Arran Pilot seed potatoes for a super early crop of new potatoes. I sowed carrots, beetroots, turnips and lettuce too. The polytunnel is great for squeezing an extra crop in before anything is possible in the unprotected beds outside.

Turkeys not just for Christmas

I managed to catch and dispatch the superfluous male turkey - important to do this while I could still tell it from the older stag.

I got it all plucked too while it was still warm. I find turkeys the easiest of all poultry to pluck.

Primocane Raspberries

With these jobs done before lunch, I continued on to cutting back the stems of my autumn fruiting raspberries. It is amazing that from nothing new stems will shoot up, flower and fruit all before winter comes round again.

These are my new raspberries, one called Joan J which gets rave reviews from everyone and one called All Gold (though it doesn't produce chocolate raspberries and they're not Terry's!)

Another Re-organisation

With drizzle coming down all day, I was by now getting pretty damp. The water table is high which means that any rain makes the soil unworkable and things churn up pretty quickly. So I continued the day reorganising the stables. I have made some room in there and want to make good use of the space. It is amazing how every space I create seems to fill up with 'stuff', hence the endless reorganisations.

And finally, despite the weather forecast for the coming week, there are more definite signs of spring. Here's a photo of some catkins I took today.

A Turkey is not just for Christmas

Monday 1st January 2018!
New Year Resolutions

I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, but if I am making one this year I guess it will be to cook a lot more from scratch. And I never thought I would ever say this, but I would quite like to shed a few pounds too. Hopefully one will help the other.

It's not a question of not having time, more about planning ahead and using my time wisely. So gone is slumping on the sofa tucking into a supermarket pizza while watching TV.
And in is baking, cooking and developing other hobbies.
We'll see how it all goes.

I don't intend to turn this into yet another food blog, but I have long held the position that using your produce properly needs just as much focus as growing or rearing it in the first place.

Even at this time of year there is fresh produce for the picking in the veg plot.

So what better way to spend New Year's Day than knocking up a couple of curries. The luck did not last for one of Christmas's survivor turkeys as it got caught up in the New Year's Eve cull. Turkey is an excellent meat and should not just be consumed once a year. In fact this annual massacre leads to turkeys being kept in terrible conditions as the industry tries to produce 10 million birds all to be oven ready on the same day.
We split the turkey into 2 breasts, 2 drumsticks and 2 wings. Each breast and drumstick is enough to cook up one big pan of food. The drumsticks are difficult to get the meat off raw, so I roast them up and then pick off the meat to be added last minute to dishes such as curries or stir fries. The tasty dark meat makes a perfect addition. The breast meat is easier to cut into steaks, to cube or cut into strips and gives endless opportunities.
Todays recipes were both taken from the internet.  Turkey and Potato Curry and Spiced Turkey Curry with Spinach (substitute Chard or Kale)

The first of these called for using 'a curry paste of your choice'. We always have plenty of spices in the store cupboard and I prefer not to purchase ready made concoctions. I found in one of my many cookery books a page for whipping up 5 quick curry pastes. It was in Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food but can be found online too.
I opted for the Jalfrezi version and was very impressed with the result. At least as good as any I've tasted in a restaurant.

Tuesday 2nd January 2018
Rain stopped play
I had a weird dream last night. A class of 5 year olds were lined up at my classroom door with their parents ready to come in and I had no plans for what to do with them, nothing set up and no idea how to actually teach them.
This is a sure sign that the holidays are coming to an end.
We had one last lye in, with the intention of getting up and worming the sheep, planting garlic and pruning fruit trees. But as has happened so may times this holiday, rain stopped play. I am not just a fair weather smallholder, but none of these jobs was suitable for a wet day.
Instead it was blogging and baking so my time was not wasted.

The pumpkins and squashes were very late to fruit this year

so are not storing well. But we still have a good selection and enough for our needs.

Today I was making a Galette of Butternut Squash, Bacon and Parmesan, something for our packed lunches when we are back at work. I knocked up a loaf of bread too. Fresh bread is so good.

Galette of Butternut Squash.