Far Lands

. . . and it's not just the sprouts. We've now had 3 trees down; the massive ash (which was dead) a month ago, a sycamore along the bottom bank, and two days ago the hawthorn behind the sheds. The bird box was too heavy? They say that chopping wood warms you three times, but when a tree comes down it's about twenty-three times; it all starts with digging (axing and chopping) out the roots. Keeps me out of mischief. Happy NYE!

Turkey-time this week. Plucked (etc) the first two on Saturday morning. Our electrician (with whom I had hammered out a complex cash-turkey deal for re-wiring the top of our house) took away the larger one (14lb, ready for the oven, he has just told me). Then, this morning, Sarah and I gutted our bird. (We had watched (on the recommendation of our electrician) a U tube video showing an 8 year old girl gutting one in under 5 minutes - amazing! Our bird weighed 12lb - not bad. Orders now being taken for next year! Happy Christmas to you, my reader(s)!

Compost heaps are, as anyone who talks to me for more than 5 minutes will know, the engine or hopefully engines of the garden. Now is a good time to dig them out. I have been digging out two of ours (six at the last count). One is pure horse manure (2nd photo), a year old now, and frankly looks good enough to eat - maybe on toast as a Christmas Day starter rather than pate? The second (but 1st photo!) is garden compostings, also a year old. It is nicely black and rotted - only the odd twig and egg-shell - and I am about halfway through digging it out and spreading it on the veg garden. Happy digging (out)!

In Guatemala we visited a permaculture farm, and saw their turkeys - see photo. The turkeys out there have quite a different life - balmy days and lots of daylight - to ours. Our turkeys have a cold and wet experience, but at least they get to see snow (we had a sprinkling last week). Of course, the one thing they have in common is their final destination. I have been dusting off my traffic cone in preparation (if you remember it from two years ago).

Inspired by my visits to the NFG (Northern Fruit Group) I decided I needed my own tree nursey, and so I have started building one. This is what they do at NFG (see photo) - a raised bed about a metre or so wide, and with enough room for 2 or even 3 rows of rootstocks. These can then be used for grafting either in March (whip and tongue) or more likely in August (bud grafts). My rootstocks will be a mixture of:- 1. purchased (a pound or so each) 2. ones I have grown from pips (by way of experiment) 3. cloned rootstocks from a coppiced tree (mine is M25 and will be the first I transplant) (this will be the subject of a further blog) Below is the rockery that I have had to remove from my new bed!

A real coffee table! Just back from a week in Guatemala. A lot of jet lag for some coffee. Coffee is a step too far for Farlands, but out there it is everywhere and it often seems as if it is raining beans. This is largely because their dropping to the ground is magnified by hitting the many corrugated iron roofs. At Farlands we would be thinking hail stones!

Our chimney stacks should now be waterproof. They have been encased in lead by a chap who usually works on churches. We were a low-rise for him! And the new wood stacks are growing; faster than the government's house-building programme. Do they know about the ever-versatile wood pallet?

It's been a good Summer for our walnut trees - the photo shows both whips that we bought. They have been in the ground 18 months now. The ones I grew from seed are much smaller but growing. What is really heartening is that when Mum came to visit a month or so ago she found a couple of walnuts growing on a tree only two hundred metres from here. So, walnuts at Farlands are possible! You can see the four turkeys if you look closely; they are (turkey)-lurking in the background.

It was very windy here on Saturday. At about 5pm I was in the bottom paddock looking for the turkeys; I was about 20 metres from the huge and dead ash tree in the bottom corner when... ...suddenly I heard a mighty crack, and I saw the ash begin to topple. Only to about 60 degrees, but still quite scary. Sunday morning revealed this:- Paul, our fab tree surgeon, came to help. A v tricky felling due to the tree leaning on the BT wire (which you can see above). It's down now. The noise so shocked one of the bantams that it laid an egg. Its first (their first) for 8 months. Taking into account their food, the egg is for sale at £19.50 if anyone's interested.

Cheeky! But at least they are putting on a little weight...

What, or more accurately whose, is this? (On top of the turkey house.) Incidentally, a couple of people have asked if they can have an email when I make a new posting. I tend to post every Tuesday, and if you would like an email update then please let me know.

We have been picking and storing our apples in our new cupboards. Hope Monty Don would approve. Having joined the Northern Fruit Group (NFG), I asked about storing apples with potatoes and tomatoes. Neither is great but storing them with tomatoes is a definite 'No'! Tomatoes give off ethylene and degrade apples significantly (almost as much as storing them with bananas). Sarah has been making jams. Under a pseudonym (Jemima), she entered the village competition with a jar of blackcurrant jam. She won first prize, and insists that there were at least 5 entries. Jammy!

After winning an ebay auction, we've got a new freezer. And it fits. I can now go and pick blackberries with abandon (373 litres of them). (And if anyone wants an upright freezer (1460mm x 600mm x 600mm) we've got a bargain.)

The chickens have decided that laying eggs is beneath them. They have taken up tricks... Well I was impressed. And you should have seen what I didn't capture on film...an impression of Michael Gove. Very impressive flapping!

The turkeys are now properly free-range from dawn to dusk. Quite well-behaved now that I have improved the 4 gates of their paddock and of course having earlier clipped their wings. They are very social and go round together as a gang. They like a siesta; usually two a day; they return to the house and all lie down in a heap. Plums and apples are now being harvested thick and fast. We started with the ones next to the road - we were amazed at the weekend how many walkers stop and help themselves!

The weather is changing but still loads of jobs to do in the garden. Still harvesting potatoes, beans and beetroot. Apples and plums almost ready. The last of the blackcurrants are in. We have clipped the turkeys' wings so hopefully they won't venture too far. I am reluctant to let them out in this spell of really bad weather. Maybe this afternoon - but rounding them up is fairly time-consuming (although amusing for passers-by). The hot box (in the greenhouse) is doing its stuff - see photo. If I had sown the melon seeds a month or six weeks earlier we might have a proper sized one. Next year. Always next year!

We picked them up from their family home (5000 siblings) in Stafford, and drove them home yesterday. Four hen poults. Three seem fine, but one is very quiet and has taken to sitting under the feeder. She is drinking a little so I am hopeful that she will be fit for Christmas.

...but I'm thinking about turkeys. We've decided to keep them again this year. I'm frantically building the turkey house - I've been collecting materials from skips! The plan is to collect the poults next week. About a month old. Possibly 3 or 4 of them. Names anyone?

As many of you will know (and read on my blog) we planted over 100 trees in our foraging hedge in March. The photo below shows its current progress. I wrote an article all about it, 'The Foraging Hedge Rulebook', which is being published in the September / October issue of Living Woods magazine. http://www.living-woods.com/ It starts... The Foraging Hedge Rulebook Following his recent experience of planting a 40-metre, 106-tree foraging hedge, James Ellson explains The Foraging Hedge Rulebook , 10 Rules to follow when planting such a hedge. The increasing interest in foraging has resulted in what many people think is a resurgence in planting foraging hedges. However, a foraging hedge is a modern adaptation of ancient traditions. This article will begin by exploring a little of the history of the hedge and of foraging, and suggest how the foraging hedge came about. Everyone has heard of the Great Wall of China but very people know about the Great Hedge of Indi...

So I thought a picture of our filbert tree would be appropriate. The first was taken when it was planted in January last year and the second was today. Filberts are a type of hazelnut. Bigger, and supposedly tastier than nuts from the common hazel tree, the type found in many hedges. Mid to late August is when filberts reach maturity and can be picked (or get stolen by squirrels). No nuts for us this year, but the trees in the Kent platts (hazelnut term for an orchard) yield tonnes of them. Filberts, originally philberts, are believed to be named after Saint Philbert who died in 864 as it is this time of year when filberts are picked.

Grow Your Own magazine are running a feature on foraging in their September issue. They asked me for a contribution, and here it is:- Apples  that grow wild in hedgerows and fields are known as  wildings . They are uncultivated, and may have grown from a discarded apple core. The resulting apples can be quite acidic, even unpleasant or just insipid. However, the occasional one can be delicious, and the tree should be noted for future seasons. My favourite tree is on common land in a suburban cul-de-sac in Reading – the apples are large purplish-red globes. An acquired taste certainly, but I love them! My current project is to graft some scions from the tree and grow one in my own garden. I am in fact just back from Reading with my scions, and I have been busy grafting them onto our hawthorn hedge (see also my last blog entry) and also onto a crab apple rootstock that I had left over from planting the foraging hedge. Won't know the results until the Spring. Will keep...

The Frankenpear story is almost worth its own blog. Parts I and II were back in May (blogs 116 and 117 if you want to read the background; briefly the story is about grafting pears onto our hawthorn hedge). So, the last pics on the blog showed an emerging pear shoot about 5mm in length growing from a hawthorn bush. The graft had worked and Sarah, as she had promised, had to eat her hat. Now look at it! Yes, the pictures show a hawthorn hedge with a grafted pear scion growing out of the top (camera case for scale). I just wonder if in the next year or 2 it might produce a pear. I wonder what Sarah would eat then - maybe a whole suit?

The picking season is underway. Eating strawbs and raspbs as fast as we can pick them. But the tarter red currants have gone in the freezer (via being flash frozen). Our redcurrant crop surprised us. From one bush which last year yielded 1kg (and in 2011 only 200g but then we had just replanted it) we picked this year 5kg! I was very careful with the pruning this year which I think has really helped. That and the sun of course. Also been harvesting rainwater - our 6 water butts were totally empty until the weekend (I had been carting water from our neighbour's outside tap!). Water butt No 7 and pipework (pipes all from current bathroom work) is now in situ on our shed. It filled in half a day on Saturday!

Just back from a couple of days at the RWAS. They expect 250 000 visitors in the 4 days, have over 1000 trade stands and 7000  livestock. Mixture of the impressive and the cute:- We saw hedge-laying, dry-stone walling, gundogs, lots of livestock, a  Messerschmitt  flypast, log-chopping competitions, went to a seed-collecting lecture, discussed clonal rootstocks with a grafting expert and ate a lot of ice-cream. It is our wedding anniversary today - 14 years. Hopefully, I am a better bed-mate than this trotter-in-the-face fellow:-

Me or the weeds? Been back from holiday three weeks now and slowly been re-asserting control. Ok, just a fancy way of saying I have spent a lot of time mowing the grass and weeding. Foraging hedge. Before... ... and after  Sarah and I are currently mid-debate about what to do with the weeds. We currently put them on our compost heaps but I am beginning to wonder whether we are creating next year's weeds. It seems crazy for us with our sized garden to use the green bin collection service, so the only other alternative is having a weed dump somewhere. Contributions welcome!

Literally. What a fantastic spell of weather - our cool house does have its upside at the moment. What will we do with the hay, I hear you cry! Its good for the chickens nesting boxes. It is all go in the garden; still trying to regain control after our holiday. I am also looking for our brown bantam who has gone AWOL. Maybe being broody somewhere, or perhaps gone on holiday to Eva's or even to Colin's.

...or so I read recently. Lucky really as I have before we went away I finished constructing a bespoke kale frame (netting now added) and have planted 25 kale plants from the cold frame in it. Kale is packed full of vitamins and antioxidants.You only need to eat a half teaspoon of kale every day to extend your life-span by 10%. Actually I made that last bit up - you probably have to eat a wheelbarrowful - but it is meant to be very good for you.

After two weeks away the smallholding looks like a jungle. In a good way, I suppose. The veg garden is in rude health - spinach and chard to last us months, 50 radishes the size of golf balls, a fruit cage bursting with vigour, potatoes and rhubarb competing for room. Lots to do; mainly with the scythe. Started on the orchard, and I unexpectedly came across a nest where the bantams had been laying while we were away. 10 eggs!

After all that we were knackered:-