Spring, it seems, may finally be here.
It’s been a long, hard winter. I have spoken of winter at length (thank you for your patience), but now my thoughts and my hands turn to warmer work.
We are still battered by the occasional gale, and in fact a great many trees in the area have succumbed to the winds in recent days, and the local rivers have burst their banks, turning fields into lakes. We have managed to avoid the worst of this, have not (yet!) lost any trees, and the chickens now seem used to the occasional bath (although they still complain). We have had no repeat of the now legendary Flood of 2016, and my daily clearing of the ditches and waterways around us seems to be paying off, paying back for the aches it causes.
The fruit trees we planted are all waking up, little buds popping out along their branches, drinking in the March sunshine. Daffodils are beginning to flower, tulips are pushing up through the earth, dandelions and daisies and bumblebees and butterflies, new life and hope.
We are visited by bluetits, goldfinches, robins, and the occasional nuthatch. We have spotted lapwings and storks stopping by for a rest before continuing their migrations. The buzzards circle in pairs, calling to each other and sending the chickens flapping for cover, tumbling over each other and trying to hide under me.
The cat (Mrs. Badcrumble) was taken to the vet to be spayed, and is, as I type this, sleeping off the effects of anaesthesia, waking now and then to glare at me accusingly and lick her stitches, and I feel like a monster. The feral cat population in the area is quite large enough already.
We have started a lot of our vegetables now, and every windowsill in the house plays host to trays and trays of seedlings. We are growing things we did not attempt in the UK, such as sweet peppers and aubergines, in the hope that the hotter, longer summer will produce good specimens, and ML has planted over 40 tomato plants, which we hope will yield well, so we can preserve enough by drying and canning to see us through next winter.
We have worked hard at improving the clay soil that we have, adding topsoil and well-rotted horse manure, and the pile of kitchen compost grows ever bigger. I hope to get to a point where the soil is much improved and we can leave it alone as much as possible. Soil structure is paramount, and any digging or tillage can ruin this, as well as causing loss of nutrients. We are experimenting with permaculture and no-dig methods, and are planning a small forest garden next year, and we hope for a good harvest. I have been attempting to coypu-proof the veg garden with chicken wire and rocks, and I will be glad if they and we can be good neighbours.
There is a chap that ML’s dad used to work with who keeps bees, and he has promised us a swarm (he does not prevent his from doing so), which means we will have bees already adapted to the local environment. They will swarm sometime in May, all being well, so we are preparing the hive with a final coat of linseed oil, we will rub grass on the inside to make it smell less of human, we will put some lines of wax on the top-bars to encourage comb production, and we will be stupidly excited when they arrive.
The variety of wildlife around the farm in astounding. When I foraged in the UK I would trek from forest to field in search of spots for wild spring greens. I had good spots for many edibles, but they were often miles apart. But here, just on our own land, I have found wild mint, wintercress (bitter!), chickweed, nettle, dead-nettle, hogweed, crow-garlic, dandelion, hairy bittercress (neither bitter nor hairy, confusingly), common sorrel, and comfrey (with which we shall make a foul-smelling tea for the garden). A bowl of some of these plants dressed in some good oil and vinegar is a welcome crunch, and a taste of things to come. I have found a spot for wild garlic (I would searched far and wide for this as it is essential, luckily I have found a good patch some half a mile away, in the same forest that provided such a glut of wild mushrooms last year), and when we visited today to pick a little for dinner, we spotted a pair of Alpine newts. This bodes well, I have decided. I plan on making enough wild garlic pesto to keep us in easy suppers for the rest of the year, as well as lacto-fermenting some for kimchi or just on its own, a salty crunchy pungent hit of microbiome health food.
The birds sing, the signs are good, and if the coypu eat all my tomatoes it will be roast coypu and wild kimchi for dinner, with a glass of nettle beer.
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My morning routine is a chilly one; let chickens out, defrost chickens, feed chickens, stare at the sunrise until my eyes freeze over, drink tea. I worry that the chickens are too cold, but the inside of their house is reassuringly warm. We’ve taken to feeding them cracked corn in the evening as a last feed, as they digest it more slowly than pellets, and this helps keep them warm throughout the night. The problem seems to be that they love the corn a little too much, and are beginning to turn a haughty beak skyward at the sight of their usual feed. Remaining strong and not giving in to their more ‘refined’ tastes is a battle of wills, as I am a softy.
summer, and they are still laying daily – a surprise, as the shortened hours of daylight should mean that their laying slows down during the winter months. I am not complaining, although as chickens only have a finite number of eggs in them I worry about them running out.
The fruit trees are all planted. As I planted them, I pulled even more scrap metal from the ground, along with sheets of plastic, and an entire car windscreen. Even here, in what seems to be a culture that works more closely with the land, people buy things and use things with no plan of how to dispose of them. Manufacture, buy, use, bury in the ground and hope no one notices. A microcosm of capitalism, in my field.
When I was a child, we had an orchard. I remember the day we moved in to that house like it was yesterday. Me and my sister paced the length and breadth of the field, wading through grass as tall as we were. We’d never seen so much space. I remember dragging an old plastic sled around in the autumn, loading up apples for cider-making. I remember picking ripe fruit from the branches, all crunch and sweet and juice like an ideal of apple. I remember climbing the trees in the spring, camouflaged in blossom. I remember my Dad hanging swings for us to swing on, higher, higher. I would lie in the tall grass in the summer, looking up at the blue sky, framed in blades, birdsong, buzz. I remember.
day’ – special offers on trees, a talk on how to plant and tend them, a very lovely and knowledgable lady who helped us choose varieties that will pollinate each other and give a long harvest, rather than a week of oh-my-days-how-much-fruit? So we bought two apple-trees (a Starking and a Reine des Reinettes), two pear-trees (a Conference and a William), one quince (a Portugal), and one cherry (a Sunburst). ML’s brother loaded them up into his 
trailer, and we took our new arrivals home to introduce them to the chickens and the cat.
I did this for seven hours (ML had to work).
We awake early to a foggy morning, wrap up warm (it’s cold now, summer didn’t last forever after all), and let the chickens out. They, as is their wont, stare at us, gurgle weirdly, and then proceed to continue digging to China. They seem to have settled in nicely. The last few days we have received four eggs each morning, one from each chicken, and the eggs have increased slightly in size every day. I take this as a sign that the hens are happy and well fed (as are we, thanks to the eggs).
From my days of tramping the woods of South-West England, I recall finding ceps in hollows in the ground and under piles of fallen branches, so I nose around, lifting things and generally getting covered in leaves and dirt. But there they are. Bay boletes, not as highly regarded as the cep, but delicious nonetheless. They’re picked and cleaned in situ, and popped in my bag. I untangle myself from the undergrowth, and head deeper into the woods.
can salt, pickle, then cover with olive oil for a classic anti-pasto style nibble. With ceps and other boletes, drying is my preferred method; the flavour is concentrated, and the mushrooms may be reconstituted later in water, or powdered into an umami-rich seasoning for soups and stews. It is advisable, of course, to eat a few straight away – butter, garlic, bacon lardons, hot sourdough toast.
Arriving home with four chickens in the boot of the car, excited and a little nervous, we pulled up to the chicken house and examined our preparations. Is it good enough? Will they like the shade of blue on the door? I opened the box and gently lifted the hens out, one by one, and stepped back as they had a cautious look around.
Except for one. As soon as she was in the run, she made straight for the corner where we were standing, and stared at us, making a noise like I’ve never heard before, something like a mix of a creaking door and a submarine. Which was odd. She then jumped up, and onto the corner fence post. A bid to escape? Well, we’ll have to clip her wings if she continues to try, I thought. I entered the run and grabbed her, placing her back down on the ground, and she seemed relatively unfazed by me. I 
decided to stay with her in the run to see what happened. What happened is this: the hen marched up and down, submarine noises and whistles aplenty, and tried to escape four more times before deciding that I was much more interesting. I sat on the ground and she clambered all over me, on my legs, on my shoulders, making those odd noises. I thought there must be something wrong with her, she was so docile, and so I stroked her and murmured to her, like a weirdo. Finally she settled down on my lap and seemed to be asleep. After around five minutes she awoke, perked up, and the noises did not reappear.
mid-to-late summer through to October, purple hands and faces are the de rigueur choice of attire when picking, with scratches to hands and arms optional.
Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) produces leaves, blossom, and berries (haws), which are all edible.
used for syrups, sauces, and all manner of things.
To go with your foraging trophies, you’ll also need to buy some demerara sugar (as I am yet to find it growing wild in the UK or France), and some cheap bourbon.
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Posted on January 4, 2017 by Kieran Jefferson
The builders have been here for a couple of weeks, repairing some rotten timber at the edges of the roof (don’t mention the problem with rest of the roof and it might go away), filling in holes in the earthen walls (holes, apparently, made by cows licking at minerals in the rock – I am unable to get over this fact), removing render from one end of the house, ready to replace it with a better lime-based one, and making a huge amount of noise. The cat is furious.
Our house is old. How old, we don’t know. Over the last few months we have uncovered
many oddities in its construction. It is a farmhouse made of a material called pisé – essentially a mix of earth, sand, and gravel. It’s a very environmentally sound material, and long-lasting if treated properly. Ours has not been treated properly. It has been covered in a concrete render that does not allow it to ‘breathe’, which it needs to be able to do as it basically a giant sponge. The lime render we are putting on one end wall will alleviate this, and we’ll eventually do the rest of the house when funds allow (never). The walls have been repaired and rebuilt many times over the years, with an interesting mix of brick, breeze-blocks, stone, and Lego (maybe not Lego). We also discover that the whole roof has been raised at some point to allow rooms to be placed in what used to be simple hay-lofts, and now seems to rest on piles of bricks that look alarmingly tipsy. We are assured that this is safe and normal, but I feel my scales for safe and normal may be a little different. It seems we may be repairing the house for the rest of time. Time, though, is something we have.
The next big project outside is the start of our bee empire. We are starting with two hives, and will expand if it seems necessary and I am not chased into the river by bees.
About eighteen months ago we went on a two day ‘natural beekeeping’ course (run by Heather and Tim of Bee the Change), which was fascinating and inspiring. Natural beekeeping is more about the bees, less about the keeping. Chemical fungicides and miticides are not used, the hives are opened and interfered with as little as possible, and honey is only taken if there is a true surplus (if ever). Swarming is not discouraged (queens are regularly killed to stop bees from swarming in commercial beekeeping and, as swarming is part of their natural reproductive cycle, this seems a tad mean). The queen is allowed to roam the whole hive (not the case in commercial keeping). They are, in essence, allowed to be bees.
Bees are a vital part of the ecosystem, and having a hive or two close by is beneficial for everything. Our fruits and vegetables will have higher pollination rates, and thus higher yields, and all will be right with the world.
A bee colony is a mind-bogglingly complicated society of queen and drones and workers and larvae, and the more I read the more I am hooked, the more I cannot wait to don my suit, to sit and watch their comings and goings. My one worry is if I worry about the chickens so much, I can see myself camping out by the hives to ward of any invading wasps or errant birds, becoming more and more crazed until I, myself, begin to buzz and waggle.
I am oiling the wood of the hives with linseed oil, as a natural preservative, and we may paint the hives with some natural paints (the hives at Bee the Change are painted bright and bold with flowers and colours). When ready, we’ll situate them at the end of the stretch where we have planted our fruit trees, facing South and slightly raised. We are planting many plants and flowers that are beneficial to the bees, providing as much forage for them as we can.
We have decided on black bees (Apis mellifera mellifera), native to Europe. They are considered to be more aggressive and less easy to handle (yay) than the more commonly kept western honey bee (Apis mellifera, confusingly), but are hardier, with more resistance to the dreaded varroa mite (more on these beasties another time). We will buy a swarm, which will come in a box. We will then, gently and slightly nervously, introduce them to their new home. We will stalk the fields in our beekeepers suits, like astronauts awaiting first contact. We will not consider taking any honey for at least the first eighteen months.
Much has been made of colony collapse and bee population decline, and we hope our hives, left pretty much to their own devices, will in some small way help to restore a balance.
A jar or two of honey will be a gift, if they choose to give.
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