"The Good Life"

(You can follow our 2007 smallholding year by CLICKING HERE)

Several people have expressed an interest in our lives as smallholders, and have asked for more information, and to be kept up to date with our progress, so here goes.......

Smallholding - the what, why and wherefore!

'Smallholding' can mean all manner of things to all men (and women!) To some, it might mean trying to live totally self sufficiently, to others it could be using their land to grow fruit and vegetables for their own use, or for sale. Others may choose to keep livestock. To us, smallholding means using our land to produce as much of our own food as possible, including fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry. We also use our smallholding as a base for Dave's business. Our own personal view, is that in  today's modern world it would impossible to be fully self sufficient from 4 acres of land, and you would need to have an awful lot of money in the bank, but that doesn't stop us from aiming to live as self sufficiently as we can.

We developed a taste for "The Good Life" when we moved to a property in Northumberland that had a large garden. We started in 2002 by growing some potatoes (to keep the weeds down) and some onions and shallots (because they were easy to grow from sets, and were half price in Wilkinsons!). They were a great success, their taste was superb, and they kept in storage much, much longer than shop bought produce. Inspired by our success, we soon expanded our plot to include beetroot, celery, leeks, peas, beans, carrots, turnips, swede, cabbages, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflowers, garlic,  lettuces, tomatoes, herbs, apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries, rhubarb and sweetcorn. Yes, I did say sweetcorn! Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't grow sweetcorn so far north - you can, and it is absolutely delicious.

Apart from potatoes, onions and shallots, we grew all our other vegetables from seed. We never ceased to be amazed by how a seed so small, in a relatively short space of time, developed into such wonderfully tasting produce. Although producing our own fruit and vegetables was time consuming, and we were both in full time employment, we considered it well worth the effort. However, in July 2003 we drafted in some extra help with grass cutting duties, Molly Gander and Wally Goose (geese can be difficult to sex!!)

 

 

Geese are excellent lawnmowers (and great characters!) They also proved to be an excellent introduction to keeping poultry and livestock. Our animal experience up to that point had been limited to cats and dogs. Our geese had a large area of grass to graze, clean water in both buckets and a child's plastic sand pit!, and a a shed from the local DIY store in which they were locked at night, protected from foxes. As you can see from the photo above, they soon 'claimed' the pond in preference to their plastic paddling pool!! They also enjoyed their treats - a slice of bread for breakfast, any greens going spare from the vegetable plot, and a handful of grain, especially in winter when the grass was no longer nutritious.

Geese mate for life and can live for up to 40 years. As ours were quite definitely pets, we were well aware of the responsibility we were taking on. (Little did we know however, what path we had started to follow by getting them!) Having said that, they are relatively low maintenance, the most tying responsibility being shutting them in at night and letting them out again in the morning.

The following spring we were delighted when our first egg arrived! Once again we were overwhelmed by the taste of fresh, home produced produce. Being much larger than a hen's egg, it almost filled the frying pan as we shared it for breakfast. Goose eggs have a stronger flavour than hen's eggs, and frying them might not be to everyone's taste but we were hooked. Scrambled goose eggs, goose egg omelettes, goose egg creme brule, goose egg lemon curd and goose egg ice cream all followed with great success.

Our goose eggs gave us our first totally home produced meal, omelette served with potatoes and vegetables freshly gathered from the garden. It was fantastic, and we glowed with a sense of pride and achievement. Unfortunately our supply of goose eggs only lasted a couple of months, and we soon learned that shop bought eggs, even 'free range,' were no match at all.

So, in August 2004, enter Norah, Nellie, Bessy, Betty, Tick and Tock! as we plunged into the wonderful world of chicken keeping! We had  exhausted the supply of chicken books at Morpeth library, and scoured the internet for information and advice, and although we still had lots to learn, we felt ready to make a start, albeit a nervous one. We wanted our chickens solely as pets for eggs, and decided on a mix of hybrids.

Norah

Betty

Delicious eggs!

We didn't have to wait long for our first egg, just a day! and we have had eggs every day since. Bed time (that’s the chicken’s not ours!) was an interesting experience for the first couple of nights. We wondered, whilst on our hands and knees in the mud, why we had chosen the wettest August for years to get our chickens. However, our girls were eventually persuaded to venture up their ladder to bed and soon got the hang of it. They settled in quickly, and seemed to revel in scratching up the garden in search of worms. They soon learned to recognise a spade too, the site of which always triggers a rush of chickens to ‘help’ with any digging needing to be done!

As we learned more about chicken keeping, the good side that we were enjoying, and the not so good commercial side, it horrified us to learn that the definition of 'free range' applied to eggs and birds we had previously bought might not match our own definition of 'free range' that our own birds enjoyed. At much the same time we followed a new River Cottage series on TV. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's approach to raising animals for food really struck a chord with us. If we wanted to continue to eat meat and poultry then we should be prepared to raise our own animals for that purpose. We should ensure they are well cared for, given an environment where they are safe, but can behave instinctively, (e.g. ensuring chickens can scratch around, dust-bathe and sun-bathe) and at the appropriate time,  end their lives in the most stress free and humane way possible. If we weren't prepared to do this then we should become vegetarians.

Dave readily admitted that he enjoyed eating meat and poultry too much to become a vegetarian. Debbie thought that becoming a vegetarian would be by far the easier option, but it would also be very much a cop out.

Fast forward now to 2005, Dave found himself in a situation where, in order to make his bicycle framebuilding business financially viable, he would have to stop hiring workshop premises and work from home. Debbie wanted more land to expand their menagerie. A smallholding would fit the bill on both counts, but with prices in Northumberland out of our range, where?

The answer proved to be Lincolnshire! Ivy House Farm, a 4 acre smallholding near Coningsby........

We moved in September 2005, and our priority was to renovate and extend an old farm outbuilding to create a workshop from which Dave could run his business. They say that smallholders have to be versatile, and we definitely found that to be a very true statement! In our first few weeks we learned skills such as digging foundations and trenches, pouring (and shovelling) concrete, loading up scaffolding with bricks and blocks, knocking doors out of windows - yes, literally, not to mention roofing! You may have followed our exploits here

Our menagerie of 2 dogs, 2 geese and 18 chickens settled in well, but we made a very conscious decision that any 'real' smallholding would have to wait until Dave's business was up and running, hopefully by the end of 2005. In the meantime, Debbie helped set up the Lincolnshire Smallholding & Self Sufficiency Club,  through which we were fortunate to meet a number of likeminded and experienced smallholders. We would return from each monthly meeting full of enthusiasm and ideas, just waiting our opportunity to put them into practice.

We did allow ourselves one smallholding project, the planting of an orchard. The trees and hedging are best planted in the winter months whilst dormant. It was a case of make the time in the winter of 2005/6 or wait until 2006/7. As it would be a number of years before the fruit trees would be productive, we decided that the sooner we could plant them the better. We identified a relatively sheltered plot for the orchard, but more wind-breaking was needed, so in November 2005 in went 160 fast growing willow and poplar trees. In years to come we also hope that they will provide a source of firewood.
We did take the easy option though, and Debbie's birthday that year will always be remembered for how she spent it, literally, out on the tiles, (as you will have seen if you followed our workshop exploits) and her present from Dave - the hire of a post hole borer!

Willows - Dec 2005

Poplars - Dec 2005

Pegs for fruit trees - Dec 2005

By December 2005, we were at least starting to feel like real smallholders. We made a huge step forward with our aim of producing as much of our own food as possible, with the dispatching of our first table birds. One of our hens had gone broody in the summer, and she hatched 5 chicks, all of whom turned out to be cockerels. The cockerels lived quite happily together until they were 5 months old, when they started to spend most of their day squabbling and fighting. We realised that the time had come to face up to our toughest task yet, their dispatching. Naomi, a very good friend, with lots of poultry keeping experience, offered to help us with the process, and we can't thank her enough. Her assistance made it far less stressful for both us and the birds than if we had tried to do the task alone. Naomi and her husband then showed us how to pluck one of the birds, and we did the rest ourselves - with varying degrees of success, but we did get better as we went along.

We left the birds to hang for 24 hours and then Naomi's father in law, a retired master butcher, showed us how to prepare and dress the birds. Once again we were extremely grateful to have such wonderful assistance and patient tuition!

Remember that goose egg omelette feeling? multiply it several hundred times, and that is how much we glowed with pride, achievement, and respect for the bird, when we sat down to our evening meal the following day. Debbie had felt a tremendous responsibility cooking the bird, and had been anxious not to spoil or waste any part. He was roasted in a low oven, and the legs and a little breast meat, served with home-grown leeks and potatoes provided our first meal. The following day he provided us with sandwiches for lunch, and breast meat used in a stir fry for our evening meal. The carcass, all bones, skin and the giblets then went into the slow cooker to make stock. Pickings from the wings and carcass had been put to one side, and went to make a delicious soup with the stock. As an appetiser before the soup, the liver, fried in a little butter and garlic, served on warm toast was truly magnificent. Finally, the post stock making pickings were given to our two dogs, who licked their bowls for a VERY long time afterwards.

So that in a (rather long) nutshell is the what, why and wherefore of how we became smallholders. Our plans for 2006 include lots of fencing work, pigs, sheep, a polytunnel, more chickens, an expanded vegetable plot and raised beds. Skills we hope to develop range from spinning to sausage making, from homebutchery to homebrewing. We are fortunate to be at the beginning of what we hope will be a long and rewarding journey. We have a vast amount to learn, about ourselves, and about smallholding. We don't expect it to be easy, we expect to meet many trials and tribulations along the way, but we hope that we will be able to rise to the many challenges that lie ahead. We are living our dream - who could ask for more?

" Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though chequered with failure, than to take ranks with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they choose to live in that grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat "              Anon.


If you haven't seen them already, you can meet more of 'Our Gang' by clicking here.

You can see how our 2006 smallholding year turned out by clicking here.

Or, if you want to follow our smallholding progress during 2007, you can do so by clicking here. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us by email. 

Dave is also in the ideal position to offer his engineering services to fellow smallholders, particularly small welding jobs, machining and tool sharpening. He also offers courses in welding and tool sharpening. More details of these, and other smallholding related courses can be found on the Lincolnshire Smallholding & Self Sufficiency club website HERE