The smell of wild freesias

The smell of wild freesias is the smell of a bottle of bubble bath that I won in a raffle a few months ago. You could tell that the bottle had been at the back of someone's cupboard for several decades before someone dug it out as a prize for the 'Chailey Common Society' January meeting this year.

We have been saving our water at home and putting it into Jerry-cans and taking it down to the field to water the salads and seeds.....mmmm. It smells remarkably strongly of wild freesias...not altogether unpleasant!

Phil (Constable in training to the Organic-Police) has made me promise to use more natural products in the bathroom if we are going to be using the bath water on the field and admitedly the bottle of bright-purple-goo is a long way from a real wild freesia!

Wide-angled view

This makes the site seem much smaller than it sometimes feels! Finn is hunting snakes to the left and Phil and I are posing in the middle of the field...posing...more likely we were bickering about whether I was being concientious enough about how liberally I was spreading lime!! The willows are much bigger than when this piccie was taken three weeks ago.

Three silver linings to one cloud

Thank God, finally it has rained! It has howled and poured. This has meant three really good things. Firstly there is obviously the water issue. Most of the rain we get round here is somewhat cosmetic. It is light and most of it evapourates before it has the chance to soak in. But not this week! The water table will be slightly replenished now and the ponds are all full....every little helps!

Secondly it means that Phil gets a bit of time off shovelling. I'm all for having a boyfriend with big muscles...but not one who is so tired he cant even communicate in anything more than grunts at the end of the day!! The rain has given his weary body a well earned rest.

And thirdly it all very conveniently co-incides with Chrissy Cool visiting so we could spend some good quality time with her and not force her to sit and watch us shovelling and tractoring all weekend!! There is plenty of time for that next time she visits!!

The willows have grown six inches in about three days and the howling winds reassured us that planting the winbreaks was the right thing to do!!

Snake Finder General

Here is Finn, who helps out Phil every day. She has been given the title 'Snake-Finder-General' after her lassie-esque finding of a melanistic adder last week. I think you have to agree that she is a particularly long-tongued waggin' happy dog. She is in charge of all rabbit chasing, wagging and bouncing that takes place on the patch!

Thirty Tons of Compost

Phil is now looking like Popeye...with over developed forearm muscles!! We had 30 tones of compost delivered last week and we are in the process of spreading it on the field (the 'L shaped' section in the aerial shot below). I say 'we' in the loosest sense as by the time Sunday came I had been banned from all hard labour on account of being physically incapable of holding a shovell any longer.

Well, the delectable cocktail of compost, lime and seaweed has been spread on a small section of the field now, and rotovated in. It is really satisfying to see the finished product of all this work. Now it will have green manures sown on it, ready for a lovely rich and healthy soil waiting for next growing season. It would have been great to have veggies in it this year, but simply not practical or realistic!

As I write Phil is shovelling...as he will be for some time to come!! I will try and get some pictures up of it all.

Here is a picture of our garlic by the very talented Jane. Go see all her pictures here .

As seen from a cloud

I have some aerial pictures of the site that I thought it would be intersting to post up. These were taken in 1999, but give you a bit of an idea of the size of the site.

The big upside down L shape is now being turned into beds with Willow Hedges dividing it into two sections and sheltering the veggies from the wind (which can really howl through at times).

Jane took some lovely pictures of the willows yesterday so I will pop them up soon.

Next installment

We will start off with a beautiful pumpkin picture by Jane taken last October. It shows the field before it was ploughed, so it seems like a long time ago now!

These are Queensland Blue Pumpkins. If you have never tried one then get on with it! They are the tastiest of all pumpkins (I think!!)

See the grapes hanging down artily in the top right corner...you can always trust Jane to enhance her compositions with a bit of Panache!!

In the beginning

Last year I went to see my friend John to ask him if he would talk to Phil about being a smallholder and what it entailed. When Phil and I returned in late July, John told Phil that he could use his site to work as he no longer wanted to do so...not enough time, not enough energy or enthusiasm! We couldn't believe it. We felt we were being given a really amazing opportunity and after relatively little discussion decided that we would take John up on his offer.

The site consisted of an L shaped uncultivated field with a neighbours horses grazing on it and what is known as the 'pumpkin patch', where John had been growing each and every pumpkin known to man for over 15 years. There is also a 105 meter Greenhouse, built by John out of recycled materials. Half of which is given over to tables and half of which has beds. There are a couple of massive vines in the greenhouse, both red and white grapes that give the greenhouse an air of extreme bacchan oppoulence in the summer months as they produce literally several hundered kilos of grapes!

In early September Phil was able to start getting the site ready. I will do the best I can to document this process. We have very few pictures of these early months, but I will do the best I can so people can see what we are up to.

Our aim is to grow lots of vegetables organically in an ecologically balanced system. Ultimatley we would like this to become a small but profitable business. We knew right from the start that this would be a pretty exciting journey, full of twists and turns and highs and lows and it certainly has been. Phil's joy at the first comfrey leaves that appeared and the fun that we have had planting garlic can be easily offsett against the physical agony of planting over a thousand willow trees!

I will 'dig' out some pictures and continue the story .........