I love blogging, but I've realised that I prefer moving images a little bit more. so for now I will still blog but on a less regular basis. I will share my thoughts and ideas and day to day life on our smallholding via videos. I plan to write additional information, more in depth thoughts and expand upon subjects that I've raised in my vlogs, that way I can share what is going on with you on two levels, the lighter on my vlogs and the more informative on my blogs. Yesterday I started to feel a little ropey and so spent a quiet day inside, I suspect I have inhaled too much dust from the woodshavings when I mucked out the chicken shed. But I did spend a little time watching the chickens and ducks enjoying the very welcome sunshine. Here's the video of my time with the birds.
Now of course, a time may come when I am unable to vlog on a regular basis and, should that happen, I will continue sharing life on our homestead on my blog. Please feel free to let me know if you prefer the written word or videos, I'm interested to know which you prefer.
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I've been very quiet on the blogging front for the last couple of weeks because so much has been going on here and I've been somewhat reactive rather than proactive. Last month I went to my GP for a standard blood test as required every few weeks or months to check that my thyroid medication is at the correct level. The GP said that she was concerned that my need for an increase in medication combined with a couple of other symptoms that we had discussed, may actually be masking something more sinister. She then went on to tell me that she wanted to test for uterine and ovarian cancer, heart disease, kidney malfunction and lung cancer. Well, talk about pulling the rug out from under somebody's feet, I was horrified and terrified at the same time. I'm sure she said lots of 'don't panic' type phrases, but if she did, I didn't hear them. All I could think about was that my father had suffered and eventually died from heart disease and my mother of liver, spleen and lung cancer. Having nursed my mother through those last few weeks, the memories of the, quite frankly, hideous death that she had came flooding back. All the images that I had locked away were now swimming around my brain. So I went for an ultrasound scan, a chest x-ray, a raft of blood and urine tests, an ECG and more blood tests. I was called back in for additional blood tests, twice! For almost a month I was walking around wondering whether my body's automimmune disease had finally turned on other parts of my insides. Until the GP raised all these potential issues I had felt fine, absolutely marvellous actually and now I was wondering if my shortness of breath wasn't just due to being overweight, but was it a symptom of one of the conditions that the GP was looking for? Every niggle became a nag and a worry. Now I know that it is pointless in worrying before the event, but our minds play tricks on us and I was losing sleep, losing a lot of sleep, worrying that I was harbouring a silent killer. Yes I know it all sounds ridiculously dramatic, but when you are staring at the ceiling at three in the morning yet again, everything becomes somewhat out of perspective. Life on the smallholding continued as much as possible as normal, I kept as calm as I could on the surface and cracked on with the jobs that needed doing and making plans for the garden, the poultry and the house. Mr J had to rearrange a couple of work days so that he could take me to appointments, but otherwise things seemed normal. The chicks were growing well, the chickens were happy, we took delivery of some new chickens, life carried on as it should. But in my head it was a very different matter, I have been in a state of panic for a month and inevitably that takes it toll on the body and on one's mood and I am sure that I have been pretty difficult to live with over the last month. Thank goodness Mr J is so understanding! Finally on Wednesday this week, a full month since the previous appointment that started this chain of events, I returned to the GP to hear the results of all the tests. It seems I am not harbouring anything unpleasant and there appears little to worry about. There is an anomaly on my ECG and given my father's health history, she is referring my results to a cardiologist to check whether any other action should be taken, but I'm not really worried about that. When I was having the ECG done I was half sitting, half lying on the most uncomfortable couch so I'm not surprised that it was showing as having a minor blip, I was in pain and not really relaxing as required. And, she is referring my ultrasound results to a gynacologist just to check that there are no issues there, but she couldn't see anything untoward. I can only tell you that this has been a very difficult month. I have felt very alone and very frightened. I have also taken stock of my life and am really rather happy with how I'm living and what I'm doing. I decided that if I had either heart disease or cancer of some kind that I would enjoy each day, live life to the full, celebrate the new morning, be grateful and thankful for all my blessings. And, that if I didn't have a health issue then I would do the same, but also celebrate my good health each and every day. It has taken a few days for my brain to readjust, to stop panicking and to start this celebratory routine. Last night, for the first time in quite a while I slept for seven hours non-stop and have woken up feeling refreshed and ready to start this next chapter. So here's to good health, to a loving family, to a bright future!
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Last Monday I spent the afternoon moving some pallets to the edge of the vegetable garden to complete the pallet fence with compost bays. I was very pleased with how nicely it finished off the vegetable garden.
The pallets held down one side of weed suppressing membrane and on Tuesday I moved several barrow loads of wood chippings (from our trees that were taken down last month) to cover the membrane and complete this side of the vegetable garden. It looked splendid and I was very excited to have quite so much space in which to make compost. Late Tuesday afternoon we learnt that Defra had announced a 'Prevention Zone' to protect our poultry from the risk of Avian Flu. It took me quite a while to find out what was needed to be done to comply and the announcements that I saw said it covered England. Mr J and I realised that if Wales didn't have such measures, it very soon would. And Wednesday morning I found the relevant information saying that it applied to Wales and Scotland too. So after careful reading I came to the conclusion that I would need to find a way to keep the birds inside a covered area for the next month at the very least. Reading between the lines, I suspect that this situation may well continue for longer. Our birds are kept in four separate areas, one for each breeding flock and so we needed to create four separate pens for them. What a headache! But, looking for a positive in all this chaos, it has meant that we've had a long hard think about which birds we really value and we've assessed whether we want to keep all the birds or reduce the number of different breeds that we keep. In the end, I decided to put the chickens into two areas and the ducks in their own pen. So armed with strong resolve and somewhat weak body I started to tackle the task. The irony of this announcement coming a few hours before Mr J went back to work for the week didn't pass me by. There is an urgency to getting the birds under cover and so regardless of my body being in the throws of another hashimoto's attack and regardless of having used just about all my energy making the pallet fence, my plan for the rest of the week curled up on the sofa had been scuppered as Mr J works four days a week and he was returning to work on Wednesday morning. It was time for me to dig deep and get on with it!
I started by putting chicken wire around the top section of the stable where up to now it had been open.
The gate was only waist high so that also needed extending to full height. I am so pleased that we have collected so much scrap wood this year, it meant that I could rummage around in the piggery and find suitable pieces of reclaimed timber to use. There are still nails in the wood and I didn't have the strength to lever them out, so I wrapped duct tape around them to protect our hands and act as a warning to be careful handling that section of wood. This week I have wished over and over that we had electric drill/screwdriver (one of those ones with a battery pack so they can be easily used where there is no power supply), because using a manual screwdriver for this kind of task was rather soul destroying. The chickens will still be sleeping in their shed, so I moved their flexible fence to give them a narrow corridor between the shed and stable along which to travel morning and evening. This corridor will then be covered and enclosed to ensure that the chickens are protected from contact with wild birds. I hung their vermin proof feeding station from a beam and placed buckets of water with apple cider vinegar and garlic on to a pallet (so it's less likely to have wood shavings kicked into it.
They don't seem terribly impressed at their sudden confinement. The Cream Legbar girls aren't too bothered as they prefer to be out of the wind and rain, but the boys and the other chickens are looking quite stressed. I am sure that they will settle down, especially once I have the walkway covered and enclosed as they will then have access to at least a small area outside. Mr J and I spent Wednesday evening trying to work out where and how to create a covered area for the Jersey Giants and Australorps. We spent half an hour or so looking at the back piggery, but it's roofing panels have deteriorated significantly over the last year and there are large oil drums of 'we don't know what' that could well be toxic to birds, so we talked about ways to fence off that part of the piggery to allow the birds to use the rest of it. It looked like a nightmare of a job and I was already feeling fairly fragile. Thursday morning I had a lightbulb moment, I had realised how to turn the outbuilding that I've refer to as my garden room into a comfortable place for the black and white birds. I took out the wood, hazel poles, bags of bags, paddling pool and a host of 'stuff' that we had dumped there to be put away once we had somewhere for these things to live. The dry wood I stored in the wood store in the stables and I put everything outside the old barn door (which doesn't open, so I wasn't blocking it). Once clear it became obvious that this would be an ideal chicken palace. So with the drizzle steadily soaking me through I went to the vegetable garden and dismantled the lovely pallet fence that I put up only four days earlier!
I had almost run out of cable ties having used so many to create the fence, so was careful about not waste them, placing all the pallets before actually securing them together.
I used the gate that I'd made by lashing together chicken wire panels which had been between the two chicken fields, but as it wasn't going to be needed for the next month, this seemed the simplest way to make a door. I found the longest piece of wood that we had, but still it wasn't quite long enough to reach the top of the outbuilding, so I created a small base from two pieces of wood which, once bedded into the ground at just the right place, allowed the upright wood to be wedged into place. In this photo you can see that I hadn't quite managed to knock it vertical yet. I put a piece of 2"x1" across the top of the door to stop the door falling out and another length of wood (2"x4") to brace the vertical length. It was still pretty wobbly and needed securing at the top, but I didn't feel well enough to be climbling ladders so I sent a message to the tree surgeon to see if he was free to help me for a short time. As the chicken house is wider than the doorway I needed to move it inside before putting up the second side of pallets. This meant moving the Jersey Giants who, by this time, were looking very stressed at all the change going on. I moved them into the field that Big Red and his girls had been in and Little White continued to crow his stressed and mournful crow while he watched me push his house out of his field and into the outbuilding. I moved the last few pallets into place and was so tired that I started crying as I screwed them into place. I was relieved to hear Mr J's van come along our lane only to realise that it wasn't him, it was our friend the tree surgeon coming to help. There is something about having someone you don't know terribly well arrive, it makes you put on a smile and not show how rotten you are feeling and that is exactly what I did. And it helped to have somebody else there, I felt less overwhelmed by how much still needed to be done. He hopped up his ladder and straightened the vertical post, securing it with a fixing plate that I had ready. Then he stapled chicken wire from the roof downwards across the full width of the outbuilding.
When Mr J got home he carried more bales of wood shavings and chopped rape seed stems (bedding often used for horses) to the outbuilding. I had managed to spread the contents of two below and around the chicken house, but run out of strength to carry enough to cover the whole floor area. The light was fading fast, but there was just enough light to carry the Jersey Giants to their new accommodation and put them in the house for the night. I ached all over and headed inside to start cooking our supper and looked forward to having a long hot soak in a bath. After supper we watched a little television and then I headed to the bathroom. This was going to be the best bath - ever!
Or not. As I turned off the hot water tap, it came away in my hand with water gushing at full flow into the bath. To avoid flooding the bathroom I pulled out the plug. We searched for an isolating valve for the bath, but there wasn't one, so Mr J turned off the water at the mains. Too late I realised that now I had no water in the bath and so that was the end of my hot soaky bath idea. It seemed that this week was just going to throw everything it could at me to make life awkward. I went to bed feeling rather sorry for myself and as I lay there in a cold achy grump I started thinking about just how much worse things could be. Sometimes it's good to give yourself a mental kick in the pants, I pulled myself out of my sorry mood and fell into a deep sleep. On Friday morning before I let the birds out of their house, I fixed the final row of chicken wire into place securing the bottom of it to the pallets and overlapping it by about fifteen inches with the top section put on by the tree surgeon. I secured the overlap in a few places to ensure that the birds wouldn't be able to get out and created a makeshift lock (with baling twine and a hook) for the door. Then I let the birds out to explore their new temporary home.
I moved the Australorps into the new chicken palace, Little White greeted each one by letting them know who is boss. There was a bit of jostling and shoving, but nothing violent, but then if I was a chicken, even one as big as an Australorp cockerel, I don't think I'd take my chances against Little White, he is a very large bird. Then I turned my attention to the ducks. I lifted the flexible netting that has been around one third of the vegetable garden (the short side at the far end of the veg area and along the side by the duck enclosure) and moved it to create a narrow passageway from the duck house into the small enclosure where the ducklings were in the summer. This means that the ducks avoid walking under the trees where wild birds like to sit and deposit their droppings below. The ducks are very upset by all the change, they now have an area about forty feet square, but that will reduce by at least half. Tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon Mr J and I will create a makeshift covered enclosure for the ducks. I have run out of strength to carry any more pallets, so will need to rely on him to move them from the garden to around the duck pond. We have looked at the options of buying an enclosure, which I think will be the answer in the long term, but we need to get the ducks under cover as soon as possible, so a rough framework covered on the outside with chicken wire and covered over the top with a tarp, some corrugated metal panels and a rigid, clear, twin wall plastic panel will have to do. It will keep them safe even if it doesn't look pretty and we will have complied with the Defra order. I have hung a bottle of hand gel on the gate for visitors to use and we've bought an approved disinfectant for a foot dip before we enter the birds' enclosures. Hopefully, we now comply with all the biosecurity measures that we need to. I plan to spend most of next week on the sofa or in bed to recover from the stress and physical strain of the last few days. But before then we have one other event to enjoy. Tomorrow morning we are heading to Bristol for several reasons. Firstly I want to visit my parents' grave because I like to place a Christmas wreath on their grave. Then we are going to a shop to buy a few essentials that we will need in the next couple of weeks. After that we will be heading to collect our two new family members.
Monty (front) and Tabitha are nine years old, their last owner has passed away and we jumped at the opportunity to give them a home. Hopefully they will be happy to curl up on the sofa with me as they get to know us over the next week or so.
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Most of my blog posts are about what we are up to, what's changing on our smallholding and how I've tackled various tasks with the poultry, vegetable garden or food forest. But sometimes the reasons that we've chosen this lifestyle become clear to us once again and although I try not to bleat on about being unwell, I think it's also useful not to pretend that all is hunkydory, because it's not. That said, we have better health than many people and better than many of our friends and family, so I do keep a sense of perspective and write with the knowledge that in the grand scheme of things, we are very fortunate.
It's been a funny few weeks. My thyroid has been playing up and I've been working with my GP to try to get it under control again. I had a marvelous spring and summer in terms of energy and pain levels and I have learnt how to better manage both, but at the end of September I started feeling not as well as I could (read about it here) It seems that every now and then I will have a blip, one that I cannot manage and find it hard to cope with. Now I know how that feels and how it affects me, I can find ways to deal with it and act more quickly to counter the deterioration. One of those ways is to get a blood test as soon as I start feeling ill so that the GP can adjust my prescription. But this is easier said than done, getting a blood test can take two to three weeks and the GP appointment is usually a week after that. Once the prescription has been changed it can take a couple of months to feel the full effect of the new level of medication. So potentially once I start feeling unwell, it can be three months or more before I am back to feeling like me again. Clearly this is not an ideal situation, but it is one that I am going to have to learn to cope with. Anyway, back in September a blip (often known as a Hashi's attack) caused my thyroid to function less well again and my GP increased my prescription with a view to getting my hormone levels correct, for how I want to feel, again. I have muddled through the last couple of months knowing that the medication level wasn't high enough and as instructed, I booked another blood test for six weeks after the last GP visit. Those blood tests were last week and the results show that there has been a slight improvement in the hormone levels, hooray! Although they aren't at a level that allows me to feel fully well, boo. And this week, I have been experiencing yet another blip, double boo! So today was the day to see the GP and I was going to tell her I felt I needed to increase the prescription and to talk to her about this next blip that I am having which will be knocking my thyroid function yet again. Unfortunately my GP is unwell and my appointment has been cancelled and there isn't another appointment for three weeks. So I have booked another blood test for two weeks time so that my GP and I can discuss up-to-date and relevant results rather than a month old results. It is not my doctor's fault that she is unwell and in the meantime I have the choice to self-medicate and increase my dosage or continue in this downward spiral of dysfunction. Here's what I have learnt about my illness. Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease and only attacks the thyroid, which means my body thinks my thyroid is a problem and is attacking it (doh!) and little by little is destroying it. Once my thyroid is totally destroyed I will no longer have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. There will be other issues to contend with if and when that stage comes, but at least the Hashimoto's will have gone. The thyroid is the gland that controls most of our hormones and our metabolic rate is all tied up in the same system. People with hypothyroidism are often (but not always) overweight as their metabolisms don't process food in the same way. They can also have all sorts of other issues as a result of a slower metabolism, like slower heart-rate, poor digestion, swelling, pain and weaker immune systems. The prescription that is usually given in the UK is a synthetic replacement of a hormone called T4 which the thyroid converts into T3. T3 is the form that the body can actually use to regulate all the functions that the thyroid is supposed to regulate. It seems to me that it would make more sense to prescribe a replacement of the T3 hormone, but what do I know? When a Hashi's attack occurs the thyroid function decreases and so more T4 is needed for the thyroid to convert it into T3 and so the spiral continues. Many folks find they get to a level and stop having attacks and can function fully on their synthetic replacement, for others it is harder or more complicated. So far I am pleased to say that I seem to be responding well to the synthetic replacement and as long as do several other things to support my systems, I can trundle along pretty well. As result of either the Hashimoto's or adrenal fatigue (which most UK doctors don't recognise) I do not absorb nutrients as well as I could previously, so I take nutrient supplements every day. These include several vitamins and a handful of minerals. A catch-all multi-vitamin doesn't work for me, so I take individual vitamin and mineral tablets at different times of the day because trial and error has shown me which times of day to take which supplements to have the most positive impact. And, there are several things I don't do any more to help my system work more effectively. I am now on a caffeine free, alcohol free, gluten free and as much as possible an organic diet (yes, mostly that feels pretty fun-free too!). I know this isn't my usual type of blog post, but occasionally I feel the need to take stock and to remember that even though I don't feel 100% healthy all the time (or any of the time), I have achieved an enormous amount on the smallholding over our first year and that's something to celebrate! Time for a cuppa!
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It's been another good week in the garden, although the sun comes up later and the air is cooler, I have still been able to get outside and make some progress. We've had another couple of loads of chipped wood delivered by the local tree surgeons (two different tree surgeons now drop off chippings to us), so I have been able to move ahead with making pathways around raised beds. I've struggled to keep on top of the weeds growing through the cardboard layer that I've put on the pathways between raised beds and they've been rampaging through the vegetable beds. So I've made the decision that for the first couple of years I will have weed supressing membrane on the paths, covered with wood chippings and once the raised beds are more established and the pernicious weeds are killed off, I will lift the membrane, replace it with cardboard again and a deep layer of wood chippings. I would rather not use plastic in the garden, but I need to find a balance between what I'd like to do and what I am physically capable of doing. If I spend the time and energy keeping on top of the pernicious weeds in non-productive areas, I won't have energy to either tend the productive areas or to develop further areas of the garden. On balance, this seems a sensible compromise, long term the plastic membrane will be removed, but in the short term I am giving myself a chance to get the rest of the garden developed.
After laying out the paths and giving them a three to four inch layer of wood chippings, I covered the area that will be the raised bed with a layer of cardboard boxes and then covered the cardboard with well composted wood chippings. Next I will put some topsoil, garden compost and mixed them together and top it with another layer of well composted wood chippings. This bed will then be ready to plant up. Having decided on next year's planting planI have realised that some of the options I've selected just won't work. I've allocated one bed to have broad beans in it, which will need planting in the next couple of weeks if I want to have an early crop next year, but that bed still has purple sprouting broccoli, carrots and spinach in it and they will sit in the ground over the winter. So I will need to re-jiggle my plan again and put the autumn planted vegetables into beds that are vacant or becoming vacant very soon. I've been back to see my GP this week to discuss the results of last week's blood tests. It looks like the short Hashimoto's attack that I had a few weeks ago took it's toll on my thyroid, as it's function had dropped again. Although my results showed 'within normal range' I have learned that I feel best when the TSH level is around or just below 1. The normal range for the tests that my GP uses is 0.3 - 4.2, so in theory anywhere in that range is acceptable. I'm not sure who it is acceptable to, but it's certainly not right for me! When I can get my TSH to around 0.5 (together with some pretty careful management of what I eat and when, and what activities I do and when) I feel close to normal in energy and general health, last week's test showed it had increased to 2.38, which explains why I have been feeling less than sparkly for the last few weeks. My lovely GP, who is happy to work with how a patient feels and not just the numbers on the screen, was happy to increase my medication to help put my TSH back to where I feel I good as I can. I'm aware that I am very fortunate to have a GP who works with a patient in this way, so many people that I've spoken to are told that they have reached 'normal range' and that's that, they are left struggling with a thyroid still not being supported to the extent that it needs to be for them to feel healthy. Hats off to my GP for listening to my request and being happy to work with me as I try to take some control of my well-being. Hashimoto's is an auto-immune disease, my body has mistakenly decided to attack itself and in particular, attack my thyroid gland. I have a couple of other auto-immune issues lurking away, but thankfully they don't effect my every day living and hopefully they never will. Growing my own food is part of managing the Hashimoto's disease and the hypothyroidism that it's caused. Reducing the synthetic chemicals and toxins that I eat has gone a long way to helping how I feel and Mr J says that he is feeling healthier too. Added to the reduction in substances that were causing problems, the increase in fresh air and gentle exercise has also helped me feel better. It's a win-win situation. Earlier in the week my brother-in-law telephoned me to see if I could make use of some grapes that a friend of his had. So mid-week we went to my sister's home and collected two huge carrier bags filled to the brim with sweet black grapes.
I have washed them and sorted through them, picking them off their stalks and discarding unripe, over-ripe and mushy ones. The first bag yielded almost 9lbs (4kgs) of grapes ready to cook.
I used 4lbs of fruit to make some grape jelly, which tastes wonderful and will be a lovely accompaniment to cold cuts of meat or roast duck. The remainder I have frozen and will use to make syrups and wine when there is a little less to do in the garden. Over the weekend, we started to put fence stakes into the ground in the chicken field. Until now we have been using flexible chicken netting (the type that can be electrified), but two long rolls of this netting were on loan from Helen at Valerie Chicken. We need to give the netting back to Helen for her to use to keep her pigs secure and although she doesn't need it back until December, there is no point in us waiting until last minute to put in our permanent fencing. So using the recycled fence stakes that came from my sister's home, Mr J has put in the first row of stakes that I will then fix metal chicken wire onto and that will divide the field in two (as the flexible netting does now). We have decided that it would be sensible to then plant trees and shrubs along each side of the new fence. This should provide us with more fruit, nuts and berries and give the chickens some shade, but most importantly it will offer more wind protection and as the plants grow, the hedge should slow down the wind that whistles across the chicken field for most of the year. Last night (Sunday) we moved the Australorp pullet that was hatched at the end of June into the chicken coop that houses the other Australorps that were hatched at the end of July. As they are from different breeders, the eggs from the older bird will be ideal for breeding additional members of the flock and for providing us with hatching eggs to sell. This morning she doesn't look wildly happy about being in a new enclosure and her former companions are looking rather put out that she is now in an adjacent space, but it won't take too long for either her or the others to settle down again. Once the new fences are in place we will also create a separate enclosure for the Jersey Giants. I had said that I'd finished hatching eggs for the year, but I changed my mind and decided to hatch one more batch of chicks which can over-winter in the shelter of the stable and venture outside at their own pace.
So I have found another breeder of Jersey Giants (photo of his young birds above) and ordered six eggs which should arrive in the next few days. Hopefully this clutch will give us another female or two and if we get a cockerel then it will be going to the breeder that we bought the first eggs from to put some fresh genes into his flock of birds. I have tried to build good relationships with the breeders of birds that we have bought eggs from, because there is nothing quite like asking advice from folks who know the breed well and it's nice to be able to offer something in return, like birds from different bloodlines. We are still learning (an awful lot, thick and fast) and I feel that knowledge and experience are the greatest assets we can acquire. We are heading back outside this morning to continue installing the new fencing for the chickens. But first, as always, it's time for a cuppa! If you'd like to receive my blog posts direct to your inbox just enter your email address in the box below and follow the instructions. You'll probably need to confirm by clicking a link in your email inbox and then you will receive my blog each time a new entry is published. You can, of course, cancel your subscription at any time.
On Sunday we spent a few hours with my sister and brother in law. We live only twenty minutes' drive away from her home which means that we can see other much more often than we used to. If my sister wasn't related to me, I'd choose her as a friend as we get on so well, share the same sense of silliness and have a similar outlook on life. I took a box of fresh vegetables from the garden, a few frozen runner beans (because they are amongst her favourite vegetables), some duck eggs, hen eggs, a jar of blackberry and apple jam, a jar of apple sauce and one of the smaller pumpkins that are still ripening. After we'd caught up with each other's latest news, we gathered some rose hips from a rose that had originally been a hybrid tea type, but over the years suckers had grown up from the root stock and now it is a wild rose with no sign of the grafted rose bush. I'm going to use these to make some rose hip syrup and add a few to some hedgerow wine. While we were picking fruits we found a few elderberries, which I will add to the berries in the freezer ready to make into some wine. We also came home with some wooden battens (that had been on their roof, but have since been replaced), some other wood off-cuts that may have ended up rotting in a corner of their field, wire mesh, a bale of bedding for the ducks. I felt that we had a much better deal from our swap until I remembered that, except for the bale of bedding, we had taken away items that they considered to be rubbish and would need taking to the local tip eventually, so we have saved them the trip. The wood battens and off-cuts will get stored away until we are ready to use them, but to have some spare bits of wood around is very useful for those days that I say 'can we just...?'. By late afternoon I had started to feel a bit wobbly and irritatingly I have now spent two days on the sofa feeling somewhat worse for wear. I have booked an appointment with my GP to have my blood tests done again to check the level of hormones for my thyroid, unfortunately the first set of appointments that I can have aren't for another two weeks. My hope is that I will be feeling better long before then and the appointments will just be a routine check-up. Being knocked sideways gives me little to write about in terms of activity on the smallholding as I haven't been up to walking outside, which means that nothing has progressed in the garden or in the kitchen. I've put all the picked fruits straight into the freezer and will deal with them at a later date when every step feels less like I am wading through jelly. Mr J has been looking after the birds and of course, this is the week that the smallest chickens have worked out how to break out of their field and head straight for the 'all you can eat buffet' that is the vegetable garden. We have foiled their fun by confining them to their house and large run until we have completed putting up more chicken wire netting to prevent the small birds slipping through the flexible netting that surrounds the chickens' fields. Hopefully Mr J will feel up to doing this when he returns from work today. I did manage to get outside for a short time this morning, but it didn't last long before I needed to come back in and lie down again. However, I got to enjoy the late summer sunrise for a few minutes. I wish my camera could pick up the intense orangey-red of the sun, but suffice to say that the sun and the pumpkins looked beautiful together.
Yesterday was a gentle day again, I spent much of it asleep or curled up on the sofa, popping outside to do a bit more when I woke up, only to need to sleep again shortly afterwards. But I did manage to get some more cardboard laid out in the kitchen garden to cover the grass in readiness for creating another raised bed and pathway.
I also ordered another ton of topsoil which, with super efficiency, the company delivered in the afternoon. I moved three barrow loads of soil and put it onto the cardboard base, but have left the rest for another day when I have less pain and more energy.
This morning I took a phone call from the local brewery to say that another load of spent grain and hops would be available this afternoon, so Mr J drove us to the brewery to collect it this afternoon. The brewer has now kindly agreed to only half fill each bag, so that Mr J is able to lift them into the van easily (even half-filled they are too heavy for me to lift). Back at home Mr J unloaded the van and the hops and grains are now in bags in the paddock waiting for us to build new compost heaps. As it's four days since I put the first small heap together, I thought it would be a good time to turn the heap, put some more air into the pile and assess how the grains are decomposing. As it is a fairly small pile of straw and grains it was a quick job to turn it, putting the materials from the top of the pile onto the ground, shaking the straw a little to fluff it up and sprinkling the grains evenly over it. In just four days the grains have turned from a pale golden colour to nutty brown and there is already evidence of some fungal activity. I was pleased to find that it wasn't the stinky, slimy mess of grains that I had anticipated that I might find and there is still plenty of heat in the pile.
I don't know that I've got the correct ratio of grains to straw and think that we probably need to add some animal manure to the mixture to put different micro-organisms into it. If we get a chance we may go and collect some horse manure from my sister's home in the next day or two, which we can add to the heaps as well as to the top soil that was delivered.
Anyway, it was but a ten minute task to turn the smaller heap and create enough space next to it to build another heap with the new batch of grains. Hopefully by the time we get to autumn there will be plenty of well rotted compost to add to the raised vegetable beds, around the fruit trees and if there is enough left over, to the herbaceous border. Decorative flower beds need to come second to the productive areas of the smallholding.
Here's a view of the kitchen garden that I don't often see. I took the photo from the centre of the shrubbery looking straight along the central pathway towards the Second Severn Crossing. It seems funny to think that six months ago there was only grass in this paddock and since then we have laid out paths, dug and planted a herbaceous border, created 10 raised beds, and planted them with plants grown from seed, started the pallet fence, made 6 compost bays and filled them, fenced off an area for the ducks and then another for the chickens (who have half the paddock!), planted a natural hedge along the back and left side of the paddock and started planting up the hedge on the right hand side. That doesn't seem too bad for a couple who are having to learn fast, learn by their mistakes and work around me being out of action for chunks of each day!
In those periods of the day that I am out of action, if I am not sleeping, I try to make use of the time by researching, reading and watching helpful videos and vlogs. This morning I had an odd moment. Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cuppa and watching yet another vlog about starting a permaculture garden, I hooked my foot around the chair leg, an action that lots of us do regularly, but as I did it I heard a loud crunch and had a shooting pain whizz up my leg and I felt ever-so-slightly sick and then, I was pain free. I have spent the last six months hobbling around on a walking stick at some point of most days, with a swollen ankle and shooting pains with almost every step. I haven't been able to turn my foot in a circle and I've woken myself each night in pain as I've knocked my foot on the bed or on my other leg and some days the only way that I have been able to get up stairs is to crawl. I don't want to speak too soon, but I think that crunch may just have sorted out whatever the problem was! My foot is still a bit stiff and achy, but after so many months of being 'crook' that's hardly surprising. So for today, I am going to celebrate and enjoy my foot feeling, well, not feeling anything very much.
Regardless of any plans that I may have thought we had for tomorrow, like moving a ton of topsoil, the task will be to build another compost heap or two using the spent grains that we collected today. I may record some of the process and a tour of our compost heaps, then spend a little time trying to edit the footage into an interesting video. I am starting to toy with the idea of making a weekly vlog to go along side this blog, because sometimes a picture really can not only paint, but also replace, a thousand words. Please leave a comment to let me know whether you'd be interested in seeing a weekly vlog of the developments on our smallholding as we try to build a healthier, cleaner life for ourselves.
