Thought for food vlog

After a reasonably busy day I have now uploaded a new vlog to YouTube in which I think about the realities with producing our own food, deal with a tricky lock and enjoy spending time with the chickens.

If clicking on the video image doesn't work for you, you can find today's vlog on my YouTube channel here.

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Why raise meat birds?

I've seen quite a lot of discussion on social media recently about whether raising one's own meat birds is worth it, so I thought I'd share my somewhat limited experience.

From the point of view of knowing that what I'm eating is good quality meat that comes from birds raised in a free range situation (except during lockdown of course), that have been able to express their natural behaviour and been fed only organic food, then yes, it's absolutely worth it.

It is worth it financially?

Chickens.

If I had a fast growing breed of bird that raced to it's maximum weight, then I guess the following calculations would be very different, but I don't like the idea of birds growing so fast that their bones can't keep up with the weight of the muscle on them. I prefer to have slower growing birds that have time to gently develop their muscle, so I dispatch chickens from around sixteen to eighteen weeks onwards and I'm still trying to work out the optimum age for dispatch for each breed. But for the purpose of these calculations I'm going to assume dispatch at twenty weeks old.

A bag of organic feed costs us £15 and lasts about a week. We're feeding around thirty birds, so that means it costs us 50p a week per bird. I also give them organic mixed corn which I estimate costs 17p per week per bird. As I grow vegetables to supplement their diet, there are no other feeding costs apart from the apple cider vinegar that I add to the water on a regular basis, so I'm going to call that 3p per week. Total input cost is 70p per week x 20 weeks = £14.00. The bird that was dispatched this week weighed 1.965Kg (approximately 4lbs 8ozs), plus the giblets which I use to make stock and then feed the heart and liver to the cats (who are very appreciative of our minimal waste policy). 

To allow a reasonably fair comparison of prices, my chicken cost £7.00/Kg.

Today I checked online for organic chicken prices.

Tesco £6.50/Kg

Riverford 2Kg = £7.73/Kg

Combe Farm Organic = £8.79/Kg

Planet Organic = £10.24/Kg

Marks and Spencer = £6.30/Kg

Eversfield = £8.65/Kg

There may also be a delivery charge for the organic chicken purchased online.

So at a quick glance it seems that raising my own chickens is probably costing me no more than it would to purchase one online and if I add the delivery charge in too, then it is financially worth raising our own meat birds.

Ducks

We have commercial breed Aylesbury ducks, bred to grow fairly quickly to a decent size in just a couple of months or so. Ducks can be dispatched at eight weeks, but for our first season we waited until they were fifteen and twenty weeks old. In the future I will dispatch at twelve and a half weeks as this is plenty large enough a bird for our needs.

Feeding costs of our ducks is similar to that of the chickens, but they reach a good size in slightly less time, so each duck will cost around £8.75 to raise.

The value of a home-raised organic duck is even better, especially as we now don't need to purchase eggs to hatch as we have three layers to fill our incubator with eggs. Our fifteen week old ducks weighed in at a little over 2Kg each, so I assume at twelve and a half weeks they will weigh around 1.8Kg. This would give a cost of £4.87/Kg.

These are the prices that I found online today.

Graig Farm = £13.60/kg
Rother Valley Organics = £6.70/Kg
Beech Ridge Farm= £6.60/Kg

So from a purely financial viewpoint, it is definitely worth raising ducks for meat.

Obviously I haven't included the cost of their housing, bedding or runs, but we would have those costs whether we raised meat birds or pets.

But, finances are not really the reason that we raise our own meat birds, it's about the taste, the knowledge of where are food has come from, what it's been fed (and not fed), food miles and food security.

We enjoy their company and we would keep ducks and chickens even if we decided not to have them as meat birds. We find a huge amount of pleasure in hatching our own eggs and watching the young birds grow into healthy adults.


When not in lockdown, the birds help to tackle the pest population in the garden, till and prepare the soil, fertilise the ground and do a superb job at turning the compost heaps (although they are kept out of the ones with kitchen scraps in them). They are an integral part of our gardening system.

On top of their gardening skills, the birds provide us with eggs. Not only do we have a good supply of fresh eggs for the kitchen and to give to our family and friends, but also we plan to soon start selling some of them as hatching eggs. The small income from the sales will help to pay for the birds' feed, making them even better value.

All these calculations have left me thirsty and in need of revitalising, which means it must be time for a cuppa!

Please note that my photos were taken prior to the Avian Flu Prevention Zone order and our birds are now kept inside as required by law. 

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Food for winter

Vegetable Garden August 2016

After Storm Angus and Jack Frost had thrown their worst at the garden, I took a walk around the vegetable beds to see what had survived and was pleasantly surprised. Although the vegetable garden looks less than orderly or pretty at the moment, there is still plenty of produce to put on our plates for the coming months.

Here's what we have in the garden
Leeks
Oca
Dwarf kale
Purple curly kale
January King cabbage
Red cabbage
Swiss chard
Perpetual spinach
Parsnips
Swede
Beetroot
Lambs lettuce
Red oak leaf lettuce
Purple sprouting broccoli
Herbs

Stored in the freezer
Borlotti beans
Runner beans
Broad beans
Purple French beans
Patty pan courgettes
Tomatoes
Rainbow chard stems
Celery
Carrots
and fruit that includes
Apples (windfalls from our neighbours' garden)
Blackberries
White Currants
Rosehips
Elderberries
Plums
Mirabelles
Grapes (a gift from a friend)
Herbs

And stored in the larder
Onions
Garlic
Potatoes
Herbs
Plus a collection of sauces, jams, jellies and syrups.

Given that this is our first year, I am delighted with the range of vegetables and fruit that we have to see us through until the next crops arrive.

We have had to buy a few vegetables, but not very many, since the garden starting being productive and it feels quite strange to go to the fresh produce aisle. We have, of course, had to buy fruits like bananas, pineapples and citrus fruit. 

Since starting to plant the food forest I have discovered that we should be able to grow peaches, nectarines and apricots so I will be ordering trees very soon, to join the apple, pears, plums and cherries that I have already planted. I have taken hardwood cuttings of red, white and black currants, tayberry and loganberry. Although I don't eat nuts, Mr J does, so I have planted several hazel trees for hazelnuts and will be ordering a sweet almond tree too.

With all this abundance together with the eggs and meat from the chickens and ducks, I feel as though we have much more food security than we could have hoped for and, being able to buy meat from our friends, like the pork from Martha, means that we can be more certain of how and where our food is produced.

As Christmas is now only three weeks away, I have started to think about what we might have to eat over the holiday period, one thing that I can be sure of is that a large portion of it will be coming from our garden.

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Year One part 3 Permanent Planting

   The Shrubberies were put in early in the year to make a colourful welcome as we drive along the lane into our yard.

 Our friend Jane gave us several shrubs and others were lifted from the area next to the piggeries and stables.

  I planted the perennial shrubs along the length of the border and have added a few more since. 

 After a few months of growing the long shrubbery has filled out and has given us some colour every month. Some of the plants in the shrubbery have uses in addition to looking attractive. The buddleia has attacted many butterflies and other pollinators as have all the flowers on the shrubs. I've harvested the lavender flowers, dried them and I will use them to make lavender bags, lavender sugar and to refresh the pot pourri in our home. The roses will produce rosehips which I will add to the rosehips gathered from the hedgerows and other sources (read about rosehips from my sister's home here).The fushia bush should provide us with berries, although as yet it hasn't produced very much and having never tried fushia, I'm keen to find out whether the berries from this particular hardy bush are sweet or have a bitter aftertaste.

The short shrubbery is still only half completed but is already starting to look good.

 We brought with us several pots of raspberry plants that had been lifted from Mr J's parents' home, together with shrubs, herbaceous plants and a couple of small trees.

Jane helped me to dig the turf from the area that would become the herbaceous border (actually Jane lifted the most of it) and we planted it with the plants that she had given to us and some that we had brought from our previous house. Over the year I haven't weeded the area anywhere near as much as was needed and as a result we've had a display of weed and wild flowers amongst the cultivated perennial plants.

The Food Forest

I decided that creating a permanent planting area filled with edible plants and supporting plants would be a good use of a large space. The more I explored the ideas behind permaculture and the way to use the land in harmony with nature, the more I realised it fits exactly with our thinking and a food forest should work really on this site.

I've had to make some compromises with how to start the food forest, but I'm happy with how it is coming along. Wood chippings have been poured onto the area and composted wood chippings used to make planting beds. It was a bit tougher than just pouring wood chippings, because finding a source of wood chippings took me several months. My budget for the garden is close to zero and it was important to find a free source of materials, but luckily I have now found a local tree surgeon who brings a trailer load of chipped wood on a reasonably regular basis. It gets dumped in the front garden and I then move it one wheelbarrow load at a time to the place I want it. 

 We made a small wildlife pond using a butyl liner that was already on the smallholding when we moved in. It's not very pretty, but as the planting around the edges grow, it should hide the liner and attract beneficial wildlife.

We've recently bought 17 fruit trees which I am in the process of planting and below them I've put fruit shrubs like currants and raspberries (lots and lots of autumn fruiting raspberries), herbs and ground cover plants like strawberries. I've been researching perennial vegetables to include in this area and in the meantime, for the next couple of years at least, I will use some of the food forest area to grow annual vegetables that will act as good ground cover (like some of the squashes I'd like to grow).

 It will take a few years for the food forest to establish and there will always be some maintenance tasks to do there, but it should be more productive in relation to the effort put in as time goes on. 

Hedges and boundaries 

There is very little hedging around the boundary and whilst that gives us fabulous views across the adjacent land, it also gives us no protection from the wind that whistles across the area from the Severn Estuary.

In early spring, Jane helped us to plant a hedge around the east and south sides of smallholding. It is mixed native hedging, that will be good for wildlife, pollinators and food and although still very small, it has started to fill out over the year and I'd imagine that by their fifth year, the hedge plants will be around shoulder high and knitted together to form a thick wind shelter and a good place for birds and other wildlife to live. I used weed supressing membrane and planted through it in an effort to slow down the invasive weeds coming through the stock fencing that surrounds the smallholding. 

I've put up some wind break fabric on the stock fencing to reduce the impact of the wind on the plants in the garden and as some relief for the chickens who were getting blown around by the wind. Much of the winter and spring brought winds of 30 to 40 mph and a few times it reached up to 60mph, which, if you are a small chicken (or a large human) is pretty miserable to be in.

We still need to plant some hedging along the west boundary and I've ordered some more native hedging to put in the ground later in the year together with some elderberry trees that we can lift from below our trees. I'm also going to add some fast growing trees like eucalyptus which I'll keep cut back so that they are large bushes rather than tall trees.

Now that we have divided up the paddock and are happy with the area designated for the chickens, we've put in a more permanent fence. I've started to plant some fruit canes along the fence that can be supported by it, offer more protection for the chickens, look attractive and be productive.

I've written further blogs looking at the vegetable garden and our animals . The best way to ensure that you don't miss them is to subscribe to my blog, which you can do below!

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Totally home grown

 We reached a milestone this week, our first meal that was made from entirely home grown ingredients. It doesn't feel like a big deal, it feels like an enormous achievement and one that I'd like to repeat regularly.

 I've continued to harvest the crops as they ripen and prepare them for storing for the winter. The beans, in particular, have been very good, I had left the last of the runner bean pods on the plants to ripen and this week I picked the fat bean pods and spent a lovely half an hour popping the creamy white kidney beans out of their green jackets.

The largest of the kidney beans will be dried and saved to use as seed for next year's plants. I was surprised at just how large the beans are, so hopefully next year the White Lady runner bean seedlings will be strong and healthy. The remainder of these fat beans will also be dried and added to the larder for use in soups and stews over the winter.

On Tuesday we were without electricity for the day. The local electricity supplier had told us that the power would be off for the best part of the day while they did essential maintenance to the power lines. The essential work that they were doing was to cut back trees that were at risk of interfering with the power lines. Far from being an inconvenience, I realised that this might be a great opportunity and so, as soon as we could see where the workmen were, we hopped into the car and headed off to talk to them. I gave them a note with my name, phone number and address on it and asked them to drop off any wanted wood chippings that they weren't leaving at the properties they were working at. 

 The next day they arrived with two trailer loads of chipped wood. It will need to sit for a year or two before it can be added to the floor of the food forest or into the soil of the raised beds (as it's from fir trees), but in the meantime I am using it on the pathways to cover the weed suppressing membrane. I know it's not ideal to have plastic membrane on the ground, but for now I am using it to kill off the pernicious weeds and in years to come and when I have saved up to buy the materials, I will replace it with bricks, flagstones or something else more environmentally kind.

On Wednesday, we had our 100% home grown meal. The only things on our plate that didn't come from the garden were a bit of butter and salt and pepper, but everything else had been grown or raised on the smallholding. The chicken was small, but tasted fabulous and was all the better for us knowing that it had lived a good life with daily (all day) access to the chicken field with fresh air, space to run around and a healthy diet including plenty fresh greens to eat. With the chicken we had roast potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli, leeks and a ratatouille type mixture made using patty pan squashes, tomatoes, garlic and basil. We had a certain sense of pride and satisfaction at knowing that we had put all of that food on the plates.

 On Thursday I started to clear the pumpkins from the small patch where they've been growing all summer. Earlier in the year I made a compost heap hotbed from spent brewery grain and straw, then made four small planting pockets in the top and planted a pumpkin and a nasturtium in each. One plant was eaten by slugs over the course of the first night, but the other three plants have gone on to produce some nice fruits.

 We had nine large pumpkins, seven of which are now ripening and hardening in the gentle autumn sunshine. As the seeds we a gift from my daughter and grandsons, they will be given one of the fruit to use for their halloween evening and the others will boost the larder considerably.

I was looking foward to seeing how much the grain and straw mixture had broken down and had visions of being able to spread a nice deep layer of well rotted compost across the area where the pumpkins have been, but the materials haven't broken down as much as I'd imagined that they would. So I think the best thing that I can do with this is create a new compost heap and use this as the brown material in it.

 In the raised beds, the nasturiums have grown well and seem to have done their job of attracting pollinators to the garden. I've collected some of their seeds and others I have scattered across the beds. I am happy for them to pop up at random in future years, after all, if they are somewhere inconvenient then I can either plant around them or pull them up.

 Nasturtium seeds can be pickled to make a 'poor man's caper' and if they are soaked in brine for a few days before pickling in vinegar some of the heat is taken out of them and they are a milder, gentler taste. I've tried this before with success and would happily make them again, except neither Mr J nor I like them! I might make one batch so that I can give them to friends and family at Christmas in a home-made hamper.

 In early summer I noticed that a sapling was growing in the area to the side of the piggeries and this week I've spotted that it is now about eighteen inches high. Fortunately it is growing in a suitable place, not too close to other trees or near buildings, so I will leave it where it is and allow it to grow. In other spots around the garden I have noticed other seedlings that are not in such clever places. There's a cherry tree that is growing at the foot of a compost bay, I will carefully dig it up and move it to the food forest. Several hawthorn and buckthorn are growing in the scrubby area behind the piggeries and they will be moved to the hedges.

There is still a great deal to do in the garden before autumn sets in fully and as today it's dry again, I am heading back outside to carry on getting in the vegetable garden, but first I think there's just time for a cuppa!

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Bountiful garden, busy kitchen

As the summer gives way to autumn, the focus of my day seems to have shifted from outdoors to the kitchen. Gathering food from the garden and preparing it for the freezer, canning, making preserves, meals and drinks takes up increasing amounts of time. 

I'm not a bad cook, as domestic cooks go. A bit basic maybe, nothing modern or fancy, but as what we want is wholesome, hearty or comfort food, I can do that pretty well. I'm now facing the new challenge of preserving all the vegetables that I've grown for using throughout the winter.

Obviously some will stay in the ground, winter cabbages, parsnips and leaks can be lifted as and when we need them, but others like the softer leafy greens and celery will need to be brought in or they will just turn to mush in the frosts. Because I have grown so many vegetables that I haven't tried growing before, I've had to look up when they need harvesting or whether they can stay in the ground and also find out the best ways to preserve them.

 I've frozen a large number of rainbow chard stems, chopped into two to three inch lengths which will be added to stews, roasted or tossed into a stir-fry. Neither Mr J nor I are very keen on the leaves of chard and while I have frozen a few servings of chard leaves, most of them were given to the chickens as I picked the stems.

The celery (Red Soup variety) will be cut this week, then chopped and frozen to add it's warming effect to meals throughout the winter. I don't like celery in salads, but I do like it braised, made into a soup or added in small quantities to dishes that are cooked gently over a long period, but most of all I like it roasted in a tray filled with a mixture of vegetables with fresh herbs and plenty of garlic.

Every day I have managed to prepare and freeze some vegetables and fruit. I've decided that even if I don't get to make syrups and wine immediately as long as the raw produce is frozen I can spend time in the kitchen once everything is gathered and make them at a later date.

The tomato fruits on the plants in the greenhouse continue to ripen and every few of days I've been bringing in a couple of handfuls of semi-ripe tomatoes.They are left in the warmth of the kitchen to ripen more and then I'm cutting them in half and freezing them. These will be a welcome addition to breakfasts in the colder winter months.

The purple French beans from a late sowing of seeds have yielded about 5lbs and there are still more to come. I planted a few seeds on 31st July in the hope that the plants might grow enough to provide a small crop, but it didn't matter if we didn't get any beans as the plants would fix some nitrogen into the soil following the onion crops that were in those particular raised beds. Having such a good crop from this late sowing feels like a bonus blessing.

Earlier in the week I noticed that one bed in which I've recently planted some purple kale also has lots of small purple leaved seedlings popping up all over it. I thought perhaps that it was red orach as there is a plant nearby, but yesterday I realised that these colourful little leaves are actually a purple oak leaf lettuce. I had forgotten that I had broad cast some seeds from a plant that had gone to seed (and now I think about it, I did the same with a tasty green leaf lettuce somewhere in the garden, I will need to go and look for seedlings). I will cover the bed with fleece to keep the warmth in the soil and hopefully we will have some baby lettuce leaf salad before too long.

I have gathered some fresh herbs and frozen the leaves whole, so that during the winter months when the herbs have died back I will still be able to use them in cooking. Each type of herb is in its own bag in the freezer. I keep them all in a small cardboard box so that I don't have to hunt around in the freezer looking for them.


Out in the garden I'm continuing to lay cardboard and make new raised beds, it's become quite slow going as there is so much to do in the kitchen. I've repositioned some strawberry runners that were growing in long grass in a corner behind the stables. They now have plenty of space in a more open position in the food forest and I've planted another blueberry there too. 

The Australorp chicks are growing fast now and their petrol black feathers are growing with a delightful sheen. They are so soft to the touch and very friendly. It won't be too long before I need to make the decision about which ones to keep for breeding and which to dispatch for the freezer. There are eight chicks and I am certain that two are pullets and two are cockerels, the other four I am not sure about! So hopefully in the next few weeks it will be become clear what gender they are and I will be able to make a proper decision. 

Of the four hybrid chicks that hatched at the same time, two are cockerels and one of the pullets is bantam size. Typically, the two cockerels which we won't be keeping have beautiful colouring while the pullets are white with scruffy black splashes. No matter, they will still provide us with eggs next year.

Yesterday (Sunday) we had sunshine for most of the day and the forecast is for fine weather for the next week. I am delighted to have this last touch of warmth before autumn and winter arrive. 

Today we will be taking one more walk along the hedgerows to pick the late ripening blackberries, they have been particularly good this year, not only have there been masses of berries but they have been large, juicy and sweet. We've already enjoyed blackberry and apple crumbles, blackberry Eton mess, I've made jams and frozen pounds of berries to make syrup and wine from. I want to make the most of this foraged harvest as not only is it free food, but there is such an abundance of it this year.

But before we head out to the fields to pick blackberries, I think it must be time for a cuppa!

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Bit of a squash

Having worked out my planting plan for next year in the vegetable garden (which you can see here) I now know that we will be using a large area at the far end of the paddock as a pumpkin patch among some young fruit trees that are going into this area in November. I won't only plant pumpkins, but all of the squash, pumpkins and courgettes that I want to grow next year.

I've been surprised at how easy the pumpkins have been to grow. This year I planted them into small soil pockets on the top of a straw and spent grain compost heap (see how I made the compost hot bed here) and I've fed them twice with a nettle tea, I have watered them when I've noticed the leaves wilting badly but other than that, I've pretty much left them alone to do their thing. Of the four young plants that I put in, one was eaten by slugs very quickly so only three grew, but I've been rewarded with 9 good sized pumpkins. The smallest of these is approximately 9-10 inches across, similar in size to a football, the largest is, at a guess, 20 inches across and 18 inches high. I'm looking forward to them being ripe enough to lift from their sprawling vines and weigh them. 

The courgettes have totally failed, not a single plant survived the slugs, but I did have some success with summer squashes and have harvested a couple of dozen (or more) patty pan squashes from the four plants that have grown in compost heaps and interestingly fewer per plant from the couple of plants that have grown in the ground.

Three butternut squash plants that looked like they had been eaten by slugs managed to survive the slimy onslaught and produced some small fruits, but sadly they have come so late in the year that I doubt whether they will ripen enough to be able to store for use later in the winter. But nothing goes to waste, if they aren't quite ripe enough for us, I can cut them and give them straight to the chickens, who will happily tuck into them.

So, buoyed by this year's encouraging experience I've decided to grow more (and different) squashes next year. I will start preparing the ground this autumn by making hugelkultur beds. I will pile up logs of wood, small branches, well rotted manure, leaves, garden compost and composted wood chippings and I will cover them with a thick mulch of straw from the duck houses to protect them from leeching too many nutrients in the winter rain.

I've been sorting through the seeds that I have in my seed box and already have several packets of squash seeds that I can use next year and I think the only seeds I'll need to acquire are of some type of spaghetti squash. As my daughter has offered to give me some seeds for Christmas, I will ask her for some spaghetti squash seeds. 

These are the pumpkins, courgettes and squashes that I plan to grow next year.

Image & info at Premier Seeds Direct

Squash delicata (winter squash). 
I really like the look and description of these heirloom squashes. They are sweet like a butternut squash but the skin can also be eaten. I've found some lovely recipes using this squash including a maple glazed one which I will definitely be trying.

Image & info at Premier Seeds Direct

Jumbo pink banana squash
Another heirloom squash that has good keeping properties and as it names suggests, it's a biggie! This recipe from Firesign Farm blog is for a squash pie looks very simple to make, I would probably only use cinnamon and nutmeg as my spices as those are our favourites.

Pumpkin Howden
This is the pumpkin that I've grown this year and I've been very pleased with it. I will grow less of them next year as I don't think we need quite so many.

Image and info at Premier Seeds Direct

Butternut Waltham
This is the butternut squash that we've grown this year and as I still have seeds, I will give it another go next year. We both like butternut squash soup and I like them baked in the oven with goat's cheese and pumpkin seeds.

Image and info Premier Seeds Direct

Courgette Verde de Milano
A deep green courgette which I hope to pick when they are still quite young as I prefer baby courgettes roasted in the oven with a host of over vegetables, garlic, salt and pepper and fresh rosemary.

Image and info Mr Fothergills

Yellow courgette
I currently have seeds for courgette Soleil F1, which look fabulous, but if I can find an organic seed that looks as appealing I will swap these seeds for organic ones. I much prefer yellow courgettes to green ones as they are sweeter, with less course skin and make extremely nice cakes!

Courgette, lemon and poppyseed cake from Riverford Organic Farmers

Oven baked summer squash Sunburst stuffed with Bolognaise sauce

Summer squash Delikates and Summer squash Sunburst
I've grown both of these this year and have been enjoying them baked, friend in ghee, stuffed, shredded and have frozen quite a few of them, sliced and ready to use in meals during the winter. The photo at the top of my blog shows these squashes (and the cabbage) used in this meal. The yellow ones look like sunny pork pies and just ask to be hollowed out and filled.

There are so many other squashes that I'd like to try to grow, but I think it would be better to try a few at a time and discover which ones we most like to eat.

Wherever possible I am using heirloom varieties and organic seeds. By avoiding F1 varieties, I should be able to save some seeds from each plant for use the next year. Our aim is to reduce our living costs and saved seeds will do their part to lower our costs. There is, I guess, a risk that plants will cross pollinate and that we'll end up with some peculiar squashes, but I don't mind, that's all part of the fun of growing our vegetables!

Starting a Food Forest

Friday 2nd Spetember. I've been researching ways to increase our harvest whilst also improving the land on which we live. Time and time again I come back to a permaculture idea of a food forest. It seems to me to make absolute sense to work with nature, not against it and emulate it as it is so successful at being self sustaining.

The idea of a food forest is that just like any forest there are several layers of growth from tall canopy trees to root crops, each layer is comprised edible plants of some sort and as leaves drop from trees and annuals die off, the forest floor becomes richer with organic matter feeding the plants for the next year. This is a long term plan. We can't plant fully grown trees and shrubs, so we will plant young trees and plants and over time they will grow to provide the layers.

Image source: Permaculture a Beginner’s Guide, by Graham Burnett

 By recreating a forest with it's multi layers of growth I can have a highly productive area of edible plants that doesn't need constant tending and planting each year. It will become more productive as years pass and will build better and better soil. We want to leave this small space in better condition and with more trees and vegetation on it than when we arrived.

 So I've identified an area that would be ideal for a food forest. Ideally I would lay down a very thick layer of cardboard and cover it in around 30 - 40 cms of wood chippings, but I don't think we will have access to that volume wood chippings and so, to start off with, I am going to put down a weed suppressing membrane and a 15 - 20 cms layer of wood chippings and then in a couple of years remove the membrane disturbing the soil layer as little as possible and let nature take over.

 I ordered some membrane which arrived yesterday and to keep myself distracted from the latest hatch that was happening in the incubator I started to lay the membrane.

This first section of membrane is six and a half feet (2 metres) wide and approximately 40 feet (12 metres) long and it seems to hardly make a dent in the area that I've earmarked for the food forest. I am excited by this project, I like the idea of creating something more permanent on this land. It won't replace the raised beds which I will continue to use for growing annual food crops, cutting flowers and herbs, but it should add a new dimension to the smallholding.

 As luck would have it, on Wednesday evening the tree surgeon delivered another load of composted wood chippings. This is by far the most well composted material that he has dropped off. Much of it is a rich almost black colour, just like the soil found on a forest floor, so will be ideal for the food forest area as well as being used to enrich the soil in the raised beds.

Once I had lightly pegged down the membrane I loaded a wheel barrow to overflowing with wood chippings and tipped it onto the membrane. As you can see, it hardly shows on this large space and this sheet of membrane is only the first of many. It's going to take an awful lot of wheel barrow loads to cover this area! I thought that I'd cover the areas that I want to put plants in first and leave the pathways clear until later. As we are having some tall but spindly sycamore trees taken down from just behind the piggeries before too long, I will use the chipped upper branches to cover the pathways as these don't need to be composted chippings.

I already have some fruit shrubs and perennial herbs that I can plant in the food forest and will propagate as many more as I can from these small plants.

I've recently started reading the blog of a couple who live not too far away from us who have outgrown their garden and two allotments and are taking the plunge to become even more self sufficient and are buying a smallholding in Orkney. James and Dee's blog about their adventure to self sufficiency and living in a more environmentally friendly way can be found at Happy Homestead. It's well worth a read. 

I've been chatting with them via social media and invited them to come for a cuppa and to have a look at what we are doing here (what this really means is that I'm going to pick their brains and ask them for lots of advice). To my delight they have offered to give us some of their fruit bushes and herbs that they have growing in tubs and that are too large or too many to take with them to their new home. They will be ideal for planting in the food forest and I am extremely grateful for their generosity.  We are also going to rehome their chickens which they feel would be too stressed by a fifteen hour car journey to their new homestead.

Saturday 3rd. Yesterday I continued to add barrow loads of composted wood chippings to the first stretch of weed suppressing membrane and planted it with a tayberry and loganberry given to me by my daughter's father in law. I also put in some autumn fruiting raspberries which came from Mr J's mother's garden, a rowan tree that my daughter gave me for Mother's Day, some herbs that I grew from seed and some currants that came from the local garden centre. I am starting to think that the food forest will be filled with plants that came from, and therefore remind me of, friends and family.

I've identified a small area that is lower than the surrounding soil and it seems to be a perfect place to have a small wildlife pond. In heavy rain it fills with water and creates a puddle about four feet by three feet and around four inches deep. If I line the base of this area with waterproof membrane, it should fill up in no time which will give us a pond that ends up about seven or eight inches deep. It won't be very big, but it would be nice to have an area that attracts frogs, toads and other wildlife. There is a large sheet of bitumous liner at the back of the piggeries, I think it is what was used to line a large surplus water store as I can see a circular outline on a concrete base by the rear piggery and the liner seems circular, so I will use a piece of that as a liner for the small wildlife pond.

As I am creating pathways through the food forest area I will make sure that a path goes around the potential pond and that I leave some space for planting around the edges of it. The good thing about the location of the pond is that it will be away from the chickens and the ducks so that the wildlife won't be a sitting target for their beaky attentions.

It is very wet today, I have tried laying out the next section of weed suppressing membrane, but the wind has picked up and is blowing it all over the place. Instead of working outside, I am doing more research and firming up ideas about the food forest and catch up with reading a few of my favourite blogs. I'm looking forward to an afternoon curled up on the sofa under a quilt reading. It must be time to make a cuppa! 

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If you want to know more about food forests, this article on the Permaculture Research Institute is useful.