Forest Garden Update

 Spring is here and oh what a Spring. Every morning we are welcomed by a chorus of birds and the shrieking of our rooster which sounds like the tortured metal of a malfunctioning starter motor. We hoped he was going through a phase but unfortunately not. We have plenty of eggs laid in a variety of hard to access places and have the lurking suspicion that at least one hen is sitting on a cache of eggs that is still to be discovered.

Blossom is everywhere, trees are leafing up and the cuckoo calls constantly whilst the mated pair of buzzards spy on us from above on the thermals of a warm day. We are trying to reclaim the polytunnel for planting. Only the new grapevine planted so far, the aim being that the shade from the leaves will protect it from the worst excesses of summer heat. There are still brambles and bracken to pull and regular watering required to rehydrate the soil, damaged from two years of neglect and no watering. The nectarine has magically blossomed and set fruit, her roots must run very deep.

We do however still have the forest garden and orchard. Some casualties but many trees are thriving, the butterflies are everywhere and our every move is monitored by the resident robins who have to inspect every ounce of turned earth for hidden treasure.

Unfortunately it is back to the UK next week for another scan and of course that always brings anxiety. Living one day at a time is a lesson that can be taken from nature and it is what I try to do. There are difficult times for many people at the moment. Poverty is a reality for many people and counting your blessings is the order of the day.

Progress Being Made

 No new pictures I am afraid, I still haven't found my camera lead but we are making steady progress. We have a young cockerel and four mixed breed hens for eggs. No eggs yet but as the days lengthen we hope that will be remedied. Thanks to a Christmas gift we bought eight fruit trees, a Mirabelle, white mulberry, apricot, almond, persimmon, nashi pear, Williams pear and a black walnut. They have been duly planted around the property. Thanks to a wonderful man called Will our land is being cleared and brambles zapped. Lots more areas to clear but he has reclaimed around two thirds of our land and it is looking incredible. In places the brambles were eight feet high and unfortunately some plants and trees have died but the ones that remain are looking big and beautiful. We have three new hand made windows on order, they should be installed in the next week. It will be wonderful to look out at the views and the cardboard currently blocking the cold wind will be composted with pleasure. Will is also running new plumbing to the bathrooms and kitchen. We have been without running water for nearly two years now (although we were in the UK for most of that) and I can't wait to hear the sweet sound of a flushing toilet, music to my ears. 

Today I planted my first seeds, mostly peppers and tomatillos into the propagator. Life's possibilities are opening up for us now and it feels good. Birds are singing, bulbs are springing and our first daffodils are in bloom. 

We Are Back (not with a bang, but with a whimper).

 We got back here eventually, hopefully for a long time but with cancer you never know. I had more chemo and a big operation on my lungs (thank you Royal Brompton Hospital) and now I am officially no active disease so we begin the 'wait and see' phase. The land is green and thriving, so many birds everywhere but we can't access it due to the impenetrable jungle of brambles and nettles. Our mighty cat is still here, a bit thinner and older but he kept the mouse hordes mostly at bay and the fabulous Amanda fed and watered him in our absence. Leaving him was far from ideal but our temporary accommodation was not suitable for him and we believe he was happier in his home. The alternative was putting him down before we left and we believe we made the right call this time. 

The house still has no functioning water, the roof has leaked in several places, mice are everywhere, they ate their way into our emergency food stash but it is SO GOOD to be here. No pics this time, I haven't found my camera yet, still unpacking to do but my soul is singing in response to Petas. this is where we belong, we have been through tough times but we got here eventually. Battered but not broken, I am pretty disabled, can't walk far, short of breath on the slightest exertion but we have the summer ahead of us.

San Juan celebrations tonight, the price of sardines has rocketed and I can't jump the fire but I haven't had the energy to sin much anyway. Perhaps next year I shall be more in need of cleansing fire.

Best wishes to you all, Nicky and Tim xxx

Time Out

My cancer has come back, it has spread to my lungs and we are devastated. More tests and treatment beckons so I am going to take a break and concentrate on getting through this for myself and for my family. Sometimes in life shit happens and we shall deal with this as best we can.

Autumn Harvest

Yesterday was a beautiful day and we sat in the sun and processed the dried pea and sugar-snap peas from their haulms ready for planting next year. The whole family are here for a week helping me to harvest our home produced food mountain. We have our biggest ever pumpkin carried by my daughter Cat.

A huge tub of butternut squashes adds to the mountain.

The dried bean vines have been set out to dry both for beans to plant next year and dry beans for over winter stews. The turkeys are growing well and are starting to get their wattles. We seem to have three boys and a girl again. They are keeping the grass down in the orchard rather beautifully.

I am still very busy processing the fruit and veggies for the freezer. The sauerkraut has done well so far and stewed fruit is the order of the day for breakfast every morning. The weather is mixed but the rain is very welcome. The brush-cutter is back out and we are fighting to reclaim some of the forest garden from the brambles whilst still making time for trips out to see the beauty that is Galicia. As usual my medical tests are inconclusive and I now have to wait for a month for the biopsy results to come back. I seem to spend a lot of time waiting for medical results but I am not complaining. It really does beat the alternative.

"Thar she blows"

We don't have a hurricane thank goodness and my heart goes out to all of those who are losing everything to Dorian, but the Autumn gales are knocking us about a bit. It has been a dry summer despite the cloudiness but the veggies have held up well. My beans are the latest victim of the gusty wind and we have given up on re-erecting them until the gales have gone.

Our soil is thin because we are on a stony hillside and the canes are just not well anchored enough. We have eaten and frozen tons of them and most days I am stewing fruit from our trees or making chutney from our veggies. In good news the lupins are fattening up well. I am not sure how you tell when they are ready to eat but I will keep an eye on them.

The turkeys remain happy and chatty, they really are very sweet.

Our sweetcorn has been a great success and very tasty. I shall be saving seed from this variety.

We are on course to produce the largest pumpkin that we have ever grown. It is still ripening but it is going to be huge.

This summer has been magical so far. After suffering from cancer and going through the surgeries and chemotherapy I wanted, actually really needed, to spend some time with Tim in our piece of heaven and we have done it. This place is our dream and having been apart so much over the last few years because of Tim's work we have been hiding away together like hermits just enjoying the best food and drink that Galicia can provide (the finest in the world), enjoying our own company, and enjoying nature at it's best and most magical. Later this month yet another round of scopes, scans and blood tests start, always a time of anxiety but I go  into it feeling like the luckiest woman alive.

Meat and Veggies

Despite the still changeable weather we are having a productive year. We recently killed the meat chickens and they were/are beautiful. They have done really well. All eight grew well and the place is awfully silent without the daily chorus of crows of varying tones and tunes. They have all dressed out at around 4.5 kilos and cost us around 8.50 euros each in total but more importantly they lived well, ate well and died well at our hands. I could not do this if I thought that they had suffered unduly.

The veggies also remain productive. As usual we have a courgette glut so chutney is calling me. I just need to get myself organised.

As ever the tomatoes have gone blighty but we are getting a few and the peppers are slow to come online with the continuing cold cloudy spell. It was stormy last night, unusually strong for the time of year and our winter wood has got wet again. We just need a long enough hot dry spell to get it dried enough to put away in the woodshed.

The lupins are beautiful. I am completely in love with them and I haven't even eaten any yet. The bees also adore them.

The sweetcorn is also very beautiful and the colour is so intense. I await the first cobs with great excitement.

In the background you can see the forest garden which is slowly developing. I should write a blog dedicated to just that sometime soon. Although some sections have 2 metre high brambles, most of the trees have survived and are starting to look like trees. They are now steadily coming on line and we have our first kiwi's, plums and persimmons to add to the many other varieties of fruit we already enjoy. Roll on nut heaven if we live long enough to see that. Our dream is to eat walnuts from our own trees.

A Month On

The solstice has passed and we enjoyed a sneaky bonfire and a bottle of wine. You need a permit out here for bonfires but barbecues are allowed and on the night of San Juan everyone has bonfires to celebrate the pagan midsummer and drive away evils by jumping over the fire. We didn't jump over ours but we got rid of a lot of last year's brush and waste. A month on from the last pic and the veggies are doing well despite the rather cold and rainy June. The grass and weeds have grown well as have the slug and snail population but local corn is struggling and tomatoes and peppers are very behind.

My sweetcorn is doing quite well but I started it in the polytunnel early this year and it has paid off. I also had good germination on the edible lupins so fingers crossed they will do well. I am a bit worried about snails but nothing awful has happened yet.
The polytunnel has yielded our first tomato of the year yesterday and we are eating loganberries for breakfast. I spotted a flower on a courgette yesterday as well so hoping for a good squash year.

Our lovely chickens are growing fast and are now fed twice a day. They adore Tim, but perhaps it is the jug in his hand that attracts them to him. Whenever he passes by the fence they run to him excitedly, wings flapping to give them extra speed.

It looks as though the heat wave forecast for most of Europe is going to miss us here in Galicia. We have a low pressure hanging off the coast which is pushing the heat past us and we are all grateful for that. The forecast is for low twenties which is enough for me. Finally a pic of Nosher who is making the most of his straw bale whilst he can. We use the straw for mulching in the summer and he is always disappointed when we take it away. Dreaming of 'ratting' perhaps?

Edited to add that we have our view back. Unusually they have been cutting back deciduous woodland this week and we just noticed that the woodland at the bottom of our land has gone so we can see for miles again. Unfortunately this was mixed oak woodland as well as pine and probably full of nesting birds at this time of year. We are hoping that they replant with native species but I expect it will be pine or eucalyptus, neither of which is any good for wildlife.

Growth Spurt

Post sheep, the grass is coming back with a vengeance and I have been busy planting out home raised seedlings with others brought in from the local market. I am a fan of Carole Depp and in the spirit of good prepping (for the downturn that is to come) I am trying to source, test and refine local varieties of veggies which are tough enough to cope with changes in climate and feed us.

We are trying 'Granny's beans' this year bought from an old lady at the local market. She assured me that they were good eaten green and for drying so we shall see. Another newbie for this year are sweet lupins which can be eaten green or dried. Tomatoes and potatoes both readily get blight here so although I am still trying to grow tomatoes, I am also putting my faith in oca and may move to tomatillos both of which are blight free even if the yields are a little less than their domesticated relations.

It looks as though it will be a good loganberry year.

Flowers keep blooming and beer traps are working against the slug and snail menace. All that cheap beer going to waste, it makes me want to weep.

Finally the darling meat chickens are having a fabulous time in the orchard. Hesitant at first they now spend all day eating, grazing, snoozing, dust bathing and chasing insects in the long grass. I often sit and watch them doing what chickens should. Their chicken mates are at this moment shut up in sheds, never seeing daylight or experiencing the joy of summer afternoons dozing in dappled shade. I know that eating meat is unfashionable at the moment but the argument for and against doesn't have to be binary, there are always shades of grey.

I firmly believe that there is a place for animals on a small holding, eating good quality natural food, living a good quality of life and providing valuable manure. Money and profit shouldn't be the main driving force behind good animal husbandry and if that makes meat more expensive and out of the reach of consumers on a everyday basis then so be it. We should value meat as the incredible nourishing gift that it is. A life was lost in order to provide it so down with your cheap burgers and nasty feed lots and cages, and a salute to the poor animals forced to endure the living hell of factory farms. We should be getting them out of there and into the sunlight where their joy can enrich humanities soul. Enough of preaching, here is a pic of Sheldon and Cyril et al.

Goodbye Sheep and Hello Chickens

Unfortunately the sheep didn't work out this time. There were six hungry mouths and our secure areas got grazed down quickly and the other larger areas which are less well fenced and/or contain delicate shrubs and trees were escaped from, or the entire contents were eaten down including our rarer trees. The senior ewes had been raised with goats, and like goats they had a taste for trees and shrubs and were happy to stand on their hind legs to reach everything below six feet high. They were also adept at leaning hard on our fence posts, some of which gave under the strain allowing them unfettered access to the out of bounds areas including our neighbour's hay fields.
All this meant that we had to supervise them constantly which wasn't going to work out when Tim started work earlier this week. Luckily a friend knew a farmer with a flock and he took them all to join his gang and I have no doubt they are enjoying their company as we speak. Buster the ram's future is less certain, if he doesn't get on with the resident ram one of them will be next weeks dinner but he was originally a meat lamb so he has had an extra year of life, sex and rock'n'roll. We will have a couple of lambs again to fatten on our land but we now know we don't have enough grass to run a flock year round so lesson learnt. Also 'goaty' sheep are much more destructive than innocent run-of-the-mill lambs which are so much easier to manage.

After the sheep went we moved forward with our plan to raise our own meat with a batch of meat birds. We have eight rubia pollos and they will enjoy the delights of our orchard for most of the summer. We avoided the white Cobb hybrid birds as the poor things grow so fast that they can barely walk and they just sit and get huge very quickly and have to be slaughtered at around 8 weeks old as they go off their feet and have heart attacks due to their size. Another example of man breeding animals for his own use and ignoring their quality of life. At least the brown birds we have will be able to walk, forage and dust bathe and we will let them live until they start to struggle with their weight at which point we will kill them quickly and humanely here on our small holding.

On a cheerier note the weather is all over the place, up to 30 degrees C for a couple of days and now back to single digits but the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing lustily and the veggies are sprouting madly. Nature's bounty brings such joy.

Passing of the Warm Spell

We are back to single digit degrees Celsius and sleety showers. Much more normal for this time of year but less pleasant to work in. I hope the bees are still able to do their thing with the copious blossom. Sam the mighty wolf has gone back to wearing a coat on his walks.

Toby the Wrecker whose super power is 'getting in the way' is much happier as he never feels the cold but struggles in the heat. Our dogs are like chalk and cheese.

We have pear and cherry out at the moment with apple still to come. My daughter is here providing some youthful energy and enthusiasm and she has started battling the brambles and mature broom that fill the forest garden.

To help us in our battle we have secured the services of some sheep, their owners couldn't keep them and so we welcome Buster (Gonad) the ram and his lovely ladies (Lamb)Bretta, Chestnut and their lambs, Hansel, Gretel and Bam.

They eat young brambles and so we need to cut down the two metre high brambles to ground level and let them feast on the young emerging sprouts to keep it down, but first we need to get some electric fencing up and running to keep our own and neighbours dogs away from them. In the mean time they have the fenced chicken run and orchard to themselves while we do the preparation work.
Add to that soil improvement work, digging out the compost heaps and wormery and planting out the seedlings into the polytunnel and there is plenty of work to keep us going.

A Lovely Morning

Today is so warm that it seeps into your bones. I just hope that it is not a false Spring where the budding plants get caught by a late frost. Bumblebees are working their magic and I heard my first woodpecker drumming this year.

Nosher is working as hard as ever, always on the lookout for rodents. The daffodils are exquisite and crocus open in the sun.

I am very pleased with the growth the green manure has put on over winter. It will soon be time to dig it in but I am tempted to leave some to set seed for next winter. The locals use overwintering turnips as green manure with the added bonus that they eat the green tops and animals will eat the roots. It all gets ploughed in before they plant their potatoes or corn.

Finally the nectarine is putting on it's beautiful show. My only problem is removing the excess fruit after it sets, it literally sets hundreds every year. A very hard working tree with beauty, an excellent bee tree, some shade beneath it and delicious fruit, what more could I want?

Sunrise

As ever photos don't do nature justice. The scene through the small window took my breath away this morning. Time to feel insignificant against the wonder that is our planet.