This is on my mind .. 'potatoes'

As I look at my chitting potatoes today, I can't help but wonder at the lives of those in past generations who depended almost entirely on this crop for their food source - and the risk of such reliance on that one food crop.

I feel privileged to have such an abundance of food to choose from today, such variety of healthy crops that have been developed (from their wild counterparts) to be bountiful, nutritious, delicious, beautiful .. and self sustaining (i.e. real, non hybrid, seeds that we can save and grow on ourselves).

Thank goodness for all those salads, legumes, brassicas, seeds, herbs and grains that I love to sow, grow, admire and eat - their diversity of colour, shape, flavour and habit. I love that diversity.

'This is on my mind' is a Friday theme from Rhonda Jean at Down to Earth .. what's on YOUR mind this Friday?

Latest building and planting progress

Leo seems to have found the catmint I brought down for him, just as it starts to grow again. That's one happy cat.

Time shoots on and I thought I'd better give an update before I forget what we've been up to. I'll also show some progress pics.

We really did so well with having Neil over for two weeks of hard graft. As well as the highlight of 'studding' they got loads done.

First the plasterboarding of the downstairs ..

They nearly made it look easy!

Then the erection of that shed. It now holds the pressure vessel for our borehole .. the blue pipe is where our water comes out. So, we now sort of have running water!

There is also the marvel of the 'portable' chicken house made entirely from scrap wood (seen here being treated with preservative by my good self).

It was so cold at night in the house recently I though of kipping in the chicken shed myself!
In theory the chicken house is portable, but in practice it is a bit of a struggle - with two people .. but it is VERY sturdy!

It is rumoured that quite soon we will have some chickens to go in it .. and even sooner there may be a couple of ducks (Khaki Campbells - the best egg layers) to test run it - until they get their own house.

Anyway, this week I've finally got on with some seed sowing (and ordered my severely oversized polytunnel!). I've sown tomatoes, sweet peppers, chilli's and melon. First I sprouted them for 24hours in tepid water (it works for sprouted seeds for eating, so I think it will help the seeds germinate quickly), ... I had a lot of varieties so had each variety in water in a tea light case and put them all in eggboxes ..

then I put them in damp compost in seed trays and took them around to my lovely neighbour Jenny, who is kindly letting me start them off in her wonderfully warm airing cupboard - thank you Jenny! The hot water bottle propagator is not forgotten though - I'll get that up and running to keep the chill off the seedlings when they are little. The polytunnel is due to arrive in a couple of weeks, so should be offering them some protection pretty soon afterwards.

The rest of my potatoes went into car tyres and old compost bags and next up for planting will be the jerusalem artichokes and Oca (other odd tubers).

I also had some edible seeds sprouting - alfalfa (which suffered in the cold), aduki beans and sunflowers. As usual, I felt guilty eating the sunflowers (I keep imagining all those sunflowers that would never be if I ate them - silly, but true) so I potted up some of the more advanced ones.

Some of the aduki beans were pretty advanced too (had sprouted little leaves and had good roots) so I potted some of them up too in the hope of getting a crop this summer.

Work on the house has slowed a bit this week (we're suffering from the loss of Neil - he was such a hard worker .. I fear we are slacking a bit!) and we seem to be mostly moving wood about so we can move more plasterboard in.

It has been really wet the past couple of days, so the pond is filling well. Here is an earlier pond pic.

It may just look like a big clay puddle to you, but to me it holds great mystical charm. I am utterly amazed at how captivating a body of water can be (I've never had a pond before - could you guess?). There are already water boatmen and other creatures finding it and when the sun shines I could spend my entire day just gazing into it. I love how the sky reflects in it, how you can see the wind and rain affecting it (whilst sitting dry in the house), how the refections change when you see it from a different angle. I'm looking forward to getting a few pond plants in and getting more life in there.





Finally, we've had an article about the house posted in the county paper - the Leitrim Post - and .. it was all good (they found out about it from the blog apparently).




Well, it isn't everyday a house appears in 12 hours. People are still stopping buy for a look, even now.

One week to go / polytunnel planning

To say that I'm counting down the days until our house arrives (I still can't get used to the fact that it just turns up on a lorry one day) is a massive understatement. I have been counting down for quite a while - and getting very excited at the 'two months to go', 'one month to go', 'two weeks to go' phases.
So, this is the final countdown, the final week of waiting. I'm trying my best at distraction tactics, as somehow I'm getting nervous rather than excited - even though it seems that we'll have friends and relations there to witness the great event (it is the thought of seeing walls flying through the air that really causes a stir - hopefully it will all be very controlled and serene!)

Anyway, we had a great time visiting the Sally Gardens Smallholding near us last week and it was a great help to my polytunnel quest to get to see theirs. Many thanks to Rebecca and Dan for answering my near endless questions (and subtly getting me hooked on the idea of ducks .. well their ducks managed that all by themselves - cute, big eggs and great slug eaters).

I've been trying to plan what to grow in our tunnel and then trying to work out the size. The bigger the better seems the golden rule - and we do have a lot of space, so it is very tempting to go mad - especially with the poor summers we've had lately. I'd originally thought of 4x8 m (25x14ft?) but I'm now getting tempted towards 6x12m (nearer 21x40ft?). We're not on site, so it is hard to make the decision without marking it on the ground - but I really would like to get an order in this week - so we can put it up in early March (just after the house goes up) and thus make use of it asap.
Funny enough nerves are setting in even about the tunnel - size, cost, ventilation etc. Silly me. I've already convinced some friends to help put it up, so really all should go well.

Here, there is some progress on the fruit and veg (despite not sowing yet).

The garlics in pots are putting on some growth (we'll plant them out later as they are too close together to stay in the pots).
Our bare root raspberries (autumn bliss) have arrived and have been heeled into a large pot - to take down to site.
and we bought some summer ones in a garden centre to give us a longer season


We now have a small Blueberry (Sunshine Blue), which will go in a pot - probably on the veranda (once we have one).
.. and we have a goji plant! I love the berries so much I think I'd need an acre of them to be self sufficient, but it's a good start.

There are some strawberries on the way - Sophie, Alice and Honeoye to give a long season.

We also have some potatoes chitting away
Despite my plans of waiting to sow until MarchI'm getting very tempted to get the leeks and broad beans started this week - even though it will mean transporting them as frgaile seedlings. We shall see.