I must apologise for the lack of posts. I have been battling on with the house garden and working lots in town. Sadly posts will become few and far between – I have been offered a full time post with one of my clients and I start back full time employment on 1st July!

It was quite clear that the ground we have been renting is not suited to growing veg on a suitable scale, albeit, not one handed. Perhaps if I had help things might have been easier, but the soil is very heavy clay and prone to being waterlogged. Last spring we lost 5,000 plants in the wet summer.

I intend to discuss with our field landlord irritating the lease in the autumn. We shall downsize the hen flock and relocate them to the house garden. The big hen house will also be relocated to the garden and be returned to it’s original role as a shed. I am still undecided about the future of the big tunnel. I guess I could arrange to leave it erected. We still have a 30ft by 10ft tunnel in the house garden in addition to 2 standard greenhouses and a lean-to affair. Currently I feel we should sell the tunnel, except the polythene (which would be almost impossible to reuse on that tunnel if it was relocated anyway) and use it to recover the wee tunnel and save the spare for cloches and the like.

There is still just under an acre of garden at the house so there’s plenty to keep us occupied in the evenings and weekends. The 3 pigs have cleared a good area and this is currently planted up with cabbages, tatties and squashes. I rotovated the last bit and it will get peas and leeks planted in it over the next couple of weeks. There’s also about 200 bedding plants waiting to be planted out in the main garden!

I don’t plan to shut the blog down. Not at the moment anyway. There’s still loads of veggie stuff going on, albeit for our own consumption. I also have a broody hen sitting on some fertile eggs. The three Berkshire pigs go to slaughter in 2 weeks so there should be something interesting to report from time to time.