The girls are here!

Just wanted to introduce everyone to Margot and Jerry who arrived this morning.

Chickens, Mice, Cats and Eglus

On a scale of one to super-excited, I’m probably a nine this morning. Why? I finally got the green light from the Royal Bank of Mr Swift to order my Eglu and chickens for the garden. A bit of deliberating over the eglu’s colour, but we finally went for my favourite - purple. The Eglu will arrive with two chickens, a Miss Pepperpot (Margot) and a gingernut ranger (Jerry).

Just need to work out how to break this news to the cats. I’m guessing Max will hide under the bed until at least Christmas, whilst Eli will retreat to his ‘situation room’ (the study) to plan his campaign of attack. Mr Swift and i fully expect him to lose an eye within the first week. On the plus side, Ron the goldfish might get a couple of weeks respite from the feline ‘shock and awe’ attacks.

On a slightly more unpleasant note i think we’re reached that time of year when i have to face my arch-nemesis , the field mouse. One disadvantage of living in a Victorian house next door to a gigantic field is as soon as the nights take a turn for the worse, said mice try and break into my home.

The first autumn we were here I was watching The X-Factor (in my defence there was nothing else on at the time and it was before I owned all seven seasons of The West Wing) and a mouse brazenly scampered out from under the sofa and sat eyeballing me from the middle of the room. The next day i laid out numerous humane traps and caught four of them. Mr Swift was dispatched to release them in the local park. I may hate them but i understand their house invasion isn’t an act of war, but a necessity; hence they get to keep their lives.

Having the cats around has reduced the numbers significantly but not removed the threat entirely. Last Christmas Eve I was sat in bed reading ‘A Christmas Carol’ (a long-standing tradition of mine) when Max came running into the room with a live mouse in his mouth. I think I’d rather have had a visit from Marley’s ghost.

So, imagine my sinking heart when Max spent the whole of last night in the kitchen, sat in the darkness peering underneath the fridge. If they are not in the house already then I give them week. Sigh, time for the humane traps and peanut butter to make a guest appearance.

RIP Summer

The past week in RCC has been tinged with sadness. We’ve reached that time of year where plants that have been flogging their guts out to feed you for weeks head into full-on suicide-mode right in front of your eyes. Despite the wretchedness surrounding the death of my trusty friends, their departure does signal the arrival of my favourite season, autumn.

What’s not to like about autumn? Crisp air, burnt orange leaves, the return of jumpers, Bonfire night and Strictly Come Dancing on the telly – need I go on?

Only one plant is refusing to accept autumn’s on the horizon and that’s the ass-kickin’ courgettes. The best (and least PC) analogy would be to compare them to a Japanese WWII solider who no-one’s bothered to tell the war’s ended. This morning I did see the beginnings of mildew on their leaves which is a tell-tale sign their days are indeed numbered (shhh – don’t tell them). Mr Swift was heartbroken when he learned they’d have to be pulled in a matter of weeks. Clearly he’s become attached to pole vaulting over the top of them on his way to peg out the washing.

So, this weekend we’ll say goodbye to summer with a massive clean-up operation of uprooting the fallen in order to make room for my least favourite gardening crop – the winter/spring brassicas. Call me fickle but I can’t manage the same level of excitement over cabbages and broccoli. For the sake of the blog I’ll do my best to sound animated.

P.S – get your thinking caps on. The blog is in desperate need of a name change seeing as the walk is well and truly over. The winning suggestion will receive a special prize of my choosing

One step closer to The Good Life

The American humorist Kin Hubbard once said "In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it".

The last four weeks have been a terribly busy, but rewarding time at River Cottage Croydon. The many months of toiling over fragile seedlings are paying dividends with a constant supply of food. On the menu at the moment are: tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, beetroots, celery, green beans, courgettes, pink chard, chillies, apples and sweetcorn.

From what i can see Mother Nature’s primary downfall is the inability to stagger a harvest, which requires you to adopt cunning ploys such as freezing and pickling to keep up with the glut.

Take the courgettes for instance. They are like the terminator – they absolutely will not stop producing no matter what you do to them! When I first started gardening I saw a book entitled ‘What will i do with all these courgettes?’ and couldn’t believe anyone would need such a thing. Two years on and I wish I’d brought that bloody book when i had the chance. Anna very kindly gave me a recipe for courgette muffins, which despite most people's initial reservations eventually went down a storm. Nigel Slater published a courgette frittata recipe in last week’s Observer magazine, so clearly he’s having similar issues.

Despite all this success I have to confess to a huge gardening faux pas. I planted what i believed to be calabrese (broccoli to the uninitiated) in my brassica plot only to realise this week that they look very similar to the chili plants growing in the greenhouse.... I expect to have my RHS membership revoked with immediate effect.

By far and away the most exciting news is the expansion of my self-sustainability experiment to include chickens. The girls – Margot and Jerry (a nod to the Ledbetters, long-suffering neighbours of Tom and Barbara in ‘The Good Life’) will hopefully be with me by the end of October. More on this later.