A few sheep loose in the top paddock...

[Stonehead]

G'day from Aberdeenshire. I'm an Aussie who took a wrong turn somewhere, found myself up to my armpits in muck, found I liked it and have continued to wallow ever since.

With the OH, the wee lads, the pigs and the chickens in tow, I work a croft full-time and generally manage to maintain an illusion of nonchalantly incompetent self-sufficiency.

To give but one example...

I decided to pull out an old strainer post, so I hitched up a tow strap to my decrepit Landie, engaged low-low and proceeded in a southerly direction.

But to my amazement, after an initial hesitation the strainer post proceeded to follow me down the track. I stopped, got out to have a look and discovered the post was balanced in such a way that a third of it was still in the ground and had carved out a marvelous furrow.

As I was shaking my head in bemusement, I was started to hear laughter coming from our plantation of spruce trees and discovered my neighbour (a farmer of many years experience) in stitches.

Since then, I have been known in local farming circles as the one and only exponent of Aussie ploughing in the district...

Anyway, I digress from introducing myself.

While we rear pigs (and plan on breeding from our pedigree Berkshires), raise rare breed poultry (Scots Greys), struggle with bees (all dead this year from cold), tinker with solar power and a Lister generating plant running on WVO, mess about with ancient tools and piles of junk, I have but two really useful skills.

One, I am mad enough to think that the best way to get an 8in diameter, 8ft long strainer post up a hill is on my shoulder. Yes, the locals do stop and shout "get a tractor", but there's something strangely satisfying about carrying huge lumps of timber to one place, changing your mind, and then taking them somewhere else. All on my shoulder...

Two, I have an affinity (or genetic predisposition) to navvying. By that, I mean I could dig in the Olympics! Last year, I double dug 14 huge beds by hand, then dug beds for the soft fruit, and then moved a very, very large pile of dirt (put there by a JCB) with my shovel and barrow, then moved the pile again. Still not satisfied, I decided to dig out the collapsed retaining wall behind the steading with mattock, spade and shovel. Now, I sit outside in all weathers and gaze with fondness on the 30ft long, 5ft deep and 2ft wide ditch that resulted.

Yes, in Aussie parlance I have a few sheep loose in the top paddock!

Stonehead

PS Hi to Ina - the boys continue to enjoy their tractors. How many lambs are you sleeping with at the moment?

[Chickenlady]

*Steps back nervously, jaw on chest in amazement*

Welcome! Are you the Incredible Hulk?

(Ina - what's this about you sleeping with sheep?)

[Millymollymandy]

Hi Stonehead. I think you will have to have a digging competition with our resident mad allotment digger, Gunners - though I think you might win!

Welcome to the site.

[Shirley]

Hi Stonehead

Great to see you here!!!

Hey, if you are so fond of digging you can come and help us dig here - we've not got a huge amount of land but it's all needing dug.... well apart from the bit where the chooks are (light and buff sussex for us, but looking for some silver dorking)

We could have a working party - Ina?! You too,,,, lambs can come and mow the lawn if you like :))

Oooh actually - you might know of a good place to get gates from at a reasonable price local to us???? We need some for the drive to stop marauding sheep eating our crops , oh and to keep the wee man from escaping and terrorising said sheep.

[Stonehead]

A few phots of the vegetable patch last year...





Then with everything growing well...





This year, the potatoes are moving out to the pig run (400sq metres) leaving us even more space for other veg. We grow potatoes, cabbage, kale, turnips, swedes, onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, carrots, parsnips, horseradish, peas, broadbeans, french beans, lettuce, sorrel, leaf beet, squash, pumpkins, courgettes, beetroot, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, tayberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, plums, apples, tomatoes, herbs and more.

Of last year's crops, we still have a sack and half potatoes, a small quantity of onions and shallots, oodles of carrots and parsnips, cabbage, beetroot and courgettes. We pickle and freeze at the end of summer, keep some root vegetables in the ground over winter (under straw), clamp other root vegetables, and use various storage methods for the different crops.

Our main problem this year was when a flock of pigeons destroyed much of our overwintered cabbage and all our kale in the space of two hours. Still, pigeon makes good eating!

As we're moving some of the crops into the field this year, we bought a BCS 715 two-wheel tractor with rotavator. It's a 9hp beast and is hard work to use effectively (not difficult, just a lot of muscle needed) but it's much faster than hand digging - although not as satisfying.

We ran it through parts of the vegetable patch a couple of weeks ago, mainly to mix the soil thoroughly before re-esablishing the beds. (We laid the patch on top of a horse arena so it's well drained but the soil came from all around the steading and from neighbours. Some of it is sandy, some clay, some has gravel patches, and some is good loam.)

I double dug it last year with plenty of rotted manure and compost, then forked it over at various times but it would have taken a long time to get an even mixture throughout the whole area. The rotavator did it in a day, and I can now go back to working it by hand, having cut at least one year and possibly two from my long-term goal of having a really productive vegetable patch in about six years.

Well, it's time to get back to work now - even if it is blowing a gale and making fencing rather interesting!

Stonehead

[Shirley]

WOW Stonehead

Those pictures have ABSOLUTELY filled me with enthusiasm. Thanks for posting them.

Interesting to see the layout - how big is your veggie plot? Do you use a polytunnel at all? So many questions, might just have to take up that offer and come and visit you all

[Stonehead]

Oh, and before I go, here's a pic of one of my favourite garden tools...



It's a 50-year-old wheeled cultivator. You walk (or better still, jog) to one side of it while its two blades break the soil up and hoik up weeds to great effect.

I also have a wheeled furrower and a wheeled hoe, both of similar vintage and both excellent for working the soil.

Stonehead

[ina]

Hi Stonehead

Good to see you here!

See what happens if I don't go on for one night... You are starting all sorts of rumours!

No sheep in my bed at the moment - and it was only one tiny little lamb that didn't have a mum... It's now quite a lot bigger, sucking like mad, and only needs me to fill up the bucket!

Your garden looks phantastic. As soon as the lambfeeding is over, I'll have to come and see that myself! I covered most of my plot with fleece, to give things a chance to grow at all this year. But it's so windy today, I expect to be busy at lunchtime retrieving my fleece from the neighbours garden, or the field next door.

Must get on with some work...

See you around!

[Wombat]

G'Day Stoney!

good to see another Aussie, even if you did shoot through to Scotland! Welcome to the site!

Nev

[Andy Hamilton]

Hello there stoney and welcome to the site, looks like you have a busy outdoor life there. I must say I envy those rows I wish I could get mine that straight mate.

[Stonehead]

Hello there stoney and welcome to the site, looks like you have a busy outdoor life there. I must say I envy those rows I wish I could get mine that straight mate.

I do most of my measuring in size 10 boots - none of this metric/imperial stuff! So, my beds are four boots apart while the main access paths are six boots wide.

[Stonehead]

*Steps back nervously, jaw on chest in amazement*

Welcome! Are you the Incredible Hulk?

Well, I'm not green but...



Setting off with my third strainer for the day. We've been flat out with both fencing and planting over the past few days, so now I've got a bung knee, sore shoulder, crook finger and a big smile as so much has been done!

Stonehead

[ina]

Obviously practising for the Highland games... You'd stand a good chance tossing the caber! Well, lifting it, anyway.

[Stonehead]

Here's the OH with the strainer post in position. It had to be carried from down behind the trees (extreme right), along the track past the pig hut (with the flat roof), and then up the hill. It's extremely satisfying to stand back at the end of every day and think - yep, we did that!



And this is today's work. Five new paths in, five beds prepared and three down to seed (two with onion sets, one with jerusaleum artichokes). The onion beds have spaces left for companion planting with carrots, parsnips, chamomile and savory.

In all, we'll have four big beds of onions, shallots (already in), carrots, parsnips and herbs; four big beds of lettuces, spinach, leaf beet, pumpkins, courgettes, squashes and cucumbers; four big beds of peas, beans and broadbeans (followed by phacelia for the bees); and four big beds of brassicas. There's another big bed of artichokes, one with more pumpkins and one for seedlings. Then six smaller beds - garlic, strawberries, herbs, rhubarb and horseradish. There's also 400sq m of potatoes going in out in the field, plus mangels and turnips.

The paths are made from chipped and shredded sitka spruce. We have a plantation of these that the electricity people topped (and in some cases felled).

We were laboriously working our way through about 40 trees with axe and bow saw, until a couple of very nice blokes turned up with an industrial chipper and did the lot for us in an hour! They said they had a lot of respect for what we do with almost no machinery and wanted to help.

We made them a cuppa and presented them with some pork chops (from our pigs), fresh eggs (from our chooks) and home-brewed barley wine. They went away well pleased and so were we. Thanks guys!

We'll cover all the paths with the chips over the next week or so.

Let me know if this is too much detail or there are too many pics, but as people seem interested I thought I'd post a bit more.

Stonehead

[ina]

That's the kind of neighbours you need! And I'm sure they can be well pleased with "payment in kind"... (No tax to pay on that! )

Your plot looks very professional. (You are not, by any chance, a closet perfectionist?) I worked on a small farm/market garden a few years back, and that place was a shambles compared to yours... It might look a lot of work to get it so well organised, but I'm sure it'll pay off in the end.

Btw, wasn't Gunners looking for one of those wheeled hoe thingies that you use? Maybe you can give him some tips on how to get one without paying the £335 they want on that one website (special offer!!!).

Well, I should tear myself away from the desk and get back home. Work to do. (Damn, should have taken a few days longer, this server change - would have given me a chance to sort out a few more things for house and garden! )