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There are loads of ideas running round my head about how I first became interested in gardening and how it has lead to where I am going to be in, say, 3 month’s time from here when I will have harvested from my Allotment properly for the first time in years and will be selling off surplus eggs from the chickens which have yet to be bought. . . Let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet though. I have written this all out and back-dated it a little to be the first entry. Here is a wee story for you:
I was brought up in Scotland by my Grandparents and Uncle. My Grandad always had a sizable vegetable patch. My earliest memory of gardening was of watching a tonne of manure being delivered and Poppop digging it in to the patch. Later that week my brother fell near the manure, cut his chin and had to be taken off to get a tetanus injection. I always think of cut chins when I see a pile of manure.
A few years later we moved house further into the countryside and Poppop continued to maintain his patch in what we called The Paddock, a triangular piece of land above and behind our yellow-bricked house, now using an old caravan as a shed. When we had visitors staying my brother and I would camp out in the caravan with the old gas mantles, the discarded playing cards and the half empty packets of seeds.
After living there for a while my uncle decided to buy some ducks. They were collected in an old hessian potato sack, in the back of Poppop’s company car (if I can remember rightly it was a Renault 9 type van!) and we sank an old bath in The Paddock and fenced off an area for them. We had them for years. We always had eggs from them, hulking large things which were collected from under the rhododendron bushes and could never be trusted to be fresh. We had to break them in to a bowl to check they were edible before scambling them.
We had two apple trees (eating and cooking), gooseberries, I think there were raspberries, potatoes, carrots and probably loads more than that but I paid scant attention to what came out of there. I wish I had been more interested in what was going on. Later on I bought two apple trees for my garden but kept to eating varieties. I remember Poppop gathering the eating apples, wrapping them and storing them in the attic. I only ever remember eating a few after that. I don’t think they were eaten.
We have a fairly uninteresting garden, laid out by the previous owner who had a brilliant plan to flag the whole back garden, leaving rectangular areas clear to plant wild shrubs which all grow far too tall and start to take over. It is only know, after 8 years of being in this house that I am starting to take control of the garden and come up with some ideas to make the garden my own.
Fast forward to my adulthood and a few years ago we had a few pounds to spare and I decided I wanted a greenhouse for our new house and garden. I bought a wormery (the first person I knew to have one), bought two compost bins (long before Councils thought to encourage them) and installed a water butt on the end of the greenhouse. All the ingredients were there for me to become a Green-ish person but somehow it fizzled away and the greenhouse was used for a couple of seasons and then it became a dumping ground for garden tables and chairs, old seeds and pots. The theory was good but there was no one to encourage me to continue with it all.
My *new life* kinda all kicked off earlier this year when we started to get the garden under control again and we dedicated one muddy part of the garden to, what we laughingly refer to as The Allotment. I have brocolli, carrots, pumpkins and strawberries in that part with more carrots and brussel sprouts in seed there now too but there was still one small area of garden which was not going to be actively used and that bothered me.
A couple of Saturdays ago I delivered Jessica out to a friend’s house for a play date, literally in the back of beyond and in the 3 minutes I was there realised that I would love to have a less “building site” or developement” type garden. You know the type: a cul-de-sac of houses, backing on to another cul-de-sac of houses with a rectangular garden, times two, between neighbours. Jessica’s friend has low level walls built of stones and a lawn here and a smaller lawn over there and all very natural looking and some kind of peace about the landscaping. Yea, I know, I wouldn’t have the energy for the upkeep of such a place but dude – it would be fun trying huh?
I came back from that visit a little unsettled but still not knowing what I could put in the empty space. Then I received an excited phone call from my Uncle. He had just ordered a weird thing called an Eglu and urged me to look up the web site that sells them and to look at the wonderfulness of the whole thing . .. This is a chicken run with attitude and he planned on getting 4 chickens to go in it too. (He actually got a Cube in the end.)
I caught his bug and started to think along the lines of *anything is possible* for a while, planning the garden around MY Eglu until reality took hold and I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to afford a new one and second hand Eglus are umm like umm hen’s teeth in this part of the world and although there are plenty in England through eBay they are all listed as Pick Up Only due to the sheer weight and size of them. Then I had a shift in thinking about a run and we headed off to B&Q to buy a shed which we will kit out as a coop and then build a run round that too.
So far we have the base in. We were supposed to have the whole shed built and in place last Sunday but the rain started and forgot to stop. At one point Iain insisted in continuing on with the laying of the blocks and I was determined not to leave him to it so Bailey and I sat under a large golf umbrella on a patio chair and encouraged him on to lay the blocks faster. When the rain got too heavy he joined us under the umbrella much to Bailey’s delight and got his face licked dry for his efforts. Iain – not Bailey.
We stood in the rain trying to work out the shed plans but as the paper got wetter our determination got damper and we gave up. We will finish it another day.
Since deciding to get chickens in the garden I have learned loads and done much research and know new technical words. I have been thinking ahead and am so obsessed with the idea have actually gone to the window at night to make sure *the girls* have been put to bed for the night and have on more than one occasion asked the kids if anyone has let the chickens out yet in the morning. I hate buying eggs now – preferring to wait for the FREE ones when they start arriving and am getting such a kick out of the whole *eating free food from my own garden* malarkey.
I even went to the fishing tackle shop last week and bought a pint of maggots for them, got home and THEN realised WE. DON’T. HAVE. CHICKENS.YET!
Today we ordered the wire for the run and I even ordered some special food which will create less-stinky poo which is better for the garden. I have even ordered 2 new compost bins from the council! And yes, I have names shortlisted. This may surprise you when you remember that neither of my children were named for three weeks after they were born!
It has been fun! I joined the Omlet forum and have found the people there to be really nice and full of advice. I have no doubt that they will keep me right when the chickens finally arrive. That may not be for a while though – can’t have them arriving before the run is ready – can’t have the foxes having Chicken Tonight!