Our Little Farm
Nine Acres of Heaven
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The cottage was built in 1812 the year Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington were doing battle at Waterloo.
When we moved in 15 years ago there was a small and overgrown cottage garden to the front and to the rear a briar and nettle infested potato plot.
The ground is heavy clay and being a glacial valley is very stony. There are two fast flowing streams at the front and side of the garden and to the front and side is forest. There is a lot of bracken hereabouts so we get swarms of biting gnats between June and September and slugs are a big problem.
The land that was to become our kitchen garden had been neglected for well over 30 years and was full of briars, thistles, couch grass, bricks, slate, coal ash, rock and junk.
First we cut back the briars and thistle and burnt them. Next we cleared out the coal ash, rusty barbed wire and as many rocks as we could see.
We marked out the plots and started to dig by hand but this was a very slow and back breaking exercise, so we brought in a small tractor with a flail mower and a powerful rotovator to help.
First we used the flail to reduce the heavy growth to near lawn quality and then ran the powerful rotovator back and forth. This produced a lot of stone which we picked up and moved in the wheelbarrow to an ever growing heap. Some of the rock that the machine dug up was was large it jammed the rotors, but eventually after many passes, this excellent machine produced a seed bed.
We marked the garden out into nine equal sized plots, 14’ x 10’ and one 15 x 14 for the poly tunnel divided by grass paths and a central path topped with a liner and the small stones gathered from the garden itself.
Four of these would be managed on a four year crop rotation. First year potatoes, second cabbage tribe, third peas and beans fourth year roots.
The remaining beds are for permanent crops including, soft fruit, asparagus, rhubarb, comfrey and herbs.
Every year we have dug in large quantities of well rotted manure and garden produced compost to build the fertility in the beds.
The comfrey, is cut three times a year for composting and to produce liquid feed.
This year we have had a bumper crop of strawberries and raspberries and the new potatoes are producing a good yield.
Every night after dark, we go out into the garden with our margarine containers slug hunting. Most nights we fill a container with these slimy pests. By doing this every night our crops have stayed healthy. These are devoured by our chickens the next day who find them a most tasty snack and help them to produce delicious tasting eggs!
A mountain location
The cottage garden
Flail mowing the kitchen garden!
In the polytunnel
A bumper crop of strawberries
The Garden
