Goals for 2019

New year, new goals!

One Year Goals (by 31 December, 2019)

• Extend vegetable self sufficiency by one month to seven months total
• Set up a chicken coop at the allotment
• Make/obtain a cold frame for the allotment
• Raise at least one batch of chicks

Five Year Goals (by 31 December, 2024)

• Greenhouse erected
• Fully self sufficent in vegetables and seasonal fruit
• Raising/breeding meat birds and replacement layers

Not raising the bar very high here again, but I hope to accomplish all of the one year goals, and hopefully more.

State of the flock, January 2019

I've been trying to transition to a younger flock for several years now--with little success. I prefer to do it as cheaply as possible: the cheapest is to get some fertilized eggs for free, which I managed last year, and can hopefully do again this year. Next cheapest is breeding my own, but is far more complicated and is probably not an option this year, despite having a nearly grown cock in the flock--none of the current hens are worth breeding, really. Then there's the option of buying chicks: it's more reliable than hatching eggs, but still not without its problems, and it can really add up, with chicks being around £3-£5 each (opposed to buying fertilized eggs at £5 for six). And I just can't afford to buy young hens at £20 each, despite it being the easiest method for getting new layers: getting my own eggs shouldn't be so expensive.

We've agreed to take six new rescue hens next month, as a local farm is shutting down. I assume they'll be the same age as our previous rescue hens: 18 months old. We've had some rescues continue to lay well for a year, but some just haven't laid at all; it's a gamble, but we're doing it partly for charitable reasons too. There are still three old rescue hens in the flock right now. They haven't laid since the beginning of December; they have all just molted however, so I expect them all to live another six months at least. The oldest is nearly six years old and the other two are nearly five.

And I'm hoping our little Pekin bantam will go broody again this spring. She's done so two years in a row, but we'll just have to wait and see; I want to get some more eggs under her and some chicks hatched, both for meat and for laying eggs. 

Currently we have seven chickens, one of which is a rooster, hatched last April.  Two hens are laying:  the only hen hatched last year (aka the cheep) and her adopted mother Cookie are taking it in turns to lay one each day.  We also have another hen the same age as Cookie (three years old) and three placid old rescues (four and five years old), none laying. 

Christmas dinner 2018

Christmas dinner 2018 not only featured my own grown vegetables, homebrew and eggs, but fruit and nuts too!

For breakfast I served a loaf of stollen bread: the husband and I spent half an hour cracking the almonds I'd harvested off my tree (back in October) on the Saturday before Christmas, then I soaked them overnight and ground them into paste the next day, adding a little icing sugar and egg white. This was rolled into a log and the stollen dough folded around it before baking. It was wonderfully almondy.

We bought quite a lot of veg from the shop as it was cheap cheap cheap (I actually bought loads and froze, dried, and brined the extra), but we didn't neglect our own veg either. We had fresh garden Brussels sprouts, and the last big green squash, as well as our own garlic in the gravy. They were lovely and I even ended up freezing half the squash puree afterwards, as there were too many leftovers to fit in the fridge!

Alongside our dinner I served a bottle of blackberry and elderberry fizzy wine which was started in September 2018. I'd picked the berries wild at the local country park and started the main (non fizzy) batch but had a little leftover after filling the demi-john; I put this into a wine bottle, capped it tightly, and let it sit in the cupboard to ferment and go fizzy. It wasn't volcanic, but it was pleasantly refreshing and as the husband didn't much care for it, I drank most of it to myself. We also cracked open a bottle of 2017's cider to be extra merry.

For dessert, later on in the afternoon, I served my Christmas pudding. I made it very soon after Thanksgiving, and it had been maturing in the fridge since. In it was the last of our own eggs (we had to buy eggs for Christmas breakfast as none were laid for weeks) and the blackcurrant harvest, saved in the freezer since summer. Although I'd never tried making Christmas pudding with frozen berries before (it also contained the usual dried raisins and currants, both bought), the result was delicious.

2018 Goals revisited

Let's have a look at how I did on my goals for 2018:

1 Year Goals (by 1 Jan 2019)

• Extend vegetable self sufficiency by 1 month (6 months total)
• Cut down sycamore tree in back
• Continue improving soil in front beds
• Raise at least one batch of chicks

5 Year Goals (by 1 Jan 2024)

• Fully self sufficient in vegetables and seasonal fruit
• Raising/breeding meat and replacement layers
• Greenhouse erected 

Notice I  achieved all my one year goals!  Though to be honest, I did set the bar pretty low in 2018...

For my five year goals, I want to continue raising my own meat birds (or spare cockerels for eating) and laying hens;  as we only got one hen from two broods of seven chicks, I'm not quite counting that as a fully achieved goal--instead of layerS we just got one layer.  Ah well.  Hopefully 2019 will be a better year for hatching pullets.  And I'm still working towards full self reliance in both fruit and veg;  I think it'll be within the next few years.

And that greenhouse?  Unless we get a free one, it's probably staying on the five year list.

See 2017's goals here. 
See 2016's goals here.

Grand total for garden food, 2018

Well, here it is.  I harvested from 1 Jan 2018 to 31 December 2018:

153 lb vegetables

859 eggs

(This doesn't count my garlic or squash harvest, both of which were unweighed.)

My totals for last year were higher at 201 lb of veg and 1643 eggs.  Considering that I didn't grow potatoes this year (and grew 45 lb of them last year), I feel I did pretty well.  However, only half the amount of eggs?  A disgrace!  Especially since we supported a flock of similar sizes both years.  I'll discuss our chicken situation in a later post.

Most of my fruit, like last year, was unweighed, and with just a small increase from last year's--but I beat the total apple harvest by a mile:  more than a hundred from each tree, compared to just two from each tree in 2017 (though I'm not counting on such a glorious harvest two years in a row). 

All in all, it was a good year, and a good harvest, and we're still eating some of the preserved veg, as well as fresh.  I hope to beat 2018's, and 2017's harvests in 2019.  In fact, I hope to beat it by a lot more than just a few pounds.  Here's to another successful gardening year!

Collecting firewood from the garden

It's time to winter prune my fruit trees!  Today I gently pruned my Laxton Fortune apple;  it's a partial tip bearer, meaning it generally fruits at the tips of branches.  I only took off a couple little shoots which were growing in the wrong directions (away from the fence it's growing against) and tied down a couple of branches to make them more horizontal. 

The Spartan apple got a much harder prune, as I took off the top quarter which had outgrown the top of the fence.  I'm trying to keep these trees within my reach for ease of harvest, and it had grown quite a lot taller over the past year.  As it's a spur bearer, I also was able to nip off the ends of a couple of the long horizontal branches, and then a couple also got tied down.  While they're not truly espalier, I do keep these two apple trees confined to two dimensions as much as possible;  the harvest and care is very manageable and they are partially supported by the fence they're next to.

I cut the prunings into smaller pieces and collected them into a large cardboard box.  For good measure, I pruned a nearby rosebush and added those too, filling the box.  I put this box in my garage, where it will hopefully dry out over the next year to be ready as firewood.   After I'd done this, I finally bit the bullet and cut up Williams pear tree--you know, the one that blew down last year;  it's been lying in the back corner of the garden ever since.  I filled up another box with its branches cut small;  only the central trunk remains, which will need a saw rather than the loppers I used.

And hey, I've got one more box of already dried elder trimmings which the husband pruned last year.  Every elder in my garden is a weed, and I have plenty!  I keep trying to kill them by continually pruning out new shoots, but for the most part, they just keep growing back--luckily most of them are only small.  A couple were big trees by the time we cut them down, and remain as large trunks with lots of shoots;  these ones produce so much that I've been saving them for firewood too.  This lot of long, thin shoots came from such an elder, and have been lying on the edge of the driveway, where they've dried out perfectly;  I collected them, breaking them easily into smaller pieces.  That's three boxes in one day, one for now and two for later.

December 2018 Food Totals

Vegetables:

21.5 oz chard
2 oz salad greens
13 oz celery
4 oz chili pepper
3.5 oz tomatoes!
1 oz bean sprouts
6 oz Brussels sprouts



Total: 51 oz, or 3 lb 3 oz

Note:  I weigh all my vegetables after preparation:  peeling, trimming, etc.  Does not include some fresh herbs which were too small a quantity to weigh, i.e. less than 0.5 oz.

Fruit: 

No fruit harvested this month

Eggs:

Total: 9 eggs from 5 hens
Total feed bought: 2 bags mixed poultry corn (40 kg)

Preserves:

4 medium jars dehydrated carrots (bought carrots)
1 large jar fermented carrots (own garlic and dill seed, bought carrots)
4 large jars sauerkraut (bought cabbage)

Homebrew:  

Bottled up 4 L cider vinegar

Elderberry/blackberry wine still fermenting

Cider still fermenting

Cider vinegar still fermenting