A sign of the times.

Over the weekend we were invited to friends for dinner, during the evening the conversation turned to the usual topic, growing food. The property that our friend have is rented and when they moved in the garden was for want of a better description, a junk yard. Gradually they got it cleaned up but realised that what little soil remained was rubbish, in fact it was mainly stones with no invertebrate activity at all so they built raised beds and filled them with whatever they could get, farmyard manure, turf (peat) mould, old bales of straw.
 They have now been there for three years, within two years they were self-sufficient in vegetables, eggs, chicken and pork, all from a plot of less than a quarter of an acre. They started with no soil, and now have a productive garden, but soil needs feeding by means of more compost. We told them the best places to get washed up seaweed, invaluable for the garden, this got added, and we took them to the mushroom farm for spent mushroom compost that we had used for many years. This farm was a smallish concern with a dozen or so mushroom tunnels, a family run business that provided employment for several local people in an area where the only local employment would be at the coal depot.
The day before our meal with them they had phoned the farm to arrange to pick up a load of spent compost only to find that this farm was now out of business. I don't know how many years they had been there, I do know that for the past quarter of a century we had got our compost from them, but small is now no longer beautiful, they could not compete with the big farms.
 I spent  most of yesterday afternoon trying to find a mushroom farm within our province, there is just one left, they have forty tunnels, but do not allow people on site to collect it, instead they have contracted out the collection to one person.
 Every one was very helpful, including the contractor and he would deliver a load, a load being seven tons, that's one hell of a lot of shovelling and for us not an option, we can however go to the contractor's place and he will leave a load out by his gate but it will be loose, not in bags.
For us this is doable, for our friend I doubt it as he suffered a series of strokes just over a year ago and now has limited mobility. Some how we will both get it sorted, it will just take some time to work out the logistics of it all, even with our hens, rabbits and donkeys we always need more compost.
Incidentally, the meal was superb, all home produced and the company was excellent. Many thanks guys.

Corkscrew Willow.

The last week has been very snowy, only a couple of inches at a time but it has proved very revealing. We have a pair of foxes that do the rounds of our driveway, and fields. They have inspected the hen fence boundary all round, they have however made no attempt to go over the electric fence to get closer to the poultry. Now I don't know why foxes don't jump over what we have, having been assured is an easily clearable height for the foxes that live in this part of Ireland, our fence is 1.2m high, but someone we know has had foxes jumping cleanly over a sheep fence 1.25m so in theory our foxes would be able to get into our run. We have used this type of fencing for years, in fact when we had the farm  we had five acres of hen paddocks fenced this way and never lost a bird inside the runs to a fox. I suppose there is always a first time, and maybe I'm tempting providence by believing that our hens are protected from Mr and Mrs fox,

Felix footprints, the only cat that wants to venture out .

Fox footprints.

but the foot prints show that the fence has not been breached, the snow has also shown us that no other mink has so far taken up the vacant territory left by the previous killer, long may it continue.

Fox and crow footprints.

The snow is very pretty,

it shows off the trees wonderfully but it rather curtails any out door activity. The seed box has been sorted and whatever new seeds are required have been ordered. This year we will cut down on the amount that we plant, we could easily feed a family of four and there is only the two of us, we will grow the same number of varieties, just less of them. We should have  a reasonable crop of asparagus, and the only other new thing is watercress. I don't particularly like salad, (the lettuce type) but a salad with watercress as it's base is different, plus it's high in iron and makes lovely soup. Every year I plant various lettuce as Simon does like his salads but well over 95% ends up as hen or rabbit food so I feel as though it a waste of my time planting a crop that only one of us enjoys.
Meg is now well established, she gives poor Tess hell, pulling at her tail and her thick hair, Tess however is a very laid back dog and takes it without complaint. The cats on the other hand are finding her a pain in the proverbial, and are mainly staying clear.

How am I expected to relax?

They can't even enjoy a box without her trying to annoy them, but they are good at giving her lessons in respect, and she is learning.