Liz loves September on the smallholding (From Smallholder)

Liz loves September on the smallholding

8:00am Saturday 28th August 2010 in

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I love September with a passion. Really I should hate it as I was not a huge fan of school but despite those gloomy memories, the excitement of harvesting from the garden and from the fields, the warmth of the days compared with the slight crispness of the nights and the dramatic changing of the countryside all combine to make it one of my favourite months together with May. Both these months herald a change and that in itself is exciting. Make your winter plans in September and you can look forward to a warm and comfortable season, make your summer plans in May and you can confidentally expect to have a good harvest. This autumn and winter we are planning to plant a cross between a permaculture forest garden and a traditional orchard on our smallholding. Our large veg patch has gradually been moved (albeit smaller) closer to the house to raised beds and a more controlled situation – with a poly tunnel also awaiting erection. So we have decided to utilise the previous garden area to experiment with ideas such as a fruit hedge, a ‘grow your own” foraging area, nut trees, apple trees and even to introduce funghi. We are going on a course run by the Eastern Apple and Orchard Project on how to start an orchard which I think will be very helpful and are keenly viewing a DVD on Forest Gardens. In this month’s Smallholder we continue to follow the fortunes of a reader who is using home grown willow to heat their house and also examine a grant scheme to plant more woodland.

We feature one of my favourite poultry breeds this month, the Marans. I don’t have any of these at the moment, a situation I must rectify at some point. Although as freely admitted in our article, they are not the greatest egg layers, what they do lay (not too lower a number) are so stunning you can forgive them. We all know that there is no extra nutritional gain in brown eggs but there is lots of joy to gain from their appearance. The Marans eggs are truly dark brown, often close speckled and are well worth waiting for. It’s also a useful table bird making it a good all rounder and a truly distinctive and useful breed.

My Abacot Ranger duck (see the article on Eclipse plumage in this month’s bumper poultry section for more details on this interesting breed), is currently broody and is being very persistant so I do hope she will be successful. When she leaves her eggs, she carefully covers them up with a mixture of the bedding (shavings) and her own feathers. All the other ducks have taken it upon themselves to sit with her but we shall have to move her separately when (and if) she brings off ducklings.

I’ve been asked again to judge at the City Farm Show held at Capel Manor Enfield on the 18th September. It is open to the public and is a great day out. It’s very hard judging as the animals are always so beautifully presented by the (mainly) young people and are very calm as they are used to being handled. It makes choosing a winner particularly hard but I can truly say this is one of the days I look forward to most in the year. Some of the farms concentrate on particular rare breeds and produce some stunning examples. One farm has very good pure breed Aylesbury ducks which are very scarce and not seen very often. The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens (FCFCG) marks its 30th anniversary this year and are launching the Federation’s oral history project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will help record the experiences of people who have been involved with the community farming and gardening movement during the last three decades. Some of the grant will be used to develop a toolkit for local groups to record and preserve their own histories.

FCFCG Chief Executive Jeremy Iles told Smallholder: “Our work in supporting community farms and gardens, and the job they do in creating opportunities for local people, is something we feel is well worth celebrating. This event gives us the chance to reflect on the past, as well as look ahead to what we need to do in the future.” For more details on this visit www.farmgarden.org.uk Finally with bees almost constantly in the news, it’s also time to prepare for a successful winter in the apiary which means providing enough food at the correct time, something that is more complex than it sounds. Coupled with the often challenging weather conditions, it means that bee keepers, new and old, have to be very much on the ball to ensure that their bees receive enough nutrition to get them through until the flowers are once more productive next spring. Then it’s back to the winter lectures provided by most bee keeping clubs and swopping experiences with fellow bee keepers which is a very positive help to everyone. If you have had a good honey harvest then it won’t be hard to sell it as honey is in great demand or perhaps its time to dust down the books and use it in recipes or even in cosmetics? Honey is such a versatile product with so many uses. As usual – there are never enough hours in the day for smallholders!