I've been away for a while just due to being slammed with the day to day grind. With the world rapidly changing, and the windfall I had from our recent bull market it seemed every time I believed I had a spare moment something would pop up. Back in April when we had our first full candle body close below the bottom of the Keltner Channel I sold half of my BTC which was a sort of emotional affair. With the inflow came the demand of what next. Where to invest and placing those investments in a way that offered advantages as things around us shift economically. Crypto won't be slumped enough to buy back in for a couple months so there's been a lot of woodland viewing. But combine that with settling in to a new place and things have been hectic.
Weirdly though in all the madness I've still been collecting photos and writing drafts so when I returned to the blog space I had something to write about. I moved during the last lock down, and found a peaceful remote village to settle in for a period while my partner and I laid plans for our permanent landing zone. We were lucky to find a private let through social networking and a landlord who was happy to take a full pay up for a year on the place. It's hard to find a good holding place before buying in the UK and standard rentals can be a nightmare as can landlords. But we were lucky here. We found isolation and a place to work quietly and also practice gardening and living minimal.
When we moved in we struck up an agreement that we would refurbish the garden (among other things) and send an invoice for the work. It's a rental so most of what we have done we can take with us. However I wanted to grow food as a hedge against rising food prices that are in the offing, and the garden needed a lot of heavy work to even get into a food producing position. What was neat was we were able to charge our landlord for the heavier aspects of the landscaping which offset the things like the costs of pots, seeds, garden furniture, etc.
At the moment I'm practicing for inevitable changes in our economy here in the UK. No I'm not saying world war Z is going to happen because of covid, but prices definitely are going to rise and more lockdowns will definitely occur. So being able to sit in the countryside and not be reliant on grocery store runs for food is high priority for us. I've already taken to buying in bulk supplies of daily staples like tin tomatoes, olive oil, import goods basically that we all use a lot but may suffer increased prices by winter.
Throughout all this I've been collecting photos of progress for Hive. Finding time to blog has been hard but I've always wanted to do a garden journal like many do here on the chain. I also see it as practice for when I purchase woodland and my next house. My hopes are to go all in and really start to make my blogging efforts about sustainable natural cheap. For the two years I'm here awaiting over inflated house prices to fall my time will be spent doing the beta on the idea. So without further preamble here's the journey so far.
Above you can see what we were faced with when we began. The house itself is built into a south facing hill that is actually part of an old iron age hill fort. The slope was originally going to be for placing air pots on to fully exploit the sunlit hill side, but it proved to be to unstable. However the ivy covering everything still had to go. It was killing everything. We also decided we would clear the slope and sow it with a variety of wild flowers for bees, and a large quantity of papaver somniferum (opium poppies). Basically we wanted good insects drawn in and plants that in a pinch had a medicinal use. But the clearing was a pig of a job that involved a lot of landfill runs with garden waste. I also put up a new shed for tool storage.
Slowly over the weeks things began to take shape. A general idea of what would go where started to form. When I tested the soil it became clear I'd have to do some enriching. I used a combo of standard compost along side mushroom compost to achieve this. Of course we had help from my dog throughout as you can see. As usual she is always hard at work.
When it came time to sow we chose a variety of beet roots, carrots, parsnips, etc. We devoted the two circular beds to alliums. They are heirloom seeds so we wont have to buy again next year. Sadly we weren't able to do as much this year as we hoped to. The landscaping and reforming of the area took longer than we expected. But we will be rolling the space into winter crops like leeks, chard, beetroot, cabbage, and sprouts for the autumn with a much better start than in the spring.
Above you can see the stat of the kitchen herb garden. I've since added more to it as it is something I heavily rely on when cooking. Also, why have a country home if you don't have a kitchen herb garden? Sort of a must. What was exciting in a way was clearing the hill and finding where people had put in steps. There's not much use to them now, but my partner decided to go a wee bit potty... No not unstable. She became infatuated with buying pots. Pots for herbs, lavender, blueberry, etc. Our trip to the garden centre turned into tense negotiating. She wanted to buy over twenty of the clay decorative one, I couldn't see the point as I wanted to focus on food. In the end I haggled her down to the ones we have, but every trip to the garden store is starting to turn into one more pot, one more rose bush, on and on. In the end I can't complain really as they are nice to look at.
In the above shots you can see it has started to come together. Sadly my seed bed with the tubers was wrecked by a local cat. I've started to take measures to cat proof the beds at as little cost as possible so in the next entry I'll cover that battle/project. Either way the cat wrecked a lot and I had to reseed the bed. It was gutting. Interestingly the herb garden was left alone. Guess the pest doesn't like herbs. The potato bags I put on the slope went gang busters and my next crop is going to start immediately after harvesting these ones. I wash and wrap them in newspaper and it sorta clamps them thus preserving the harvested potatoes for up to 3/4 months in the right temperature.
Well guys if you made it this far thank you for reading. There's a lot of pig work that comes with these sorts of projects, but being able to sit in the quiet in a beautiful place and watch what you plants makes it all worth while. It's my first garden journal and I'm sorta late to the game this year. However there's more to come as I've been documenting it all for Hive. Well that's it for now. As always looking forward to checking out all you guys amazing posts and projects.
Image credits: My ipad