Living the Country Dream E-Book

Bella Ivins

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

In Living the Country Dream, Nick and Bella Ivins provide all the knowledge necessary for anyone thinking of embracing a self-sustaining lifestyle and farming their own plot.

Leseprobe

Living the Country Dream

Living the Country Dream

How to create a self-sufficient homestead, grow your own produce and raise livestock

Bella & Nick Ivins

With photography by

First published in 2016 as

The New Homesteader.

This edition published in 2021 by Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields,

London WC1R 4BW

and

341 East 116th Street,

New York NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Bella and Nick Ivins 2016, 2021

Design © Ryland Peters & Small 2016, 2021

Photography © Nick Ivins 2016, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-78879-355-1

E-ISBN: 978-1-78879-399-5

Printed and bound in China

The authors’ moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

US Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

Senior Designer Toni Kay

Senior Commissioning Editor Annabel Morgan

Head of Production Patricia Harrington

Art Director Leslie Harrington

Editorial Director Julia Charles

Publisher Cindy Richards

Contents

Introduction

The Kitchen Garden

Planning the Kitchen Garden, Common Kitchen Garden Pests, Growing Herbs, Growing Under Cover, The Shed, Essential Kitchen Garden Tools, Practical Workwear

The Orchard

Planning an Orchard and Growing Soft Fruit

The Animals

Keeping Livestock, Bee Farming, Poultry: Setting up a Flock, Free-Ranging Poultry, Broody Hens and Hatching Out, Designing a Henhouse, Keeping Other Birds, Keeping Pigs, Hand-raising Orphan Lambs, Fattening the Sheep

The Land

The Wildflower Meadow, Establishing a Woodland, The Nuttery, The Front Garden, The Courtyard, The Brook, Foraging

The Work Areas

A Hard-working Barn, The Woodyard, The Porch, The Workshop, The Store

The House

The History of Our Homestead, The Homestead Kitchen, The Dairy, The Pantry, The Cellar, Homestead Housekeeping, The Utility Room, The Boot Room, The Sitting Room, The Library, The Bedrooms, The Children’s Bedrooms, The Bathroom, The Hallway

Sources

Index

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Over the ten years we have spent here at Walnuts Farm, we have developed a system of food production that suits us as well as the land we farm. Our aim as homesteaders is to raise just the right amount to feed our little family and any visiting friends, but no more. We don’t aim for a surplus or to sell produce at a profit. It is also important to point out that we are not 100 per cent self-sufficient or purist about trying to be so. We admire those homesteaders who are both, but for us it is simply a question of growing what we like to eat, is expensive to buy or tastes best fresh from the garden. We are not ashamed to head to the grocery store, a local farm shop or even the supermarket to augment our produce. You could perhaps call us fair-weather farmers, in that we aim to put in the least effort for maximum enjoyment and optimal production from the resources we have available.

When we started out, we soon discovered that to succeed as homesteaders, it’s essential to work with what you’ve got rather than fight against it. Walnuts Farm is situated on heavy clay and poor and unimproved grazing land. Because of the wet conditions over winter, we can only rear livestock outdoors during the summer months. For us, therefore, most of our homesteading activities take place in this season. We do less farming in the winter months and more hunting for game foods. Winter is also a time to warm by the fireside, to rest, take stock and plan for the year to come.

In this book, we hope to show how you too can make a virtue of necessity, whatever the scope of your enterprise. And also to prove that the good life does not have to be the hard life. Whether you ‘farm’ on a microscale in an urban backyard or suburban garden, or upon several rural acres, or even if the notion of homesteading is still a dream rather than a reality, we hope that our experiences, successes and failures will be of interest. If your desire is to become totally self-sufficient, then our method of homesteading offers an easy way in and a place from which to expand.

We decided from the start that everything at Walnuts Farm has to ‘feed the eye as well as the family’, for our aim is to gain as much pleasure from the doing as from the final result. We are conscious that our homesteading is to some extent a labour of love and as such must reward us in every way. This is not, for us, a luxury. With every activity we have an opportunity to do it well and to find an elegant design solution, or to merely do it adequately, at a cost to the environment and to aesthetics.

On our homestead, we have several different enterprises separated into distinct zones. Adjacent to the house, the kitchen garden is at the heart of the enterprise. We find that it is best positioned close to the house as we work in it little and often, sowing, growing and harvesting throughout the year. Surrounding this are areas for pigs, sheep, bees and poultry, on the meadows and among the woodland. These enterprises require less of our labour so can be positioned a little further from the house.

Despite what non-gardening visitors may think, our kitchen garden is relatively easy to manage. Most of our fruit and vegetable production takes place on less than an acre. We do not dig our beds as we’re on clay, and in our experience this is best left below ground and not brought to the surface. But our growing beds are big – approximately 7.5 x 7.5m/25 x 25ft each. Between them we have laid hard-wearing gravel paths that fit a wide wheelbarrow, and the central axis will accommodate a Land Rover plus trailer. We don’t try to extend the growing season at either end, as we have limited resources and no polytunnel. Accordingly, we outsource some early seed-growing to a friend’s commercial glasshouses nearby, and this gives us a head start on the growing year.

When we are tilling the ground, we have to work efficiently. We use a big cultivator hoe for weeding and so we plant rows to fit the width of the cultivator. We use few other tools and spend little time watering as we are growing for flavour, not volume. We do spend time on defence – keeping rabbits and deer out, as well as mice and slugs – but at least we can harvest some of these pests for the kitchen table.

We introduce pigs and lambs as young stock in spring, when the land dries out, and fatten them up over summer, using as much home-grown grass and feed as possible. They are all in the freezer by the time the land becomes wet again in autumn. The animals have complemented the vegetable and fruit production and integrated well with it, as well as providing interest and pleasure both in everyday life and on the plate. If we started over again, we would use pigs and chickens to do more of the site-clearing, and integrate the pigs directly into the rotation of beds in the kitchen garden to prepare the beds for cultivation.

This is the story of our easy way into homesteading, trying out a variety of different enterprises while keeping our set-up and labour costs as low as possible. Every year is different and we have had our fair share of failures as well as successes, but this is part of what keeps us interested and the reason we operate multiple enterprises. There are always some surprise successes to make up for the inevitable failures. The land and livestock work hard for us, and fit in around our other jobs.

What of the rewards? Well, there is fabulous food, the like of which is hard to buy even at the premium ‘organic’ end of the market, and a lifestyle that ‘feeds the eye as well as the family’. Above all, the greatest pleasure is, without a doubt, producing by one’s own hand and endeavour the food for one’s family. It is an act of love that undoubtedly appeals to the hunter and gatherer within us all.

THE KITCHEN GARDEN

It was part of our original plan for the kitchen garden that each of the vegetable beds would be surrounded by evergreen box/boxwood hedging (Buxus sempervirens) to give the plot a pleasing year-round formality. However, we made the mistake of not planting the young box plants close enough together. Not only were rabbits getting in, but we didn't have the structured look we'd imagined. We have remedied this in two ways: firstly, by erecting a low rabbit-proof wire fence around the perimeter of each bed, and secondly, by infilling the hedges with small box cuttings bought at a local plant auction. Several years on, we now have a seamless hedge around all four beds (opposite).

Planning the Kitchen Garden

Our kitchen garden sits on the north side of the farmhouse and is only a stone’s throw from the kitchen door. It is the focus of all our efforts outdoors, and we have purposely designed it so that it is permanently ‘on show’ from the house and something to celebrate. Every single day, we delight in the beauty of this productive piece of garden that feeds the eye as well as the stomach.

Many people might imagine that a patch of land for growing fruit and vegetables is best placed at the bottom of the garden, tucked out of sight, but our kitchen garden is at the heart of the homestead. Our ambition is to grow and eat fresh ingredients throughout the year and we treat the kitchen garden as our walk-in larder. We pick our produce as and when we need it. We don’t store fresh ingredients in the salad drawer in the refrigerator or in a vegetable rack as we like to eat everything ‘superfood’ fresh. We simply pop outside to cut a few stems of broccoli and pick a handful of beans to steam for supper – a real treat. A kitchen garden encourages the family cook to be resourceful with the available produce and harvest ‘just enough’, so that nothing goes to waste. Some crops will fail, while others will be too successful, and the clever thing is to know how to deal with either situation.

GETTING STARTED

When it comes to planning a kitchen garden, be ambitious but don’t imagine every inch has to be super-productive – you’re not a commercial farmer. Give your kitchen garden a structure, using low hedging and espaliered fruit trees to divide the space. If you are on poor soil or heavy clay (like us), don’t dig down but opt for a raised bed system instead. Follow the orientation of the house when laying out the garden, so the two form an integrated whole. We plant in squares rather than rows, as they are visually more pleasing. We also plant crops along a north–south axis rather than east–west, so that they get the maximum amount of daylight and aren’t cast in their own shadow. Gravel paths, just wider than a wheelbarrow, are laid throughout the garden so we can step out from the back door and keep our feet mud-free, even when it’s very wet.

To add height to the kitchen garden, we coppice long hazel poles from the nuttery and tie three or four together with hop-growers’ string to make simple wigwams. These are renewed each year, as by the end of a long, dry summer the poles become brittle and snap easily. We make a couple of wigwams for each of the four beds and grow a mix of climbing flowers and vegetables up their poles. Squash plants love to climb, as do sweet peas and nasturtiums (shown here). Our intention is for the kitchen garden to look pretty as well as be productive.

In late autumn our garlic seed bulbs arrive by post. Each individual clove is then planted out in plugs and put in the cold frame. A few weeks later, green shoots appear and we transplant the young garlic plants into the 'root' bed alongside onions, shallots and leeks. We water them in as soon as we've planted a block of plants to give them a good start. Interestingly, garlic needs a spell of frost to help the cloves divide and then they look after themselves until their high-summer harvest.

Sweetcorn/corn is best planted out in blocks rather than rows as they need to wind-pollinate themselves to produce the cobs. The plants grow tall by late summer and you know the cobs are ready to pick when their beards start turning brown. Varieties such as 'Sweet Nugget' are almost good enough to eat straight from the plant, but dropped into a pan of boiling water and eaten with butter or black pepper, they are like nothing you've ever tasted. If there is one vegetable to grow and eat fresh and seasonal, this is it!

CREATING STRUCTURE AND HEIGHT

Our kitchen garden started out as a flat, bare site and over the years our aim has been to add as much height and structure as possible. It’s like building a 3-D sculpture as it involves a process of layering, which takes time – this is not instant gardening. Now, ten years on, this vertical and horizontal framework not only provides shade and shelter, but also a scaffold for vegetable and plant matter to grow up. We have introduced pleached lime trees (Tilia cordata, also known as little-leaf linden), espaliered dessert pear and apple trees, and box hedging for this purpose, and the whole kitchen garden is enclosed in woven-willow fencing, which adds a sculptural quality. This structure gives the kitchen garden ‘good bones’, which are particularly evident during winter months when the garden is laid bare.

We grow two varieties of espaliered dessert pear trees, Doyenné du Comice and Beurre Hardy, both of which were bought as spindly maidens. They are now five years old and, with judicious training along strands of galvanized steel wire tied to chestnut poles, the four layers of espaliered pear branches maximize the vertical growing space. Pear trees flower earlier than apple, so in early spring a wave of blossom comes into flower along the central avenue of the kitchen garden, providing welcome early forage for flying insects.

During the winter months, the framework that supports the espaliered trees catches the frost and sparkles in the pale sunshine, as do the split-chestnut gates and the woven-willow fencing, adding visual interest when there is little growing.

The traditional time of year to harvest willow for fence-making is at the end of the growing season. The straight, flexible stems are perfect for weaving of all types, but for fence-making we select the thicker, two-year-old poles, which are about about 5cm/2in in diameter. The thinner leafy tops are sliced off with a billhook – satisfying outdoor work on a winter's day.

Making woven-willow fencing

During one of those crisp days between Christmas and the end of the winter season, we head down to the willow plantation and, armed with loppers, pruning saws and billhooks, harvest the two-year-old willow growth. By this stage, the stems are thumb thick and about as much as the loppers can comfortably slice through. We bundle up the 2.4-3.6m/8-12ft poles, lash them together and carry them back up to the garden.

Before fence-making, we will have already erected a row of chest-high sweet chestnut spiles (or posts) in the line that the new fence is to take. The first spile is driven into the ground at one end of the proposed fence, and the second and subsequent spiles are placed at regular intervals, determined by placing the elbow atop the first spile and driving the second where the hand holding it naturally falls.

The hazel bundles are dropped alongside the line of posts at right angles for easy access, and then it's a case of weaving them around the spiles, working from one end and starting with the thick heal of each rod. It's rather like basketry on a large scale. You can make your fence messy or neat, but either way aim for a good, tight weave so the fence is strong enough to bear a man's weight. Willow fencing will age over time and eventually become dry and brittle, but it should last as long as a hedge planted to grow alongside it takes to fill out and replace it. In our case, it’s five to eight years before the weave needs replacing.

Black mesh is stapled onto makeshift square frames to keep birds off tender green leaves during their long growing season. The frames are lightweight and can be moved easily by two people.

Early on in the making of the kitchen garden we had to install chicken wire around the outer edge of each growing bed to keep the rabbits out. Long plastic cloches offer a second line of defence against the elements for young plants.

In our efforts to repel predators, we have also chicken-wired all our cleft chestnut gates and our first soft fruit area (on the left of the photo). In fact, chicken wire underpins most of the kitchen garden’s structure, and who knows if we would have much growing there without it!

Common Kitchen Garden Pests

Although box/boxwood hedging shelters our vegetable beds and provides year-round evergreen structure, it does have a downside in that it harbours pests, providing shelter for snails and slugs.

Before the hedging grew to a reasonable height, our main problem was rabbits decimating the young crops, so we ring-fenced each vegetable bed with chicken wire held in place by split chestnut posts 1m/3ft high. The wire is now covered by the box but it accounts for the less-than-perfect edges – our hedging leans towards a ‘cloud’ formation, as over time the chicken-wire structure beneath has bent and sagged in places, making the hedging difficult to cut in straight lines. We have never been brave enough to remove the chicken wire completely for fear of rabbits squeezing through the tiniest of gaps in the hedge.

Pigeons descend onto the beds both morning and evening to nibble at the tender tops of purple sprouting broccoli or other young brassicas, while at night a whole raft of pests make their presence known. Perhaps the best way to deal with them is to grow enough produce for it to not be a problem when they consume some of your crop. Interfering tends to upset the natural order of things, so we only use chemical powder to combat the cabbage white butterfly and rely on toads or our ducks to do some of the slug and snail removal.

We also try to avoid attracting pests of all kinds by not sowing seeds directly into the soil too early in the year. Instead, we start off most of our young plants under cover (see pages 28–29). Chances are that seeds planted early, such as broad/fava beans and peas, will be eaten by mice, while slugs feast upon the juicy leaves and stems of young seedlings. We circumvent these problems by buying in young stock from a local nursery that belongs to a friend. They grow some unusual vegetable varieties from seed there and we collect them when they are ready to plant out. That way, our time can be better spent elsewhere on the homestead.

The devastation wrought by the dreaded cabbage white caterpillar can be seen here. In the space of a few days the leaves of this brassica have been stripped bare.

Growing Herbs

We grow our favourite herbs – flat-leaf parsley, sweet basil and chives – in the kitchen garden alongside the vegetables, rather than in a dedicated herb garden. This way the herbs enjoy rich soil, light and space, and are not overshadowed by large perennial herbs, such as rosemary.

The basil and parsley produce an abundant harvest of fresh leaves throughout the summer months when grown on a large scale and really thrive in the space, producing large bushy plants. They form the mainstay of our summer lunches and suppers, and there is nothing like being able to harvest huge armfuls of fresh herbs to add to a simple pasta sauce with finely chopped garlic and anchovies. Our local greengrocer sells huge bunches of herbs at reasonable prices, which are far superior to the supermarket stalks packaged in plastic or the pot-grown herbs, which are often grown hydroponically, resulting in flaccid, relatively tasteless leaves. Grow your own on a grand scale and you will never look back.

We sow parsley from tiny, fiddly seed, rinsing it first in warm water to kick-start germination. Harvest stalks several times to encourage new shoots. At the end of the season, dig it up to start afresh next year.

We cut the chives back hard when the flowers start to dry out, to be rewarded with a second crop of juicy stalks. Its strong oniony scent deters pests like carrot fly.

Spanish omelette

Bella’s mother was born and raised in Barcelona and makes the best Spanish omelette. To bring out the lovely mix of flavours, serve just warm or cold the next day, or as tapas with a glass of sherry at the end of the working day.

50g/3 tablespoons salted butter

1 large onion, finely sliced

3 garlic cloves, finely sliced

500g/1lb 2oz potatoes, peeled and sliced

6–8 eggs, beaten

generous handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

rock salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in a large frying pan/skillet over a gentle heat. Add the onions and soften them, then add the garlic, taking care not to let it burn. Meanwhile, parboil the potato slices for 10 minutes in a pan of salted, boiling water. Drain the potato slices and add to the onion and garlic. Pour the beaten eggs over the mixture and sprinkle with parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes, until the base of the omelette is cooked.

Meanwhile, preheat the grill/broiler. Place the pan under the grill/broiler to cook the top of the omelette. Using a non-stick spatula, loosen the omelette and turn out onto a serving plate or board. Leave to cool. Cut into slices and serve lukewarm or cold.

Making horseradish sauce

I was taught that the definition of a herb is a plant that is both useful or medicinal, and horseradish, which is known for its anti-inflammatory properties, fits the bill. After several failed attempts at cultivating it in the heart of the kitchen garden, it now grows well alongside the compost heap, together with the Jerusalem artichokes.

We dig up the roots in autumn when the flavour is strongest and use them fresh for extra potency. Fresh horseradish sauce served with roast beef or oily fish, such as mackerel, is hard to beat. Once dug, the roots will keep in the refrigerator if you scrub them and wrap them in a plastic bag.

Here’s our simple recipe for fresh horseradish sauce – you can adjust quantities to suit your tastebuds.

horseradish root, scrubbed, peeled and grated

crème fraîche or double/heavy cream

1 teaspoon English mustard

salt and freshly ground black pepper

freshly squeezed lemon juice

Once peeled and grated, quickly mix the horseradish with the other ingredients to prevent it from discolouring. You want a lovely creamy consistency, so mix in plenty of crème fraîche (or double/heavy cream, if you prefer your sauce to be richer). Then add a teaspoon of mustard, season with salt and pepper, and add lemon juice, to taste.

We also use horseradish sauce as the starting point for home-made smoked mackerel pâté, mashing two smoked, skinned mackerel fillets into the horseradish mix with a fork. Add a few more tablespoons of crème fraîche or cream to taste.

Growing Under Cover

Having under-cover outdoor space helps you get going a little earlier in the growing year and extends the seasons at either side, but if you’re starting out, it is not a necessity.

We’ve gone for many years without a polytunnel or glasshouse and just use cold frames to cover tender seedlings. We also use cloches to help salad crops to get off to a good start and as permanent cover for sweet basil, as this needs moist, warm conditions to grow well. Similarly, we use cloches for cultivating chillies as the warmth helps the fruits to ripen.

In the cold frame, check the undersides of seed trays and pots for slugs and snails. Don’t forget to water the seedlings once they start to emerge (seed trays should not be watered too regularly before this point or the seeds may go mouldy and rot). We scrub out our cloches and glass domes at the start and end of the season with dishwashing liquid and a stiff brush to remove any diseases or algae that form on the surface of the glass and block the light. Greenhouse glass should be washed throroughly in a similar manner at the end of the season.

Garlic cloves are traditionally planted outdoors in late autumn, but we now start them off in modules under glass to increase the success rate (in the past dogs and garden birds pulled out the cloves before they had become established). Now we plant out garlic in the ‘green’. Following the edge of a scaffolding board allows us to plant in a straight row without compacting wet soil.

Our pleasingly shaped terracotta rhubarb forcer raises young stalks in the dark, which results in a pale and tender crop, harvested in early spring.