The Cottage Smallholder

An old friend of ours, Edward Twentyman, used to tell us how delicious corn on the cob is if it is harvested and cooked within minutes. “Once the cob is cut, the sugar starts to turn to starch.” Now that we grow sweetcorn ourselves we’ve found this fact to be true. Unfortunately for us, Edward Read More »

, We also have an old family recipe for blackberry and apple jam here. The blackberry season is just starting here in Cheveley and it’s time to make our first batch of blackberry and apple jelly. I think that this is definitely the queen of jellies, so good that it can be spread on toast Read More »

I was surprised to hear recently, that dandelions are one of the largest sources of nectar for bees in the spring. So now I don’t feel quite so guilty about leaving them be and only snapping their heads off just before they go to seed. Like most people, I find weeding out enemies with deep Read More »

It’s Danny’s birthday today. As requested, I gave him a very smart pair of washable beekeeping gloves and a hive tool. It was quite hard buying gloves for him when he was working away from home and not available to try them on. I buy most of my beekeeping supplies from John, at the Springwell Read More »

Mrs Boss is one of the original bantams that we bought three years ago. A bantam is a breed of small chicken. As you can see from the photo she is white with pretty black and white feathers around her neck. She reminds me of the portraits of English cavaliers sitting so proud in their Read More »

The rats are back.As soon as the corn is cut the rats return. It’s war. We’ve tried everything to keep them away. One year we supplemented poison with rat traps (a giant version of a mouse trap) but they were very difficult to set. Then we hosted a rat shoot. Great fun but not effective. Read More »

I found the cottage fourteen years ago. It stood quite a way back from the road, with dormer windows and a low terracotta pantiled roof. The plot was a third of an acre with most of the land lying behind the cottage. Everybody said that I’d be mad to buy it. The ceilings were too Read More »

Our runner beans have perked up with all this rain. With their “fresh from the garden” flavour, we could eat them every day. The early beans were poor, even with regular watering but now we are getting a good harvest every second day. There are loads of flowers and with them the promise of more Read More »

The newt pond lies in an overgrown corner of the garden. It wasn’t planned as a newt sanctuary. Initially the pond was installed for treating sick fish. At six feet across, the pond holds roughly 100 litres of water. The big pond holds about 8000 litres. I reckoned that it would be much cheaper to Read More »

We have kept chickens for three years and we love them. A lot of my clients keep chickens and I got the longing from watching them. Danny was encouraging but I overheard him telling his brother to make the run no taller than 5’4″, my height, so as to avoid chicken cleaning duties! I didn’t Read More »