News from our farmstead #40
Snails, bread and rain...
First new item: we finally had some proper rain this month! With over 150l per square meter falling over the course of one rainy week, we are very happy to see our land turning green again and the spring flowing abundantly. We also learned the lesson that one single 230l water barrel is the most pathetic, almost not-even-worth it, nod to rainwater harvesting. It began overflowing after just a couple of minutes of heavy rain, which of course we knew it would, at the back of our minds, having done the calculations of our roof surface area years back. But until you actually see it, it’s hard to comprehend the vast amount of water that can actually be captured coming off even a modest surface.
I say “almost not-even-worth it” but in reality, it’s been so worth it. If we hadn’t had trouble with water this year and been thinking more about it than previous years, we wouldn’t have been able to come to some of the conclusions we’ve now made about how we should be capturing, storing, diverting, and using water in general on our land. Seeing water streaming out of the top of our rainwater barrel definitely helped confirm some things too. Seeing the two extremes so close together, as it were - the drought and then an epic rainfall event - helped us really wrap our heads around the full range of conditions we face here and sparked lots of ideas for us. I won’t go into them now but we’re excited to begin putting them into place over the next few years to improve our water security. Meanwhile, the garden has been loving the rain and unlike previous years, not a single one of the baby lettuces or brassicas I planted have been lost to snails, since I was able to pop out (on my way to the loo) during the night and pick any pests out of the raised beds, which are so conveniently close to the house.
However, the snails aren’t letting us off that lightly. They may not be on my cabbages but they are in our house plumbing. Why are they there? How did they get through the pump? Can snail eggs float around in water and somehow get stuck on the inside of a pipe and grow in there? What are they eating? Do we need a UV filter? If we ignore the problem long enough will they just… die and decompose and flush themselves out? Or will they grow into a huge self-sustaining colony, possibly its own sub-species? Do we really have to undo all our plumping and try and poke them out? So many questions which I’d rather not begin to think about, so we’ll just put up with the low water pressure for now…
Meanwhile we have some big projects in progress! After finishing off a few little things and making a very satisfying video out of the process, we are now turning our attention to some big outdoor infrastructure work. Some of these projects involve a DIGGER which is very exciting, and will be the first time a digger has set foot on our land since we’ve owned it. It’s taken us nearly four years to figure out what we want the digger to do, but I think the observing and pondering has paid off because now we’re pretty confident in what we want. There will be a new pond, trenches, swales, paths, holes, levelled spaces for concrete pads… you name it!
The pond will be located in the new food forest we are creating for the chickens and ducks. We planted the trees a couple of years ago and now we’re embarking on our most serious fencing project to date. It’s going to be glorious and they’re all going to be very happy and lay us lots of eggs and have lots of baby chicks! We’re also looking at building a new donkey shelter in the new land, roughly the same as our previous one which was built with pallets as a base, with mud and lime plaster layers on top. We loved the experience of building with these natural materials and would love to do it again, maybe as a workshop, but for now we need something quick and weatherproof so we’re going to be using woven fencing panels for the siding, which will form the base (like the wattle in wattle-and-daub) for a mud plaster on top, later on. Or maybe even a manure-based coating, since that’ll be the material most locally on-hand! What animal should we put in our previous donkey pen? Let us know your thoughts!
I’m also continuing my side-project of beautifying the immediate garden area outside the house. With my biggest raised bed to date completed, I’m now eyeing up the next site. Honestly, there’s no stopping me. And I’d like to plant some garlic and leeks pretty soon so I do need some more space! We’re working our way through various wood piles that have been seasoning, chopping up any big logs and replenishing our wood store, hoping for a second year in a row where we will be totally self-sufficient in firewood. I’m also attempting to sow something, anything, in our drylands field this autumn. However, it’s my first time doing it and I’ve got all sorts of different advice so I really don’t know what I’m doing or when to do it. I want to get a cover crop like alfalfa established there, but do you know how much a whole bag of alfalfa seeds costs, for a space that big? Over €100, which is an expensive mistake, if I get the timing/variety wrong and they don’t germinate or rot in the ground or get eaten by ants. Sometimes even the simplest sounding initiatives are completely flummoxing. I’ll let you know next month if I bit the bullet got anything sown or not!
Meanwhile we are preparing for a short trip to the UK, again, this time for a wedding. This time all three of us are going, and Mauro is excited about taking his first full week off work since going back after paternity leave. He’s also been enjoying baking even more lately, since we’ve got our new oven installed (previously he was limited to the pizza oven, or the woodstove, which we never quite mastered as a bread-making device). We are eating fresh sourdough every day which is a real treat and he’s recently expanded into the world of cheesecake which is also very exciting.
So that’s about it from us. Lots of new things beginning, which feels really good. Lots of garden and animal stuff happening finally, some new trees in the ground too, and everything looking a little bit tidier and neater… poco a poco!
Thanks again for reading and see you next time,
Harriet 🌻
Please ask Mauro to do a dedicated video for us, on how to make both sourdough starter and bread! I'm sure many would love it!
Your post feels like your energy is bubbling over, like the rainwater storage ❤️