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It’s always busy in September. We take the honey off the bees, the apples off the trees and get busy filtering, fermenting, preserving and potting up ready to stash away for colder days or sell to local customers.

The Green Queens…
This year is the first year that I’ve used a ‘proper’ queen marking pen – yes, there is such a thing – and I haven’t been the most neat of artists whilst using it. Previous years have found me sporting an old bottle of nail varnish and, as you can see in the photo above, blue glitter was quite a favourite.

Oops I did it again…
This week on one of my favourite courses, A Day at Hen Corner, I made a classic ‘schoolgirl error’. Well, that might not be the best way of describing it as we didn’t make jam at school – probably too much risk letting teenagers boil sugar to very high temperatures. However, it was a mistake that I’ve made on more than one occasion before.

One of the things I love most about Hen Corner is that we share our hobbies and passions for sustainable living with so many other wonderful people.
Recently I’ve spent some time with my friend Elsa who is really living my dream! I know her originally through our Bee Keepers Association and was quick to discover that not only is she a dab hand at making preserves, but she also keeps chickens in her back garden.

It’s our birthday! I can’t believe that it was nine years ago that Hen Corner came into being.
It all started when we were thinking about a ‘brand name’ for our homemade Christmas chutney label and concluded that Sara’s Preserves was a bit boring.

We were very honoured last week to have been recognised at the Urban Food Awards in a special category, Women in Food: The women putting good food on London’s plate. This is where thirty of London’s leading Women in Food are being celebrated as part of the capital’s Urban Food Awards, championed by the Mayor of London.

We are so excited as we prepare for this year’s Country Living Magazine Spring Fair – We’ll be there, complete with a clutch of chickens, and will be based in the Smallholding area as one of the first things you see as you enter the event.

We’ve been keeping hens in London since 2007 and it was on moving to the house in the corner of the street, the following year, that opened up the possibilities of increasing the size of the flock, indulging in different types of chickens, and welcoming others to come and see how easy it is to keep chickens in a London back garden.

I always try to keep the diary a bit quieter at the beginning of the year, allowing us to get ahead of some of the winter tasks in the garden and to ensure that we keep up to pace with new things that come in throughout the year.

Here we are, a New Year with loads of new opportunities ahead of us, just inviting us to grab hold of them as they come into reach.
I know I’m not alone in having good intentions for a new rhythm that brings balance to work and home.