Whilst everything is cold and frosty, the grass is crunchy underfoot, I need to break ice on the chicken’s water each day (and smash ice on the lake for my morning swim) – there’s no way that I’m going to be able to dig up that deep rooted horseradish, so I’ll stay in the warm and crunch numbers instead.
Andy, my husband, likes me to have all data available at the click of my fingers, the forefront of my mind and the tip of my tongue. But generally, I go by feelings… That went well, there was a lot, I’m pleased with that, etc. So sitting down and sifting stats is something that I tend to delay to January. It’s a great ‘post-tax return’ activity and looking back can fuel the encouragement to learn/tweak/change for the year ahead.
Produce
As an urban smallholding (with an emphasis on the ‘small’), we’ve had another productive year which can be measured in various ways. I use an online tool, a Harvestometer, to record everything that we gather in and this data not only tells me the cash value of the food, therefore how much money I’ve saved in growing my own rather than buying it, but it also shows me how much CO2 I’ve saved by avoiding intensive farming, heated commercial greenhouses, many miles of travel and multiple layers of packaging.
Throughout 2024, logging all the food that we produced both in the home garden and at the allotment, we harvested £4,800.83 worth of produce.
What did we do with it all?
We ate most of the vegetables and made lots of jam with the figs and greengages. A glut of apples were prepared for the freezer with a few batches of Apple & Chilli Jelly and Apple Wine preserved for later enjoyment.
The eggs were eaten by us, used on baking courses or sold to local customers.
The figures don’t really include items that I’ve sold on, such as preserves, or those lovely beeswax candles that I made (but that’s not food…) and now my brain is hurting too much for more calculations.
Tell me about the honey…
Our honey – now that’s the most precious thing that we produce and we rely solely on the bees to do what they do best. There are many variables with bee keeping, come on a course later in the year to find out more, and fortunately, 2024 was our biggest harvest ever with us collecting the golden stuff from all three apiaries. As there’s such demand for our honey, from the ‘Real Brentford Bees’, we sell nearly all of it and use our ‘honey money’ to buy the meat and the wheat that we don’t produce.
Below is a breakdown of last year’s harvest by weight, showing a nice equal split between food from plants and food from animals. Whilst I don’t want to see a reduction in our eggs and honey yield this year, I would like to see more fruit and vegetables gathered in which will require good planning and several strategies to protect crops from squirrels, pigeons, slugs and snails.
Gardeners World Magazine
I fully intend to continue learning year on year, and am pleased to have been able to develop several new areas on the allotment and create more growing spaces in the garden at home. Those who follow me on Instagram and Facebook will have seen recent announcements introducing my new series in Gardener’s World Magazine. I’m writing a year long series called ‘Growing the Good Life’ and hope that my experiences can encourage readers to try new things themselves.
View this post on Instagram
Courses
Last year, 281 people joined us for courses at Hen Corner and the questions and conversations during the day often inspire me to create new events. This is exactly how Making Cheddar, Stilton & Sourdough has come into being – an exciting *TWO DAY COURSE* designed to help guests master hard cheese and sourdough bread in ‘real time’.
Over the TWO days, guests will develop their artisan culinary skills as we separate curds and whey, press cheeses overnight, stretch and fold sourdough bread and so much more… When I posted the picture below on social media saying ‘Want to create your own cheeseboard for next year?’ I didn’t mean choose the cheese, I meant MAKE THE CHEESE!
Please note Making Cheddar, Stilton & Sourdough has been moved by a day and is now on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st February.
Each summer our Bee Keeping courses are always popular, be that for adults or children, and again, in response to requests, we’ve created a new course Bees for Teens, which will be set at a higher level than our original family course. This is run in the school holidays, is open to High School Students, and we ask that an adult accompanies all participants that are under 18. Full details here.
If you’ve been on a course before, you’ll know that returning guests get a 20% discount off further bookings, just email me and we’ll sort it out…
For one day only…
January sees the return of our annual Introduction to Making Marmalade course on Tuesday 21st, we only run it now whilst the bitter Seville Oranges are in season allowing us to make this perfect preserve.
Come and join us to make two different varieties of marmalade along with a delicious loaf of bread, allowing you a royal breakfast of marmalade on toast or a Paddington Bear lunch of sandwiches – though I wouldn’t suggest keeping them under your hat as the results could be a bit sticky and fluffy…
Become a Bread Angel – Start your own Micro Bakery
Again, we don’t run this course throughout the year, but if you are thinking that you’d like to incorporate more baking into your life and want to explore how to start a microbakery, get in touch and we can see if we can help you.
Coming up at Hen Corner:
January
- Introduction to Making Marmalade – Tuesday 21st
- Introduction to Making Cheese – Wednesday 29th
February
- Introduction to Making Bread – Tuesday 4th
- Introduction to Scandinavian Baking – Tuesday 11th
- Pasta Together (Families) – Tuesday 18th
- Making Cheddar, Stilton & Sourdough – Thursday 20th and Friday 21st (Two Day Course)
- Introduction to Making Bread – Wednesday 26th
Other news:
- We are still harvesting winter veg, the brassicas are more than happy in the cold, and a lovely Romanesco will be ready soon
- I’ve visited the honey bees, seven colonies across three apiaries, treated them for varroa and checked they have enough food for winter
- We’ve adopted a new hen! Her humans are moving house and wanted her settled in with us, she’s a white Leghorn, like our logo, and as she is younger than the rest of our girls, is laying an egg every day – even in this cold weather
Jobs for the week:
- Nurture my sourdough ferment, it feels forgotten and forlorn
- Plan the winter prune for orchard fruit trees at home and the allotment
- Start sowing the early chillis and aubergines in the heated propagator
Keep warm and keep ahead – Remember, it’s all in the planning
I hope to see you soon,
Sara
Discover more from Hen Corner
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
6 comments
Last year our fig harvest totalled: 1 (one).
Last year the squirrels ate *all* our peaches
And what were the cats doing whilst all this was happening?
Probably asleep on my bed…
Or maybe chowing down on some other wildlife that they’d poached!
⬛⬛