Have you ever arrived home from work to find your garden looking a little grumpy? Ever envied the lives of those gardeners who don’t have trains to catch, intrays to empty, or late nights in the office? Chances are most people reading this blog don’t have time to gaze at their gourds all day long: sometimes, real life gets in the way of gardening. Lucy from the Smallest Smallholding breathes a little realism into her self-sufficient dream.
When I attempted to realise my idea of a ‘Smallest smallholding’, my life was relatively different to how it is now. For starters, I had four battered but beautiful ex-battery hens who would ensure that I spent at least a significant portion of my day outside. I was constantly baking cakes and pottering in my veg plots. The big difference was, however, that I was also freelancing from home, which meant my time was flexible.
During summer, I could happily sit outside in the garden, tapping away on the keyboard, one eye on the hens. I could abandon my work for an hour two spent in a tea shop or pottering about the veg patches. In winter, I’d choose to spend the shorter winter daylight hours outside, whilst wiling away the longer, darker evenings on the laptop, catching up on work.
So, as you can imagine, it was easier to run my ’smallest smallholding’ – a tiny flock of hens, a few modest vegetable patches, and a whole lot of ideas and plans. I felt as if I was inching closer to a freer, self-sufficientish, more wholesome kind of existence. I used to quietly sigh a sigh of relief each Sunday night, knowing that the following week I wasn’t going to be just wishing for the weekend to come.
But earlier this year, the recession came home to roost. I desperately needed some financial security and my freelance work just wasn’t making me a viable income. A job soon landed in my lap, but when I received the phonecall telling me they wanted me to start the following week, I met the news with mixed feelings.
I was so very lucky to have landed a job I really enjoyed during the recession. But I felt as though I’d almost given up on my self-sufficient dream. In a way, I felt I had failed. One of the things that made me saddest was only having a quarter of an hour to see my hens and potter about before the night rolled in. It felt like my day had been snatched from me and I was somehow neglecting my duties.
The big change came in April. Halfway through the month the last two of my ex-battery hens had died within ten days of each other, both having battled and lost to long illnesses, but equally both having had good lives outside of the cages. It was the end of a very important chapter of my life, because the hens had been the catalyst that had pushed me in the direction of creating my own ’smallest smallholding’.
I was already tired from a working day, and felt like I was losing the inclination to go outside and do something constructive. When the hens died it felt like my smallest smallholding ethos was slipping away too. I’d lost one of the driving forces that had put me on that road to the good life. But I needed a break from henkeeping – we’d been extremely unlucky and all four had died from chronic illnesses that battery hens are prone too – and it was stressful, expensive and I’d had enough sadness for the past 18 months, thanks to other things going in my life too.
So it was down to just me and my veg patches, and a job.
In the intervening months, I tried to dabble with balancing working full-time and continuing, albeit in a slightly different vein, to have some sort of ‘good life’ connection. I won’t deny it’s been hard. My vegetable patches have pretty much had to take care of themselves this year, and my garden has, at times, resembled an overgrown rambling jungle. I’ve had to give up the allotment (again, feeling like a failure) and had to accept I just don’t have the means to do everything I want. I suppose I’ve had to downscale my smallest smallholding.
But what I’ve found is that being outside and working with the soil, growing seeds, planting, weeding, pruning – it’s possibly the best antidote to working with computers there is. It’s real. It puts everything into perspective and is just one of those really simple joys of living life. I just can’t leave it alone. I have to do it.
So my smallest smallholding continues to be more of an ethos than anything else. But I still have my modest veg plots, my compost bins, still regularly eat homegrown veg soups and my jam making books are on standby. But most of all, I still have my plans, my dreams, my big ideas. And that’s enough for now.
