Personal Blogs

On the vegetable front: I had to lift all the carrots as many of them were split and also due to mice not only eating our young trees (see November’s newsletter), but also my carrots! The number of mice and voles are truly horrendous this year; both in our house and in the garden. Every single morning, we have at least one trapped mouse in our larder and as I said lots of damage too. I’m not sure why there is such an explosion of small rodents, since there are plenty of natural predators. Or maybe, there are plenty of predators because we have an explosion of rodents! Who knows, but usually in ecology, the predators follow the prey, so I guess we first had lots of mice which attracted owls, red kites and buzzards. The wildlife camera even filmed a fox walking around in our first new field named ‘Middle Earth’. The fox was wary of the red light at first before it decided it was okay and then it jumped on something (hopefully a vole!). You can just about see it jumping in the video which I published on YouTube. It’s interesting how animals seem to notice the camera and some even try to attack (?) or investigate (?) it like the magpies in the same video.

And it’s all happening in the new big field too! We had two tree consultants visiting to look at the site and discuss with us what our plans are and what options there could be. They estimated we could plant between 700 and 800 tree saplings! We discussed that we preferred native edible trees and some ‘non-edible but good for wildlife’ trees and we are hoping to see them arrive early in the new year. Of course, 700 tree saplings are a lot to plant for just two people and therefore we want to organise a ‘tree planting event’ once the trees have arrived. Those who come along can also name their own personal tree with a name tag and a dedicated website where you can register your interest in participation will be revealed nearer the time. It’s hard to imagine that the field in the picture will house 700 trees in just a few months’ time.

In combination with bringing back nature to Glensherup, JP and I have started a new project called ‘Circle of the Good Life’ where we hope to inspire people to embrace nature in all its aspects and enjoy being outdoors away from technology. Technology has slowly taken over our lives and many feel frustrated and anxious by the way technology is always there, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s key that you leave your phone at home (or out of sight in the car) when you are reconnecting with nature.
So, I have created a dedicated YouTube channel on which I share how JP and I embrace nature, what nature you can find in Scotland and how trees can be beneficial to us (this last one is not out yet). Some may have already watched the first two short videos, but 4 more videos have been added:

‘Meet Glensherup’s wildlife’ – pheasants, a fox, jackdaws and misbehaving magpies

‘A snapshot of wildlife in Glendevon’ – footage from my wildlife camera over a number of years

‘Buzzards closeup near a carcass’ – footage from buzzards feeding (it’s not that gruesome)

‘Traditional Celtic pagan handfasting’ – a summary of JP’s and Josine’s renewal of vows in June

All these can be watched (and subscribe) Circle of the Good Life

2022 seems to have been the year of the number 17:

17 jars of stewed pears (from our own Dutch pear tree)

17 bottles of apple wine (from apples very kindly given to me by various customers and friends)

17 bottles of grape wine (from Scottish grapes given to me by a very kind customer, who got 100kg from a friend and aptly named ‘Grapeheart’)

17 tonnes per hectare of fruit & vegetables

‘Tonnes per hectare’ is a measurement used in agriculture to value the productivity of a farm. We don’t have a hectare and we didn’t grow 17 tonnes (which is 17 000 kg), but I’ve converted my own kilos to tonnes and the size of my vegetable garden to hectares.
I think this is pretty good considering that I don’t use any artificial fertilizers or pesticides.

I like working with numbers and keeping track on how much I’ve grown and to compare it with previous years and there definitely is an increase in our yields over the years. Adding compost to the soil every year, not digging too much and also growing green manure (an overwinter crop meant for leaving to die back) improves the quality of the soil massively and thus increases the yields. This is confirmed by various studies which all looked into different aspects of soil and yields of food. I am just obsessed with soil and thankfully I can experiment endlessly in my own back garden (I took 32 soil samples last year as part of my Natural Sciences study).

Another thing I’ve been keeping track on is the variety of birds seen in my garden and that has also been increasing over the years: we had 18 different bird species in 2015, but in 2022 we had 30 different species! Furthermore there is an index used by biologists to measure the biodiversity of an area (Simpson’s Diversity Index, should you be interested) and when I calculated our index value using my previous RSPB bird watches, I discovered that this too had increased and is now a very healthy 0.91, where the maximum value can only be 1. You see just by cutting out pesticides, leaving a couple of wild areas and planting some shrubs and small trees you can do your bit to help nature.

The chickens have been allowed in our back garden (they normally only roam the fields) and they loved it! I my naivety I thought that they would eat overwintering pests and fertilise the soil at the same time, but I forgot that they can also be little white feathered bulldozers! One of the white chickens could not leave the rhubarb plant alone and I watched as she purposely set out to dig up the entire plant. I couldn’t let that happen of course and had to put some wire over it, after which she tried to continue but discovered that standing on hard wire was not very pleasant and the was plant saved.

Harvey, the young cockerel, is losing his boyish peeps and his voice is starting to break. In other words, he will soon start crowing and the first couple of times are quite funny as he looks startled and he doesn’t know himself what is happening. As it so happens, on the last day of the year he stood at our back door, showing off his newly discovered crowing! It is quite cute, until he starts crowing at 4 am in the middle of summer.

The chickens are all back in the fields again, because, well, let’s just say that our sitting area is well fertilised!