The beginning

My name is Marti and I have a little family, Shadann (fiance) and Amelia~Rose (daughter) We live here in Somerset and we are trying to do our bit to keep the cost of every day living down and stay happy and healthy. I really wanted to keep a record of what im doing and seeing if it all plans out as expected.

I have started to grow a few vegetables to go along side with my hens, I have 3 laying Sasso hens called "Eeny, Meeny & Mo." I pretty much cook all our food from scratch but our food bills were getting way to high, so I set about making a veg patch, getting my fiance to build me a compost heap and then I got him digging me a second veg patch as one is never enough! My 18 month old daughter love the garden and ours is on a slope so she has to learn to be steady on those wobbly sea legs!

I work full time but am lucky that I can cram it into a 3 day period so I get 4 days at home to enjoy my family. My fiance is a self emplyed builder so im pretty lucky if I need something built he can do anything! (but he hates gardening!) The property when we brought it came with a greenhouse so that was one expense covered. Shadann rigged up a couple of water butts so we can collect as much rain fall as possible.

So far I have planted from seed :

onions, carrots, parsnips, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, potatoes, cucumber, peppers, tomatoes
leeks, swede, peas, broccoli, butternut squash, summer squash, pumpkins, gooseberry bush, blackcurrant bush, rhubarb, mint, basil, bay leaves, majoram.

Some stuff (april 09) is still indoors on the window sills as we could still get some pretty cold spells, last year at this time we had snow, so have not risked putting certain bits out yet.