Garden Page

Since moving to my smallholding high in the Welsh Valleys the personal interests of my wife and I have reverted closer to nature as the months go by. When we moved in most of the usable garden was covered with around ¼ acre of corrugated steel sheds that the previous owner used for manufacturing furniture. Since then we have spent untold amounts of hard earned resources removing every last vestige of the previous occupants and have so far removed over 120 tons of concrete, glass and around 50 years worth of rubbish that was under the concrete before we finally found the heavily compacted soil which again was littered with broken glass.

Towards the end of 1999 the garden was in a reasonable state for us to start bringing in livestock with the eventual aim of become as self sufficient as possible just like Tom and Barbara in the Good Life except in our case it will be the Toogood Life. The first animals we bought were 3 hens (Wellsomers/Light Sussex cross) followed by another 3 to keep up with the egg demand from my work colleagues.

The main plan for 2000 however is to finally get the garden area back to what it was up until just after the War when the disposable nature of people today took over and they became dependant on supermarkets. The first job has been to replace the deficit left by the concrete hardstands with some decent topsoil (32 ton so far) and repair the derelict fences. We have also bought enough hazelnut hedging to cover up the gaps left when the ever expanding sheds killed off certain areas. Another purchase has been an assortment of high yield fruit trees to complement the remaining ones here from the old orchard that used to take the form of a boundary around the site.

	Wing Co the Broken Butterfly Lop Rabbit was another rescued animal that was give to us by his previous owners due to his unfeasibly large testicles being more than a handful to keep clean. He has now had the "snip" enabling him to him around with out tripping over them
	The best part of keeping chickens are the fresh eggs every day that are without doubt better than ANY egg that a commercial supplier can provide