Spring Flowers.

 I took these in a heavy shower this afternoon.  Apparently the rain is from that French named storm Mathis  - "When a storm is born".

It's supposed to be 18 degrees here next Easter weekend on the Irish Riviera.  Yes and I'm the Lord Mayor of Munster.  We'll see.

Here's a few pics of Spring flowers 💐.

Geranium macrorrhizum.  It's got a gorgeous  perfume aroma.

Ransoms or Wild Garlic.  You can eat them raw in salads.  Like all Alliums they are very good for you and keeping the vampires 🧛‍♀️ away.

Bergenia or "Pig Squeak" or Elephants Ears.  They originate in China 🇨🇳 and Siberia and are tough as old work boots.

Osteospermums or Cape Daisies.  They originate in South Africa.  I grow them from cuttings.  The Geraniums are made by division and cuttings.

What have you got flowering at the moment?

I am hoping to sell some at carboot sales over the Spring and Summer.  Anyone want some cheap perennials?

A New Knife And A Furze Attack!

 The wife brought me a tree knife from you know where the other week.  It was less than 6 Euro and it folds in half.  The blades got jagged saw like teeth and looked just the ticket for one of pernicious weeds projects.

My new tree saw knife.

I spent a morning and more cutting rogue Furze,Gorse or Whin vegetation down in a field.  No-one else volunteered to help but the ponies and donkeys do browse graze the flowers sometimes.

I wore work gloves and still suffered some prickly spikes stuck in my gloves and a few bloody scratches on my hands.

Some people would get some kind of paste or weedkiller to spray or paint on the stumps.  But I will come back another year and cut them back.  The Gorse wood can be made into cutlery handles.

Gorse or Furze was grown for firewood and sold in bundles in Galway.  It's also got medicinal uses and it's called the "Pioneer" plant in New Zealand.  

It's also taken over vast areas in parts of North America.  Pioneer Europeans took Gorse seeds there and they thought they were spreading a little bit of "ould Ireland 🇮🇪. 

I like the flowers and like the Dandelions they provide much needed nectar for the bees and other beneficial insects early in the year.

There's an old country saying:

" When Gorse is out of blossom, kissing out of fashion".

It begins flowering in February to May.  It's flowers smell like coconut or sun tan cream.

It's beautiful but can be a nuisance!  The wife said I made a fantastic job.  I did something right for once.  Must ✍️ it the diary.

What pernicious weeds trouble you?

Filling Up Quickly.

 'PORTUGAL' my torn and ripped polythene cover that's still a functional polytunnel is starting to get very packed with cuttings both perennials and shrubs.  

Propagating plants is a great way of making a garden without spending a fortune.

You don't need money just patience and a love of plants.  But you can have a garden of delight.

Are you in the mood for a bit of Goth Rock?

Here's The Mission.  I have been fortunate enough to see them play live at Manchester Apollo a couple of times.  What a splendid band!

Division Time In The Perennials Garden.

 One of my hobbies is propagating plants like perennials and shrubs.  You know the gardeners mathematical equation don't  you? 

 " The only way to multiply is to divide".

Most of my perennials I divide and my shrubs I take cuttings.

When we moved here over 20 years ago I filled two wheelie bins with perennials and wheeled and pushed them into the back of the rented Luton van we hired to bring us and our belongings to the Emerald Isle.

Since then I have bought more plants but the majority I have propagated from the original plant  collection.

 

A couple of weeks ago I divided forty of my big Shasta Daisies.  They are white flowers rather like the snow capped peaks of the Shasta mountains in California USA 🇺🇸. 

All you need is your fingers to prise them apart or use an old bread knife 🔪 to cut them in half.  You can also take cuttings of your favourite perennials if you are prepared to wait for them to root.

My Northsider garden in Summer 2022.

I had forty perennials in plants ready to be sold on a carboot sale this summer.  I also had that big pile of sieved soil and countless plant pots.  I stated dividing the forty.  A few hours later and I now have 120 new plants. I told you I am always going through lots of compost.

Anyone want any very cheap perennials?  Cash or barter gladly accepted.

Cheap Wad RootIng Hormone Solution For Nowt Or Nuffink!

 Apologies if you read a similar post in 2019 in praise of Salyclic Acid. 

I don't always buy rooting hormone powder to 'strike' or 'root plant cuttings.  Most of the time I just stick the cutting in a plant pot filled with compost and water it every few days.

However you can always make your if you live near a willow tree.  There's lots of pussywillow catkins flowering in the countryside at the moment.  

I made some of my tightwad hormone rooting solution Salyclic Acid) this very afternoon:

Willow cut into one inch pieces and placed in my homemade Lucozade bottle vase or Vaze if you live over the Pond.  

The vase is filled with cold tap water from our well which I dowzed for with a forked willow stick.  It's 120 feet deep and it came to the top of the pipe without a pump being installed.  True story!

The Acyclic acid seeps out of the small twigs and helps Mother Nature do miracles and roots will grow on your cuttings when you dip them in the solution.

Willow is used for Cricket bats, the bark for Aspirin and the herbal treatment for psoriasis.   It's also useful for rooting your cuttings.👍

Slug Pub Traps.

We were shopping in Euro Giant in Limerick the other day and I noticed 2 slug traps for sale for 2 Euros.

Ever since I converted the little field into my veg plot over twenty years ago.  I have tried not to use any weedkillers, artificial fertilizers or pesticides except for slug pellets that is.

The Emerald isle is a very wet and damp and mild climate and perfect habit for slugs and snails.

I don't really like using slug pellets because I don't know what they do to our food, our environment, local wildlife like birds and most importantly to US!

So instead of having an heated debate with the missus about using them I purchased these two two slug pub traps.  

You just fill them with a bit of  El Cheapo beer or fruit juice and old Sluggy or Snaily will have last drink and drown.

They also have roofs to keep the rain out.  

I suppose you could make your own?  But for only two Euros it's a no brainer.  It's good to see plastic actually being useful in the garden!

I suppose you could always go round the garden with a torch 🔦 and 🪣 and collect the slugs and snails and feed them to your hens and ducks or go round sprinkling salt on them?

How to you deal with vegetable predators?

Buying The Right Compost.

 I bought 3 bags of potting compost the other day.

My biggest outlay in the polytunnel and garden every year is bought compost. 

 I have tried using garden soil in my plant pots  but these contain weed seeds.  It's  ok to half fill them with homemade compost or topsoil and top them up with bought compost.

I find that a lot of bought compost consists of composted bark and peat.  It's  better than nothing but it contains very few nutrients and it often cakes when it dries out.

I noticed the one in the photo.  It's dearer than the cheap compost but I notice it's  got John Innes in it.  I hope it's the John Innes number 3 recipe which is soil based.

I opened the compost bag and noticed its made up of a lot of composted bark but it's soft and friable and I will experiment with it this growing season.  I will add the seaweed fertilizer pellets to it that I featured on here yesterday.

Do you buy a lot of potting compost or do you make your own?  

I have a big pile of fym from the livestock winter quarters.  I was thinking of getting a lorry or trailer load of wood chippings and mixing it with some of the stable manure and covering it in black plastic for twelve months or so.  I think it would make a  super growing medium.  

Old leaves stored in black bin bags for a year or two  also make a great growing medium.  

This what the compost above looks like.  What do you think of it?

What's your favourite potting compost?

Seaweed Fertilizer For The Inland Even Coastal Gardener?🤔

 I noticed my local Garden Centre and beer providers and supermarket is selling bags of seaweed granulated fertilizer at the moment:

Wifeyy treated me to two bags of them.  

Apparently they are made into pellets and are a mixture of chicken manure and seaweed.

I opened one of the bags to have a look at them:

Yes they are just like the organic poultry manure pellets I buy in a tub every year.  

I gave the onions and garlic a good sprinkling of the pellets.  They should be a good slow release fertilizer and also weed free.  

Anyone else used pelleted seaweed fertilizer recently?

I have a big pile of fym from the ponies, donkeys, lambs, hens and ducks and pigs.  But that's far too fresh to use at present.

Regular readers will remember that we also recently collected seaweed for the new potatoes bed a couple of weeks ago.

It was the driest February for 90 years and I think it's going to turn into the wettest ever March.  March came in like a lamb and a lion arrived in the middle of the month.  I hope to see the  lamb return again soon to take us into April!

Buying Tat or Perhaps Treasure At The Carboot Sale?

 We went to our first carboot sale of the season on Sunday.  It started raining but we still set off because their indoor stalls in a hall in a West Cork village.  

The carboot sales are not on a big scale like they are in Blighty but it was good to have a run out and change of scenery.

The wife bought some wool for her knitting projects.  Every time a family member or friend is expecting J knits cardigan presents for the new arrivals.

Here's what I bought:

An old antique collecting book.  I Googled it and it's for sale for nine Pounds on Abe Books site.  I paid one Euros for it.

Old Killarney jaunting car posy vase.

A buffalo made of cast iron I think.  He's heavy.  What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison?  You wash your hands in a bison/basin😊.

Empire State Building plate and cup.  I paid 5 Euros for it.  I Googled it and found one for 35 Euros.

Writing on underside of plate.

What someone had wrote in the antique collecting book 

Irish Ghosts book for a Euro.  That should make good reading.  Maybe it will be the subject for a blog post?

Have you been car booting recently?  

"Four legs good, two legs bad!"

The blog title is from George Orwell's Animal Farm.  Have you read it? I sometimes think I am Boxer the Carthorse who gets all the menial tasks around the smallholding.  

 I think I've been listening too much Pink Floyd's Animals album.

 I have never seen Pink Floyd but I did see my old  Rocker pal Roger Waters and ex Thin Lizzy guitarist Snowy White perform The Wall.  I also saw Snowy in Thin Lizzy back in 1981.

So P is For Pink Floyd in my A to Zee or Zed of my favourite rock bands.  Still haven't  done a blog for the letter O.

Any road.  We were looking on Done Deal on the Tinternet  the other night and we spotted some pet lambs for sale.  Number one son duly came back with 5 of them.  Said they were off triplets and quads and the farmer didn't want to feed them by the bottle.

So we have the joyous task of making Lam Lac (powdered milk) in the microwave and filling 5 baby bottles and feeding them four times a day.  I am a wet nurse for 5 baa lambs.

Here's  Sheep by Pink Floyd.  Even the dogs turn their heads listening to this one!

Anyone else thinking of getting sheep?

The Terraced House Allotment Garden In March.

I planted the Japanese onions 🌰 outside that were growing in 'Portugal' my polytunnel  and we planted this years onion sets and garlic bulbs.  They seem to be flying it!  Yet again it just goes to show that you don't have to have a veg plot or allotment to grow your own vegetables, spudatoes and vegabulls.

 March can be a very strange month weather wise.  It can come in like a lion and go out like a lamb or even vice versa.

The end of February was perfect for sieving soil, weeding and digging over the veg plot and planting up the containers and a sink and old baths in what I call the Terrace House Allotment Container Garden.

I have spread seaweed on the outdoors new potatoes patch and dug 4 inch trenches to plant them around the 17th of this month.  St Patrick's Day is the traditional time in Ireland for planting potatoes.  

However conditions are very bad and the ground is saturated at the moment.  I might have to put up a Cricket sign: RAIN STOPPED  PLAY! 

When they are planted.  They should be ready to harvest in twelve weeks before it's too hot to want to eat potatoes.  

The ones in the polytunnel with the ripped plastic cover should be ready before then if Jack Frost and his wife don't paint the potato tops that is.

Will you be planting your 'outside' potatoes this St Patrick's Day weekend?

Pints And Toasties.

 The weather has been appalling this week and I have been wearing my 'rainy day' suit around the smallholding and in the gardens.

I decided to look at my photos gallery this morning from last October and the caption of this particular photo said:

 A Tuesday Afternoon In October.  

It even plays music whilst you look at your photos.

 

It was 28 degrees and myself and wifey were sat gazing at the sea and I WhatsApped my photos of Paradise to my my family and friends in Hibernia.

Are you planning any holidays yet?  

A Hot Bed In The Veg Plot.

Hot Bed.  The fresh fym below the soil is forcing the onions and they are putting on growth

Seriously.  It's a way of forcing vegetables to grow quickly.  The old country estate gardeners of old use to place them in large glass or green houses and cover them with a glass frame.

So how did you make your hot bed Dave?  Good question Dave! 

Well I got an old barrel and made some drainage holes in the bottom and I threw or piked a couple of wheelbarrows of fresh fym or stable manure.  Then I shovelled a few inches of top soil over the manure.

Last week I planted some of my onion sets in the 🔥 bed.  

Already the onions are sprouting and sticking up their own stems.  It will be interesting to compare them to the onion sets growing in just the ordinary ground.

Anyone else experiment at even making an hot bed?

Homemade Pig Ark.

The Tamworths and Saddlebacks like their new home.

 Welcome back to the bodge it and fettle it smallholding department.

The pigs in the field are getting rather too large for their bed quarters and number one son came home with some old corrugated iron sheets and a broken cattle ring feeder.

He got to work in the Haggard and before you could say : "Here's one I made earlier".  He had constructed a rather sturdy and robust pig ark.  All for the cost of a few welding rods, some tek screws and a bit of electricity. Oh and some elbow grease and manual labour.

We put it in the field and gave them a straw bed and they are loving it! 

Have you made an homemade pig ark or thinking of making or even buying one?

Polytunnel Potatoes Planting Time

 I planted my seed new potatoes this weekend.  The outdoor ones will get planted around Paddies Day.  The traditional time for planting early spudatoes in Hibernia or even Ireland.

Regular readers will remember the six  potatoes plant bags I used and bought at a carboot sale for 5 Euros last year.

I put a few inches of top soil in the bags and made holes and planted on average 3 seed potatoes to the bag.

British Queens purchased from our local German Garden Centre and beer providers and supermarket.  

Planting up the potatoes 🥔 bags.  Covering them again with the soil and I gave them a good watering of  Adams Ale.

Any one started off their 'indoor' seed potatoes yet?

A Bag Full Of Vegetable Peelings.

Not not the name of some psychedelic Prog group.  It's not a bad idea though is it?  

Rural Ireland does some things different than in the towns with things  like Honesty Boxes for eggs, honey, vegetables and fruit.

One of our neighbours leave us a polythene bag full of vegetable and fruit peelings for our livestock to eat and enjoy.  They leave it on their wall for us to collect them.

Some people compost their peelings or even put them in their dustbin and they end up making compost at the landfill.

I suppose if we wished to be real tightwad smallholders we could boil the peelings and make smallholding soup?  I one tried eating some vegetables that had passed their sell by date.  Don't try it.  Yuck!

Apparently it's illegal in Ingerland (UK)  to feed your hens and ducks and rabbits and piggy wigs vegetable peelings.

If you see our net curtains twitching nervously.   Don't worry it's only us looking out for the vegetable peelings police.  They will be asking us for Domino's cat 🐈  licence next!

Stop the world I want to get off!

Piglets Progress.

 The young piggy wigs were 3 week old on Friday.

Already they are going for the pick and weaning themselves off Barley their mother's milk.

They eat their straw bed and help themselves to her Sow and Bonham ration and the pulped fodder beet.

Here's Barley the Sow and her beautiful Bonhams.  Some of them have done a Jenny Agutter and gone Walkabout off camera.  There should be seven of them!

To those of you who weren't good at Metalwork.  They are Gloucester Old Spots.

Barley dining with her Bonhams.  Barley and the Bonhams would be a great name for a Rock group.

Anyone keep pigs or thinking of getting them?  They are real characters.

Getting Our Daily Bread.

 They ("who are they?") say if you want to sell your house do some baking just before prospective buyers have a look round.  It's  the waft of home cooking.  Far better than fresh paint that the world that Royalty visit on social occasions.

We are not thinking of selling at the moment but we did buy a ticket to win an apartment in Spain the other night.  Of course we didn't win and we are still here on the Irish Riviera in West Cork.

The wife baked some brownies and a loaf of bread.  All thanks once more to our poultry feathered friends.  The eggs production team is showing no signs in stopping laying.

The French bake fresh bread every day and it is delicious and I can see why bread is baked freshly every day.

I started paraphrasing the American band Bread song: "I Want To Bake It With You!"

Here's a bit of music trivia.  The members of the band were stuck in traffic and they saw a bread truck and decided to call themselves Bread Truck!  🍞 Bread really!

A Omelette For My Dinner.

I ate an egg and tomato omelette for my dinner yesterday.  The old hens and ducks are putting on an eggstroidinary  laying performance at the moment.

Dinner is what some people call Lunch.  When you went to school you had Dinner Ladies not Lunch Ladies.   I rest my case.  I don't wish to put all my eggs in one basket!😊

The ducks are quackers and are laying six eggs in the middle of the night.  Whilst the hens lay their eggs at much more godly hours through out the day.

Regular readers will know I have  been  living on Lidl tomato cuppa soups and some homemade bread for my dinners this winter.  

Yesterday however.   Old wifey rustled up us both a spicy egg and tomato omelette.  She used 4 duck eggs.

Apparently they originate in Persia like the carpets.  But the word omelette originates in Franch.

We talked about we once went on a day trip to Boulogne and a Douglas Bader like character met us disembarking the ferry and told us to "get in line" and he Pied Piper like led us to a cafeteria up some side street. He was a really charming well educated man who looked a bit dishevelled (like myself!) and I bought him a drink after a very interesting conversation.  

The proprietor was an elegant middle aged French lady dressed in black also rustled up the best omelette and fries we have ever tasted and I washed it down with a couple of pints of lager.  She wouldn't let us pay until we had finished eating and ordering drinks.  This was my first experience of Continental etiquette.  None of this standing at the bar and paying for your drinks every time.  She gave our leader a complimentary meal and drink for leading us to her cafeteria.

It was a grand day out and yesterday homemade omelette wasn't that bad either.  Cheers ducks and hens!

A Much More Substantial And Secure Rabbit Run.

 The busy bees got down to hard work at the weekend and created a more secure and substantial residence for our long eared friends the rabbits:

Concrete blocks weighing down doors.  I think number one son must have been listening to me  or reading my allotments tales about concrete lumps and blocks holding down tin roofs on allotment sheds, polytunnel s made out of plastic water pipes and onions drying in old supermarket trolleys.  They will have to be fox body builders to move those blocks.

The new run is now split in two sections so Mr Rabbit can live in separate compartments from his wives until he invites her into his humble abode and puts on his record by the Nolans: "I'm in the mood for dancing, romancing,  I'm going to dance the night away"...

There is also a mesh floor now to prevent any escaping or digging tunnels for the great escape:

Being tight wad smallholders.  This new bunny palace cost nothing because it was part recycled and we always have some materials hanging around to repurpose or create new creations.

Anyone else been creating or repurposing material to use for their animal housing and veg plot projects?

One Of Our Rabbits Went Missing.

 If Peter Ustinov had substituted a Dinosaur  for a Rabbit film title on the Irish Riviera here in West Cork

Any road  We got up on Saturday morning to see to the livestock.  

I fed Barley the sow some of her Sow and Bonham ration and gave the field pigs a couple of buckets of pulped fodder beet and the hens and ducks were given their Layers Mash and some vegetable peelings from the kitchen.

Then I went inside and made us a cafetiere of black 'real' coffee and ate some chocolate Oaties biscuits.  

Whilst reading blogs and comments and drinking and eating number 2 son arrived and informed us that 'our' rabbit had escaped from under the run.  But the other rabbits were still there.

I was not an happy bunny and thought that would be the end of that poor rabbit.

Later that afternoon one of the lads friends went looking for Domino our smallholding cat to feed him and she noticed the escapee hiding under a shrub next to the rabbit run and rabbits.  Number one son saw it and pounced and 'our' bunny rabbit is now back home.  

Late afternoon the haggard was an hive of activity.  The rabbits have now got a much more substantial and secure home.  Watch this space to see the happy bunnies new home in the countryside next to the sea!

N is For Neil Peart And Rush.

 I have been lucky enough to see quite a few great Rock bands.  One band who I have liked since I was a teenager is Toronto 3 piece outfit Prog Rockers Rush.   

I have seen them twice.  Once at Birmingham NEC and once at Sheffield Arena.

Neil Peart the drummer and lyricist is sadly no longer with us but his music, videos, lyrics and books live on.

I have in my possession his great motor bike travel memoir Ghost Rider.  It's full of pathos, humour and it's where I got the phrase "my mental jukebox" from.  

Neil writes to a buddy in jail and the stories are highly amusing.  He also paints some amazing word pictures of the Canadian and North American and Mexican landscape.  It's  a book I highly recommend and I aim to  read it again some time.

Being a Prog Rock band.  Rush made concept albums and Farewell To Kings was recorded in Wales.

Have you seen Rush?

Here's a short track by Rush instead of a long Prog version like Xanadu which is based on Coleridge' Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner.  That man from Porlock had a lot to answer for.

Here's Spirit Of The Radio.  It's lyrics sum up when radio music was good  and reminds me of when I would listen to this record over and over again.  Some magical lyrics from the Professor Mr Peart like: "A companion unobtrusive..."

I don't really listen to the radio much these days.  Unless it's something like Classic Hits playing eighties and nineties music.  

Even this years Glastonbury is bringing back the oldies like Guns n Roses and Cat Stevens/Yusaf Islam.  Like that Bob Seger song says: " You can't beat that old time RocknRoll!"

I Think Cool Hand Luke Lives At Our Smallholding.

 I ain't no Paul Newman.  But I'm starting to be like his film character Cool Hand Luke.

 We are having an egg glut at the moment.  We are getting 18 eggs a day and that's 12 hen eggs and 6 duck eggs.  

The wife is baking bread and cakey  wake and we are even had Quiche Lorraine for our Tea.  None of that Lunch and Dinner nonsense.  We are even giving eggs away and Barley the newly farrowed sow eats eggs for her breakfast.  

Homemade Quiche Lorraine.  It did what it didn't say on the tin.  It was ok.  J says she's  never made one before.  Well she's made one now!

It's eggstroidinary (have I invented a new word?)  that they are laying so much especially during Winter.  Perhaps it's their layers mash mix or maybe it's the grass and weeds I keep feeding them? Answers on  a postcard or even a comment down below.  Please that is.  Even petty, pretty please! 

Anyone else keep hens and ducks?  The eggs are a lot fresher than what you get in the supermarket. Next time you are in there. Ask them for half a fresh egg.  That will confuse them.

Bact to the Prog Rock tomorrow or may be Monday.   

Seaweed Collecting For The Potatoes 🥔 Plot.

 I tidied a garden yesterday for my brother and then I tended the two family graves.  

Then in the afternoon we took two of the dogs to the beach near where we live in the countryside next to the sea.  

The two dogs paddled and swam and I collected 6 fertilizer("bag manure") bags of seaweed.  

It's a free resource from the sea, weed free and said to contain over 50 trace elements.  Anyone else collect it and use it in their veg plot?

Beach full of washed up seaweed.

More seaweed.  Thankfully no rubbish. 

Six bags of seaweed which I collected and carried to the car boot.

I spread the six bags and I had exactly enough for this years new potatoes plot.  In winter the fym will be rotted enough to spread over the veg plot.  You don't need to use man-made chemicals to grow your vegetables.

Our ancestors were organic or natural farmers for thousands of years long before it became middle class and trendy.

A Resourceful Smallholding Tool Fixer.

 I was clearing a part of my veg plot the other day and I found this shovel again.

It came from England with us over twenty years ago or so.  It originally had a wooden handle and this broke and ever resourceful number one son made and welded me a new T shaped handle.

This is used mainly for a mucking out shovel.  Especially where the floors are made of concrete.

In Ireland and a lot of the other parts of the world they use the long handled Celtic or Devon shovel.  These have a point on the shovel blade.  

I can use any.  They are horses for courses kind of tools. 

Sledge hammer heads can be picked up very cheaply at carboot sales and second hand markets and you can buy new wooden handles for less than ten Euros or Pounds. 

Why buy a new shovel if you can fix it?  

Planting Time For The Onion Sets.

 I like to start off my onion sets in plastic modules.  I fill them with potting compost 3 for the price of 2) and push the sets into the modules.  

They live in the polytunnel for a couple of weeks until they sprout shoots or onion stalks and a lovely white root sock.  

They like their polytunnel bed and breakfast arrangement and I water them regularly.

Today I planted them outside in the terraced house (containers) allotment garden of the veg plot and filled up the module with fresh compost and planted red onion sets.

Underneath the growing module.  See the white roots emerging from the holes?  It's a much better way of starting them off instead of just pushing them into the cold and sometimes very wet soil.

Onion sets sprouting in ye olde polytunnel.  I even took a photo of my wellies.

Tomorrow we will probably sow our tomato 🍅 seeds?  Have you started planting and sowing yet?

You don't need to have a garden or allotment to grow vegetables and container filled with compost or soil will suffice.  

They ("who are they?") say that supermarket vegetables will be in short supply this year.  So why not grow your own?  Or even get some pigs and ducks and hens and  be like other smallholders and raise your own food?  Home grown and home raised food is the best.