From Field to Fork

10.00am: A gorgeous blustery day...the sort that makes you catch your breath with joy at being out in it. And better still, it is not obligatory (as it has been during the heatwave)...there is just enough of a chill in the air to be mildly off-putting and what clouds there are in the blue sky look heavy as if at any moment they would drop their load right over me. So, a perfect excuse to stay inside and turn on the computer. The rarest of treats.

Suddenly it seems there is going to be a storm; the wind has whipped up outside now but inside it is quiet except for the scamper of kittens. They are everywhere...five of them...all over my lap, my lap-top, in and out of guitars, wellies, the wood-burning stove. Dixy, their mother - not much more than a kitten herself - grew up fast and now sits on the window cill, watching them with a baleful eye, her tail flicking slowly. She spends hours berating them with her strange purring mother-meiow, hours suckling them, hours cleaning each and every one of them and hours shopping for them out in the field, coming home every day with a selection of baby animals for them to share under the kitchen table as we have our breakfast. Unpleasant, indeed, but if we take them away, the carnage is worse - she plunders the fields anew. She's a very diligent mother.

Outside in the bread oven is another maternity ward. Our hens went broody weeks ago and I had to start buying eggs from the supermarket again. There were dozens of eggs being sat on for weeks by all these grumpy hens. I didn't know what to do! I asked the Ladies of the Dicker for their pearls of wisdom because we went way over the twenty one days alloted to a fertile egg for hatching and yet when i inadvertently cracked the odd one, they were quite definately 'with chick'. So we bobbed the eggs up and down in bowls of warm water, discarded those that sank and popped floaters back under Black Betty (uber-mum). Ousted, all the other hens flounced off to take mud baths after so many weeks of pointless brooding. Then one day last week during my morning egg-fret I noticed a titchy beak tapping through the shell. Naturally, I nearly dropped the egg with excitement, but regained composure and ran all eggs and fast as I could to the safety of a disused bread oven we have outside and then rushed Black Betty to her new safe haven too in case Dixy decided to make a few menu changes. When the children got home from school, there it was - one tiny fluffy black chick - gorgeous! And eleven eggs still to hatch. So for the next few days we lifted Black Betty up-down, up-down, to perform chick check. But no chicks. We did the warm water test again and clearly some no longer had living chicks in them so we removed those eggs. Then Black Betty trod on one of the fertile eggs, and upon inspection it was definately not fertile, just very old with a rather antique pong. And so it was with the other eggs - all duffs and profoundly smelly. So we have just one chick. Louis announced our new arrival in the playground to one of the mothers who breeds chicks. She asked how many we had; 'Just the one,' he said, 'How many have you got?'

'Eighty thousand,' she replied.

2.00pm: Here is the storm; thunder cracking over the flat fields; rain like I have not seen for a long time, a waterfall cascading down the side of the house. Rain, then flashes of sunlight - the vegetables will love it. But our soil is dense clay out here - waterlogged at one end of the field in weather like this, rock hard after a few days of sun. The vegetable plot was pasture before this year but over winter the pigs dug it up neatly and fertilized it for us - wonderful creatures! We are planning how to improve the soil for next year and chatting up the local horsey folk in search of heaps of unwanted manure - we're going to need a lot.

This morning Dave was up early to take the Landrover round to the field for a lamb delivery from Tottingworth Farm; then out to see what could be harvested for the Tin Drums before getting Martha into school in Brighton on time. He took in herbs and garlic, beetroot (my favourite, especially the amazing golden ones which I am planting more of tomorrow), first ripening tomatoes, spring onions, kohl rabi (which have lovely blueish leaves and are interplanted with blue borage flowers - I didn't expect the vegetable plot to look so pretty), tender yellow French beans, and at this time of year, plenty of courgettes.

I must think about feeding the family now and like the cat go out into the field to see what I can find to put on our forks. All I can hear is distant thunder, the rain, a ticking clock, the cats purring...no tv, no cars, no sirens - time to log off.