The New Homesteader
Over the 10 years we have spent here at Walnuts Farm, we have developed a system of food production that suits us as well as the land we farm. Our aim is to raise just the right amount to feed our family, but no more.
We are not 100 per cent self-sufficient or purist about trying to be so. We grow what we like to eat, is expensive to buy or tastes best fresh from the garden. We are not ashamed to head to a local farm shop or supermarket.
The library with stove
When we started out, we soon discovered that it’s essential to work with what you’ve got. Walnuts Farm is situated on heavy clay and poor grazing land in the High Weald in Kent. Because of the wet weather over winter, we can only rear livestock outdoors during the summer.
Everything at Walnuts Farm has to ‘feed the eye as well as the family’, for our aim is to gain as much pleasure from the doing as from the final result. Our homesteading is a labour of love and as such must reward us in every way.
We work in the kitchen garden – which is at the heart of the enterprise – little and often, sowing, growing and harvesting throughout the year. Surrounding this are areas for pigs, sheep, bees and poultry, on the meadows and among the woodland.
Left: Items from the utility room. Right: The bathroom, with heritage radiator.
Most of our fruit and vegetable production takes place on less than an acre. We do not dig our beds as we are on clay. When we are tilling the ground, we use a big cultivator hoe for weeding. We spend little time watering as we are growing for flavour, not volume. We do spend time on defence – keeping rabbits and deer out, as well as mice and slugs. We introduce pigs and lambs in spring and fatten them up over summer, using as much homegrown grass and feeds as possible. They are all in the freezer by the time the land becomes wet again in autumn.
What are the rewards? There is fabulous food, and a lifestyle that ‘feeds the eye as well as the family’. The greatest pleasure is producing by one’s own hand the food for one’s family. It is an act of love that appeals to the hunter and gatherer within us all.
Our kitchen garden sits on the north side of the farmhouse and is only a stone’s throw from the kitchen door. It is the focus of all our efforts outdoors, and we have purposely designed it so that it is permanently ‘on show’ from the house. Our ambition is to grow and eat fresh ingredients throughout the year and treat the kitchen garden as our walk-in larder. We pick as and when we need it. We plant in squares rather than rows, as they are visually more pleasing. We also plant crops along a north-south axis rather than east-west, so that they get the maximum amount of daylight.
The kitchen table is the main workstation
When it comes to choosing what to grow in the orchard, we opt for fruit that we like to eat and that is hard to find or expensive to buy locally. We enjoy the nutty Egremont Russet apple and crisp Cox-type Laxton’s.
Bee farming goes hand-in-hand with a productive and fruitful kitchen garden. The hives are in a sheltered spot in the kitchen garden, along the back fence and facing south but well out of the way of children and dogs.
We use battery-powered electric netting to keep the chickens in one area. We move the netting and the hen house when the patch becomes bare. During the winter, we move our portable chicken ark onto the kitchen garden beds. The chicken can scratch about on the vegetable beds and do some clearing and manurespreading for us.
Walnuts Farm, 1825
We have an area of garden on the south side of the house that we use for entertaining and eating outdoors. We refer to it affectionately as the ‘pub garden’ because it is really just two squares of gravel edged by box hedging. On balmy summer evenings, we eat outside in the sheltered courtyard space between the house and the outbuildings. We light beeswax candles in the lanterns on either side of the pigeon-grey door and carry the kitchen table out into the courtyard.
The New Homesteader, by Bella Pringle and Nick Ivins, with photography by Nick Ivins (Ryland Peters & Small, £19.99).
We are not 100 per cent self-sufficient or purist about trying to be so. We grow what we like to eat, is expensive to buy or tastes best fresh from the garden. We are not ashamed to head to a local farm shop or supermarket.
The library with stoveWhen we started out, we soon discovered that it’s essential to work with what you’ve got. Walnuts Farm is situated on heavy clay and poor grazing land in the High Weald in Kent. Because of the wet weather over winter, we can only rear livestock outdoors during the summer.
Everything at Walnuts Farm has to ‘feed the eye as well as the family’, for our aim is to gain as much pleasure from the doing as from the final result. Our homesteading is a labour of love and as such must reward us in every way.
We work in the kitchen garden – which is at the heart of the enterprise – little and often, sowing, growing and harvesting throughout the year. Surrounding this are areas for pigs, sheep, bees and poultry, on the meadows and among the woodland.
Left: Items from the utility room. Right: The bathroom, with heritage radiator.Most of our fruit and vegetable production takes place on less than an acre. We do not dig our beds as we are on clay. When we are tilling the ground, we use a big cultivator hoe for weeding. We spend little time watering as we are growing for flavour, not volume. We do spend time on defence – keeping rabbits and deer out, as well as mice and slugs. We introduce pigs and lambs in spring and fatten them up over summer, using as much homegrown grass and feeds as possible. They are all in the freezer by the time the land becomes wet again in autumn.
What are the rewards? There is fabulous food, and a lifestyle that ‘feeds the eye as well as the family’. The greatest pleasure is producing by one’s own hand the food for one’s family. It is an act of love that appeals to the hunter and gatherer within us all.
Our kitchen garden sits on the north side of the farmhouse and is only a stone’s throw from the kitchen door. It is the focus of all our efforts outdoors, and we have purposely designed it so that it is permanently ‘on show’ from the house. Our ambition is to grow and eat fresh ingredients throughout the year and treat the kitchen garden as our walk-in larder. We pick as and when we need it. We plant in squares rather than rows, as they are visually more pleasing. We also plant crops along a north-south axis rather than east-west, so that they get the maximum amount of daylight.
The kitchen table is the main workstationWhen it comes to choosing what to grow in the orchard, we opt for fruit that we like to eat and that is hard to find or expensive to buy locally. We enjoy the nutty Egremont Russet apple and crisp Cox-type Laxton’s.
Bee farming goes hand-in-hand with a productive and fruitful kitchen garden. The hives are in a sheltered spot in the kitchen garden, along the back fence and facing south but well out of the way of children and dogs.
We use battery-powered electric netting to keep the chickens in one area. We move the netting and the hen house when the patch becomes bare. During the winter, we move our portable chicken ark onto the kitchen garden beds. The chicken can scratch about on the vegetable beds and do some clearing and manurespreading for us.
Walnuts Farm, 1825We have an area of garden on the south side of the house that we use for entertaining and eating outdoors. We refer to it affectionately as the ‘pub garden’ because it is really just two squares of gravel edged by box hedging. On balmy summer evenings, we eat outside in the sheltered courtyard space between the house and the outbuildings. We light beeswax candles in the lanterns on either side of the pigeon-grey door and carry the kitchen table out into the courtyard.
The New Homesteader, by Bella Pringle and Nick Ivins, with photography by Nick Ivins (Ryland Peters & Small, £19.99).