Begin at the beginning

My husband comes from a farming family. Going back a couple of generations they had a pretty big farm, but, thanks to death duties, they ended up having to sell most of the land and all that's left now is a triangular field. A small part of it is used as a vegetable plot by my father in law and in the past my husband used to also have a plot there, but it's been abandoned for some time. We've been talking for years about starting an allotment for ourselves there and this year we finally decided to get started.

Like I said, my husband's background is farming. Although they didn't have their own farm, when he was growing up his dad was a farm worker and he went to agricultural college after school. Since leaving college he's been working as a gardener, so outdoors stuff and growing things is what he does. My background is a bit different. I'm a city girl and pretty much anything green tends to die around me! I think the last thing I grew was probably a broad bean in a jam jar at school, or maybe some cress on blotting paper.

In order to get this allotment going, we pretty much have to start from nothing. My husband has a greenhouse on the field from his previous efforts, but it's been left empty for ages and the brambles have taken over!

As you can see, there's a lot to do before we can even start to think about planting anything. On the plus side though at least we have a fine crop of blackberries so we may not have planted anything but we have a harvest! I was able to pick just over 1kg and baked a pie.

As well as cleaning out the greenhouse, we also need to prepare the ground. Thankfully my husband has the tools for the job so out came the rotavator

We spent a couple of hours at the field this first time and made a good start. Can't wait to get back there and keep going.