How is our allotment/garden/playground looking?

It has been just over one month since we started work on our little patch of earth here on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains and despite our new life on lockdown we are thankfully still permitted to walk the 200m to our allotment where we like to spend our afternoons.

We ran out of drift wood to create boarders for our first group of beds but a timely trimming of a neighbour's bamboo permitted me to complete the job a different way. There can be no confusion now for the kids about where they can & can't walk.

Notice how we are mixing wood ash with the earth. This helps balance the acidity and also adds potassium.

The garlic was planted just two weeks ago and is shooting up so fast.

Beans and spinach here.

The cherry trees are in bloom and I am seriously excited about how many we are going to have. Cherry recipes anyone?

Here you can see Esteban & his best friend Axel from nursery school whose family own the allotment beneath us.

I noticed they put up two long slack-lines in their garden a few days ago and look forward to having a go! You can just make out the green slack-line beneath our allotment in this shot.

It is incredibly good for the body to master walking on these.

This place really is our playground :)

Very happy we now have two decent sized compost boxes. These are going to fill up quickly.

The last thing to go in today were the strawberries. These ones produce fruit till November.

The little bonfire zone has been super useful. And fun!

Above our allotment is another piece of land which belongs to our elderly neighbour in the village. Just last week he kindly offered it to me.

It has a few olive trees, which for some reason excites me a lot!

And it has a shed which could potentially be converted for chickens.

I love the way it overlooks our own garden, further extending the playground.

In light of recent events I have accepted his offer and taken over this land with the intention of producing a whole bunch more food there. Sabrina thinks we have enough already, but I am anticipating a future in which we are not just feeding ourselves, but potentially many people in our village of 300.

It is better to openly share what we have rather than risk having it stolen. That being said I am prepared for the eventuality that all our allotment food may indeed be stolen when the food supply chain breaks down here. It is for this reason that I have been working on a back-up food supply in the courtyard outside our home using vertical gardening techniques & a whole bunch of up-cycling creativity. I look forward to showing this in the next post.

Together we are stronger

On a final note I want you all to know that you are welcome to join us. If you can make it here (which will likely not be easy) and you are willing to help me achieve my community oriented goals, I will help you find food & shelter.

Love & Light everyone.