Nature is your enemy: that’s the verdict of one BBC journalist berating the current trend of allotment ownership.

He had one himself way back in 1974, and found it simply too much hard work. Carrying the watering can, keeping the plot weed-free, getting the blackfly off his broad beans… he quickly came to the conclusion that it would be better to revert to buying his vegetables off Kingston market. Which he did.

But isn’t that rather missing the point? For some people having an allotment is about saving money on the food they’re eating (one of his inspirations in the early days, too) but for many it’s also about knowing where your food comes from, and getting out in the fresh air and having some productive exercise.

Sadly it’s the exercise part that ultimately put him off.

Check out the full story here on BBC News.

The strawberries have been our big success story this summer. Surprising, really, as they have been a dead loss in years gone by.

Right now, though, they’re cropping so heavily that we can’t pick and eat them quickly enough, and even a pessimistic estimate would put the value of what we’ve had so far at about £20. You’d never buy that many in the shops, and if you did they wouldn’t taste nearly so good.

These strawberries are the most intense, fruitful berries you can imagine, and it would be very difficult going back to shop-bought ones if the crop failed next year.

But we’ve not just been lucky with the size of the crop: we’ve also been fortunate with its condition. Very few of the berries show any sign of having been nibbled by any kind of infestation, and we haven’t even needed to use straw to keep them from touching the ground.

All in all, as close to a perfect crop as you could hope, and one high point in an otherwise slightly disappointing plot.

Poor old Barbara clearly wants to be a mum. She’s not coming down from the nest in the morning, and after three hours (or more) of sitting on not only her eggs, but also Gerry and Margot’s efforts I’m having to physically lift her out of the Eglu and down into the run.

She doesn’t like it. She makes funny little noises as you open up the side of the Eglu to pick her out, and then makes herself as wide and flat as she can over the eggs, which makes her quite difficult to pick up.

Then, when you put her down, she plumps up all of her feathers and sits there on the floor, among the chippings, shaking a little. I’m not sure whether she’s shocked or furious.

Fortunately she’s not getting too cross about it. She’s not pecked me, which I thought she might, although I’m wearing gardening gloves just in case she gets too protective.

Unfortunately, though, looking at the various chickeny books we have, this could easily go on for three weeks.

I don’t think the chickens like oyster shell. It’s supposed to be good for them, as it replaces the calcium in their bodies that they lose through laying eggs, but whenever we put it in their layers’ pellets they just kick it out of the feeder. Result: dusty (or muddy if it’s raining) pellets all over the run.

It’s annoying because this is the first time we’ve tried them on bought oyster shell. Up until now we’ve been baking our used egg shells and grinding them up in the blender, then pouring them back into their feed.

I think probably they’ve never noticed we’ve been doing that, so the sudden appearance of something new over the last two weeks might have spooked them.

I’m hoping they’ll get used to it and start eating it without too much fuss, so we’ll persevere as I really don’t want to have to go back to keeping used egg shells around the kitchen for days on end.

The final figures are in, and May saw a slight decline in in the number of eggs laid. It was the second consecutive monthly fall, seeing a net cut of five eggs between March and May.

Why? We’re not sure. Margot seems to have re-grown the feathers on her undercarriage without ever properly moulting, and Barbara and Gerry don’t seem to have dropped any feathers at all.

We’re keeping them well fed with plenty of vegetable scraps to supplement their layers’ pellets, and we’ve built them a new perch, which they enjoy standing on to get a better view down the garden. They spend their days either dust bathing or clucking away to each other as they scratch in the chippings and seem, on balance, to have a pretty perfect chickeny life.

Perhaps it’s just seasonal. Maybe they’re getting used to the hot weather. Or perhaps it’s down to the fact that they’re each coming up for a year old now, and their eggs laying capacity is naturally declining. That’s why battery hens have a 12-month life expectancy, after which they’re shipped off to be made into dog food.

June, fortunately, is looking up so far, with an egg from each of the hens every day so far. If they can keep it up at that rate they’ll be almost back to their March level, and that’s not bad going for a month that is one day shorter.