Even before we moved into the mill, Peter’s mind was largely on school and his new garden. He had come to terms with the Suffolk boys with their Suffolk accents, and now found them much more responsive than he had originally thought. He did miss the mixed staff room at Stratford even more than he missed the co-educational classes, declaring that the all-male staff were a lot of old women, and he was horrified to be told that “We don’t talk politics here. We are all Conservatives.” But he was beginning to make friends with the English teachers in what he regarded as his team. Ray Weight, a typical minor public school product, was gentle and soon devoted to Peter, and besides a young married man, Ken Brown, there was a very nice Quaker, Geof Mitchell, who taught English most of his time.

But I didn’t hear much about his work. Once he got home his garden filled his thoughts. I have a school notebook of his started in October, before we were even out of our tents. On the first page he lists the fruit trees he has ordered, and on the second, the soft fruit.

We decided to divide our half acre plot into four parts like Gaul. The erstwhile field to the east, marked of from the rest by a slight curve and the footprints of the horse as he turned the plough, was to be a vegetable garden near the house and an orchard below that. There was a convenient double plough drainage line to divide the two halves. The slight, very slight curve we kept feeling that there must have been a reason for it.

The other half to the south of the “house” must be a pleasure garden and lawn as one emerged from the french windows. Beyond that, the last quarter, we set aside for soft fruit, rhubarb, Gale’s garden and, now that we were living in the country, chickens!

Graham, of course, knew someone who wanted to sell a second-hand hen-house and run for half a dozen hens – enough for a start. Indeed, the chickens were under shelter before we were. On advice – always advisable! – we bought six point-of-lay first-cross Rhode Island Reds. These were expensive because normally hens are programmed to stop laying in the winter, so it needs skill to hatch them at exactly the right time to start laying eggs in the autumn and to go on through the winter when eggs were expensive to buy. They had Rhode Island Red mothers and White Leghorn fathers – the first because of the egg quality and the second because they stood up to the cold east winds of Suffolk better than pure bred birds.
Sure enough, they started to lay beautiful eggs within a couple of days of taking up residence and all through that winter we were able to collect at least four sweet smelling eggs from the nest every day.