Graham enjoys buzz of working the land

The 61-year-old is enjoying the Good Life down at the Barnford Park Allotments in Oldbury.

He produces scores of jars of home-grown honey and hundreds of eggs every year, to go along with a bumper crop of vegetables including leeks, onions and potatoes.

He also grows brocolli, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, asparagus, broad beans, runner beans, French beans, herbs, garlic, rhubarb, raspberries, blackcurrants, whitecurrants, redcurrants, blackberries, tayberries, gooseberries, blueberries, apples, pears, plums, cucumbers, parsnips, swedes, pumpkins and squash.

Mr Walker is secretary of the allotments and, with help from his wife Diane, 64, keeps three plots. Like others who work the land in the area, they have turned their allotment into a mini urban farm by expanding into livestock.

The gas fitter, of Hackett Road, Rowley Regis, has just checked in on 40,000 bees and is preparing to look after a lot more.

He said: "Over the winter they throw each other out until there's only around 40,000 protecting the queen.

"Now it's spring, and the first bees are going out looking for the first nectar. In July, I should have 650,000."

The father of five has so far not been affected by a colony disorder that is wiping out bee populations around the world.

He said: "Mine are no danger unless someone kicks their hive – and if that was to happen, I'd be more worried about the person doing the kicking than the bees themselves." The honey is believed to have a unique quality as a homeopathic treatment for asthma, because it has been made from bees living in a built-up area.

Mr Walker has turned down lucrative offers to sell off the honey commercially so that he can maintain his supply to friends.

He said: "If you have asthma in Oldbury you need honey from Oldbury. It's no good treating it with honey from somewhere else.

"A local homeopathy expert offered me £9 a pound for it so she'd have the whole supply but I refused." The weather so far in 2009 has been looking good for allotment holders, who are looking forward to warm sunshine that will take the temperature towards 60F.

Mr Walker said: "The mixture of sunshine and rain is offering the perfect conditions. The freeze we had last month killed off a lot of the diseases that we had to deal with last year."

Dean Turner, 39, is the assistant secretary of the group and has recently diversified by keeping four chickens of his own. The air conditioning engineer and step-father of four, of Addington Way, Oldbury, said: "It's the appeal of a fresh egg every day that made me do it.

"I'm looking for another eight chickens at the moment, and when the summer comes, I will let them out onto my plot, and they can eat all the slugs off my vegetables.

"The ones I keep are not the normal feathered chickens; they have a sort of fur. It looks like they are wearing hats.

"We have a lot of plot holders with children who like to come down, so the chickens are a bit of fun for them."