Particularly pleased with our first ever crop of Padron Peppers (bottom left), continuing our Mediterranean weather themed summer. And one of our favourites in the kitchen.
At this rate of climate change we’ll soon be able to supply our favourite local tapas bar!
Having pickled the first sowing of radishes, our next harvest at The Secret Acre was once again the over wintered onions and garlic.
This year’s varieties were Cristo and Iberian Wight for the garlic with Troy F1 white onions and Electric red onions. Although the results seem on a par with last year’s varieties. Continue reading
This year, one of our early harvest gluts was radishes, which all came in a rush, despite the weather.
So for the first time at The Secret Acre, Emma tried her hand at pickled radish. Continue reading
Has The Secret Acre gone to rack and ruin since our last blog 5 months ago?
In short, no.
What has gone to ruin, we’ve realised, was our resolve to only work part-time since moving to the smallholding. Both our hours have slowly crept up again over the last two years, almost without noticing. Continue reading
Chepstow Wassail & Mari Lwyd
Once again, January came and went, before we actually put into action any of our good intentions to make an early start in the garden.
Not that it was all just lounging around in the house after Christmas drawing up planting plans and ordering seeds.
As the snowdrops started to emerge, we got down to making another year’s supply of marmalade, following the award-winning formula we accidentally hit upon last time round. Continue reading
In a Secret Acre first (and quite possibly last!) we thought we’d announce our first ever ‘Tool of the Year’ award.
And our totally just made up award goes to… the Wolf Garten KS2K Weeding/Planting Knife! Continue reading
If you were with us this time last year, you will know that Emma and I decide to dump the traditional first 24 wedding anniversaries – the rubbish ones like ‘paper’ and ‘glue’ which come before the serious bling – in favour of our own list of things we actually like.
So we wrote down 12 each and randomly assigned them into the 24 draws of a repurposed advent calendar, to be opened at the start of each year. Continue reading
