Definitely feels like we’ve achieved more winter clearance this year. The weather’s been less wet for a start. Even if the ‘to do’ list still seems as long as ever.
Top of the list for this winter was tackling the five foot high impenetrable thicket of nettles and brambles behind the pigsties. Continue reading
We’re guest tweeters of the week all this week on Twitter @SmallholdersUK
Followers of this Blog get their updates in one of three ways. Either you’ve signed up on the website for direct email alerts, or you see posting on Facebook or Twitter. Continue reading
Spring might officially still be a while off, but the first stirrings of new hope ahead are already in the gardener’s heart.
There’s the new, rotated veg patch plan to draw up, and seeds to be sorted and ordered. Continue reading
Welcome to Fastershire said the postcard through the door recently, announcing that our local phone cabinet has finally been wired up for the prospect of faster rural broadband!
See what they did there? Nice. Continue reading
Here’s something inspirational for the New Year, to balance my depressing New Year thought about the IT Industry’s contribution to Child Slavery. Forget your black landfill wheelie bin, this is the landfill jam jar!
Thanks to fellow Good Life bloggers at Home Grown Heaven, I was recently introduced to another inspirational Irish blog, Simple No Waste Life. They spent 2016 going hard core on Zero Waste. Continue reading
A cheery thought for New Year! But the fact is many of the devices we use to access the internet, and read this blog, contain materials that are mined on some of the planet’s worst conflict zones. Continue reading
We didn’t just grow vegetables in our first year at The Secret Acre, we took time out to get married too. In our own field, at our own boutique, indie style festival for family and friends. But that’s a whole other story!
However, like many modern marriages these days, we met later in life. Which got us thinking about how we would celebrate our anniversaries. Continue reading
Last month our dog, Ruby, emerged from the darkness of her usual night time patrol round the garden with a stick in her mouth.
Bringing us little presents is a relatively rare event, usually confined to the odd rotting fermenting windfall apple, presented with a slightly drunken look on her face as if to say ‘you should try these fermented apples they are really great!’
Ruby’s stick face however had an altogether different look of smug satisfaction. And rightly so. Continue reading
No, not a Channel 5 programme pitch, but a fierce, yet silent, night time battle to the death, fought out recently at The Secret Acre.
There are apparently over 110 species of digger wasp in Britain, who’d have thought it, one of which decided to nest near our greenhouse earlier this year. Out of the way doing no harm we decided to leave them to their own devices. Continue reading
Twice a year, I put on my coat, pull on my wellies, and climb out of the bedroom window… to go gardening!
Yes, last month was time (if slightly overdue as usual), for the bi-annual weeding our lovely green roof. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 