Of course the first thing the novice needs to tackle, when getting going on veg growing, is the sowing of the seed. A timeless wonder of nature explained so well in The Young Ones I seem to remember. Continue reading
Nature Grows the Seed
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Author Archives: paulrainger
We’ve got a plan Stan
So that’s decide then, we’ll make a start on this Good Life thing by getting going on the veg growing this year, and worry about getting animals next year.
Time is pressing…
“Delve in! The year’s before us. Spring’s promise fills the air” – Frederick Frye Rockwell, “Invitation” Around the Year in the Garden, 1913. Continue reading
Thinking of the Future
“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade” – D.H. Lawrence.
This year we really need to make a start on the whole becoming more self-sufficient thing, now the house is fairly finished. Our store room is imposing an air of expectation upon us. Continue reading
Finishing the Landscaping
Apart from the snagging, The Secret Acre’s eco-makeover feels pretty much truly complete now the external landscaping around the house has been done too.
First up (below) was removing the old tarmac front drive and replacing with a permeable pebble surface, to provide sustainable drainage, and extending it down the sides of the house. Continue reading
New Year, New Start?
It’s February already, but seems like only yesterday it was Christmas Eve and we were fifteen foot up one of the cider apple trees precariously harvesting our very own mistletoe.
But with the New Year has come the challenge of making a new start at The Secret Acre, or at least making a proper start on the plans to be more self-sufficient. Continue reading
Show me the (renewable heat) money!
It seemed wrong, in the season of goodwill, to title this post ‘Fuck Off George Osbourne’. Although perhaps it would have been understandable given you can argue this is currently the worst period for UK environmental policy in 30 years. Certainly the Tories, unshackled from partnership coalition and driven by the Treasury, are not a pretty sight.
Their well documented proposal for an 89% reduction in the Solar PV ‘Feed In Tariff’ may well effect our own plans for a PV array next year. And today’s ‘climbdown’ in the face of a storm of criticism, to just a 64% cut, will do little to reduce the damage. Boris Johnson is right to be “very concerned” that up to 20,000 jobs could go in the next few months. But ultimately the economics of solar will defeat oil whatever the Tories do now. Just a shame those jobs will have gone to other countries by then, sacrificed on the alter of political ideology. Continue reading
Our new Energy Performance Certificate
It was with some trepidation recently when Neil from the Severn Wye Energy Agency came round to assess The Secret Acre’s new Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This was after all the independent validation of our smallholding’s whole eco-makeover!
When we found The Secret Acre in 2013 its EPC stood at a lowly score of 44 (in band E). Continue reading
Rural reality… transport
Moving to The Secret Acre has meant reluctantly taking up driving again. Like painfully slow Broadband, having a car is just part of rural reality.
Having driven all my life, I eventually gave up the car after moving to London, but only after paying out shed loads of cash to keep it in a garage for a year first, just to have used it three times in 12 months, before the penny finally dropped that I really could get by without it and be much better off financially. But it still felt like losing a limb at first. Continue reading
Rural reality… broadband
When I lived in the city with 40Mb cable broadband I used to wonder what all the fuss was about when programmes cropped up from time to time moaning about the lack of internet speeds in the countryside.
Now I know why! It feels like we’ve gone back to the days of dial up internet at The Secret Acre. Basically you get 2Mb through the phone line, which all the commercial service providers of course claim is just enough for streaming. Sadly the independent regulator OfCom says you need 10Mb. Continue reading
Proper insulation, we’re never going back!
We’ve banged on a lot this year during the smallholding’s eco makeover about the need to invest in proper insulation, ahead of spending on eco bling.
But it didn’t really strike us until we moved in last month, that this is the first house either of us have ever lived in, that has been fitted out to the modern building regulation standards of energy efficiency introduced in the last decade. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 