The other weekend, we let the dog out at 7am as usual for her morning pee, then went back to bed with a cup of tea.
Half an hour later, we looked out of the window to see a huge flock of sheep had mysteriously and silently, with military precision, materialised in the garden like a mass of fluffy clouds, as if we had suddenly been transported into a bizarre live action episode of Shawn the Sheep!
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Despite the dry summer, autumn dampness seemed to arrive just in time for a spectacular display of seasonal colour.
The autumn fungi seemed to enjoy it too, with an abundance of edible and non-edible varieties popping up around The Secret Acre.
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If you want to be the best, if you want to beat the rest… have a really dry year apparently… certainly some things on the smallholding have enjoyed it more than others… and not necessarily the things you might expect.
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It’s shaping up to have been a pretty good year at The Secret Acre, despite the very dry weather.
Where crops simply failed in last year’s unseasonable rain, at least the gardener has the chance to water things, especially, if like us, you live in a well-managed area like Severn Tent Water, which rarely needs a hosepipe ban.
So most things are back to growing reasonably well, even if the fruits are a bit undersized from the lack of rain.
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While we were enjoying our spring equinox BBQ earlier in the year, we were also getting round to starting the final transformation of our rebuilt ‘lean to love shack’ into a new outdoor kitchen.
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The rotavator man cometh!
Since moving to The Secret Acre, on the principal of cash poor, time rich, Paul has dug over the veg patches each spring, having never quite managed yet to get our ‘no dig’ act together sufficiently.
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Following our unexpectedly early ‘three seasons’ spring equinox BBQ, the UK weather delivered a prolonged heatwave.
Thanks to the growing climate crisis, after last year’s continuously unseasonable cold and wet spring and summer, causing England’s England second worst harvest on record, spring 2025 could prove to be one of the hottest and driest on record. We are already suffering the most extreme marine heatwave since satellite monitoring began.
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Last week saw the arrival of the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. The UK enjoyed an unseasonably warm day, including Wales’ warmest spring equinox on record, as the early impacts of the coming climate chaos continue to make themselves felt.
Naturally, here at The Secret Acre, we took the opportunity for a summer BBQ. Our earliest on record, after none at all in last year’s continuously unseasonable cold and wet.
We ended up enjoying three seasons in one day! A summer BBQ on the warmest spring equinox, having dug up the last of the winter leaks, to char on the BBQ coals, and eat with an excellent romesco sauce.
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Who’s the thief, who’s the thief?
We diligently put the very last of our Bramleys in a bucket, to make a final few apple pies in the run up to Christmas.
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As I write this, the UK is being battered by the second named storm this winter. Already ground sodden all last spring has returned almost instantaneously. It never really went away.
The year has basically been too cold and too wet. In record breaking amounts thanks to climate change, and the moving, possibly collapsing Gulf Stream.
England has suffered its second worst harvest on record because of the weather. If you think the damage from growing number of storms and floods in bad, just wait until we hit global food shortages.
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The Secret Acre 