We’ve seen the future of garden strimming, and it’s biodegradable!
Regular readers or visitors to The Secret Acre, will know that strimming has been a big part of our lives since moving in.
Only now, some six years on, does it feel like we have finally made good inroads into reclaiming the overgrown areas to put back into productive use. Each winter’s incremental progress requiring regular summer strimming to maintain the foothold.
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A lot of people made a lot of banana bread during lockdown. We made red wine and cheese. But apparently, four-time Formula 1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel completed an internship in organic farming. He is not alone of course, 1979 World Champion, Jody Scheckter, owns Laverstoke Park, a biodynamic farm in Hampshire. Continue reading
Much excitement on The Secret Acre winter veg patch.
“Look at the size of this parsnip” Emma calls over pointing at the giant disc sitting surrounded by topsoil.
“That would be a great one to dig up for Christmas.”
So we did….. Continue reading
Autumn, according to Winnie the Pooh, is “A time of hot chocolatey mornings, toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves.”
And who are we to argue with the great Tao of Pooh?
So all three have been enjoyed at The Secret Acre this autumn, while England endured its second Covid lockdown as you can see!
These autumn months always just seem to whiz by in a flash. Continue reading
Last month saw some of our final summer harvest pickings as the decent into autumn gathered pace.
It’s been a long lockdown summer in the garden.
From the early broad beans, onions and garlic, through the traditional gluts, and welcome summer helpers.
Here’s another pictorial roundup of the final action. Continue reading
It hasn’t just been biodynamic tear peas that we experimented with this year, our plans for a mushroom bed progressed too.
The idea germinated some years earlier when we visited GroCycle in Devon to see their project growing mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds, as a possible business idea for The Secret Acre. Continue reading
Like most smallholders we still work part-time, the holy grail of living off the land proving elusive in the current unsustainable era of cheap industrial food which hides the true costs of production. Continue reading
Regular readers will know that autumn’s harvest season also brings forth the village show.
We have form, stating with some urban practise, and then some baby steps, before gaining experience for a successful all-out assault on a whole section last year.
To be frank, I didn’t think it could get any better, and along with the uncertainty around the virus this year, I doubted we would enter. Continue reading
August is always a manic month of harvesting and preserving, and our ongoing Harvest 2020 was no exception.
If anything things have been even busier this year with the unseasonal climate change affected weather meaning everything has been ready at least two weeks early, and some crops badly hit.
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Our harvesting continued apace in July and as we headed into August, traditionally the month of gluts on the veg patch.
The start of the school summer holidays also marks the traditional influx of child labour thanks to visiting friends. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 