Season’s Greetings from The Secret Acre
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Category Archives: Good Life
Decent into Autumn
As the September harvest with its late summer sunshine gave away to increasingly damp and cool autumnal weather, we gathered in the last of the crops at The Secret Acre and started clearing down the veg beds.
Here are a few pictures from October and early November’s gradual decent into autumn.
Continue readingGoing for the One
You might remember that last year, Emma tied on points with another competitor for first place overall as ‘Best in Show’ at our local Fruit and Veg Show.
We are nothing if not competitive here at The Secret Acre, so as the start of Village Produce Show season loomed again at the end of August, Emma was plotting to go one better this year.
And that she did, claiming the ‘Best in Show’ trophy as outright winner this year, picking up the section winner cups for Best Baker and Best Brewer en-route.
Continue readingBook review: National Trust School of Gardening
This new book by Rebecca Bevan, beautifully illustrated by Madeleine Smith, is the perfect companion to the RHS’s Growing Vegetable & Herbs.
Between the two of them, anyone will have the confidence to successfully fill their garden with flowers, vegetables and fruit.
Continue readingProduct review: Biotrim. Eco strimming has arrived.
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.
Continue readingWild Garlic Three Ways
Followers of our adventures at The Secret Acre will know that we go wild for Wild Garlic.
It’s usually one of our first big forages of spring, and one of the easiest for beginners, growing profusely in woodlands over a long period, and not easily misidentified, smelling and tasting of, well, garlic.
Continue readingThe Noodle of Serendipity
There is a new soul with us at The Secret Acre.
Meet Noodle, the labradoodle!
When our beloved Ruby passed away before Christmas we were very clear. We were not going to have another dog for at least a year in order to go travelling. But fate had other plans for us. Continue reading
Heartbreak Hotel
There have always been three souls here at The Secret Acre, the third person in our marriage being Ruby, a little rough-haired Jack Russell.
She even carried the rings down the aisle for us.
So it was heart breaking this Christmas when Ruby died at the ripe old age of 13, from what we have now all learned to call ‘underlying health issues’. The first of a string of devastating bereavements as it turned out. Continue reading
Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year with love from The Secret Acre
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Winterval
Sadly it’s turning into a Christmas Horribilis for us. More about this at a future date when we feel we can write about it.
But before the proverbial hit the fan, we were busy preparing for a happier, socially distanced Yule.
The Christmas tree arrived on a tractor, delivered from the farm a few hundred yards down the road, where we had often walked the dog past the field where it was growing.
Just six inches needed trimming off the top to get it in. Continue reading
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