The inevitable consequence of Apple Day in October is of course a new batch of cider making.
And this year our friend Derek was on hand to record it all on film, leaving me in presenting terms somewhere between Jack Hargreaves and Kevin McCloud I fear.
Anyway, grab your popcorn for the first (and quite possible last) Secret Acre movie…
October of course sees the official arrival of Apple Day in the UK, and an opportunity for harvest weary smallholders to invite friends round to help out under the guise of having a party!
Although in truth our apple crop had been arriving progressively in the kitchen since the start of August.
And The Secret Acre is certainly no stranger to hosting our own Apple Day events, in our long standing quest to make cider, which fortunately seems to be getting better with time at least. Continue reading
August’s harvest rapidly flowed into the Sept/Oct apple crop (more on this in the next blog) and before you know it here we are in November!
But while this hectic period was on, we still found time to enter September’s traditional local Village Show.
Now, veterans of this blog will know we have form when it comes to Shows.
Well, I say we, but although we have both entered before, only Emma had actually triumphed. Continue reading
April was unusually warm and dry, ensuring Spring arrived with a vengeance, underlining the timeless wonder of it all.
At The Secret Acre it proved a busy month recycling, creating new borders, as well as cutting the grass, planting the potatoes, planting extra successional broad beans and onions, and bottling the last of the cider. Continue reading
Sang no European rock band ever. But if they had, it would have made a fitting title for this, our final word on rural broadband, you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear.
And that’s because we have, to give credit where credit is due, actually reached a satisfactory conclusion. Continue reading
Today is officially the first day of spring, if you’re a northern hemisphere type of person that is.
Of course the early signs of spring have been popping up everywhere already, but today the sun has done its stuff, at 10.28am to be precise if you were in the UK. 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
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
The Secret Acre 