And another year goes by. So last month I put up two curtain poles and a washing line at The Secret Acre. Because October marked our first year anniversary of moving in. And rather embarrassingly these were the last of the ‘quick’ jobs still undone from that very first month!
But missing curtain poles aside, October was a chance for us to reflect on the good and bad points of our first year. Fortunately, perhaps, our positives and negatives were remarkably similar. Continue reading
We’ve been away from The Secret Acre for two weeks on honeymoon. Before we left we took the precaution of picking and eating all the courgettes. But these buggers grow fast, and on our return we were greeted by four massive marrows already the size of torpedoes!
In August’s issue of Home Farmer magazine their advice on growing courgettes to marrow size was simply “don’t do it!” So faced with our honeymoon marrows, anyone else got any good (and preferably tasty!) suggestions?
“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land” – Abraham Lincoln
If Abe, the dollar bill guy was right, then we ought to be celebrating our heroes of self-sufficiency.
But who are your own personal heroes?
Take our poll and let us know! Continue reading
So the house is finished and the vegetables are growing.
Surely time now then to simply lay back in warm summer sunshine and enjoy the good life!
The American humorist, S.J. Perelman, apparently once wrote that –
“A farm is an irregular patch of nettles, containing a fool who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.”
Little did he know that this fool has a hammock!
The guerrilla growing movement has taken off in cities across the globe in recent years as citizens reclaim unloved urban spaces for veg growing.
Most city authorities now embrace and support these movements, recognising the positive contribution thy make in creating healthier, happier, edible cities.
So it was intriguing to read a ‘weak signal from the future’ via Forum for the Future, about the work of the Guerrilla Grafters in San Francisco. Continue reading
So, six months ago we discovered the rural reality of broadband (there isn’t any), despite OpenReach calling our community an “Enabled area” which turns out to really mean that the area is actually un-enabled and unconnected!
Half a year later the update is er…. no change. Continue reading
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
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
After two exciting and exhausting months we are starting to feel settled and finding time to explore our new surroundings. We are blessed to have moved to an area that is crisscrossed by footpaths across some spectacular countryside, and although still feeling a pang for the city, we are certainly enjoying the great walks from our doorstep, especially the dog.
Embracing local life we battled our way through winds and rain to enjoy a Christmas cream tea at a nearby village, experienced the town’s Christmas Fair in the rain, and walked down in howling wind and torrential rain to the Cam Christmas lights switch on. Continue reading
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
The Secret Acre 