The start of February marks the traditional Druid festival of Imbolc, celebrating the beginning of spring, being about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
Of course these days, Imbolc is some six weeks ahead of what we now tend to think of as the official start of spring in March, but nonetheless, this is the time when the first earliest signs of the garden waking up start to appear.
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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.
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Here’s our quick pictorial look at some of September’s harvest season action at The Secret Acre.
As is so often the case now under climate change, awful August gave way to warmer days again in September, as soon as the school had gone back (September was second warmest on record for the UK), before autumn could return again properly in October.
In the garden, flowers, fruit and veg all continued in abundance as we moved into this harvest festival and apple pressing season.
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It seems to us that more and more August is becoming the start of autumn in the UK under climate change. Certainly our green roof seems to think so!
In the last few years, summer heat seems to have started too early in spring, with an awful August (in time for the school holidays!) before the sun often returns again in September before a final slide into full autumn.
Nonetheless, July’s veg patch bounty continued to accelerate in August, aided by our usual school holiday influx of visitors, put to work on the growing harvest.
Here’s a few of our pics from our August at The Secret Acre.
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Regular readers will know that our usual approach, as slovenly smallholders, is to do everything about two to four weeks too late.
Hence writing about some of our winter clearance work in December, instead of in March, feels slightly wrong. We blame it on lockdown 2.0! 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
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
Move over Chris Packham! Because another advantage of the current Good Life on Lockdown has been spare time to finally play properly with the trail camera we received at Christmas.
Since moving in we have got used to observing the daytime wildlife, even when red in tooth and claw, but we really wanted a wildlife camera to also be able to capture the hidden nocturnal wildlife, in full on David Attenborough style. Continue reading
When we were urban foragers living in the city, cherry trees were a favourite, especially the irony of collecting a free basket from the productive cherry trees at the end of a large supermarket car park while those inside paid for theirs.
So it was exciting to inherit an old orchard when we moved to The Secret Acre. And although mainly apples and plums, there was also an elderly cherry. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 