It has been the usual busy summer period here at The Secret Acre, since enjoying the first produce of spring, punctuated by the sadness of having to say goodbye to a beloved elderly member of the family.
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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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Our new nature watch camera at The Secret Acre includes a timelapse facility that we have been playing around with.
Best so far has been a summer’s day in the paddock, watching the horses and their visitors come and go. Eighteen hours from dawn to dusk compressed into just 9 mins of film. Continue reading
Since starting to use our nature watch camera at The Secret Acre we recently hit the motherlode of (mostly nocturnal) animal activity.
A veritable M25 of wildlife comings and goings, it turns out, exists in the overgrown patch round the back behind the walnut tree. 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
Last Spring we wrote about the popularity of swales in our local farmer’s fields. These temporary winter ponds help work with the water to provide natural flood regulation as well as important wildlife habitats. Continue reading
Although it feels like we are well into spring now, it was only this time last month that our local swales were heralding spring’s arrival with the first sighting of frog’s spawn.
Apparently the clumps of spawn (eggs) can be laid in ponds anytime from January onwards in the south-west England, but we’ve never seen it that early here at The Secret Acre. Continue reading
Last month our dog, Ruby, emerged from the darkness of her usual night time patrol round the garden with a stick in her mouth.
Bringing us little presents is a relatively rare event, usually confined to the odd rotting fermenting windfall apple, presented with a slightly drunken look on her face as if to say ‘you should try these fermented apples they are really great!’
Ruby’s stick face however had an altogether different look of smug satisfaction. And rightly so. Continue reading
No, not a Channel 5 programme pitch, but a fierce, yet silent, night time battle to the death, fought out recently at The Secret Acre.
There are apparently over 110 species of digger wasp in Britain, who’d have thought it, one of which decided to nest near our greenhouse earlier this year. Out of the way doing no harm we decided to leave them to their own devices. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 