Christmas (turkey) Delights

Posted on December 22, 2015 by emmaalesworth

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 →

Show me the (renewable heat) money!

Posted on December 17, 2015 by paulrainger

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 →

Turning Apples into Food

Posted on December 12, 2015 by emmaalesworth

It might not sound as impressive as turning water into wine, apples are basically already food after all, but tuck into the delicious apple cake at The Canteen in Nailsworth, or enjoy the apple sauce with your pork at The Hog in Horsley, and you may have eaten apples from The Secret Acre.

Last year we turned our apples into test batches of juice and cider, with a view to scaling up production this year. But despite getting an industrial size press, the timing of our moving into The Secret Acre meant that our cider empire had to be largely put on hold for 12 months. Continue reading →

Our new Energy Performance Certificate

Posted on December 9, 2015 by paulrainger

It was with some trepidation recently when Neil from the Severn Wye Energy Agency came round to assess The Secret Acre’s new Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This was after all the independent validation of our smallholding’s whole eco-makeover!

When we found The Secret Acre in 2013 its EPC stood at a lowly score of 44 (in band E). Continue reading →

Rural reality… transport

Posted on December 3, 2015 by paulrainger

Moving to The Secret Acre has meant reluctantly taking up driving again. Like painfully slow Broadband, having a car is just part of rural reality.

Having driven all my life, I eventually gave up the car after moving to London, but only after paying out shed loads of cash to keep it in a garage for a year first, just to have used it three times in 12 months, before the penny finally dropped that I really could get by without it and be much better off financially. But it still felt like losing a limb at first. Continue reading →

Rural reality… broadband

Posted on November 19, 2015 by paulrainger

When I lived in the city with 40Mb cable broadband I used to wonder what all the fuss was about when programmes cropped up from time to time moaning about the lack of internet speeds in the countryside.

Now I know why! It feels like we’ve gone back to the days of dial up internet at The Secret Acre. Basically you get 2Mb through the phone line, which all the commercial service providers of course claim is just enough for streaming. Sadly the independent regulator OfCom says you need 10Mb. Continue reading →

Proper insulation, we’re never going back!

Posted on November 12, 2015 by paulrainger

We’ve banged on a lot this year during the smallholding’s eco makeover about the need to invest in proper insulation, ahead of spending on eco bling.

But it didn’t really strike us until we moved in last month, that this is the first house either of us have ever lived in, that has been fitted out to the modern building regulation standards of energy efficiency introduced in the last decade. Continue reading →

First Glimmers of the Good Life

Posted on October 30, 2015 by paulrainger

Amid the stresses of moving in, unpacking and snagging it can be easy to temporarily lose sight of why you wanted to chase a more balanced life in the first place. So it has something of a relief to almost immediately get the first glimmers of the promised Good Life.

My top three so far have been – Continue reading →

The Recycled Kitchen

Posted on October 21, 2015 by paulrainger

One of the great joys and surprises of The Secret Acre’s eco-makeover has been our bespoke recycled kitchen.

From the outset, Emma has been dead set against buying commercial kitchen units. You regularly hear of people spending tens of thousands of pounds on commercial kitchens which all tend to look frankly so cheap and nasty you wonder why they bother. The answer is of course because we are told having a bespoke kitchen made for you is astronomical. Continue reading →

Six Months In: Moving, Snagging & Landscaping

Posted on October 15, 2015 by paulrainger

It seems hard to believe, but just over six months into the smallholding’s eco-makeover, the excellent builders had stuck to both the timetable and the budget and we were ready to move in.

So after lots of internal finishing in September, and a disappointing lack of readily available Triple A rated energy efficient appliances, we finally booked the removal van for the start of October, worried only by the alarming amount of stuff we had to pack up.

Now safely in, we are starting to work through the inevitably long list of snagging issues, top of which on day one was the alarmingly absent manhole for the bathroom sewer! Continue reading →