A lot of people made a lot of banana bread during lockdown. We made red wine and cheese. But apparently, four-time Formula 1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel completed an internship in organic farming. He is not alone of course, 1979 World Champion, Jody Scheckter, owns Laverstoke Park, a biodynamic farm in Hampshire. Continue reading
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
The start of this month was Imbolc, the traditional Gaelic festival marking the beginning of spring.
It is about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, as the very first hopeful signs that life will start to return from winters grip start to emerge.
Back in May I opined about how on top of all things veg we seemed to be this year, warning that it surely couldn’t last.
And that hiccup arrived almost immediately in the form of a prolonged spell of unexpected parental care, now all fine fortunately, but leaving Emma to cope solo on the veg patch.
So the harvest we have enjoyed is all down to her hard work. Here’s a pictorial roundup of some of the action. Continue reading
The strange feeling of ‘veg bed competence’ we had at the start of May has somehow survived through to end of the month.
Surely it can’t last!
The greenhouse seedlings (pictured left) rapidly turned into a veritable garden nursery vision of plug plants demanding to be planted out against the risks of any late frosts. Continue reading
Thanks to the mid-spring Easter sunshine, it almost feels like we are on track with our planting plans this year.
Already Emma’s seeds in the greenhouse are shooting up.
In previous years, last Friday would have seen me out on the veg patch planting our chitted seed potatoes.
The ‘Good Friday Potatoes’. I read it in a book way back and the idea stuck.
Apparently, Easter potato planting is a very English thing. The Irish prefer to use St Patricks day. Continue reading
The New Year barely seems to have got underway, before the occasionally feel of a Spring like day arrives, and the veg growers cycle begins again.
For us at The Secret Acre that usually means the chitting potatoes gets underway, the rotated veg bed plan is drawn up and the new seed order arrives. Continue reading
It seemed a slightly odd harvest this year.
Thanks to the unusually hot and dry summer, some old reliables failed, like our potatoes, while some pervious underperformers flourished, like our aubergines. Continue reading
Has The Secret Acre gone to rack and ruin since our last blog 5 months ago?
In short, no.
What has gone to ruin, we’ve realised, was our resolve to only work part-time since moving to the smallholding. Both our hours have slowly crept up again over the last two years, almost without noticing. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 