Regular readers will know that we over winter our broad beans, onions and garlic on the veg patch. We’ve also had increasing success using green manure field beans over winter too.
One thing we’ve noticed over the hardships of winter, is how the green manure field beans always seem to suffer much less, and recover more quickly, than their broad bean relations.
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We can now pop out and pee in the garden.
Yes that’s right, we’ve finally got round to building some compost bins. Appropriately recycling some of the pallets left by the builders of course. Continue reading
“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
Our first ever step on the road to greater self-sufficiency, even before discovering wild garlic, was making Elderflower Champagne.
Once someone has shown you what Elderflower looks like, you can’t help but see and smell it everywhere you go in early June.
And what’s not to like about an alcoholic fizzy drink that is as simple as sticking it in a bucket for 6 days, bottling and drinking! 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
So that’s decide then, we’ll make a start on this Good Life thing by getting going on the veg growing this year, and worry about getting animals next year.
Time is pressing…
“Delve in! The year’s before us. Spring’s promise fills the air” – Frederick Frye Rockwell, “Invitation” Around the Year in the Garden, 1913. Continue reading
“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade” – D.H. Lawrence.
This year we really need to make a start on the whole becoming more self-sufficient thing, now the house is fairly finished. Our store room is imposing an air of expectation upon us. 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
The day of our big move into the smallholding is nigh. Just over a year since we bought The Secret Acre, and after six months of eco-makeover.
So this week we sit among ever increasing piles of packed moving boxes. An alarming reminder of just how much unnecessary stuff you accumulate. The uncomfortable feeling is particularly acute for Emma who moved into the house in Bristol with just a rucksack and no furniture. Now 15 years later we are going to need two large removal vans to shift it all! Continue reading
Of course the whole reason for moving to The Secret Acre is to grow our own and be more self-sufficient(ish). So it is frustrating this year, while the house is getting its eco-makeover and we are not yet living on site to properly tend a veg patch, that our planting plans have had to be made for 2016, which still seems a lifetime off. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 