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
So the house is finished and the vegetables are growing.
Surely time now then to simply lay back in warm summer sunshine and enjoy the good life!
The American humorist, S.J. Perelman, apparently once wrote that –
“A farm is an irregular patch of nettles, containing a fool who didn’t know enough to stay in the city.”
Little did he know that this fool has a hammock!
The Veg Beds in May
Well at least (most) things are growing in this year’s first test vegetable beds.
Already we are learning lots of useful things for next year, including the undoubted benefits of more manure, lots more manure. And the sensible advice of our much more experienced neighbours to provide a good level of protection on certain crops. Continue reading
If I’m honest, up to now I’ve been a bit of a Flower Nazi, much to Emma’s annoyance.
In my defence, being an urban container grower with a flat’s six foot balcony, or a terrace’s five foot square concrete backyard, doesn’t leave much room for flowers taking up valuable growing space. Continue reading
Spring’s arrival of wild garlic has usually been our second major event in the kitchen store cupboard calendar, even as urban foragers before moving to The Secret Acre.
Of course moving to a new area this year first necessitated seeking out local woodland areas suitably carpeted with the Ramsons. But wild garlic has to rate as the easiest of forages. Continue reading
The guerrilla growing movement has taken off in cities across the globe in recent years as citizens reclaim unloved urban spaces for veg growing.
Most city authorities now embrace and support these movements, recognising the positive contribution thy make in creating healthier, happier, edible cities.
So it was intriguing to read a ‘weak signal from the future’ via Forum for the Future, about the work of the Guerrilla Grafters in San Francisco. Continue reading
So, six months ago we discovered the rural reality of broadband (there isn’t any), despite OpenReach calling our community an “Enabled area” which turns out to really mean that the area is actually un-enabled and unconnected!
Half a year later the update is er…. no change. 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
Apart from the snagging, The Secret Acre’s eco-makeover feels pretty much truly complete now the external landscaping around the house has been done too.
First up (below) was removing the old tarmac front drive and replacing with a permeable pebble surface, to provide sustainable drainage, and extending it down the sides of the house. Continue reading
The Secret Acre 