Having safely demolished the old barn, and removed the asbestos, before it fell down, it was time to start preparing the foundations.
Since preparation is key, the first act was actually to install a new field gate in the paddock to allow access to get materials deliver to site.
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Last year, we rebuilt the pig sties, turning them into useful sheds.
This year we are tackling the Barn, which has miraculously survived the last two winters without falling down completely, although we did lose part of the roof.
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And we say, it’s all right.
Despite the Climate Change driven drought, summer abundance arrived at The Secret Acre.
It all made for a busy July and August, along with the usual influx of willing helpers at the start of the school holidays.
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Here’s a quick pictorial catch up of how it’s going on The Secret Acre Veg Patch after our unexpected slow start to the year.
Overall, things have caught up pretty well considering our chaotic spring, and garlic, field beans, salads, strawberries and red currents are all ready to start to harvest.
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Last year we created an asparagus bed by the greenhouse, planted up with a mixture of purchased crowns, as well as some plants grown from seed by Emma the year before in preparation.
As the RHS advises, new asparagus plants take a couple of years to settle in before you can start harvesting, so patience is required initially.
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Last year we wrote about our Field Bean Experiment.
Inspired by results from Garden Organic, we allowed a section of our Green Manure Field Beans to grow on as an edible alternative to Broad Beans, and also to seed save for replanting this year.
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Despite our usual New Year optimism for the gardening year ahead, an unexpected combination of care duties, hospital treatment and Covid, meant that we are having a very slow start to our spring at The Secret Acre.
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It’s now two years since we said goodbye to fossil fuels, and went fully electric with our Renault Zoe.
And despite some periods of Covid travel restrictions, we have been very happy with it, driving the length and breadth of the country, discovering the rapidly increasing numbers of charging stations in lovely spots off the motorway. Nice, like driving used to be.
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January tends to get a bad rap as a month.
We blame Pilot for letting the rot set in when they sang in their 1975 No1 hit single “January, sick and tired, you’ve been hanging on me”.
But as Josephine Nuese, author of The Country Garden pointed out, gardening really begins in January, with the dream. So come last year’s cold snap, or this year’s unseasonably mild weather, we kind of quite like January here at The Secret Acre.
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The Secret Acre 