What a Beauty!
We have a number of old apple trees in our walled garden. One is an unknown variety and could not be identified by the RHS. However, this has proven good for juice and cider making and normally ripens September. The other varieties are Cox, Beauty of Bath and Bramley. All varieties that relate to...
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A Place to Brew
I have finally managed to get my Brew/ Wine/ Honey extraction kitchen up and running. Not quite finished. Still need to tile the floor, finish tiling the walls and put the last shelves up, but it is now fully operational. Rather than use the utility room, I have transformed part of the Shippen into...
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Rabbits Eating the Veg!
It’s been a nightmare this year! Frost killing the beans and pumpkins. Crows and magpies eating the eggs. Foxes eating the livestock. What next? We’ve now had an invasion of rabbits eating the crops! So this is where the dog comes into her own. Yes, she is a good mouse, mole and rat catcher,...
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The Strawberry Patch is Giving
This year we have had the chance to net the strawberries properly. I built a fruit cage from some galvanised pipe and blue water pipe. Its proved to be quite affective. The peasants pace up and down outside and this year the crop loss has been low. We have been picking (or rather Barbara)...
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Cheese Gromit!
Just had a lovely delivery of cheese from The Fine Cheese Co @thefinecheeseco. www.FineCheese.co.uk. Saw a promotion on Jamie Oliver’s Instagram @jamieoliver about supporting British Cheese producers during COVID ….. and going forward! A beautifully packaged box of delicious cheese turned up today! Lovely hamper of cheese which included a cool pack, so the...
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Getting Super
The bees are doing so well, that I am struggling to keep up. Over the past month the weather has been fine, warm and dry. As a result, the bees have been out most days pollinating everything in flower. The apple trees are a buzz, the plumb and cherry trees are setting little fruitlets....
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Putting the Tractor to Work
The other weekend we all had fun with the tractor moving wood chip down to the vegetable patch. This week I mowed the field for the first time this spring. We had another chicken taken, so Mr Fox is being brazen in the day. Probably out to get food for cubs. The grass was...
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The Lack of Flour
Barbara makes the family Sourdough bread and has been making bread for for over 20 years. I won’t say “I can’t remember the last time we bought shop bread”, because we can, and regret it every rare time we do! One of the challenges we have found with lockdown, is being able to buy...
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End of a Perfect š Day
Spent much of the day moving wood-chip around on the tractor. Got the kids shovelling it into dumpy bags, then moving it to the veg patch. We all had a great day and tractor š rides too!...
Hard Plants
The little softies raised in the greenhouse now need to get hard. So we issue each of them a flick knife before they’re planted out into the wild. Well, not exactly. Over the past few days the first lot of vegetables and bedding plants have been coming out of the greenhouse onto benches for...
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