Almost two years and one month to the day since Julie and I started work on this house, we have finally decided that we need a holiday š® A last minute trawl around booking.com, and confirmation from a friend that she can come and house-sit, and we’re off to visit Chiflik, a small village in…
Read moreAuthor: Joe
Gonna eat a lot of peaches
This post is for Michael, you know who you are! Well, we’ve moved to the country, and this year we’re sure going to eat a lot of peaches! We spent a very pleasant day yesterday with our friend, Ivan, preserving his year’s peach harvest, making 42 large jars of peaches in a thin syrup, ready…
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Improving the soil with manures
The transformation of waste is perhaps the oldest pre-occupation of man. man being the chosen alloy, he must be reconnectedāvia shit, at all cost Patti Smith, “25th Floor” from the album “Easter”, 1978 And so it is here on our smallholding. A huge amount of our time seems to be being spent collecting, storing, turning…
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A very different May/June
After a lovely start to this year, May and June have had awful weather. Mostly dry, but with huge thunderstorms. It’s been so wet that most of our soft fruit crops have been lost to moulds, and those that have survived are pretty tasteless. So this year we have barely any greengages, strawberries, or cherries….
Read moreDucklings – here’s peeping at you!
We got our first ducklings today. Fifteen of them, just ten days old, and very excited about all the new things they’ve encountered today! We’ve got them living in a large cage until the chickens get used to them, then they will haveĀ a cosy house to live in. We also want them to get a…
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Gathering bees in May
It has long been an ambition of ours to eventually keep bees, but we hadn’t quite anticipated that it would be this year! We’ve spent winter swotting up on bee keeping with two books we got from a friend; Collins Beekeeper’s Bible and The Complete & Easy Guide to Beekeeping. The Collins one has been…
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Friends, family and first volunteer of 2016
The beginning of March was a bit hectic, we really wanted to get the central table in the kitchen finished before our first guests arrived. This involved a few late nights but we managed to get it finished two days before they arrived. March has seen a few visitors come and go, our first arrivals…
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What to make with a whole pig
We butchered our first pig on Monday. It was a monumental task, and we learned loads during the whole process. This is our attempt to document what we set out to achieve, how that went and what we learned from it, so we can remember for the next time as it will be a whole…
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