Category Archives: Smallholding

Veg plot 2020, #1

Vegetable seeds started arriving in the first week of April and I considered myself lucky to get so much of what I wanted given that just about everyone else in the country seemed to be trying to do the same … Continue reading

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A new “lockdown” vegetable plot

With the impending arrival of lockdown in the UK we decided that it might be useful to grow some more of our own food and it therefore became necessary to increase the space we use for growing vegetables which has … Continue reading

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The “Ooh-Aah” bird

Apparently so-named because it lays square eggs. But perhaps it just lays these. An average “large” size egg (the pale cream one, obviously) alongside for comparison.

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One blew over the hornet’s nest

I had a stack of hive brood chambers containing old comb that I was going to melt down. It must have been bumped by a deer or something like that, which left room for some hornets to get in and … Continue reading

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Juicing apples

As ever it took longer to get around to this than I’d hoped, mostly because we’d been somewhat short of weekends with suitable weather. However, eventually I had the opportunity to assemble all the various bits and pieces required to … Continue reading

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Sloe, sloe, prick, scratch, sloe (ouch!)

I spent an hour or so this afternoon exploring the hedgerows and collecting sloes. It’s a job I’ve put off for a couple of weeks waiting for the rain to stop and the days to turn colder. It seems the … Continue reading

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Apples, apples, everywhere…

And most of them will be drunk. I took advantage of the first sunny day for what seems like months a couple of weekends back to get out in the orchard and do something that’s been on my list of … Continue reading

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Blobservatory Bitter is ready!

Back in August I posted about making my first batch of beer in some time as a celebration of getting the observatory into a usable state. After a little time to condition, here it is: First impressions? It’s quite drinkable. … Continue reading

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Mists and mellow fruitfulness

Over the last few weeks I’ve been out harvesting the bounty of the local hedgerows, in particular the blackberries which grow almost everywhere around us. I’ve picked pounds and pounds (or even kilos and kilos if you want to be … Continue reading

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We have fermentation!

A day or so after adding the yeast to my Blobservatory Bitter, it looks like they’re hard at work. A nice raft of top-fermenting yeasty beasties…

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