This tyre probably needs replacing

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

Fortunately (ish) it was only on a trailer and I spotted it before there was a problem.

Posted in Random | Leave a comment

I think these might be a bit past eating

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

Not much chance of recovering the potatoes with the shoots intact either. One for the compost heap…

I suspect they may need to be kept somewhere colder.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged | Leave a comment

Lord of the files?

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

Honestly, I just don’t know where all of these came from. I suspect they’ve been inherited more than once.

I need to sort through them and work out what’s worth keeping, but at least they’re all in the same place now.

Posted in Workshop | Tagged | Leave a comment

Thursday’s disaster

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

As I’ve already posted, I made a 350 mile round trip to collect an electric honey extractor last Thursday. It was a pretty horrible trip of about 110 miles up the M5 with poor visibility and things hadn’t improved much by the time rejoined it to make my way south again.

The journey then went from bad to worse, as the coolant level warning light started flashing about twenty miles from home. Fortunately I was only a mile from Sedgemoor services and managed to pull in there before the engine showed any sign of overheating. As the junction for the A38 at Burnham-on-Sea was only a couple of miles further south, I decided to allow the engine to cool for an hour or so, then refill the coolant system with water and see how far I could make it down the A38. Perhaps if I was lucky and carried some more water I might even make it home. I couldn’t really diagnose the problem any further as it was already dark.

Sadly not. I made about five miles. Fortunately the warning light came back on about a hundred metres before I reached a pub with a car park that I could pull into. Unfortunately they were on the point of closing, so I couldn’t get food and a drink. It was however a convenient place to organise recovery of the car to home.

Initially the suspicion was that something had been kicked up off the road, passed through the grille and punctured the radiator, but after looking in daylight I think it’s more likely that the radiator has just failed and sprung a leak. As far as I’m aware, replacing the radiator requires removing much of the front of the car, so I’ll be leaving it to a garage to deal with.

Posted in Random | Tagged | Leave a comment

Flowers for cutting

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

I’ve played with creating a cutting garden over the last couple of years, but this year I’m definitely committed to it. In part that might mean creating another bed, but that’s probably not a major deal as we have one flower bed that needs (re?)moving anyhow.

The first thing to be sown for the cutting garden is Antirrhinums. Specifically the deep red Black Prince and white/pink Lipstick Silver. They’re now in the propagator keeping the many trays of sweet peppers and chiles company.

Posted in Cutting Garden, Smallholding | Tagged | Leave a comment

No dig diary, 18th January 2026

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

Today was onion sowing day. I sowed six module trays of red onions (Carmen) and five module trays of yellow/brown onions (Yellow Rynsburger), four seeds to a cell, so 880 (or thereabouts) in total. We do eat an awful lot of onions 😀

Not desperately exciting, is it? 😀

In somewhat smaller numbers however, I also sowed a tray each of two varieties of mustard (Red Frills and Golden Streaks) which might end up being the first plants in the main vegetable plot this year, as well as a couple of module trays of peas for shoots. These are left-over peas that didn’t get sown in previous years. When I’m done with peas (of whatever variety) each year I just throw what’s left into a box to use for shoots the following year. I fill a module tray with compost, press it down in each of the cells, drop three peas in each one and cover them up to the top of the cell. They’ll get planted out once they’re about 5cm tall and the shoots will be used in salads.

Posted in Smallholding, Veg plot | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Imagine the seagulls!

Posted on January 18, 2026 by james

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lxkl3gd6jo

No further comment necessary I think.

Posted in Random | Tagged | Leave a comment

And today’s mystery object is…

Posted on January 17, 2026 by james

Well, I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

If anyone knows what this is, please do say.

Posted in Workshop | Tagged | Leave a comment

This year’s food fad…

Posted on January 17, 2026 by james

Is allegedly going to be eating plenty of fibre. Last year was apparently the year for protein.

Honestly, I just don’t get it. Why do these fads even exist? If people are so worried about their diet and health, can’t they just stop doomscrolling for fifteen minutes and actually plan to eat a balanced diet and consume less crap?

Says the man who is going to eat pizza for dinner this evening 😀 Though to be fair, it is pizza made from home-made dough, with sauce made from home-grown tomatoes and no ingredients that most people wouldn’t recognise or that require the use of a chemistry set.

Posted in Random | Leave a comment

Mushrooms are go!

Posted on January 17, 2026 by james

My plug spawn arrived on Thursday, so today I have drilled out the logs I put to one side and hammered in the plugs. I don’t know if it’s just this willow, but once they were hammered in they became almost invisible so marking the spacings etc. is pretty much a requirement.

The two closest to the camera are Summer Oyster and the two furthest away are Shiitake.

For now, to shelter them from the wind, I’ve put them in our log store. I should probably label them so no-one decides to use them for heating 😀

I have one log left. I’m tempted to find some other variety to try to grow in it though I’m not sure what at the moment.

Posted in Smallholding | Tagged | Leave a comment