We're in the middle of another cold snap. Days and nights have been crisp for almost a week now and the ground has remained solid. I'm well aware that there may be people around the world reading this who would barely raise an eyebrow at this, but temperatures have been down to 5 and 6 below at night (Centigrade, not Fahrenheit). And today, for the first time in this spell, the temperature never actually rose above freezing point even during the day. Amazingly we've not had a flake of snow yet this winter, but the seasonal chill is on the whole welcome. We don't always get seasonal weather any ..read more

Here's what the veg beds were supposed to look like back in early summer. Unfortunately, it is now too late for many of them to produce a harvest. The courgettes and beans are finally putting on some growth but we'll run out of daylight hours and sunshine before they can produce any sort of crop. Some of the leafy veg will provide a late harvest. The ground is finally workable enough to harvest some potatoes. I have left them in the ground for as long as possible to absorb as much moisture as they could find, but any longer and the voles and slugs will find them. The harvest is pretty meagre ..read more

Strange as it may sound, the key to a forest garden is the network of paths which provide access. These can have a habit of disappearing into the emerging vegetation. They not only provide access, but they invite people to explore.  Originally I edged the paths with any spare branches I had from work around the smallholding, but now that we have an almost endless supply of logs and chip, I decided to refresh everything. Leylandii logs are not ideal for burning in the log burners as they contain a lot of sap, but they are ideal for substantial path edging. While I was lugging logs Sue was ..read more

I have spent many an hour on my hands and knees weeding. At times it's a pleasant mindful exercise. At times it is a back-breaking, soul-destroying chore. If you believed all the no-dig hype, you would be wondering why I need to do weeding. After all, you just cover the soil with an inch or so of compost every now and again and hey presto! no more weeds. This works in theory, if you can possibly get enough compost and if your compost has heated up enough to be weed-free. But unless you have a close relative rich enough to keep cattle and donate a constant supply of cow manure, producing enou ..read more

There used to be about 20 square paving slabs behind Sue's beehives... until they got pilfered for other projects around the smallholding! Getting hold of paving slabs is easy if you have the means to transport them and they can be had for free or very cheap on Facebook Marketplace. But I had the bright idea of bee-themed paving! That's right. Hexagonal slabs. Luckily it only took a week or so to find some locally and a few weeks to find some more to extend the scheme. There's no fancy patio-laying going on here. They are simply placed on the ground and have to take responsibility for settling ..read more

Someone noticed that alongside the two boxes which came back from the abattoir were two sheep skins. It is fairly easy to get the sheepskins back and to process them. You need a special licence from Defra to collect Category 3 animal by-products, but this is a simple process and only needs doing once.  Then there are two options. The first is to return to the abattoir on kill day (as you usually take your animals in the day before) to pick up the fresh skin, then get it home and salt it immediately to prevent any rot setting in. Alternatively our abattoir were happy to salt the skin for ..read more

Elder is one of my favourite trees. It has beautiful creamy flower umbels early in the summer which are a magnet for insects followed by deep purple berries, plates of juicy jewels which wild birds love, especially blackcaps. Maybe it's how the males top up the colour of their shiny caps. When cut back, elder grows a multitude of dead-straight vertical new shoots which are perfect for lopping off and poking into the ground to become new bushes. Elder wood and leaves have a unique, indescribable smell which I love too. I don't know what the chemical is, but it's said if you poke a stem into ..read more

The Hummingbird Hawk-Moth. I've only seen these twice before, but the same day that I read they are popping up in many a garden this year and what should happen? I first noticed it hovering around a verbena bonariensis plant in the forest garden, but ti quickly turned its attention to a flowering buddleia. In fact I had plenty of time to phone Sue and drag in the house to come and see it. Occasionally it darted off, presumably to another feed plant, but it kept coming back to these same few flowers. It was impossible to get a picture with my phone. The things never stop moving and even if ..read more

Warning, this blog post does contain an account of sending sheep off to the abattoir. I don't go into any shocking detail, but if you think of livestock in a cute, woolly way then you may not want to read this. However, this is all part of the process of keeping livestock with the aim of eventually turning them into meat.  Lots of smallholders have taken the decision to sell their sheep flocks this summer, the drought and consequent lack of grazing undoubtedly acting as a catalyst for this decision. We've not lambed for a couple of years and have not been sending any to the great freezer ..read more

138.8mm of rain for Holbeach - that's us! Last night it rained. Proper rain. More rain than we've accumulated in the last 4 months. It's the first we've had for a long, long time. In fact I think it's only rained a few times since the beginning of April. and only once this summer. [ed. I knew it rained a lot and the fields were full of standing water, but it turns out that on a wet day countrywide, Holbeach was the wettest with a staggering 138.8mm of rain!!!]  Unfortunately there is an obvious pattern in recent years of all our rain saving itself up for the occasional deluge wh ..read more