Yeah yeah... we know... But it had to be done! :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odc8VxJ3EeI ..read more

It all goes horribly wrong - but not for the reasons we were expecting! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6ukAGJ17Vw ..read more

We started keeping bees in May 2019 when we collected our first swarm. Although it was small swarm, the bees were healthy and good-tempered, and it did well through the year. With just a single colony we were nervous about getting it safely through the winter, but it did well and in March 2020 the population was increasing steadily. So we decided to try and split the colony into two. This short series covers how it went... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3ZGQpNoNmY ..read more

With International Women's Day falling this week, I thought I'd recount a recent experience. As fate would have it, I was able to attend the Global Summit of Women in Abu Dhabi. It was all very last minute and arose from a conversation with a friend. I was talking about Natural Progress and our ambitions and dreams - and the very real struggle to make them happen. She helped by putting my name forward and suddenly I was going to the UAE. It really is good to talk - and we women do that well! Friday night and I'm overwhelmed, trying to unscramble thoughts. What would I tell people about our en ..read more

We had a bit of interest in the design and build of our chicken coop so here's a quick tour. We had a fairly exacting design brief: First off, it needed it to fit in our trailer so we can take it with us when we move house. Second, we wanted something we could move around so we can put the girls on fresh grass (once chicken lockdown is over). It had to be off the ground to protect against damp and vermin. It needed to be secure. We couldn't decide between a mesh floor as featured in the Goodlife Permaculture Self cleaning chook house, and a solid floor - so we thought we'd have both. We toye ..read more

We took some time out on our recent trip to Jordan and Palestine to visit the ‘Greening the Desert’ site in Jordan. This is Nadia and Geoff Lawton‘s permaculture site, created to show how permaculture techniques can be applied within arid regions. It serves as proof that we can reverse desertification and bring back life to desolate barren lands. It’s a teaching site but also home to members of their extended family. The site demonstrates energy-efficient housing with natural cooling systems, a plant nursery, solar electricity and hot water, a natural swimming pool, dry compost toilets and div ..read more

On International Permaculture Day, I'm happy to report that I'm now a certified permaculture designer! My permaculture journey started in 2015 when by chance I attended a City Circle talk from Richard Tatum and Shamaila Akram. This resonated with me on a number counts - it aligned with my own dislike of industrial farming, it opened my eyes to changes you can make in your own back garden, it piqued my nerdy interest with aquaponics, and it reminded me of my fondness of The Good Life (yup, Tom and Barbara!) and building food resilience. Both speakers had completed a permaculture design course ..read more

In part 1 we built the oven plinth and base. Part 2 covered the oven wall, mixing the cob and we finished by seeing if the brick arch would be self-supporting... Fortunately it stayed up so the next task was to scoop out the sandcastle. This was also a bit nerve-wracking - we had no way of knowing whether the walls would collapse when their support was removed. Below you can see the newspaper - now stuck to the inside of the clay oven wall. Here's the finished oven, drying out: As you can see we plastered some cob over the concrete block base to hide its high energy input, unsustainable, co ..read more

In part 1 we covered: building the oven plinth learning news skills in bricklaying, tolerance and forgiving raids on the bottle bank for insulation materials construction of the oven floor. Now it's time to get on with the main job - creating the oven itself. Before getting muddy there was a short break in proceedings. Yours truly had decided a brick arch around the oven door would be a nice touch, so it was time to make up a quick 'former' using some scrap wood. This would support the bricks while the arch was built around it. Oven construction The general approach for building the oven str ..read more

The cob oven was one of our earliest projects. There's something very appealing about the idea of an outdoor oven - and what can beat wood-fired pizza?! There are plenty of courses organised all over the country on how to build cob ovens. But as usual we didn't bother with them and jumped straight in. What is cob? Cob is a mix of clay, sand and straw. It's probably the world's most commonly used building material. This is what it looks like: It has some advantages: it's made from natural raw materials it's easy to make it requires zero energy inputs to make (other than lots of tea and biscui ..read more