Although we still have some good, tasty apples left in the store we have started buying some the last few weeks.  The stored ones just don't travel well now and as four of the five of us go off every day and need to take lunch the apples look very bruised an unappetising by the time it's lunch!  so although I'm eating ours from the (apple) store, the other's aren't. It's shame, I could do with growing some that travel a bit better at this age. The middlest still takes dried appple with her every day though.  I think it might be worth stewing up some of these and dehydrating t ..read more

 I've mentioned this before on the blog, but the little 8x6 greenhouse needed a bit of an upgrade this year.  The base I put in some 12 years ago, it was just some 8x2 treated softwood I had left over from a job. It made a good temporary base and I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.  The little greenhouse started it all off in the garden when we first moved here, it wasn't long until I got the bigger greenhouse, but it's always been useful. It's just the last few years it's fallen on a bit of disrepair and missed out on the love, becoming a bit of a dumping ground. As the ..read more

I was a bit broken hearted the other day. My daughter noticed the tree on our drive to school, it had gone over.  This oak was always a little stunted, trying to grow out from the huge veteran alongside it. Always leaning over.  the other day I was down there and noticed a huge crack up the trunk, but didn't think too much of it. But this constant wet weather and the storms have taken their toll. Over it's gone.  Part of me would love to just leave it like it is and see what happens. But these things never happen in the right places, this has gone right over the access to ..read more

 Much as I quite like a few moments by the rain barrel to let my watering can fill up, I've decided that I'm wasting too much time doing it.  So I dragged a water trough from the bottom field up tot the barrels at the back of the shed. It was just the right height (with the addition of a few slabs) to go under the tap.  Already this is saving me a bit of time each day and I'm only using a few cans full each time.  I was worried that birds and other animals might meet their demise in there, as well as debris (which blocks the rose on the can), so I knocked up a little co ..read more

The polytunnel has been a constant source of shame for me over the winter. Full of dead plants and a thick green slime on the plastic.  I was desperate to get it back into tip top form this year, it's such an amazing space for growing I really need to be making the most of it.  So I've been trying to tackle it in spare moments when I could. Not that many spare moments make themselves known however... It's taken a bit of elbow grease and occasional help from my children (well two of them) when it came to cleaning the plastic.  It's so clean now someone thought I had put ..read more

My wife got me this book for my birthday and as she handed it to me she said "I feel this is the book you probably should have written."  She also said that she knows I'm not the target audience, and as I write this review please bare in mind that I'm not the target audience. I've also met Huw once, a few years back, he's a lovely guy and I love his YouTube channel and what he's been doing.  What I want to do is say that I think this book is great, but that also it's flawed in a few ways. I really think this book was on the very cusp of greatness, it could have been one that is al ..read more

With a break in the weather at the weekend I managed to catch up on a bit of gardening. First job was to pot on a good quantity of chillies and tomatoes.  Some of these haven't grown at a rate I'd expect. And I think the compost is to blame, bought in, but it's so unpredictable. I'm going to start adding a bit of seaweed feed to the watering can, not something I'd normally do this early on, but I feel they all need a bit of a boost. I don't normally buy liquid feed to be honest but the comfrey won't take kindly to being chopped already.  I may have gone a little overboard with t ..read more

 Saturday there was that yellow orb in the sky that we haven't seen for months. I decided to seize the opportunity, I got up early and set to making bread, then did my chores and lit the earth oven.  I then tended it as I went about getting some gardening jobs (potting on far too many tomatoes and peppers), and invited some friends for lunch. Not much notice but it felt like we needed to grab this opportunity to worship the sun for a few hours.  The batch of dough I'd put on would work well for pizza and put on a second mix, this was as well as my middle daughter making hot ..read more

I managed to get a project I've been thinking about for many years done the other day - I made a wooden wheelbarrow! Now this isn't a typical wheelbarrow, it's more of a flat one. I wanted one I could move seedlings about with, or other jobs around the smallholding.  The opportunity to make it came, as it often does, via the idea of a magazine article, this time for Woodworking crafts.  It was a fun project to build, not too complicated and used an old push bike wheel.  If you want to see how I did it then watch the video above. I'm hopeful this will prove useful in ..read more

 So at the weekend I gave my first days carving tuition. It was to a couple that had seen my videos on YouTube and enquired if I'd do some carving instruction.  I was hesitant at first, it's not something I've done before, except with my own children. But I got talked into it via email! As the day ticked around I was really looking forward to it. Something a little bit different to my day to day in the workshop.  The couple arrived and I gave them a walk around the smallholding as a bit of a tour. Then we set to do some tool control skills (the board on the top photo), It was ..read more