Monthly Archives: July 2015

This year, despite living on a six acre smallholding, I have essentially had no garden in which to grow stuff. Earlier this year, I fell upon a solution to this most frustrating of conundrums and invented a new style of … Continue reading →

Everyday is Apple Day at the moment here in Devon, especially Saturdays and Sundays. There’s barely a farm or estate across the county that’s not getting in on the act. One day they might get round to standardising it so … Continue reading →

Months ago, when the promise of Spring was wriggling gamely from the mire left behind by a mild but mardy winter, making cute squeaks of effort, chucking crocuses and ducklings hither and yon, we Vegetablists, still shrugging off the shredded … Continue reading →

Ah Summer. You were great while you lasted. You still are kind of lasting. The children are back at school, be-freckled and cheesed off, drowsing in the mid September haze, chewing their pencils, gazing off across the playground, dreaming of … Continue reading →

Right folks, I’ve got about ten minutes, the first ten minutes I’ve had spare since the vacuum of useful time and space that is the Summer holidays. The kids are at the cinema with my parents. By rights I should … Continue reading →

Ah, lovely home grown produce. There really is nothing better than eating your own vegetables, accompanied by the meat from the pigs you fed and raised yourself who learned to greet you with a cheery grunt before you carted them … Continue reading →

Wow, it’s quiet. The kids are at school, I have boofed the geese down to the bottom pond, and Jamie has taken Jess (my stepdaughter) and Dudley (yapster and general hound) camping leaving behind both me and his faulty banjo. … Continue reading →

It’s that time of year (apart from all the other times of year) when the birds get picked off one by one, like the cast of a long running Avian Agatha Christie made for TV movie. Every week, I’m on … Continue reading →

It’s hot. I have dug out my sandals. The car smells like brie. These two things are, I can assure you, entirely unconnected. The latter may have more to do with the soup of apple juice, part sandwich and child’s … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago the brown runner duck lady hatched some teeny runner ducklings. Poultry babies are peculiar in that they come our of the shell bearing all the traits of adult poultries, only all cute and fluffy like. They … Continue reading →