Death came to the farm last night proving that nature is indeed red in tooth and claw in the form of some mangy, vicious foxes. We were appalled to find that all six of our chickens were slaughtered last night. We found two, headless but otherwise whole, and some entrails by our fence. The other […]
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Canine-human relations are decidedly strained at the moment. Not content with pulling up and eating multiple raspberry canes, a cranberry, umpteen blackberry plants and a whole apricot sapling, the hound has embarked upon a campaign designed to destroy our new long flowerbed before it is even planted. We are slowly accumulating the plants for said […]
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Hello, my name is Catherine and I’m a topiary addict. After planting our six foot topiary rabbit for the children, I just keep thinking of different things in our garden that should, if possible, be made of living materials. We really want to make our smallholding a haven for wildlife and one of the easiest […]
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Or rather, from medium-sized oaks, mighty oaks grow. Or they would if we weren’t going to cut the growing tips to get them to focus on becoming bushy instead. As part of our drive to get the basic structure of the formal garden in place, we decided to replace some of the many trees we […]
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When we bought our much-beloved smallholding, we had great plans for the garden. I’d loved my tiny London patio beyond measure, or so I thought until I arrived here. One of the things I was really keen to do as soon as possible was to prettify the formal garden with flower border in a country […]
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Watching trees being felled makes me very uncomfortable. Not so my oldest son, for whom the sight of chaps in high vis vests skimming 20 feet into the air to whizz about with chainsaws is second only to the circus, but I really dislike it. We recently felled a number of trees from our new […]
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We’ve divided our little smallholding into four distinct areas: formal garden, kitchen / cutting garden, woodland garden and playground and livestock paddocks. Whilst this is a working smallholding and I want to keep the property functional in that respect, we do have two small children and I want them to grow up in a large […]
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London to Land Girl 