I’ve been keeping a secret from you. One lovely summery day in early June, my sister and her boyfriend came to stay and we decided to make elderflower champagne. We’ve got multiple elder trees and it seemed like quite a lovely thing to do with our DFL (“down from London”) family now that we were […]
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Our new sheep have been settling in well and it feels a bit like they’ve always been here. It’s rather nice, watching them potter about maa-ing at each and hoovering up the grass. However we have a problem. We built our new chicken enclosure in a nice sheltered bit of one of our lower paddocks […]
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Part of our long-term plan has always been the production of our own meat. For welfare as well as health reasons we’ve gradually become more or less vegetarian during the week. Don’t get me wrong, we’re avid carnivores, but we like to know where our meat comes from, and that it was ranging freely whilst […]
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Or, plant in haste, repent at leisure. As part of our whirlwind first dormant period on our smallholding, we planted more than 120 raspberry canes and more than 30 fruit bushes up in our new orchard. Amongst them were redcurrants, blackcurrants, white currants and many gooseberries. The idea was sound in principle. We would lure […]
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I grew up in Portugal and there, we believe that soup is important. It’s practically a sixth food group all of its own. In winter here in the UK I’ve brainwashed Mr Land and the children into believing that a hot bowl of soup before dinner every day is the norm. In truth, it’s so […]
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Our beloved, if somewhat immature orchard, has had its share of teething issues. Only about half the trees had pollinated fruit (although frankly given that they all survived our utterly naive planting at all meant we really didn’t care). But of more concern since then has been the things that have gone wrong. Our peach […]
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We’ve spent an absolute fortune on topsoil and compost since we moved here. I’ve long intended to start making our own compost but it’s taken an age to get around to it. Our local council gave me a free 100 litre compost bin that I brought home to be smirked at by our gardeners. With […]
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I have already realised that we grew far too many courgettes this year (although we’re yet to throw any away, we just keep pressing them on people). But I didn’t realise that our summer squashes might follow suit. I used to grow pumpkins up trellises in London because I had no space – vertical growing […]
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This whole move from London to the countryside in search of the good life was a massive gamble for us. We moved to an area where we knew nobody, leaving behind our friends and the town we loved. In truth, we’ve never been happier and it was definitely the right thing to do but it’s […]
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First there was foraging, and then there was cool foraging and you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a friend that was serving just-picked mushrooms at their dinner party. Then there was a backlash against foraging. Too many people stripping too much from nature. I’m not talking about going out with a basket and your […]
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London to Land Girl 