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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Given that we’ve spent over half a year starting to mould our land and getting chickens established, it might sound strange if I say that I only really started to feel like a smallholder a week ago when our lovely sheep arrived. We’d been looking for sheep for some time; we even went to a […]
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I’ve become slightly obsessed with garden paths. Our original intention in the kitchen garden was to use bark, but we plumped for shingle in the end on the basis that it might deter slug and snails and also that it sounds so nice and country when you crunch about on it. It’s a decision we’ve […]
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In mid-december last year, I answered the door to a harried-looking delivery man who declared (in a rather surly voice) that he had a 37 box delivery for me and that he had to be back on the road in minutes. I was enormously confused, I hadn’t ordered anything recently, and was on the verge […]
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London to Land Girl 