Help Needed - Always

A tail as old as time - I need help in the garden. 

The eldest has been amazing, she goes out most nights and does a bit. She waters stuff for me and does weeding and planting. 

Youngest needs a bit of persuasion, but will come out and do a few jobs when asked.  

 Middlest is keen to help, but needs to be a set task, clear this area, plant this, etc, or she gets bored quickly. 

I'm lucky to have a bit of help, although the garden is getting swamped. Just too much time in the workshop trying to keep up! 

The Giant Spinach Didn't disappoint!

Sometimes what is said on the packet doesn't always translate to the plant. But I think this one did. 

 Labelled as giant spinach it certainly ticked the box!

Make A Gabled Roof For A Beehive

A few weeks back I noticed I could have another complete hive out there if I had an extra rood made up, so I used some pre folded sheet steel I bought last year to make a gabled roof for a national hive. 

They normally have flat roofs, but I thought this would be worth making one of these and seeing how we like it. 

There are pros and cons to each type. The video above shows me making it up, step by step. 

Which roof do you prefer for a beehive? Flat or pitched?

 

Hellen's Garden Festival this weekend

 The years seem to fly by, and I find it hard to believe it's time for Hellens again already. Always a highlight of the year. 

This year I'll be back in the garden Question and Answers tent, on Saturday at 12 o'clock. 

Really looking forward to it. Be great to have a day out of the workshop! 

Miniature Display Cabinet

 Not really homesteading, but I realise I do probably need some hobbies that don't earn money. One that's been nice is my lads interest in models and model making. I was into this when I was about his age (and older) and so a few months back we got all my old stuff out again. 

It's really reignited something in me, and it's been lovley to sit on an evening and do some painting with him and watch his skills grow. 

As always with me we've gone all in on this. We have a 3D printer (although this will be for work as well), and have a lot of models we've been putting together and painting up. Of course that means we need somewhere to keep them. 

The downstairs loo is just painted brickwork, so I thought it could do with brightening up with a few models on the walls. I made up a unit from some good quality ply and ordered some glass doors to protect the models. 

A fun project and a good way to make use of a narrow bit of space. I'm going to build a second one of these units for the opposite wall next I think. We've already filled this one! I've been told we'll have one each then. 

Busy Bees

 Sorry I've been so neglectful on here, we've just been so busy lately! 

My Online stuff has gone crazy again with lots of gooseberry scoops being sold as well as my other items. there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day. I've also had a few talks, as well as a day at Hay Festival and lots of bee stuff to do as well. 

I love this picture above, we were trying to capture a swarm for a friend who is a beekeeper, who was on holiday. We thought we had the queen, but she was tucked up under a roof and so this was a failed attempt. Good experience, although a bit disappointing. I took one daughter each time I tried with that swarm. A real shame for my friend, but we did try our best. I think I needed some sort of vacuum to get the queen out. 

So tomorrow will be in the workshop, and I'm going to get my eldest to do the jobs I should be doing in the garden hopefully, and Middlest making some sourdough! 

Talk For A School

I was really lucky again this year to be invited back to Hellens Gardens to give a talk for a school. 

They'd been going to the school and building a garden with them and planting seeds with the year 3 class. This was the last day and involved some crafts and planting as well as a talk from me about growing food. 

Sweet Chestnut Raised beds

Well it's taken me a year, but I finally have some raised beds in that I can use. Well nearly... I still need to fill three of them. 

Wild Garlic Flat Bread

Last night I fired up the pizza oven for tea, made some dough and sent the children on a foraging walk without me. 

Their mission was to get me some wild garlic we could mix into butter to make amazing flat breads to go with the pizzas. 

Visit To A Vineyard and Garden

 Last week as manic as I've come to expect, but I did manage to steal an hour yesterday to go and see a local garden and vineyard as I'm friends with the daughter in law of the owner. 

It was a perfect spring day (in fact so hot it felt like a summers day), and it was a the perfect break to take from the workshop. 

Easter "Break" Over

 I think my wife and children have had a great Easter break, they've had lots of friends round, lots of time with some of their cousins, and other family, and a few days out (they all went to London on Thursday, but I stayed working at home). 

I feel like I'm starting to catch up now, I've managed to get ahead with a few stock items, and start producing some more batches of my items. I'm trying to make sure I have plenty of gooseberry scoops in stock should they do well again this year, but the batch I started nearly broke me - you can see the number of pieces in the picture above. 

Tomorrow I'm going to do a few other jobs that have been sneaking up on me, and then back in the workshop Monday hopefully. 

Using A Deep National As A Bait Hive

Last year I bought a few new poly hives very cheaply as they were in a closing down sale. The were deep national hives, also called 12x14s, at the time I thought this could work well, but my concern since getting them is that my girls will struggle with the inspections with the bigger frames. It's surprising the weight that is in a frame. 

I might still use these, but while we have some standard national hives I'll use those first. I still want to use them though, so I decided I'd use them as bait hives. 

Bait hives are used to try to capture wild swarms of bees, that have swarmed naturally (or from someone else's hives). 

Another Weekend Working In Wales

 I had another weekend down in Wales with dad. 

Got loads done.

My main job was to hang the garden gate and two external doors for the boiler shed and storage shed. 

A Swarm In April is worth? A Barrel of Maple?

 Just before I picked up the children from school on Tuesday I saw that the garden was full of bees. A Swarm in April! 

I went and got the children and told the girls to suit up. The warm landed in our neighbours garden, but before we could get set up they took to the air again. Luck was with us and they landed on the fence. 

Cooking With Fire And Smoke

This weekend my brother and I went on a cooking course. It was at the same place I did a fermentation course a few years ag - Harts Barn cookery school. 

I'm never sure what to expect on these courses, but I'll start by saying I was blown away by the afternoon. 

I will also say a bit of bad stuff, the course was cancelled twice, once for bad weather, which was fair enough, and another time because they had another event, which wasn't ideal from our point of view as stuff had to be rearranged. 

 

When the course went ahead though it really did deliver. It was an afternoon of some of the best food I've eaten in a long time, and I'm fairly sure we ate more than what the course cost! 

We made pork koftas and cooked them on the BBQ, then charred some asparagus and aubergine as well as orange. this then went with some cold smoked feta to make an incredible salad. 

We also roasted some baby gem lettuce and made some more salads. 

We cooked flat bread in the bread oven, and made baba ghanoush, and when added with the kofta it was one of the best sandwiches I've ever eaten.  

"Dirty" steak cooked on coals was another incredible eat. 

Roasted rhubarb and creme brulee (which had charcoal added to it as it cooked) was a great pudding. But we also had cold smoked salmon, a blade of beef that had been hot smoking for hours and hours, the food just kept coming. 

I swear I've never eaten so much food in one go before, it was a truly brilliant afternoon, I loved it. I came away with enough food for the five of us to have a full meal Sunday night and for our lunch boxes on Monday. the chef was good fun and the other people on the course were great as well. 

Trying To Tick Jobs Off

 So I've been trying to do little jobs and often, it's a way I can move forward while keeping everything else running in the background. 

One of the jobs I've trying to get done (since this time last year) is the sweet chestnut raised beds. I really hate having this timber stacked up and not being used. 

The idea was to have them at the bottom of the veg garden where it lies wet all winter. I'm hoping this will provide a bit of drainage and make this area a bit more manageable. 

So far I only have a few fixed in place and I' haven't filled them yet, but already it's given that area of the garden a bit of structure. I can't wait to get them planted up. I'm very tempted to have one or two fo them for strawberries and try to get better at growing that fruit! 

Let's hope I can get the rest in before the growing season really kicks off. 

Do you like growing in raised beds? Or do the negatives outweigh the positives?

Two Large Baskets sold - But not collected

So I'm doing this post as a reach out to a lovely couple who paid for two of my jumbo harvest baskets at a talk I gave at Mickleton Gardening club the week before last. 

 They paid for the baskets even though I didn't have any with me at the time, the plan being they would come and collect - I was hoping for an email to arrange a time. If you see this blog post please send me a message so you can get your baskets. 

Many thanks

Kev

A Bit Of Burn Out

 Argh, what a couple of weeks I've had. It really feels like I haven't stopped and looking back I don't think I have. 

Until Saturday afternoon! I wasn't feeling my best on Friday, but had about £1200 worth of timber turning up and I have to carry each piece up the drive by myself as the lorry can't get up our drive. I had stupidly taken on another job which needed to be done that day as well (it was for a charity and someone local - more on that in another post later). By the end of the day I was feeling a bit broken, I cooked tea, ate it and went to bed. 

The next day I woke and felt terrible. Body hot and cold. Unfortunately it was also the day of a big organised scout hike here on the hills (900 scouts). If I dropped out our scouts and cubs (about 8 in our group) wouldn't be able to do it as I'm the first aider. So I forced myself up, the children got everything ready, did all the chores and made our lunches, whilst I hid under a blanket in the sitting room. Then we walked to the scout hut and set off on the 12km walk over the hills. By the end I was dragging my feet fairish. I'd felt worse and worse through the day. The children were great though and kept checking I was okay. 

We got back, got our badges, and then walked home again, I got in the house, climbed into bed fully clothed and fell asleep. My sleep was fitful, I was too hot, too cold, changed my shirt three times, but I basically didn't get up until Sunday night, and then only for an hour. Monday I managed to eat some food and get up in the afternoon, and today I've been up most of the day, although I've had no energy whatsoever, I did manage to pick the children up though! 

Some of our friends (really brilliant friends) picked up the children for school and then picked them up again yesterday which made everything a bit more possible as I lay in my pit of despair! 

I'm hoping I'll start to feel a bit better tomorrow! 

There is a bug going round, so maybe it's a combination of that, along with a bit of exhaustion that's made me feel so run down. I don't think the big long walk helped either, but I really didn't want to let down a load of our scouts and cubs. 

I always really struggle when I'm ill, my life is so active and I am so full of energy that people wonder how I do what I do at times, and I don't get ill often, I keep myself fit and healthy and eat good food and so far I've had good luck (which is probably the biggest factor to being healthy), but when I go down I tend to go down hard! And I really hate not being able to do what I usually can.

My wife has been amazing and the children as well, went into the greenhouse to see my eldest had watered and tended for all the plants, she's going out each day to listen to her audio book, and doing gardening at the same time!

That first night as I was lay there feeling terrible, my boy came in at his bedtime and hugged me "If you need anything in the night daddy, just give me a shout..." 

A Fence For A Friend

The last few weeks I don't seem to have stopped! This last week I was out every evening doing something (two talks as well!). 

My mate Neil, who has been mentioned on here before when he went with me to collect my second larger greenhouse, needed a hand with his fence. So I gathered up my tools and went to give him a hand. 

As you can see the old fence wasn't in a great way. Luckily he'd cleared a space for us to work and dig the holes, he'd even dug the one already. I brought my graft ( a heavy hole digging spade) and we made short work of the rest of the holes. 

 

Luckily it was a lovely sunny morning for most of it, and in all honesty it didn't take long once we were going. 

Turned out to be one of those jobs where it was lovely to take a step back at and look at what we'd done in a morning. 

It's also nice that he can get that area planted up now. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it in the coming year. 

What's your favourite thing to grow against a fence?

Planting Seeds - Not me

My girls have really taken the bull by the horns the last few weeks. They've been out there in the garden sowing seeds for me, while I've been doing some other jobs. 

I give them the packets and tell them how many of each we'll probably need and they just get right to it! This was after they cleaned out the greenhouse for me! 

Two Year Di-iversary - Axe Throwing

A few weeks ago we "celebrated" a milestone in our lives. It was our eldest daughters two year anniversary from her diagnosis with type one diabetes. 

It's fair to say that it has given us many ups and downs in those two years, and already it's hard to remember how easy things were before that came and kicked us all - my daughter especially. 

She is incredible with it though, never openly gets her down, although I'm sure she thinks about it a lot. We all do, but she is so responsible and mature about it. 

So instead of commiserating the two year anniversary we go out to celebrate kicking it's butt for another year. My wife booked axe throwing followed by some rather amazing burgers (with a spot of warhammer shopping before hand for me and the boy). 

The axe throwing was great fun, with some great and truly awful shots thrown. It makes me want to make my own target! 

The burgers were great as well, although it's now come to the point where the children end up eating adult portions and leave me with nothing! I thought we'd be a few years off that yet!

So here's to the next 12 months. F-you diabetes, you won't get us down. 

A Third Greenhouse?

 It's fair to say that my concentration has been out in the "wider" smallholding (trees, hedges, etc) or in the workshop (trying to earn a living). But the sunshine yesterday made me long for the garden. I really don't want the bottom end to be a weedy mess again this year so I'm determined to get on top of it now. 

I have decided that the space is perfect for my old greenhouse to go there, there will be enough room at the back to trim the apple trees. 

I like to divide up my areas as much as possible, makes it all feel a bit more manageable.

This greenhouse will just be on oak sleepers on bare earth. Nothing fancy. The last one lasted 10 years and that was on softwood in the same way, so hopefully I'll get ten years from this. I doubt this greenhouse could take another move, some bits look close to breaking. 

Up the side of this greenhouse there will be three raised beds as well, jsut because it's so wet down this bottom corner. 

So a bit of work left (a lot of work really), but I'm already trying to decide what to put in it. It could be for melons and strawberries, and maybe have a plant that needs isolating for seed saving. I was tempted to have it as a netted greenhouse rather than glazed, but I have the glass here so it seems silly to have to buy something more to use it. 

What would you plant in an extra greenhouse?

Basket Willow Planted

 I finally got some more willow planted. I've wanted to do a bed of basket willow since I planted the hybrid stuff over ten years ago.

I got some from a friend and some I got online (from world of willow).

Willow I've planted - Salix Viminalis Brittany Green Harrisons Green Golden Rod Black Maul Golden Deep Purple Austrian Grey

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this lot grows, with plants to maybe increase the area in future years.

Anyone else grow willow for weaving? What's your favourite variety?

Restoring a Hedge Part 2 - Replanting

 So I manged to do a bit more to the hedge I'm restoring last week. I got in the trees I ordered to fill up the gaps. 

I planted a mix of hawthorn and hazel, but also added in a fruit tree in a light patch that we had.

It's not much, but another 60 trees added to our part of Herefordshire and another variety of fruit added to what we're already growing, as I added in a Mirabelle De Nancy in the lighter patch of the hedge. 

I may regret planting so many fruit trees in the hedges in future years, as it'll make laying hedges harder, but not for a long while yet. 

Another Trip To Wales

The last couple of weekends I've spent in Wales with my dad. We've been working but it's been really good fun. 

This weekend just gone started a bit slower though  - 

Dad - "when you come over this weekend do you fancy doing me an extra favour?"

Me - "Go on..." 

Dad - "Would you come here first (an hour extra) and take a trailer with you?"

Me - "Yeah, no probs..."

 So Saturday started like that, a drive for an hour, a hook up to the trailer, then a three hour drive in the pouring rain! 

We got there, spent a few hours unloading, then did a few hours work on the house. That night we were sat having tea in a local pub and dad said "I don't feel like we got much done today..." I had to bite my tongue somewhat! Lol, he's always the same, wants a lot done in a day. He does love a project, so he's been loving doing up this house. 

Half term this week now I'm back, so catching up on my own work, but also doing a few bits with the children hopefully - we've got axe throwing and a burger booked later in the week to "celebrate" two years of our daughter kicking type one diabetes butt. should be fun. 

Feburary Walk Around

Sorry for the lack of posts the last week. I've been busy with articles, work and life. The weekend just gone I went to Wales to help my dad do some building work, a long weekend of it, I had scouts Monday night (fire lighting in the rain) and a talk last night in a village called May Hill! 

Today has been a bit calmer though, the boy is off ill and I managed to take a bit of time off to play a load of games with him this afternoon which was great fun. 

 I did a walk around of the smallholding at the start of the month and didn't share it here, it shows what we've been up to in January. I managed to make it a really productive month and tick off some big jobs from my long list. 

Let me know what you think. 

Anyone else think life just gets busier and busier?

Hereford Seedswap 2025

Not many photos of the actual swap I'm afraid, just a few before it all kicked off. 

As always it's great to be involved in this event. Hundreds of packets of seeds changed hands and I got to see some faces I only see at this event and lots of people I've met at gardening clubs when I do my talks. 

 We had a great talk as well from Catrina Fenton, who is head of the Heritage Seed library. Was really interesting to hear her talk about seed saving and the lengths they go to to keep varieties pure, as well as trying to find new old varieties to save. 

I think seed swaps are amazing things, it feels right, it feels like it's what we should be doing with seeds. Its encouraged me to save more seeds and I'm a far better seed saver because of all these years doing it. I had so many different types of tomato there this year someone said "Ah, so you're the tomato man..." Which made me laugh! 

Do you go to a local seed swap? What was your best find?

Seed Swap This Weekend!

So the annual Hereford seed swap is on this weekend!  

Always one of my favourite events of the year. Hope to see some of you there! I can't wait! 

Restoring A Hedge

 With the oak tree down it has left a rather large gap, and although it was set back form the hedge by a good 14ft it feels very empty down there now. 

But it has let a good amount of light into the old hedge that runs in parallel to it. It's also made me realise how much this hedge needs some work, especially this first section. It's very gappy, with the trees that are left looking very little like a hedge. 

Want to seize the bull by the horns I decided to keep on working with the wood on our land and lay a bit of this hedge. 

INDOOR Camp OUT

This month our eldest turned 13! In all honesty it's made me feel rather old. 

We asked her how she wanted to celebrate and she suggested a camp out with her friends. I have to say I wasn't that keen on camping outside so I suggested a compromise. We'd camp in the scout hut. 

 There's not many advantages to being a scout leader, but using the scout hut when we want to is one of them! 

Chipping Brash

 I seem to have done a lot of work with the trees on these 5 acres the last few months. What I need to do now is start tidying up before the grass starts to grow. 

The first job is to chip all the brash that I've got piled around the place. The picture above shows the blackthorn I've taken from my little coppice. I'm still not finished in there, but it does feel like I've made an impact to stop it's spread. 

Rabbit Damage On A 13 Year Old Trees

I couldn't quite believe when I saw my apple trees the other day. These trees are 13 years old and the one had been chewed by rabbits! I thought the bark would be hard enough now to discourage them. 

When I see stuff like this my work is flexible enough that I can deal with it straight away. I went and got some rabbit wire and wrapped around them. I hate using wire like this and will try to make use it doesn't grow into the trunk. 

I really thought they'd be big enough now that I wouldn't have to worry. I guess there isn't much goodness in the grass at the moment. 

I foresee rabbit pie in our future...

Giant Oak Dismantle

Last spring one of our oak trees fell over. 

I was gutted. Really gutted. I like to think we're here to look after the land, but this came down due to high winds and a very, very wet winter. It blocked the gateway. 

Pizza Oven In January

We have a few birthdays in in January, the youngest had a few friends over at the weekend for a sleepover - although they were up at 4 so I'm not sure much sleeping happened! 

 We fired up the pizza oven for feeding them. It was frosty and cold outside, but I much preferred standing out there, cooking the pizzas, to being inside with the noise and chaos!