How many of you have heard of Jerusalem Artichokes? Not the Globe Artichokes that you can easily buy in the supermarket, but Jerusalem Artichokes? No? No-one? Well you’re not alone. I hadn’t heard of them either until we were researching perennial vegetables.
Category Archives: Garden
The last of the Fruit Harvest (thank goodness!)
If you’ve been reading our blog you’ll know that we are self sufficient in fruit. That is unless we decide we want a banana or pineapple which struggle in the UK climate. All of our apple trees can be found in the field where we keep our chickens so we make maximum use of theContinue reading “The last of the Fruit Harvest (thank goodness!)”
The Problem with Autumn/Fall…
Autumn/Fall is a beautiful season. The leaves on the trees show a myriad of colours and for a period of time the garden looks like a beautiful oil painting. The chickens love it too. As the leaves fall they take great delight in turning the leaves over, scratching at them to reveal hiding insects forContinue reading “The Problem with Autumn/Fall…”
I love HOT chilli sauce!
It’s true! Hot sauce is amazing and thankfully Hugh grows lots of chillies for me and every year grows a new variety that he’s never grown before. 3 years ago it was a yellow variety with a lemony, hot flavour called Lemon Aji. Last year it was a variety called Red Basque. This year heContinue reading “I love HOT chilli sauce!”
Who Knew Parsnips Are So Versatile?
The humble parsnip is a vegetable that only EVER was roasted in our home before we started our smallholding lifestyle. Like most things in our home we use the phrase “Waste not, want not” every day so we do much more with parsnips now.
Blackberry Bliss
We have a large fruit cage in our field where we grow raspberries and blackberries. I appreciate it’s not pretty, but who needs pretty when we really need fruit. It’s very productive with early golden raspberries, late red raspberries and right in the middle of the summer we have lots of glorious blackberries.
Our Cheap Fruit Cage is Paying Off!
Over this last winter here in the UK we were required by law to keep our lovely chickens either indoors or in fully netted enclosures due to Avian Influenza Restrictions. We bought three 3m x 6m polytunnel frames that we connected up and covered with bird netting. It was much less space than they wouldContinue reading “Our Cheap Fruit Cage is Paying Off!”
Sometimes it can be Overwhelming…
Our home is our wonderful sanctuary. It gives us so much joy and our move to the smallholding lifestyle has been amazing, but…. yes, there’s a “but”. The work on the smallholding is dictated by the seasons and sometimes balancing this with earning money as well as supporting friends and family can be overwhelming.
Strawberries Everywhere!
I love strawberries. I really, really love strawberries. To feed my love of these fruits we’ve planted 300 square feet of them in our field. At this time of year we spend LOTS of time picking them and processing them so that we (OK, I should really have said “I”) can enjoy them all yearContinue reading “Strawberries Everywhere!”
For the love of Elders
This week we have been making elderflower cordial and its made me think about the underappreciated Elder tree. We have lots of elder trees on our smallholding and we make maximum use of their flowers and berries in season. There are so many uses for the flowers, berries and wood too it’s baffling that theseContinue reading “For the love of Elders”
English Country Life 