286. Smallholding tours . . .

If you didn't know I run smallholding tours - see the orchard, bees, chickens, veg garden etc whilst I wax lyrical on grafting fruit trees, trying to be self-sufficient in fruit and veg, permaculture, seeing ourselves as stewards of the land  (as opposed to property owners), attuning to the seasons and the simple joy of being outside . . .

See sister blog for details http://farlandsholidaycottagepeakdistrict.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-cottage-is-part-of-smallholding-of.html

Recently, anticipating a Summer rush, I put a notice in the village shop. Which to my surprise quite a few people have seen.

Yesterday I did a tour for a five year-old and her grandmother. And it went quite well . . . she collected eggs, sampled snap peas, tomatoes and purple podded peas. She (the five year-old / 'nearly six') told me she liked mint tea so we picked mint and black peppermint too. We explored the veg garden, the greenhouse and the fruit trees.

To finish I put her in Sarah's bee suit and we looked at the bees!



She went home with mint and eggs and peas and beans; maybe next year she will grow some of the peas in her garden in London.

I hope (as I do after every tour) that I might have inspired something.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

285. Been thinking about my last blog . . .

Image
. . . even if no-one else has. One of the implications of much of an apple's goodness (minerals and vitamins) being in its seeds is that to benefit they have to be eaten. And not just eaten but chewed up as apple seeds tend simply to be passed. I then remembered something about apple pips containing cyanide. I began to look into all this . . . There are hundreds and hundreds of web snippets on the benefits of eating apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and all that. But quite difficult to shore it up with trusted sources. A medium-sized apple weighs 150g - 200g and contains half that number of calories. 80% is water, 10% is carbohydrate, 0.5% protein and 4% minerals and vitamins. Half the minerals and vitamins and fibre are in the peel and the core. Apple pips contain amygdalin which can release cyanide when coming contact with digestive enzymes. According to the http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/contact-us/about-us/  (Cambridge University group) a...
Read more

319. We've got a dog!

Image
I know, I know . . . but I've kind of always wanted one . . . . . . from when I was very young, before I joined the Job, when I was thinking about joining the Job. I had a dream (I must have been 13 or 14, and I had lots of posters of dogs on my bedroom walls) about becoming a bearded-batchelor police dog-handler. In my dream I called the dog Wolfram . And guess what? We've called our dog  Wolfram ! He's so cute. He is, of course, an Alsatian and a good guard-dog. Which will be good because this is a big place and Sarah's away a lot. (The door-bell went off in the middle of the night last week, no-one there, turned out it was half-pressed in, but it didn't half freak me out.) Anyway, Wolfram is a new type of dog. Specially bred for people like me. He's a veggie. Eats like a horse of course, but and this is the point, he eats just like a horse. CRUCIALLY, he shits like a horse too. So, no smelly piles all around the garden but just the sweet...
Read more

73. Stuck for something to read?

Try a William Boyd novel. They hook you from the start, have interesting and original plots and are not overly long. What's more there are lots of them, and relatively easy to find in second-hand bookshops. Perfect for a holiday read, if you are stuck on a difficult novel or just want something a bit different. His books sometimes feel like he has written them with the aid of a special book-kaleidoscope: twist it again, 10 bizarre plot-lines fall out and Boyd glues them together in 300 pages. Try one!
Read more