wild food, wild places, wild times
Read part one here. Note: bees are complicated, wildly so. I am not an expert, not even close, and much of what follows is knowledge I have gleaned from books and courses, and some is still controversial in the beekeeping world. I have provided links to further reading for those that wish it. I cannot…
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Note: bees are complicated, wildly so. I am not an expert, not even close, and much of what follows is knowledge I have gleaned from books and courses, and some is still controversial in the beekeeping world. I have provided links to further reading for those that wish it. I cannot take responsibility for external…
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Some exciting news – in between wrangling chickens and running away from wasps, I am going to be writing a regular column for Locavore Magazine. “Who?” I hear you cry. Well, in their own words: “Locavore is an editorial-led magazine, defined by beautiful photography and intelligent writing. Firmly based in the British Isles, we’ll also…
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Spring, it seems, may finally be here. It’s been a long, hard winter. I have spoken of winter at length (thank you for your patience), but now my thoughts and my hands turn to warmer work. We are still battered by the occasional gale, and in fact a great many trees in the area have…
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Patience is required. Although I wish that spring were here, it stubbornly refuses to be anything other than winter. For every beautiful, frosty morning, there is a day like today, when the clouds hang low and dew forms in my beard when I step outside. I can confirm that it does, indeed, drizzle in France.…
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Winter is all about preparing for spring. We tidy and dig and prune trees and wait and wait. We choose and buy seeds, and I’m already planning what to cook, preserve, and ferment with the produce we’ll grow. Next year we’ll save our own seed, but this year we buy what we need from the…
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The mornings are cold. Frost clings in sharp little lances to everything, the sky is a pale blue blanket, and we all shiver underneath. My morning routine is a chilly one; let chickens out, defrost chickens, feed chickens, stare at the sunrise until my eyes freeze over, drink tea. I worry that the chickens are…
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When I was a child, we had an orchard. I remember the day we moved in to that house like it was yesterday. Me and my sister paced the length and breadth of the field, wading through grass as tall as we were. We’d never seen so much space. I remember dragging an old plastic…
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We awake early to a foggy morning, wrap up warm (it’s cold now, summer didn’t last forever after all), and let the chickens out. They, as is their wont, stare at us, gurgle weirdly, and then proceed to continue digging to China. They seem to have settled in nicely. The last few days we have…
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The chicken run is finished. Finally. It became something of a personal Hadrian’s Wall. (Hen-drian’s Wall? Anyone? No?) This is the first fence I’ve ever built, and it’s a surprisingly satisfying thing to do. We found a chap in a village about two miles away who makes and sells acacia fenceposts. He has a massive…
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