WIN A COOP

With the launch of the book comes a competition with a fab coop as the prize – go on, don’t be shy – you know you know the answer, even before you’ve read the book!

Kiddy plots

For the past couple of months, my good deed for the week has been to go to my youngest daughter’s school and work with the children on their veg plots. Built only a few years ago, the soil therein is depleted and ravaged by weeds that fly in from surrounding...

real food farming

So, we did the Real Food Festival at Earl’s Court last weekend – May 7 – 10. Huge amount of people buying porter from Norfolk,  mutton from Scotland and chocolate from the Congo. I found it rather moving – the man making Congolese chocolate....

cockadoodledoo

Bending over to refill the hybrids’ feed hopper at 7 this morning, I had my back to him when he crowed. But there was no mistaking it – the extraordinarily resonant sound, squeezed out through his upstretched syrinx (a bird’s vocal chord, situated...

Overheating

So, some busybody has been creating vicious rumours about my Solway hen house. She says it causes hens to overheat and is not safe and the local poultry shop is refusing to sell it because of the news. What I say is – how come the prize-winning Solway...

More allotments

What a marvellous thing the Great British allotment is. The idea of urbanites growing their own food perfectly combines all sorts of contemporary ideologies – it’s local, it’s low-carbon, it’s recession-friendly….For me, it appeals to my...