Sustainable Farming
Late Night Walk With Bats on the Farm
My youngest, one hand contained in its smallness entirely in the curl of mine, the other, pointing, tracing the half seen flight of a thing in the sky. My eldest following, twiddling dials, yelping with excitements. All of us giggling and laughing as the fluttering wings of things wheeled feet from our faces
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Tree Sap Syrup
I’ve a mind to make syrup from tree sap on the farm. I’m combing the hedgerows and woodlands for good sized Alder, Sycamore, Beech, Poplar and Lime
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Honeybees, failing hives and why we farm holistically for bees
We have two hives remaining One colony gone. Dead. A thin drift of bees on the hive floor. Late to swarm, and light on bees. A small swarm. It was cold and wet before they swarmed.
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Shetland Sheep – Why They Work For A Sustainable Smallholding
Shetland Sheep. Small, tough, smart good mothers. A short blog on what’s good, and not so good and why we chose them
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Small Farms Build Community. Industrial Farms (often) Don’t. Here’s why.
Small farmers live where we work. And we love where we work. We live with our choices, and their results and consequences. In the land we live in.
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The Past is a Farming Country…
You are always in time. On time. Out of time. On a farm. Always. Seasonal time. Geological time. Daytime and night time. Deep Time and no time. You are in the time of fertility and the time of harvest. Your year might be framed by frost time. Sow after the last harvest before the first […]
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Messy by nature
There are farms with lines of white stones that pick out the borders of perfectly crisp lawns. Striped. Formal and formed. There are farms with trim hedges that behave themselves. Rectangular boxes of clean green lines that picture frame their fields. There are farms with fields of ryegrass and clover, uncluttered by wildflowers or weeds. […]
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The Consumer Shapes the Farmer
There is a clear idea of community, of what the culture in agriculture means. It means in part, the people. In part the stories the people band themselves together with. But the culture and community of a farm is bigger than that. It’s everything. It’s the sense of place and of purpose. It’s the people […]
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Why we graze our sheep and goats on wildflower meadow. (It’s sustainable. They taste great.)
This is a post about flavour. Deep, complex, flavourful lamb and goat. It’s also about wildflowers. Diversity. Sustainable farming. Pine martens. And grazing. But it’s fundamentally about flavour. Which is what grazing boils down to. We believe how we farm gives our lamb, goat and hogget a taste of place. A unique taste that’s a […]
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Wild orchids and what they mean for this farmer
In the Quarry field, tight by the road, once more, our wild pink orchids bloom. This makes me as giddy as a kid in a sweetshop. This is Christmas, and Hannukah, and the all Ireland championship and a Monster Truck rally all rolled up into one for me. There are drifts of Ragged Robin too. […]
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