There is definitely an increase in the whole idea of sustainable living, living off grid, permaculture, tiny homes – all the things that are part of the ‘how do we survive the next 20 or 30 years’ mix. On Wednesday it was the turn of Jon, filming for a ten minute programme on the BBC, which when finished will (hopefully) show the reasons we are doing our thing here, and be more direct in terms of its environmental message than a lot of the stuff we’ve done previously. The day was about filming what will be the backdrop to an interview that we’ll do later in the year, and thankfully the weather was kind. Everyone got a turn, especially the chickens, and we managed to have the veg garden into some kind of shape, as just a couple of days ago it looked like a bomb site.

Now one half is complete, and we’ve been clearing out the other side. The old north-south beds are going, and we’re realigning it all east west so that the beds go right the way across the garden with a big path up the centre.

The whole side of the garden was completely overgrown, and the pile of material we’ve pulled is epic. Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have it cleared and the paths in. Then ‘someone’ has to barrow about 4 tonnes of horse manure onto all the beds, and another 4 tonne of compost.

Oh in the middle of the filming I realised that a relay in one of the inverters had stuck shut, which meant that a 2kw heater had been switched on for 18 hours. When i saw that the batteries read zero percent I initially thought it was a mistake, and then quickly realised that no, actually they were completely flat, and that we were simply running on direct solar. Needless to say this was a Bad Thing, and I was worried that the batteries would be knackered. Thankfully we’ve had plenty of sun, and they’ve recharged seemingly without any ill effects, but the inverter will need to be looked at. Just goes to show, all that solar and storage, and it was nearly undone by taking my eye off the ball for a day, and something as simple as a heater.