Horses and permaculture
I’ve been fortunate enough to be around horses for 30 years now, and very early on, decided that horses would be my career. I’m ashamed to say that it is only now that I am getting to grips with pasture management. From a permaculture point of view,...
Life in the tunnel
At long last all the beds in the big polytunnel are filled, and I think we officially have the oddest tunnel layout in the land. The centre beds with a circular path and keyhole beds in the corners are designed to maximise the available edge in the tunnel, and...
Thank You
As we enter our second year on the farm, we wanted to take time to thank all the people who have helped us. To Sinead for helping with the truly horrible task of pulling out old thatch, and to our family and those who came and helped us tear up floors and walls. Then...
Spring (ish)
Although it might not look it here, we are finally seeing a lot of young vegetables growing and are reaping the benefit of the new tunnel in this not-quite-spring. Hundreds of young seedlings are coming on in modules, and the first of those have been planted...
Meet Rain!
This is Rain. He’s a two year old cob, who came to live with us this weekend, having been a resident at Holly’s Horse Haven, a horse rehabilitation and rescue centre in County Louth. He seems to have been more neglected than mistreated, and so apart...
One year on…..
For a while there we thought it might never be sunny again, but once again we are enjoying the warmth, and the knowledge that the sun is providing our electricity and an increasing amount of our hot water. All around us the place is bursting into life, and the brown...
One million trees, one polytunnel, many volunteers
In what was an exceedingly hectic but productive end to the week, we welcomed a host of volunteers to the farm to help us plant our contribution to One Million Trees in One Day, which in the end turned out to be about 160, in a variety of places all over the farm....
Finally some sun, and a new polytunnel
Rather surprisingly the sun came out today so we dashed out and got to work. Claire and Lyra were on weeding duty in the small polytunnel, and I managed to put up the frame of the new big polytunnel, although some interesting acrobatics were needed as I was on...
Composting loo – a toilet reborn
Something that we’ve desperately needed since arriving is a decent outside composting loo, if only to save muddy hordes coming in and out of the house in the depths of winter. We inherited an old tin hut of an outside loo, that had the particularly...
Off grid
It isn’t a huge amount of solar, but it’s enough to allow us to manage almost entirely without the mains grid. (The washing machine is too much for this system). We have, in theory, enough power to keep us going for 5 days in the event of it being...