‘Bootifully’ Easy Boot Projects

The wet winter months usually mean a return to more sturdy footwear for gardening, and quite often a return to not-so-stylish muddy platform heels! I wouldn’t describe ourselves as being particularly house proud, in fact with the number of children, chickens and a messy collie dog, its like shovelling snow in a snowstorm trying to …

Are things a bit late this year?

Its a question asked quite frequently when it comes to gardening or the flora and fauna of the countryside but for me I can't say I can always provide evidence to support my answer. Ok I know the date when the swallows return or the first chiff chaff call but thats based on whether I'm …

Green Roof for the Chicken Coop

Every now and then I’m given a chicken house to put through some field trials and as a consequence I can end up with quite a few ‘buildings’ covering the field. It was on one such coop I figured I try a different kind of field trial by sticking a green roof on it. Why not, …

Fine weather for ducks….

….but perhaps not for chickens. The last week or so it’s been pretty much persisting it down, which whilst it’s no bad thing for the garden or the ducks in the garden, it can have its pluses and minuses on the chicken front.     Chickens don’t mind a bit of rain, in fact it’s …

Fence Pole Table (to go with the Fence Pole Bench)

A bit ago on this blog I showed you how to knock together a cheap but very weather resistant garden bench using fence poles and some yorkshire board using nothing much more than a chainsaw, a hammer and some nails. Well heres another simple DIY job with more fence poles & board, again using little else then a hammer …

Apple Tree Recovery – Pruning & how to revive an old tree

When we moved here some years back we were presented with quite a wilderness. The house was just about to reach at least its second dereliction in as many decades and the garden was in need of some serious help to try and bring it back to some semblance of order. A previous owner had …

Wheelbarrow compost riddle & drying tray

With having a fairly large productive garden and more chickens than you can shake a stick at, we create quite a bit of garden waste, though far from ‘waste’ it is, as we compost just about everything we can. We do this not only to supplement the vegetable plot but also to create our own …

Build a bird box!

This is a part of an old article I wrote some years back but on the request of a twitter friend Heather Wilde of @KidsNorthWest I'm uploading it here as she's holding a bird box building party soon so hopefully she'll find this timely and useful 🙂 Birds are an integral part of any garden, be it …

Wine Bottle Bird Feeder

I’ve always had a bit of a passion for birdwatching which stems from my childhood sitting by the kitchen window recording and drawing all the bird species that visited our little semi detached garden. One of the best ways to attract birds into the garden is to feed them, and feeding them is equally essential …

Make more of your chicken ark

Theres quite a wealth of chicken houses out on the market and if you are reading this then you'll know thats quite probably because keeping poultry at home is a booming hobby/ lifestyle choice. The thing is, it's also rather an addictive thing is poultry keeping. I know, I started with a flock of half …