Country Diary 86

THE OTHER EVENING, as I went to empty the compost bucket into the scruffy bins that I made out of pallets four years ago, I was surprised to see a badger eating up yesterday’s vegetable scraps. He scrambled away but …

Country Diary 84

THANKS TO THE GOOD weather, everything in the vegetable garden has been shooting up. I lifted the early potatoes. There were about ten kilos of them, which at Riverford prices are worth about ten pounds. Delicious, but is it really …

A Country Diary 83

MAY HAS come at last, the merry month of May, and I have bought a copy of Thomas Tusser’s One Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, first published in the 16th century. Tusser himself was rather a comical and even sad …

A Country Diary 81

Problems with Wood

OVER THE LAST two months, we have been mainly concerned with keeping warm. Now that we have two wood-burning stoves, writes Tom Hodgkinson, the amount of work for me in wood-chopping and preparation has nearly doubled.…

Country Diary 81

ONE MORNING IN MID OCTOBER, I DECIDED THAT I could save a fortune by brewing my own beer. Right now I am spending anything from £1.20 to £2 per bottle of fine ale, and it’s all adding up to a …