Fizz's Farm Blog

• Berries

    Days of mists and mellow fruitfulness. I’ve made blueberry muffins’, said a daughter a few days ago. ‘Really?’ I said.  ‘How lovely.’ ‘Yes, I found some blueberries in the freezer and used those,’ she went on. ‘Hope you weren’t keeping them for something.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, thoughtful.  ‘How do the muffins taste?’ ‘Well,’ she […]... read more

• Birds

  Me, I love birds.  All last week I was entranced by a cuckoo calling in the woods above me, and I potted on my tomatoes to the sound of fledgelings chattering above a trough of sweet peas.  This past month I’ve often paused to rest my weary arms on my shovel and crane my head […]... read more

• Glitter

  It’s raining.  How unreasonable. As the hottest year on record draws to a close the clouds are mustering, the leaves are dripping and the early morning school run starts with the mournful toll of the computerized thermometer on the car warning us that the temperature has dropped below 4 degrees.    Everyone, everywhere is suddenly talking […]... read more

• Ragwort

  My world has shrunk.   I have learnt to make my way down down down where the iguanas play, for a reason that Dory Previn never envisaged.  My gaze has shifted from the usual delighted scanning of a cerulean sky … groundwards. Star stained heights have lost their lustre and everything that is of interest […]... read more

• Lookering

  Lookering – a word not found in the Oxford English Dictionary – is the act of going into a field to check the welfare of your livestock. Sweet, verdant June and the verges are frothing with creamy cow parsley. The barns, barren of livestock, rattle desolately in the warm summer breezes, dusty reminders of the daily winter bedding-up […]... read more

• ‘Stop Thief!’

    Maybe, like me, you read quite a bit of Beatrix Potter as a child. Perhaps you identified with some of her characters? Not, I suspect, the extremely irritating Squirrel Nutkin who gets his comeuppance atthe beak of the terrifying Old Brown. (I couldn’t read that one to my own children as I was still too traumatised.) I […]... read more

• It’s a Plot

    I have discovered that a blogging is a dangerous activity. If you write about creating a cutting garden and post it up for everyone to look at then you must reap the consequences. Last month on this site I extolled the virtues of no-dig and my excitement with the theory that flower growing might be successful without […]... read more

• No Dig

  I hate buying flowers.  I don’t like the ones that come in cellophane from the supermarket and are cheap. (Oppressed workers! Farmers bankrupted by ‘50% extra free!’) And I don’t like the ones that come from the florist and are priced by the stem. (How much did you say that comes to? For six chrysanthemums […]... read more

• Christmas Pudding

  For some people it’s all about the turkey.  The big da-dah! moment when the bird is put on the table, the roast potatoes come out of the oven, and everyone looks in vain for the gravy boat.  There is the important formal tradition of pulling the wishbone and the annual naming and shaming of those […]... read more

• Quince

    We’ve lived in our present house for 20 years but the quince tree in the garden has only fruited three times in that entire period and I came close last year to hacking it down in total disgust.  Perhaps every quince tree just needs a good talking to (and a saw brandished at it […]... read more