Alan Williams's Blog, page 39

Quick Links 8th May 2017

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

Life In General. – I started this week taking Ruby to the vets, she’d been a little lethargic and off colour and we suspected that maybe she had a urinary tract infection. The vet confirmed this,...

Allotment Update 6th May 2017

Short video post from the allotment.

Update From The Potting Shed

This is the first update from the potting shed for 2017. My tomatoes are out in their final growing spots, a little earlier than I would have liked, but they were getting leggy and needed to go out, but they are just putting out their first flowering spikes so it’s about the right time from that point of view. Also a quick peek at some of the other seeds that I’ve got germinating.

Decentralised Agriculture

[image error]I’ve been reading a lot of Wendell Berry in the last couple of weeks. His views on the environment, farming, growth and globalism are profound, but also pretty spot on. Some of these essays were written decades ago, some are nearly as old as I am. What in effect he foretold, has come to pass and in many ways the commercialisation of agriculture and food production could well be the biggest downfall of our society.

I also read an interesting article on the impact of Brexit on food production [...

First Radish

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Harvested the first radishes of 2017 this morning. They were direct sown on April 1st, and there are plenty more to come. The variety is French Breakfast, although I’ll probably be having them with my lunch!

Starling Madness

I’ve been trying to capture a video of the starlings in our garden “eating” from our mealworm feeder – decimation would be a better adjective as they can empty it in minutes. I’m not sure whether this is deliberate to share the worms with their fellow birds or whether it’s just a consequence of their rather mad feeding behaviour on the feeder.

There are often three or four on the feeder, but this is a small proportion of the total flock of around 15 birds. The remainder are on the ground unde...

Quick Links 1st May 2017

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

Life In General.  – My car was back in the garage on Monday, for a couple of items picked up on the service to be worked on. It was back on Friday after the repair started leaking oil, it was fix...

Quick Links 24th April 2017

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

Life In General.  – Easter came and went, and on Tuesday my car had it’s annual MOT and service. It passed the test okay, but is going back again on Monday to have a repair completed, one of thos...

First Swallow of 2017

I know that “one swallow doesn’t make a summer”, but I did see my first of the year yesterday. I checked my notes from last year and it is a day later than in 2016, but still pretty consistent. (The first Swifts of 2016 were 7th May). 

This year is marching on at a pace. 

Quick Links 17th April 2017

Each week I’ll try and post quick links to things that I’ve seen, read, inspired me or just sparked my interest in the previous week, with a little background and my thoughts and other things that I’ve been up to in the previous week. Mostly gardening, cooking and environmental stuff but not always.

Life In General.  – So this last week has been a little all over the place with different family things, we’ve had the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, with my Mum coming for an Easter Sunday Roast d...