Turnip
The Ranch: Spring hurtles in, full throttle, thwarted by snowy East-Beast snaps. It's been a funny old winter. Blue Monday [...]
Earth, water, fire and air
Ranch: Summer went, giving way to a musky autumn with the first frost already delivered a couple of weeks ago on [...]
Making a hay wain
Ranch: I open the door after a week away. Everything is overgrown and all the beds need weeding. The embers [...]
Punk Rock Party
A basking baking smouldering heat reigns supreme and I can stand any amount of it. The English, famed for their complaining [...]
Where are the sparrows and WWTD?
Ranch: We get back from Beatherder late on Monday and it's still searingly hot. Helen has watered the greenhouse, and apart [...]
Ticker le Punk
'I never even liked punk'. I said. 'Cover your ears Carmen'. Said Ticker. Louise was in the kitchen making a cup [...]
Birdwatching
I forfeit my usual trip up the mountain in favour of heading north from the top of the lake. Up the [...]
The Chattering of Sparrows
The heady, exotic, musky, smutty scent of valerian flowering from mid-May heralds summer full-steam-ahead. The plants grow as tall as 8 [...]
Beltane and The Vulgarians
Ranch: May has always been my favourite month and I'm sure it's no coincidence that its beginning is marked with celebrations [...]
Springtime
Nothing compares to the shimmering light bright green of spring as it rapidly coats the bare brown branches of the hedges. [...]
A triumphant February beginning
Ranch: In the grey midwinter, a tawdry clinging cold pervades, yet spring heralds in the shape of brand new electric-green hawthorn [...]
Wassailing?
Ranch: Christmas and New Year have been and gone and now if ever, is the time for January blues. We had [...]
Everything is Energy and Plan C
The Ranch: ...Is dismal in its cold clinging greyness and seemingly endless slutchy muddy wet. As I walk round, jobs beckon [...]
Walking common ground and the totality of evidence.
A freezing Sunday: Dawn - Sunday 28th November 2021 From my window, I watch a thin streak of crystal light powder [...]
Going out without a bang
The Ranch: is autumnal. There are characteristic drizzly rainy days but also bright sunny ones. The greenhouse is infested with greenfly [...]
Back to Rossendale
Ranch: The weather broke into our characteristic Northern blustery drizzle, and I psychologically hunkered down for winter but then it broke [...]
Unsubscribing and a new beginning
The Ranch: I’m on the ranch in demi-shed A. It’s raining. The long late run of balmy September sunshine has come [...]
Northward bound
We’ve come on holiday by mistake. Past the old toll house on the right. Past the caravan park where they used [...]
Harvest Moon
The Ranch: A basky balmy sordid humid heat intoxicates me for weeks and I'm relieved when it's over and the rains [...]
Sagefest 2
The Ranch: I’m on the ranch, living a dream come true. I’m sitting at the bar of demi-shed-A, writing at my [...]
Shed joy
The Ranch: It rained properly on Thursday night and I swear that the plants all grew an extra couple of inches [...]
Duties of a Doctor?
The Ranch: It’s raining. It started around 3am and is now just fizzling out at 6am. It wasn’t much, but exciting [...]
Don’t mess with the kids
Salutation to the dawn: The chorus begins at half-past three with a funny sounding bird whose song I don’t recognise – [...]
Repair and the Car Boot
The Ranch: There is nothing sweet and tender about these hooligans. They are merciless. Stealthily, the patriarch eyes track me silently. [...]
May day and the thousand pound tomato
Ranch: Hazy warm sunshine dawns after a frostier than ever April and early May. Of course the English weather obsessives have [...]
odmorden and the gin terrace.
The Ranch ... is a scruffy field and a scruffy allotment above the arsehole corner of an arsehole Northern town. Once [...]
Starry night
The Ranch: High gardening season has crept up quietly. Now, with a few exceptions (beans and squashes) it's time to plant, [...]
Down the rabbit hole again
The Ranch: 12 days of snow and ice, with temperatures as low as minus 8. Then a thaw and heavy rain. [...]
Revolution of the reasonable
The Ranch: A freeze serendipitously embraces the New Year period. A raw, bruised, brutal beauty embraces the ranch. A blanket [...]
Vaccus
Ranch: I feel so grateful to live on the edge of a big park, with a wonderful Elizabethan Hall and museum [...]
How science can help the ordinary gardener
Ranch: I haven't had much time to get up there this week. However, even a couple of hours at a time, [...]
How to grow your own food during a pandemic – anyone can do it – 10 tips GalleryHow to grow your own food during a pandemic – anyone can do it – 10 tips
Common ground, coronavirus, Emergency Medicine, Friends and family, NHS, older post, organic gardening, Science, self-sufficiency, tree planting, wellness, work life balance
How to grow your own food during a pandemic – anyone can do it – 10 tips
Earth, water, air, fire: That's it. That's the secret. That's the answer. That's how to do it. The four [...]
Fenny
The Ranch: ... is a clay one-and-a-half acre hillside organic plot in the North of England. At the moment it's [...]
Donald Trump underpants?
The Ranch: Toast? Via the Self sufficiency, permaculture and sustainable living group, I've managed to secure a small quantity of [...]
Please sir, can I have some more?
The Ranch: 1st November It's sometimes tricky to romanticise ordinariness. Each and every day Linda mucks out her stable into [...]
Tip-toeing, tapestry and The Law
The Ranch: It's me and the trees. I walk through the park and they are putting on their annual autumn [...]
Medicine and Rock & Roll
The Ranch: Once again, the weather catches me out. I'm all psyched up for settling into my curmudgeonly Autumn and Winter [...]
The Common Ground project
Birthday to birthday: I thought that the 21st of Sept was going to be our last warm sunny day of [...]
How to start a revolution with just six people GalleryHow to start a revolution with just six people
100% DIY, Common ground, coronavirus, Derry Girls, Emergency Medicine, End of an era, Food, Friends and family, Irish, Making a film, NHS, older post, organic gardening, permaculture, Revolution, self-sufficiency
How to start a revolution with just six people
A perfect sunny day: Monday (the 21st of Sept) was a perfect Indian summer day. It started cool and crystal blue [...]
Ergot of rye, blues and Rock & Roll.
Ranch: The mild, muggy, rainy, northern summery weather is breaking into autumnal gales and horizontal rain and the harvest is [...]
Sick of being normal? I failed my A-levels
Ranch: A spell of sultry, clinging, steamy heat punctuates an otherwise mediocre summer. Hot, hot, sleepily hot. Then come the [...]
Common ground and the House of Turds.
Wheels: Northwards! Along the bypass. Past the college. Past the toll-house. Past the tower on the hill on the right. [...]
Kick out the jams
A fortnight of rain and drizzle gives way to a promising weekend with warm weather forecast. I always forget what [...]
Farter’s day
The Ranch - is a routine of comfort in a sea of madness and rising darkness. Planting; weeding; tidying; concrete [...]
Rioting for beginners
The Ranch - May has been and gone - my all-time favourite month. Hot, hot, hot and heady. Now we [...]
Duck weed and walnuts
The four-foot-deep well in the main allotment is completely dry for the first time since I dug it many years ago. [...]
Hey app! Sense and censorship.
I've been slowly levelling off an area next to the greenhouse in anticipation of a poly-tunnel, by emptying wheelbarrow [...]
Forty days
Phew. Grey clouds spill heavy rain, heralding the return to baseline North-westness. The ground sighs relief, marking the end of a [...]
Missing my family
A lot of my friends and colleagues have lost access to the things that mentally help charge their batteries - [...]
The best, the worst. Corvus corone!
I'm sitting in the green plastic chair, capturing a transient moment of March sunshine. A bee lands close by [...]
Digging trenches
The primroses, in their exquisite pastel yellows are out on the shady lane, which leads past the ancient 17th [...]
Mending a double bass.
Sun 16th Feb: Mending a double bass? The rhubarb is peeping through. The sloping hillside gives some protection against the [...]
I’M IN THE LIBRARY!
I wake up and look out of my window and something is different - the bands of silvery grey are [...]
Computer addiction and the Arts association
Oh well. We're out and February is here. Occasionally daily life gets so overwhelmingly busy that I can't get to the [...]
Friday the 13th – mud mud mud
Ranch: Fri 13th December 2019: I'm just back from the ranch and I'm soaked. Really soaked. I had four days without [...]
Letterpress and woodblock printing
Louise read me a Ted Hughes poem last night - Stubbing Wharfe. He's talking about his time with Sylvia Plath and it [...]
More floods and family & friends
Ranch: More floods - Hebden last week then South Yorkshire & Venice plus catastrophic fires overseas. Here, the weather is pretty [...]
A new chapter and relinquishing control.
Ranch Christmas, New Year, Winter, Summer and so on. Do the trees celebrate? Do the foxes and tawny owls have an [...]