Winter Solstice 2025
Ranch I’m awake at 5. Wide awake. Not tired or groggy. I was in bed by 10 yesterday and out [...]
Holding hands
I’m awake at 4.30 and up by 5. A hazy grey dawn lets in the first streaks of pastel light and [...]
Sending out an SAE
Ranch: For newer readers, the ranch is a scruffy sprawling affair. One and a half acres, tucked away off the beaten [...]
Love supreme
Ranch: A reprieve at last from the incessant soggy wet, wet, wet. At least for us in The North. Down south, [...]
Reserve not met
Ranch: A long gnawing spell of freezing weather, with temperatures as low as minus eight is sandwiched between endless soggy rain. [...]
Cracking hazel nuts
Ranch: Scudding clouds. Warm winds. Lots of sunny spells. A few showers. That's been the weather recipe this week here in [...]
Making a hay wain
Ranch: I open the door after a week away. Everything is overgrown and all the beds need weeding. The embers [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Intellectual curiosity and the spirit of critical thinking
Ranch: For the benefit of my new readers, 'The Ranch' is the name I jokingly gave to my allotment many years [...]
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 [...]
Shed joy
The Ranch: It rained properly on Thursday night and I swear that the plants all grew an extra couple of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
odmorden and the gin terrace.
The Ranch ... is a scruffy field and a scruffy allotment above the arsehole corner of an arsehole Northern town. [...]
Starry night
The Ranch: High gardening season has crept up quietly. Now, with a few exceptions (beans and squashes) it's time to [...]
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 [...]
Revolution of the reasonable
The Ranch: A freeze serendipitously embraces the New Year period. A raw, bruised, brutal beauty embraces the ranch. A blanket [...]
Ergot of rye.
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 [...]
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 [...]
Scythe versus strimmer
Ranch: At work we do tests of change. It's a common sense way of trying out new ways of working to see [...]
More floods and family & friends
Ranch: More floods - Hebden last week then South Yorkshire & Venice plus catastrophic fires overseas. Here, the weather is pretty [...]
Back on the road
Ranch: The beginning of November is the arbitrary time when I start pruning the hedge. Fencing is a big consideration when [...]
Punk rock and mud
Ranch: Autumn rain and sogginess are so extensive, that the area below the beds in the field is a mud-bath, making [...]
Fig fiend, potato blight, emergency medicine and science.
Ranch: Summer has tumbled into autumn, with a brief late-summer hot and sunny reprieve which has given way to North-west lashing [...]
In which the bees arrive and Sagefest finally happens GalleryIn which the bees arrive and Sagefest finally happens
Digging a well, drainage, Ferguson tractor, Festival, Irrigation, NOTSENSIBLES, organic gardening, permaculture, Punk rock, Rock & Roll, self-sufficiency, soak-hose, The first ever Sagefest, VW split screen
In which the bees arrive and Sagefest finally happens
Ranch: Summer has catapulted along and August is here. North-west English weather remains my favourite: blustery; often grey; patchy rain and [...]
Talking to the bees
Ranch: 7 am. Friday 10th May - computer at home. I have that Friday feeling for a very good reason. I'm [...]
Me and the trees
Ranch: Whenever I arrive at the ranch, I wander round, having a look at everything. I jokingly call it a ward [...]
Transcending the apocalypse
Ranch: I’m cold and wet. I’ve just walked through the park and the blustery March gales delivered a dose of HHWDR [...]
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 [...]
Triple Mad Friday, stray cats and settling into the right groove.
Ranch I nearly didn't bother going up today - I'm knackered from trips to the Dirty old Town. I'm glad that [...]