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 [...]

Another reset

Ranch: I have an impressive 4cm double-furrowed cut across the top of my forehead, courtesy of barbed wire – an inevitable [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 – [...]

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 [...]

Starry night

The Ranch: High gardening season has crept up quietly. Now, with a few exceptions (beans and squashes) it's time to plant, [...]

Revolution of the reasonable

  The Ranch: A freeze serendipitously embraces the New Year period. A raw, bruised, brutal beauty embraces the ranch. A blanket [...]

A solstice celebration

  Ranch: On Monday I'm exhausted. The last thing I feel like doing is going to the ranch. Who else is [...]

Vaccus

Ranch: I feel so grateful to live on the edge of a big park, with a wonderful Elizabethan Hall and museum [...]

Christmas tree butt plug?

  ... and baking bread:   The cosmic cycle rolls on, as day is barely distinguishable from night. It's been an [...]

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

  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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

Rioting for beginners

  The Ranch -  May has been and gone - my all-time favourite month. Hot, hot, hot and heady. Now we [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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