Eight Acres

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Farmer Liz: You will remember  Tanya from Lovely Greens from the first series , she lives on the Isle of Mann and added chickens to her garden about a year ago.  You can leave comments for this post on Tanya's blog . How many chickens (and other fowl) do you keep, what breed and what do you use them for (meat, eggs, slug control etc)? Tanya: Around the same time that we were initially thinking about having hens another friend beat us to the punch. She went to the local pet store and bought a flat-pack hen house and chicken run combo and found a local farmer who had dozens of semi-feral chickens running around his property. One night he pulled three down from the trees and my friend took them home in a pet carrier. She named them Miracel, Carmen, and Geraldine and though they’re pro...

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about...

Today, as part of my series of interviews with bloggers who grow their own, I have an interview with Tanya of Lovely Greens . Tanya grows veggies, herbs, and flowers in her garden and allotment in the Isle of Man – that’s a lovely little island located in the middle of the Irish Sea. In addition to gardening, she keeps hens and honeybees for home-grown eggs, honey, and beeswax and has plans to one day add goats to the menagerie. Tanya uses her produce both on the table and as ingredients for her handmade bath and beauty products which she sells online , at local shops, and at her Farmers Market stall. For her growing is a passion and one that she’s keen to get more people involved in – especially beginners. Farmer Liz: Tell me about your garden and climate  Tanya: The Isle of Man has a rather odd climate, being that it doesn’t ever get really hot or really cold. Summer temperatures are generally at or under 20C and winter between 5-10C which means that it can be challeng...