Flowers in my garden

I've never been a flower gardener, my garden is all about eating, however I do recognise the importance of flowers in the vege garden for attracting bees and beneficial insects. I think there's three kinds of flowers in my garden at the moment:

The perennials: things like comfrey, arrowroot, sage, and lavender are flowering at the moment and they are the good flowers, because they let you know that the plant is happy enough in its surroundings to flower for you.
The annuals: these are the bad flowers, these make you think "oh crap, you're bolting to seed and I haven't planted any seeds yet to replace you". At the moment that would be the parsley and the broccoli, and over the past few months have also included lettuce and rocket. The only consolation is at least you get to keep the seeds! And they do look rather pretty.
The plants that you actually want to flower: plants like peas, beans zucchini and tomato that you NEED to flower so you can grow your veges (of course then they're technically fruit) and I've indulged and planted some marigolds, calendula and nasturtiums, they so cheerful, and supposed to be good for the soil in various ways themselves :)

top row: lavender, comfrey, arrowroot, marigold, pea, bottom row: broccoli, sage, tomato, bean and zucchini

What's flowering in your garden at the moment?

Read more about seed saving here.

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here . You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!). I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months. I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Farm update - August 2017

Its been cold this month, and very nice to have the fire going every night. Here's a photo of my boy in his cape, great for late night woofing at things. Most of July we were either preparing for the butcher to come or putting meat away. Its always a big job, but its only once a year, and its all done now. My lovely neighbour came over to help, so it was fun to have the company and work together. Taz was a champion once again as she helped us to move cattle in the yards ready to load for the market. Gus is not at that level yet and had to stay home (he cries when he gets left behind, but he just gets in the way and scatters the cattle). We have had a few sprinkles of rain here and there, but also plenty of cold nights, so the grass is mostly dead and dry, waiting for the warmer weather to revive our summer-active pasture. Gus in his cape Taz after she helped to move cattle Food and cooking It was all about beef in July and we are v...

Making tallow soap

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.... For some reason I've always thought that making soap seemed too hard. For a start the number of ingredients required was confusing and all the safety warnings about using the alkali put me off. The worst part for me was that most of the ingredients had to be purchased, and some even imported (palm oil and coconut oil), which never seemed very self-sufficient. I can definitely see the benefits of using homemade soap instead of mass produced soap (that often contains synthetic fragrance, colour, preservatives, and has had the glycerine removed), but it seemed to me that if I was going to buy all the ingredients I may as well just buy the soap and save myself all the hassle. For the past several years I have bought homemade soap from various market stalls and websites, and that...

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