The Great Rebuilding

S'mae pobl! If you've been following our adventures at Nantymeillion for a bit, you'll know that we have had a very long and difficult winter. Long story short, it started raining and the beginning of July and it Did Not Stop. Still hasn't, quite; it's been throwing it down here all day. BUT we did...

The Magic Bluebell Forest.

S'mae pobl! About 18 months ago, a very elderly greyhound went missing in the village, prompting a community-wide search as it was very cold overnight and everyone was worried about her. (She was found safely despite being out for three nights in sub-zero temperatures, so this story has a happy ending.) Someone said they thought...

Uplifted Gardening

S'mae pobl! Recently we were kindly gifted a job lot of stone crates, the big ones that paving slabs come in, and we have set them to work as both a fence between the duck compound and the veg beds, and as raised beds eventually intended for perennials and self seeding herbs alongside the polytunnel....

Smelling Like Dirt

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” - Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg As I've been smelling like dirt right through the winter, it shouldn't be too hard to get this right. The difference in the spring is that the dirt can be scraped off, rather than sticking to...

Horses, Hedges and Hideaways… and naked chickens

The weather is upon us, and no mistake. Today has actually provided a brief sunny respite from driving rain, but the sky-water is due to return tomorrow, and it will mostly rain for the next week or two (or month or six, this being Wales...) We managed to get some good preparation in for winter...

Arrivals and Departures

Last time I posted, summer was coming in, and the meadows were full of flowers. Now it's fading, and the flowers are giving way to berries, though not quite the glorious crop we had last year. We've seen our indefatigable volunteer, Ieuan, establish himself almost overnight as a kind of French-speaking, tea-making sweary farm installation,...

Another (Long) Overdue Update

Those of you who follow us on Twitter (@Meddwl_Coed) or on Facebook know we never really went away, but this site has been neglected. I guess Jo did get distracted, as did we all. Setting up a smallholding continues to be a busy process, as we lurch from one project to another, frequently tripping over...

Impatience and Distraction

These are my two big failings as a gardener, and I was thinking about them today as I realised we'd lost the redcurrants after harvesting only a handful of early ones. A few days ago, the main redcurrant tree was full of lovely redcurrants. Now it is empty. And the reason it's empty is because...

Great Escapes Updated – On Board the Pony Access Express!

Brilliant news - thanks to some very generous donations we have already raised over £200 to put towards funding our Pony Access carts! *dances around with glee, scares the ducks* So we've decide to expand the fundraising target to £700 - you can donate any amount, big or small, on https://ko-fi.com/nantymeillion . We will be...

Great Escapes!

We have two new ponies at Nantymeillion and yesterday they precipitated a mass horse breakout. Followed, as soon as we had fixed the gate Mal had kicked down (yes, we know it was Mal, even if he is Heather's golden boy), by another mass breakout. Followed almost as soon as we had rounded them up...