Cider No.3 Pressing & Cider No.2 UpdateNovember 26, 2017 - 12:01 pmCider No.3 Pressing The final cider making day of the year, and what a day was forecast! A height of five degrees Celsius, with rain from mid-day to mid-afternoon – lovely! The thermals were extracted from the rear of the wardrobe where they’d lain since last winter, and with four layers on I ventured out, […]
Another Odd-Job Day…May 6, 2018 - 10:34 pm…I love those days where there’s no pressure to anything in particular, because you know full well that there’s always a list of things to complete. As the weather’s warming up, it seemed like an opportune time to get the good old squash going, so in we popped the squash, to start in the house, […]
Busy SundayMay 13, 2018 - 4:36 pmThe spring weather continues to be glorious, and as the earth warms up, more seeds can be sown and indoor growers transplanted to outdoors. Today we began with the task of potting on. Vegetable growing is a continuous production line; plants needing a long growing season, such as aubergine, begin inside in a warm place […]
With our heirloom orchard now in full production, we have over eighty fruit and nut trees. Almost every one a different, and older, variety that is hard to find in the average shop or market.
From the local Newton Wonder culinary apple from Kings Newton to the distant melt-in-the-mouth Beurre Hardy classic French Pear.
We proudly stock Ancestral Canine specialist dog food, a range of hypoallergenic, complete dry dog foods, with varieties suitable for adults, puppies and seniors, all wheat gluten free across the entire range. Rice and oats, which are low gluten grains and healthy for most adult dogs, have been used in the recipes, along with vegetables and herbs, making the foods palatable and easy to digest.
Outside the house we sell chicken, duck and occasionally guinea fowl eggs. We also sell any surplus fruit and vegetables from the allotment. All produce is grown without the use of chemicals.
We are part of an informal group of friends and keen enthusiasts who take an interest in breeding rare breed poultry. To see the breeds we currently have for sale, see below. For more information on the breeds we keep as a group, visit our animal pages above. Please do get in touch if you are interested in any of them.
For 2018 we are currently incubating and hatching the following breeds of chickens:
Rhode Island Red
Welsummer
Derbyshire Redcap
Marsh Daisy (Wheaten)
Light Sussex
Cuckoo Marans
We are not hatching any Pilgrim or West of England geese.
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This website began as a way for us to record everything we’ve done here at Merrybower; an aid to memory for what we do, when we’ve done it, and why, so hopefullay we can learn from our successes, and our mistakes.
As life continues, it has a tendency to become richer, and busier. A small vegetable patch grew into an allotment. Two fruit trees grew in to over eighty. Four rescue chickens grew into a few breeds of chickens, geese, ducks and rabbits (plus the odd waif or stray that finds us).
Today we live as much as we can from the food grown here. Any spare we give away to friends and family, swap with fellow growers, or sell over the garden gate.
Whilst the lifestyle can be quite solitary, the advent of the internet has meant we each can learn so much more, and so much quicker, from others carrying on in a similar fashion, throughout the world. The amount of knowledge people are happy to share is quite staggering, and humbling. Here at Merrybower, alongside the ubiquitous Complete Book of Self Sufficiency by John Seymour, and other specialist books, sits the computer. This opens up literally millions of live books people are writing every day, from which we can all cherry pick the nuggets of information that may help us in our own particular situation. Hopefully someone somewhere might find a nugget or two in our own scribblings, to help smooth their journey just a tad.
Cheers!
To have a chat – hit the big purple button!