First half of 2024 Wow, does anyone else think that those first 6 months have gone so fast? Normally on our farm its easy to see the year passing us by as we watch the seasons change, but it’s only just started to feel like Spring in the last few weeks! The terrible weather meant that our donkeys were indoors for weeks longer than usual, but they’ve been terrifically well behaved and we did have to give them some toys to keep them occupied. I’m sure anyone who follows our social media will have noticed how happy they are now that they’re back in the field (up to mischief!) along with their 3 horse friends. This year is also exciting for both of our tree thicket and our orchard too. Over the last month, on fine days, myself and Chris have headed down to the trees to remove the ‘jackets’...
Well, it seems quite mad that after all of this horrible rain that Chris is still plugging away at making our shop bigger so that we can increase our gardening and plant supplies! It certainly doesn’t feel like March, but we’re ‘march’ing on through the muddy fields and wintery days to try and make this spring great, once it finally decides to arrive! If you’ve been in our shop recently (and if you have, thank you, we appreciate you all very much!), then you may have noticed that we’ve had a huge change around in the past few months! We have tonnes of new stock with our Trixie dog treats and some other small animal foods, plus we’ve even added a load of Timco hardware! We’re hoping that you DIY lovers and allotment holders might have a look at our wares, because our prices are great for the stock, and it...
With only around 10 days to go until Christmas we do know that everyone is running around likeheadless chickens, or are very smug after getting everything done! However, we just wanted to poston here about something fun and creative that you can do with some younger family members overtheir Christmas holidays as a creative arts and craft activity. Everyone likes a bit of messy play, andmaking the birds happy at the same time!Christmas wreaths are certainly getting more and more ‘big’ every year, we seem to see more ofthem and more diversity – plus, theres been a lot of wreath making classes noted in the last fewyears too. It’s a great thing to do, but we have got a kind of tutorial for how you can make a fantasticwreath for not only your friends and family, but also one for your garden visitors too!We haven’t made ours yet, but since seeing...
Top tips for pumpkin picking in the UK – specifically at Laverock Hall As the new Autumn term has started , I'm sure a lot of parents will already be thinking of half term activities, especially Halloween themed ones. As a mum, it is amazing how quickly half terms do creep up on you! If you're prepared, and are coming to Laverock for pumpkin picking, then this is the blog to read to make sure you're prepped to the max! I think it has always been a really American thing to pumpkin pick, but since my children were little the ‘spooky season’ and the gourds that come with it have certainly grown in popularity (granted, the oldest of my children is 30 now, so maybe that was a bit too far back!). Now, onto the bulk of the reason you’re reading this, a farmer’s wife’s top tips for farmyard pumpkin activities...
Is it wrong to be thinking about chocolate when you’re out for a walk? The reason I’m saying this is that last night we visited our trees that were planted a few years ago – if you have followed us for a while then you may remember them; we planted hazel trees, oak trees, holly trees, sweet chestnuts and many more. In fact, we planted a few thousand trees and dug a pond and it’s become rather a wildlife haven too. I heard my first skylark there and I’ve shared a few photos of the trees and pond over the years, and how it has developed. Tonight, however, on our visit I noticed a development, much to my delight! The hazel trees are starting to produce fruit, well cobnuts to be precise. I’ve looked it up and cobnuts are commercial hazelnuts, but ones that are grown to be eaten before they...
Anyone else sick of Mud? Every dog walk becomes a trudge through mud, wellie wearing for me then watching the mud splash over the dogs as they walk ahead of me, then getting splashed myself as they both run towards me at top speed.This Winter has seemed never ending, the dark days trying to fit in all of the outdoor jobs before it gets too dark to see, then taking off wellies and waterproofs to get warm and dry before doing it all over again.Our dogs do have a lot of energy and require quite a lot of exercise (much more than me) but have been really good this Winter as some of our routes were just not passable of late due to excess mud and puddles, Frank hates puddles and visibly winces as Walter ploughs on through and splashes him, and me, mercilessly. They then come back into the house...
This week we are in the final stages of planting our latest project, our Orchard. We’ve been planting a variety - apple trees, plus some pear and plum trees too, but mainly apples. It’s a freezing cold February day and it’s blowing a gale, yet that isn’t stopping the team and the last batch of trees are being planted. The wind chill here is made even worse by how close we are to the sea, but hopefully the trees will love the sea air. The view from the field is spectacular as the ground is rather high, we can see the menacing sea, today its rather dark and the wind is whipping around so the trees will need to be tough cookies to survive these Northern temperatures! The apples are mainly Old English varieties which will be able to withstand our climate. It’s very interesting that the arborist we have helping...
After the big gaden birdwtch, we wanted to keep up all your momentum going with birdwatching, so we’ve decided to do a really exciting giveaway this month to a lucky follower! February is a bit of a rubbish month, so spotting new birds out the kitchen window has to be great boost, or at least I've found that it is. Just this week we had a female woodpecker - I was so excited to see her, and since I saw a male one a few weeks back, we might have a pair! Anyway, back to our competition! We’re giving away 2 types of our Laverock Hall bird foods in 5 kilo bags - the High Energy and No Wheat. Both of these bird foods are great for attracting finches, blue tits and some smaller birds like robins and thrushes too. They’re super good all rounder feeds, and can be used...
Instead of Jeremy Clarkson, I’m beginning to think I’m married to one of those blokes on tele who has a new crazy idea to make money each episode – hence the title of this blog!! One thing is nice; Chris is always trying to help the environment and the local area at the same time. We’ve been so busy the last few weeks and months (thank you!!!), and haven’t really stopped since harvest – plus I help Robyn every day with her soap and candles too – and now he’s thrown a whole new one into the mix of things to think about. I suppose I can never say living with Chris Hogg is boring! This one is truly inspired, however I do keep tripping up on the name – I keep saying ‘your Christmas trees’ and he is very quick to correct me that he is in fact selling from...
It’s been a couple of months since we were visited by Adam Henson & the Countryfile team. We were overwhelmed by the response from customers and friends from all around the country who had watched the programme, then contacted us to say how amazing this small part of Northumberland looked on tv on a Sunday evening! The hot weather and lack of rain has caused many problems this summer, but the largest casualty has been our pumpkin crop. We’ve grown Pick Your Own Pumpkins for the last 2 years and we were looking forward to another season welcoming people to the farm to have a ride on the Pumpkin Express and pick their own pumpkins for Halloween. Sadly, as our area of Northumberland only experienced an eighth of the rainfall we had last year, the plants all suffered and couldn’t all survive. We will have a few pumpkin survivors for sale...
Wow. Can a blog be just one word? Probably not. Best try and get on with it then. Well, we have been absolutely overwhelmed by the amazing response that we have had after our segment on Countryfile on Sunday, in fact, that’s probably an understatement. I was so excited to see so many lovely people reach out to us, and even more people on our website and reading our blogs, yes that does include you, my dear reader! I was already gobsmacked and chuffed with how my husband and daughter came across on TV, I knew they would, but it was great to see it for sure! It might make you laugh, but I was actually unloading the dishwasher at the time that they were on because I was trying to distract myself, they made me watch it though, so I just had my hands half over my eyes, by the...
Many children want to be doctors, or bus drivers, or the classic ‘I want to be a pop star’, however, my children (especially Robyn) just wanted to be some kind of odd outdoors person who’s on Countryfile. Finally, success is coming on Sunday! I must admit, every time Kate Humble came on the tele she would turn to Chris and I to announce ‘I could do that’ – lo and behold, she can. For those who don’t know, BBC’s Adam Henson came to us last Tuesday to film a Countryfile segment all about our pigeon corn, pumpkin patch, and Robyn’s ‘soap empire’. It was a truly surreal day for us all, but one we won’t forget! Probably the most odd part for me was the producer saying Chris should keep his holey North Face fleece on rather than getting changed, to look more authentic. The craziest part of this whole thing...
We’ve been keeping quite a big secret for a while now, with an emphasis on big – you could even call it… giant. Last year, as you’ll remember, we had an absolute blast doing our pick your own pumpkin festival, and we are so excited to be doing it again. Of course, that isn’t the secret (or if it is, then we’re terrible with secrets), our secret is that we’ve been growing some Atlantic Giant pumpkins in our massive commercial polytunnel! We didn’t want to announce it until the plant was mature and was definitely going to produce a pumpkin, you never do know with farming, and we were very sad when our sunflowers didn’t grow last year! We never can just do normal things at Laverock Hall, my husband thinks he’s a maverick, and I think he’s a madman, but we digress! This pumpkin is going to get so large...
In 1991 I stopped being a farmer’s daughter, and instead became a farmer’s wife. This is both quite boring, and also very funny; my dad and my husband were both ‘large scale gardeners’ as I like to say, and yet I cannot garden on a large or a small scale. For years I have tried to enjoy gardening, my dad had a veg garden that was beautiful, tidy, fruitful and of no interest to me – I didn’t understand him doing small scale gardening as a hobby for when not doing large scale gardening. My husband gardened with his grandad, but I was too blinded by young love to think of the fact that I had no garden skills to add to his. This has been a heavy feature for my life, forever seeing people who garden and watching my plants wither! I watered them too much, too little,...
Spring 2022, The 2nd Anniversary of Lockdown, the ongoing situation in Ukraine and surrounding nations, petrol prices, inflation and much more to worry or stress about for all of us, that is if you watch the news or read the papers. However, after digesting all that, the reverse is that ‘Life goes on’ no matter what is happening, and it certainly rings true here in our little Laverock Hall Farm bubble. I posted some pictures last week on Facebook of young Colin the calf (named by Chris) – the baby was an unexpected arrival, he was born to one of the cows who are lodging here for the Winter and will soon be off with his mum to pastures new, quite literally! He’s such a cutie and a favourite with all the family but as you all know its dangerous to get too attached as they must go off on...
I've mentioned Cover Crops a couple of times on Facebook and in a couple of Blog Posts too but I thought I'd write a post explaining what they actually are and why we choose to farm using this method. Basically the old fashioned or usual method of Farming was that after the crops were harvested, the straw would be left in lines and baled into bales, either round or square, then led away to be used as animal bedding for the Winter. The fields would then be ploughed and left over the Winter months for the frosts and cold weather to break down the soil before it would be cultivated in the Spring, then planted with the next crop which would be harvested in the Autumn. The minimum tillage method that we have adopted means that instead of baling the straw we have it chopped very finely by the combine harvester...
What a blast we all had with our Pumpkin Patch, and we hope that if you managed to join us that you had a good time too and managed to choose your best pumpkin (or 10 as many of you did). It was great to meet so many of you and share in making memories for so many people over the two weekends we were open, the photos of so many people in our field, on the Pumpkin Express, and on the straw bales surrounded by pumpkins was amazing. As well as the usual pumpkins this year we grew edible squashes, these proved to be so popular, especially the blue/grey ones called Crown Prince Variety, in fact these are the ones that are used for Pumpkin Pie in the US, and lots of people have since contacted us to share recipes and photos of their culinary masterpieces, and there were rather...
Now, those of you who live nearby, or follow us on Facebook, may have noticed our pumpkin content last Autumn as we did our first ever Pick Your Own Pumpkin season here at Laverock Hall Farm. Well, we had so much fun, and think you did too, so we’re gearing up and getting ready to welcome you all back again this year! The pumpkins are growing, the signs are being repainted, our staff are ready to help, and I’m writing this blog! We had such a blast last year, that we’re going to be bigger than last year, with some surprises to be announced once they’re all finalised! Since we’re a working farm, we are growing so many fun varieties of pumpkins and squashes too - some we know are great for taste and cooking, others are great for growing big and carving, and some are cute or knobbly!...
This week’s blog is somewhat different to the usual – since this week, instead of doing our own farm work, we have instead been watching Jeremy Clarkson making a meal out of making meals! We were sitting in the lounge laughing away at Mr Clarkson making a measly £144 and drawing so many parallels of the perils of farming that we realised that our wacky farm had its own version of the Diddly Squat Farm family. So, without further ado, introducing: Chris, as Jeremy Clarkson My husband is Clarkson-like for his silly outbursts and love of cars before he even began farming, but now it seems they are even more similar! I saw Jeremy planting all his veg, and it brought back vivid memories of our own time last year when Chris came into the house and proudly exclaimed that he had bought an inordinate amount of pumpkin seeds – brimming...
Some of you will remember my last blog post about digging our latest Pond, well I promised an update as soon as I could and here it is. You will see by the photo that it is filling nicely with water from the field drains, it's by no means full yet but the dogs both managed a lovely swim in it on Bank Holiday Saturday. The ditch that was dug is steadily trickling into the pond and its at least stopping the adjoining field from flooding!! Often that field causes flood risks to our newly planted seeds, and the loss of a great deal of nutrient rich topsoil too. This has happened for several years and was what prompted Chris to dig the pond and ditch too. I am amazed at how quickly the wildlife has adapted to using the pond, when we arrived there were two ducks swimming across...