The Cottage Smallholder

A couple of weeks ago our trusty old Dyson cut out. It felt very hot so we let it rest for a couple of hours while I searched the Internet for a replacement vacuum cleaner. I’m lucky as I visit new houses every week and have road tested hundreds. I’ve been impressed by the Seebo. Read More »

“Even though we’d been vegetarians for years we sometimes had a yearning for bacon.” Teresa was running a vegetarian restaurant at the time. “What did you do?” I imagined Teresa hot footing down to the local town wearing a large brimmed hat and scoring a wad of bacon from a backstreet butcher. “We fried cheese.” Read More »

“They have settled in so well. I expected a few problems but they are getting on fine.” S poured the tea as the ducks toured the garden in a neat crocodile line outside. “In fact, Eric(a) loves hanging out with the grown up boys. And she’s extremely bossy with the older female ducks.” Eric had Read More »

“August has been terrible, this year. It seems to have rained every day.” My prospective client stared out of the window into the greyish, damp gloom. I’ve only had outside work for the last few weeks. I know the Met Office site better than our redundant garden table, where we used to eat our supper Read More »

I stood in the bay window in Emma’s kitchen watching the bantams sunbathe like languid couples on a Greek island. I’d noticed that her bantams pairs tended to stick together whereas the Buff Orpingtons didn’t. In fact they couldn’t. There was just one Buff Orpington cockerel with a handful of pretty, plump wives. “You couldn’t Read More »

“Do you like carrots in your shepherd’s pie?” “Yes please!” Danny looked suspicious, “What else are you going to add?” I was planning to cook a traditional British Shepherd’s Pie with the leftovers from a shoulder of lamb. He visibly relaxed. But when I went to the fridge that evening the shelves were bare. For Read More »

Danny doesn’t kill things. Ants, wasps, caterpillars and slugs are all given a free range in our cottage and garden. When his car pulls out of the drive I attack the pests that are destroying our stuff. The ants and wasps initially and then it’s a leisurely stroll down to the kitchen garden with a Read More »

A couple of years ago we became addicted to Tessa Kiros’ recipe for linguine with prawns and asparagus. Delicious and almost worth crawling the five miles to Newmarket to buy the ingredients. Tonight we decided to eat Clare’s scrumptious quick spinach and prawn gnocchi recipe and then I spotted that we had some linguine in Read More »

We’d been looking forward to the blog’s birthday, crossing off the days as we sailed into August. This morning I realised that we’d missed it. Yesterday the blog was two years old. So tonight we raised two large glasses of sloe vodka to the blog. It has bought us so much joy. My mum always Read More »

“Finona, do you know that you’ve got paint on your jumper?” Hector, aged two, was keen to save my embarrassment. Growing up in a world where a splatter of paint beyond a painting smock would cause a shriek of horror, he was intrigued. Later in the day he came into the room where I was Read More »