90 trees replanted today to replace the ones that died in the drought. These are oak and hazel for our hedgerow, coppice, and scrub blocks. Next planting session it’s field maple, holly and small leaved lime.

Nice hail of Jerusalem artichokes. We’ve struggled with growing these in the past, but this year they’ve done us proud. That’s 5.5kg off just two plants; headed off for an event on Friday with some other goodies.

Glasshouse clearance coming on well. What was once a solid wall of bramble is slowly becoming a structure. Lots of glass has blown out from the side walls so it’s a slow job removing it to the skip

Some days on the farm it’s glorious afternoons planting out trees in the autumnal sunshine. Other days it’s frustrating stop-start mornings fixing malfunctioning equipment in the drizzle! Today is one of those days; two seized hedge trimmers, a busted ignition and a stuck bolt.

Tree planting continues apace! This season we’ll be planting around 300 native trees as well as 70 fruit trees.

Headed out to RSPB Ouse Fen last night to catch up with friends and watch the starlings congregate for murmuration. Saw bittern and marsh harriers. Such a beautiful spot.

Slug and snail grazing trails on the glasshouse panes.

Agaric mushrooms, the first ones we’ve seen on the farm. Found on rabbit grazed pasture just off one of our tracks.

Now the soil has regained enough moisture we have begun this seasons tree planting. Today we put in 40 goat willow. We will be replanting 300 saplings to replace the ones that died in the drought this year, as well as 50 fruit trees to establish new areas of mixed orchard.

Here we go again! We’ve begun clearing the second half of the glasshouse. We’ve brushcut the perimeter and have cut transects through the centre of the thicket. So far no nasty surprises.

Harvested a patch of seabuckthorn. We’ll freeze these down ready for juicing later. Apparently the freezing process makes the berries drop of the viciously thorned twigs; a much easier harvest than ‘milking’ the berries off the plant into a bucket with heavy duty gloves.

Making the most of the momentum here, we’ve decided to clear out the remaining section of the glasshouse. It’s a huge undertaking, but when we’re done we’ll have 900m2 of protected growing area. What a resource!

The soil in our newly reclaimed glasshouse is in very poor condition. We made the decision to shallow till to decompact the soil and integrate amendments before sowing a fertility building cover crop. This mix of annual rye and hairy vetch seems to be establishing beautifully.

Exciting new harvest at the farm! After two years we’ve got our first crop of Sichuan pepper. These seed casing provide a fragrant, numbing lemony note that typify Sichuan dishes. We use them to make dishes such as dan dan noodles and mapo tofu.

Chilean guava have been planted in the glasshouse. These small shrubs crop a delicious fragrant fruit with a flavour just like guava. We’ve been mulching the plants with sheep’s wool and leaves that have recently fallen from our poplars.

Today’s mood: harvesting sweet chestnuts in the woods

Medlar harvest!

Harvested some sea buckthorn. We juiced it down and mixed with some apple juice. It’s a top tier fruit, imparting a sharp passion fruit type flavour and vibrant orange colour.

Bramble roots growing in the leaf litter on the roof of our glasshouse. Beautiful, but it’s going to be a hell of a job to clear!

Even though the glasshouse isn’t quite finished yet, we’re wasting no time getting roots in the ground. 90 strawberry plants went in today and we’ve been establishing a fertility building cover crop in the annual beds, a mixture of annul rye and hairy vetch.

Hannah and Pete putting in a solid stint replacing glass panels today. This section of the glasshouse has 500 panels, with around 30 needing replacing in all. It’s already starting to feel warmer in there!

We’ve been marking the location for our new trees. A third of the glasshouse will be planted as a perennial forest garden This season we’ll be planting the canopy, shrub and climbing layer. Think apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries, figs, pomegranates, grapes & berry bushes!

Continuing with the glasshouse renovation today. We’ve installed the manifold for the new irrigation lines, cleared out the roof guttering and are replacing broken panels of glass. It’s all coming together quite nicely

Early start getting our heads around the irrigation system for the glasshouse, which we’ll begin installing today. It’s worth getting it right from the beginning as it’ll make our lives so much easier during the growing season.

Here’s what we found in the glasshouse. Plenty of bramble, but few obstacles to have to work around. We cut a transect along the edge to link up with the area we have been working on. Feels good to be breaking new ground!

Who wants to come exploring?! We’ve been slogging through the bramble to gain access to the other entrance of the glasshouse. No one has been in here for over 20 years. Let’s see what we can find!

Morning all. A damp, dreary one today. We’re continuing to clear the overhanging branches on the old glasshouse and will be brushcutting the south perimeter. Let’s get to it!

Getting some serious research in at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens apple day today! We’ll be planting around 60 fruit trees this winter, including 25 apples. We’ve chosen most of the varieties but still have some more to pick. We also had help identifying our veteran apple trees

Before and after photos of todays tree clearance work. Still some more to go, but that’s the worst of the leaning branches cleared. The gutters were blocked, meaning there was some pretty grim unblocking work to be done!

Technically demanding day today. We’re trimming back the mirabelle tree that has been overhanging the entrance of the glasshouse. A much needed job to avoid any further damage to the structure

Our seabuckthorn is fruiting for the first time this year. We plan to juice the delicious (but super astringent) fruits, which can then be added to apple juice and mixers. It has a tropical mango-passionfruit type flavour

Lots of progress today with some big milestones reached. We cleared the last of the bramble from this section of the glasshouse and have begun making the beds. We scraped up the bramble cuttings to form the pathways & have added amendments to the beds. We’ll be growing in here before we know it!

A tale of two halves of the glasshouse. This week we’ll be having a big push on the section on the right; rotavating, adding amendments, replacing broken glass panels. The section on the left, well, that can wait until next season!

Solid afternoon on the glasshouse. We’ve been clearing bramble from the roof and replacing glass sheeting and corner pieces. We’ve also been mulching bramble cuttings into smaller pieces to make it easier for when we begin rotavating next week. Getting there!

Today we put on four new oyster mushroom growing columns. The spent mycelium from a previous batch was added to 150kg of substrate (coffee grounds and straw). In around 6-8 weeks we should begin harvesting. These columns should yield over 20kg mushrooms.

Clearing the brambles from the roof of the glasshouse. This is slow, tentative work, but the last of the clearance. Once we’ve finished this job we’ll patch up the structure and begin ground prep.

Spring onion flower head loaded with seeds. We increasingly leave a number of plants to go to seed in the beds. Once ready we either harvest to sow next season or sprinkle the seed directly where we want it to grow. The result is often a delightfully chaotic mix of plants.

A new harvest for us; one that’s taken two years to reach maturity. This is hopniss, Apios americana, a vine producing root crop from North America. It develops tubers along its roots, which can be sliced and fried, or baked/boiled. Taste is similar to a floury potato.

Spent the day flipping beds. Potatoes and courgette are out, garlic and wheat is in. This is the first year using our home saved garlic to plant. We’ve put in 300 garlic and 20m2 of wheat

Yesterday we spent getting the market garden beds ready for winter. We harvested the last of the potatoes, weeded and sowed any empty beds to a winter cover crop. We still have plenty of plants in the ground to harvest over the coming months (think spinach,greens, brassicas and herbs)

We’ve set up a rudimentary tree nursery to grow saplings to plant on the farm. It’s very much an amateur affair; plant in seed trays then wait and hope for the best. We’re on the hunt for hazel, good eating walnuts and holly. If anyone could help out please give us a shout!

We have a merry band of goldfinches that make short work of the seeds on the sunflowers dotted around our market garden. These flowers provide a decentralised feeding site to the birds, avoiding disease issues that come with a static feeder. The attracted birds also help with pest control

Harvested our maincrop potatoes today. We’ve left them to dry out for a day or two under cover before we box them up and move them to a cool dark storage spot. Plenty to keep us going for the coming months. Pics show about 1/3 of the yield

Hannah making some serious inroads into the ‘small’ glasshouse. You should have seen this place a few weeks ago, it was an impenetrable bramble thicket.

A few weeks ago we went to watch the hay cut at Kings College Cambridge. Today we collected the first of the bales ready to spread and seed our own meadow. It certainly turned a few heads cycling a bale back to the farm through central Cambridge and the villages!

Working on tree planting plans for autumn/winter. The green plots show previous plantings (predominantly native scrub, agroforestry lanes and coppice). The red areas show areas to be planted up. This year it’ll mostly be mixed orchard blocks and willow coppice)

Glasshouse clearance continues apace. Made some headway into a serious tangle of bramble today. It’s slow going, energy sapping work, but also super satisfying.

Squash harvested today. We’ll leave in the polytunnel for a few weeks to cure. Must have close to 150kg this year, not too shabby!

Big day of clearing today in our ongoing effort to resurrect the glasshouse from the thorns. 30 metres of bramble along the outer perimeter was cut back, a seriously big job. A big thank you to Pete who came along and smashed it!

A major milestone reached today. We have finished clearing the bramble from the inside of the glasshouse Work doesn’t finish here; we’ll be clearing the outside perimeter, mulching and rotavating the compacted soil, adding organic matter, and fixing broken sheets and irrigation