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You may be entitled to a backup from your supplier for your digital landline. I know my mum will be as she has a fall alarm that needs the phone line. I gather they will not last long but better than nothing. Annoyingly, when I tried to phone the ambulance team that was responding to mum mum a...

Round here much of the litter is due to the council. We're in a windy, wild area and the refuse is put out in plastic sacks the night before and recycling in light plastic bags and crates, often away from your home. The results is animals ripping open refuse and fairly often stuff blowing all...

Well I had to make an emergency dash this morning at the tail end of Storm Chandra, right across Devon and over to Sussex, through some of the worst hit areas. There was lots of flooding, even cars submerged and abandoned on the other side of the road. Plenty of deep water to drive through where...

The problem is many people do train their dogs.They are trained to go whilst on a walk so the owner does not have to tidy anything up. It wasn't unusual to see people drive out to the forestry areas where I used to live, open the boot, let dog do their business and then put them back in and...

I think the majority of dog owners don't always pick up after their dogs. I say that as a dog owner, although sadly I'm between dogs at the moment. I've always encouraged our dog to use our garden and if she went in public it was always picked up and normally taken home, rarely binned (I...

Having seen my mums modern bunded tank split the internal wall and known of a couple of tanks badly damaged during theft, resulting in spilt oil, I'm glad I got rid of mine.

And where there is a genuine need for wood burners there's often no mains gas. I don't know if an LPG tank needs electricity, I know oil boilers do? Personally I'm not keen of large tanks of fuel, especially oil which can leak into the environment. Wood seems more sensible to me, but I do live...

When we had a gas boiler power cuts stopped it working. We were also without gas at one time for several weeks as they replaced all the gas pipes in the area. There's been gas outages in Devon recently and several suggestions people should be using heat pumps to avoid the outages, ignoring the...

They seem to wheel out the wood burner ban every year, the last time I seriously looked into it the ban was based on a government study they eventually admitted was seriously flawed. Now, having lived in suburbia there is a problem with people burning wet wood on open fires, stoves, bonfires...

Add them to my growing stash of candles... ;) I was actually after the candle holders that came with them. Some of the less useful candles will be turned into firelighters and I'll keep the decent household boxes in the emergency drawer - I'm sure they will come in useful.

A second hand 2.2m x 12cm x 5mm strip of leather, which should make me a few belts. Also a large box of candles including 10 boxes of old fashioned Prices household candles. I may have overpaid on the candles as some of the boxes have 13 1/2 p stickers on them!

With the weather we've had recently, even if I managed to get a firelighter going with a blow torch chances are it would float off in the squally rain.

Well to kick 2026 off I've picked up a bag of seed potatoes, Sharpes Express again this year and I'll be growing self saved Pink Fir Apples. There's still plenty of leeks in the garden to use, our lemon tree has provided a good harvest over winter and I've just noticed another flush of Shiitake...

We don't really get this problem with our stove which is probably down to such a good draw on the flue (one advantage of living on a windy hill). When it is a bit sluggish to get going I just use lots of fine kindling and shavings if I have them, often without any paper as that can cause smoke...

I am a bit curious though, to see how much would apply to the UK. Does the US have such strict planning controls for example? I've just browsed the contents of your first linked book on Amazon and a more polite description would be an introduction. There's just a page or two on bee keeping for...

This is probably a horrible sweeping statement but I tend to find cover-it-all self sufficiency type books aimed at people thinking rather than doing. I tend to prefer detailed books on a particular subject.

It's not just anecdotal, although I've seen dozens of planted woodlands including many broadleaf plots and all the rows are visible. It's also logical, thinning does not alter the fact trees were planted in rows, i.e. the trees that are left are still in rows and if you view down the row it is...

In the UK I would suggest people don't just look at books or studies (which may be biased) but get out and look at what's happening locally. I spend a large amount of time in one compartment of my woodland which is mostly planted via a grant, some 30ish years ago. It has 1,000s of oaks and many...

I've been planting trees for years. I've done a fair bit of reading and have several books but learnt far more by getting on and doing things the best I can. For example, the books say spray off the grass and plough before planting, whereas I've just cleared a planting hole and got on with it...

Thanks chaps, I tend to plant quite a few trees each winter so will not need any help this year. In a year or two I could do with some help (opinions mainly) on my patch of woodland. Thinking about the trees I've planted over the years I should take some pics of them to show their progress to...