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I like the idea of a Milton bag, made from brightly coloured shirt material with a good sense of humour.

As I mentioned, when we had a large area power cut, which lasted for over 30 hours, our analogue phone carried on working. Both the available mobile masts stopped working. With the digital switch over we have less resilience or have to buy yet another expensive service, which doesn't seem that...

Well, I've not had the mower out during May at all. In part because it's not currently working and coming to the end of its life! I've looked for new one, just a simple walk behind with grass collection, but I want something with a high cut. I don't like scalping the grass and cutting high also...

The UK does have a text warning system but when we had a 'danger to life' storm hit locally no warning was sent, so a bit useless. Our land line survived but we had no power for over 24 hours and the local mobile transmitters were also down so no mobile signal anywhere in a wide area. This is...

Now our own home phone line is being moved to digital. Annoyingly it appears our provider has tried to move us without ensuring we wouldn't be left without any means of contacting people during a power cut as we don't have mobile reception at home. (See...

Another little update on this. I've come across this about the SOTAP or analogue SOTAP upgrade. https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/11/openreach-prep-alternative-uk-analogue-style-phone-product.html

I did see they used straw type filters but when I've looked at filters there was a difference between brands of what they filtered, hence wanting to know what the infection was and what filters were used. I do boil water we filter but if you always need to boil why are the straw type filters...

We've been hearing them for a couple of weeks now and today I noticed a couple of bundles of fluff on the edge of our woodland. You can just make out what they are hopefully, it was a camera pic taken at distance. They are half way up the pic and one at each side. They're a pair of young...

I thought this story might be of interest. It's a shame they don't give many details such as what the infection was and what filters the people used. Anyone know any more details? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98rpgqyqygo

First new potatoes of the year. A couple of spare seed spuds popped into the greenhouse before the tomatoes get planted out.

Under an old water butt lid in the garden...

I came across this hydraulic ram design which looks easier and cheaper to build. Just posting in this old thread in case anyone is interested. Video: PDF instructions and parts list: https://wot.colo.utwente.nl/uploads/publications/breurram_uk.pdf

It's worth having a look at your local planning department planning application maps to see if anyone has put in planning for something similar. You can then read through all the stuff submitted, what people have complained about and what the planning decision reasoning is. That way you can get...

Bamboo does seem to get a bad press these days as an invasive, but it's still sold everywhere. Ours does now grow well and spread, after taking a few years to establish. We have room for it and no neighbours for it to spread in to. I think we're getting a few hundred new shoots a year. We grow...

That's a very common warning on many things made in the US. AFAIK it just means it contains on of 900 chemicals and I expect many EU axes would have similar warnings if made from the same materials in the US.

I'm not sure where to post this, it could go into a foraging thread. Anyway, as we're growing them for food here's a few pics of our bamboo. New years shoots: A shoot ready to eat: Shoot trimmed with the edible stem left: And finally the shoot cut and boiled for a few minutes and ready...

Good time of year to spot flowering pignuts., this is one of our fields:

I've got a small, light, old Kent pattern axe I picked up for pennies. I tend to use it quite a bit for trimming sticks, splitting small kindling and delicate work. I wouldn't mind trying a titanium axe to see what it's like in actual use as I don't often need all the weight of a big axe...

It's not that idyllic these days. The farm near us that was sold last year seems to have completed its works of scalping many of the hedges back with a couple of large excavators. All the fields are now covered in plastic presumably to grow forage maize. All the grass has been sprayed off and...

I wonder if we've actually got more dependant on imported fertilizer since the original post well over a a decade ago? I would have thought one of the first things done on the push toward net zero or whatever would be to reduce fossil fuel based fertilizers and make more use of nitrogen fixing...