Home Farmer Magazine August 2016 issue Back Issue

The August issue of Home Farmer is available to download, complete with an irresistible mix of gardening tips, great recipes to make the most of your produce, sound livestock advice, and useful DIY. August is traditionally the month when we feature preserving, and this year is no exception, although we have ‘incorporated’ the articles rather than making the feature a ‘pull-out’ ‒ we hope this helps the smooth flow of different features. We have lots of great preserving recipes, with special features on pickles, using up strawberries to best effect, making fruit juices using a steamer, drying your produce – including a feature on building a solar dryer which draws on a fan heater for extra oomph ‒ a feature on ketchups and catsups, and advice on using up and avoiding courgette and marrow gluts. Preserving is an important part of the picture for home farmers, so we take our obligations seriously, but we also hope you have fun putting our ideas into practice, including John Harrison’s recipe for pineapple and courgette jam, which he assures me is a winner!
As for our regular features, gardening is headed up by articles on harvesting to maximise yields; grafting (with step-by-step instructions on grafting tomatoes); planning for autumn and winter in the polytunnel; low-cost slug-beating strategies; the forthcoming National Allotments Week; and a project to build a garden sundial. Our livestock features Dot Tyne’s ever-popular smallholder diary, spotting signs of varroa infestation in the apiary and dealing with it, and getting the summer poultry chores right. We also have further features on home-made biscuits, winemaking, foraging (including two common weeds which taste like cloves and pineapple!), a report on new developments in the neonicotinoid debate, and a useful feature on selling produce through the nation-wide Country Markets co-operative. We just hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it all together.