Home Farmer Magazine March 2017 Edizione posteriore

March is a time of changeable weather, with any good spells useful for getting the early harvest underway, especially towards the end of the month, but it’s also a time for preparation. To that end we look at seed swops, a real ‘Irn-Bru’ of polytunnels, building an invaluable sturdy mobile cloche, and making a useful wellie tool that both cleans and removes them, together with inside info on moles from a Shropshire catcher. We also feature incubation, feeding ruminants, foraging for smallholders, advice for shepherds, getting bees through stressful spring growth, the importance of land insurance for landowners, and Dot Tyne’s regular smallholder diary. On the food and drink front we look at growing and cooking with kale, making your own muesli and granola, and wines from jam and marmalade, and on broader themes we check up on the news from Oxford’s January’s agri conferences, learn what’s involved in setting up a Christmas tree business, and, in an essential feature for any small food business readers, we investigate a possible new and hefty cost for advisory and investigatory visits, together with a chance to make your views known to the decision makers on the matter before it becomes law. Home Farmer ‒ your key to practical self-sufficiency; try it and you’ll be hooked!