Grow a healthy garden this autumn
Grow a healthy garden by shopping wisely for trees, seeds and plants, to protect our environment. For gardeners, autumn is a time of gathering in the abundance of summer months, storing and preserving this bounty for the winter to come. I’m busy with the last sowings...
My friend Sara Venn
My wonderful friend Sara Venn sadly died on Saturday 21st June, after a long illness with cancer. She was well known, loved and respected in the world of gardening and horticulture as an activist, especially for her work promoting community gardening at Edible...
Growing Year Round Day Course at the Hafod Estate
Learn how to grow your own food year round on this day course at the beautiful Hafod Estate in Ceredigion, on August 3rd 2025. 10am to 4pm August is a key time for sowing many food crops which will provide harvests throughout the winter and into the following spring....
How to support small businesses for free
How to support small businesses for free – and also some ways to support small businesses for a little money. It is important to support small businesses – we need them! The ever increasing cost of living if affecting most of us these days. It is a...Read more“Plants are the source of the air we breathe and most of the food we eat, yet we often do not pay enough attention to keeping them healthy. This can have devastating results. FAO estimates that up to 40 percent of food crops are lost to plant pests and diseases annually.”
Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.
Grow a New Garden – book review
Grow a New Garden by Becky Searle is a fantastic guide for anyone wanting to create a vibrant, healthy garden, whatever size space. Becky, a qualified ecologist and experienced gardener and garden writer, has moved many times and each time has created a thriving...
ASA 20 Cordless Secateurs by Stihl review
Stihl ASA 20 cordless secateurs are designed for both professional and amateur use in the garden. How would they perform being put through there paces here on a Welsh hillside? I have a lot of fruit trees, ornamental shrubs and other woody plants, and use secateurs...
No Dig Gardening Day Course at Hafod Walled Garden
I am looking forward to teaching a no dig gardening day course at Hafod Walled Garden on Sunday March 9th 2025. Situated on the stunning Hafod Estate, the day has been funded and costs only £35. Running from 10 – 4pm, the day will include: How to create a no dig...
Review: Genus Warm and Dry Gardening Trousers
When Genus offered to send me a pair of their Warm and Dry Gardening Trousers, I was certainly interested to try them out, but must admit that I wasn’t sure whether an kitchen gardener and homesteader like myself would really need such snazzy looking trousers. I...Stephanie Hafferty
photo by Jason Ingram
Welcome to my blog. I’m Stephanie, follow my journey as I create my homestead in rural Wales on around half an acre. Here I grow year round, and teach gardening, homesteading and food courses.
An experienced kitchen gardener, homesteader and plant-based chef, I’ve been growing my own food for decades to feed my family. I am an award winning garden and food writer, write for many publications and am currently working on my third book.
From the garden to the kitchen, explore the categories below to follow the rhythms of life on the homestead.
Publications I write for include:
