It really feels like Autumn is upon us here at the Welsh Hovel. I am wearing a coat indoors as we battle not to switch on the heating or to start using up the wood stored in my shed, in the wood burning stove.With the Met office warning us again about what a hot year 2025 has been, we really could do with a touch of global warming here in Wrexham.

What else would one do on a rainy afternoon in North East Wales? Whilst I harvested the 40 or so younger apple trees I have planted here at the Welsh Hovel some weeks ago, the older apple trees by the river are still heaving with fruit. And thus Joshua and I filled three buckets…

As I mentioned the other day, we are still working our way through dried chillies from 2024 but we have had another decent harvest this year and, in what feels, like the start of Autumn, I threaded the first two chains on cotton this afternoon.

In my first year harvesting the crabapple trees I have planted here at the Welsh Hovel I collected 750g, enough to make about three quarters of a jar of jelly. The Mrs and her family turned their nose up at my jelly, having to add flavour to cooked meat is not central to a curry based Indian cuisine. But then Joshua and my sister-in-law tried it and now it has an army of fans.

We use chillies quite a lot here at the Welsh Hovel. The Mrs adds them into her Indian cooking, I add them into various jams and ice creams and also to my healthy vegetable and fish meals. Notwithstanding that, we are still working our way through the dried chillies from the 2024 harvest. And now I ave harvested the 2025 crop of various varieties as you can see below.

About ten times a day I read something about the state of Britain, my heart fills with despair and I think “I just give up.” Meet Ermal Merdani.

This is a truly crowded contest. The absence of photos of kids actually starving to death in Gaza means we are still flooded with Hamas supplied photos of starving kids from Yemen or Syria, AI images or kids with other diseases. Photos the BBC and Western press happily run even after they are shown to be fake. There was the hospital Jeremy Bowen insisted on the BBC that the wicked Jews had bombed killing 500 people. It was, of course, a misfiring Islamic Jihad missile.

As you are probably aware suicide is something that for familial reasons I take seriously. My mother killed herself as did one great aunt and two cousins of my parents. I don’t joke about the issue. Data today from the ONS on suicides is interesting in that it gives a new line on the “privilege” , the innate advantage that I might have as a middle class, okay upper middle class, white male. Or maybe in some respects I am not so privileged at all.

I comment on the flags, where they were flying and by whom. Then on today’s soul destroying encounter with NHS incompetence. It was so depressing.

You look at the photo below and will think, I am NOT drinking that. But you would be mistaken.

What you see below are radishes from the garden pickled in a sweet and sour South East Asian source. They will be served up at Sharestock but with another, larger, jar to pickle tonight and one other done a few weeks ago, this should also last the family through to Christmas. And that was not the only preserving.

Six buckets of apples from the new trees I planted in the upper orchard and what was the jungle went into the scratter, the blue machine below.

The video clip below shows why when folks spit out the word Zionist what they mean is “Jew”. Days after Lucy Connolly is released I argue not that she was wrongly imprisoned but question why this chap below has not been arrested and put on a fast track to an even longer sentence.

I have yet to touch the old apple trees and the new ones I planted by the river. That is the bulk of my harvest. What you see below is just from the trees I planted in what is now the upper orchard and what used to be the jungle, and it excludes the 300 or so apples already stewed, turned into jam or crumble or stored in my rack. The trees are now emptied and what you see below is being turned into juice this weekend.

An email arrives:

I support Israel but not Israel’s government and nor should you – a government responsible for war crimes in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. People are asking the question whether you might be paid for airing your ultra Zionist propaganda.