Our news
December 2024: how to take the double skin off chestnuts without burning your fingers!
We made some great breakthroughs this year. Someone lent us a machine for taking the double skin...
March 2024: water, water, every where!
We’ve had so much rain this winter that our new lake which was dug at the end of November is...
September 2023: summer rain at last; mountains of fruit; autumn 2023 courses, energy efficiency & renewables
Amazing news from our farm: it rained this summer! It’s the first time we’ve had significant...
Summer 2022: new barn roof with solar panels; wattle&daub; new window and wall; Open Day; RIP Danièle Lepetit 1938-2022
Our local roofer, Freddy Royeau, and his team spent the month of March redoing the roof of the...
2021 : building a greenhouse, restoring the well, expanding the forest garden, spreading the poo!
2021 was in some ways a frustrating year. We lost most of our fruit crops because of a May frost....
Winter 2020-21: pond digging, offering new courses, tree planting, loving life
Well hello there! Feel like a long time since you heard from us? That’s because it has been. Our...
Surviving lockdown at the farm
We’re back! We had to cancel three courses because of coronavirus, but we made it through lockdown...
Filling the pond, burning wood, planting trees…
Winter has well and truly arrived here at The Big Raise and the pond is full for the first time...
New course dates for 2020, food growing and bottling, WWOOFers and fields of gold
Good news – our September permaculture and meditation course was full (and the participants were...
It’s hot down on the farm!
So we’ve done our first three Introductions to Permaculture and Meditation. They seem to...
Building the dream – mostly in yellow!
Our long-term tenant and the former owner of the farm, Steve, has finally left for a new life as a...
Learning, working and having fun: weekend courses at The Big Raise
We offer two types of weekend: permaculture and meditation or permaculture and vegan cooking. We...
Planting our first fruit trees and becoming parents to two kittens
We were lucky enough to inherit 40 hazelnut trees, 30 sweet chestnuts, 15 peaches, four pawpaw...
More mistakes to savour and a bumper harvest
More mistakes to savour We’ve spent a lot of time this summer trying to correct a big mistake from...
Two steps forward, one step back
So far we’ve mostly talked about steps forward, but we think it’s also important to record the...
Spring has finally arrived at The Big Raise
It’s been the wettest winter for more than 50 years at the Big Raise and it was particularly cold...
Calling in the soil doctor at The Big Raise
One of the first things we did after buying The Big Raise was to commission a land analysis from...
Towards a permaculture energy strategy
Our future goal is to use wood from our six hectares as our primary fuel source but we’re a...
Upgrading the main house starting with the ground floor
We bought The Big Raise at the start of July 2017 and spent most of a very happy first summer...
Interview with Charles + Perrine of Bec Hellouin Permaculture Farm
Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer decided to become low impact farmers in 2006. It was a long and...
Cleaning out and deepening the pond
We’re going to need to store a lot of rainwater on our permaculture farm: 1) to water trees and...
Starting a forest garden and digging a hole
In permaculture you’re supposed to watch the land for a year before you do anything so as to get a...
An adventure, a way of life, a sustainable business and a source of inspiration
This is a website about an adventure that hopefully will become a way of life and a sustainable business, and maybe a source of inspiration for others.
Getting to the farm and meeting the locals
One of the reasons why The Big Raise won our favours is that it’s a short bike ride from the...
