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As always, looking forward to hearing your comments @JSHarris.

Our solar PV array has been up for four months and I thought it was a good time to have a look at their performance providing an unbiased report, based on real life experiences, illustrating power output on overcast, rainy and sunny days. More info is available here about our array: https://myhomefarm.co.uk/solar-pv-and-inverter-review Would be very interested to hear comments and how our array compares to yours.

You've answered most of my next questions JS. Insightful as ever. Had doubts about the solar option at nighttime. Looks like PoE it is. Any brand recommendations?

Yes there is, but I'm trying so hard to do all our DIY ourselves now. Would be a good way to take my phobia head on.

Great points as always mafaldina. When we do eat meat, we ensure it's organic. It's more expensive, but it's so much better in every sense. Instead of having meat every day and paying £2-3 for poor quality meat, we spend more and only have meat once a week. It's far more sustainable that way. I feel that the world has become addicted to meat, and the only way to deal with this is to provide cheap, poorly produced meat. Your farm sounds great, and similar to the farms around us (sheep and beef), barring the one guy who wants to build a factory in the middle of the countryside.

Yeah, looking at that. Our roof and gutters are really high and I have a fear of heights.

PoE make life easier as we only need one cable. Can’t run ground level either because of walls that’ll in the way. Popping the cables in the gutter might be a solution. That’s what Sky did when they installed our dish.

Problem with wireless is that they still need power cables. Was also looking at solar powered options.

We want to put up 2 exterior cctv cameras that are connected to a HDD inside the house, and the distance between the two cameras would be around 20-25m. I’m struggling to see how I can wire our cameras as we have no loft space and don’t want to run cables on the exterior of the house. Does anyone have any innovative suggestions?

We recently had a friend visit us who stood awkwardly on one of our slate steps leading to our front door. The slate must have been very brittle and large chunk came away. Not really sure what to do, I popped down to our local hardware store and spoke to our go-to guy there who recommended an extremely strong adhesive for this repair. I made a video of this, and really chuffed with the way it turned out. https://youtu.be/CAiM1zynwrY Not sure how well the adhesive is going to hold and whether it'll break again if someone stands on it. If it does, does anyone have any other suggestions how one could repair a broken slate step?

No. Our diet has gone largely meatless (very occasionally we have pork or beef). We stopped eating chicken years ago, when we discovered how many antibiotics they were being pumped with.

Thanks for the feedback Ferdinand and Mafaldina. Once again some really great points from both of you, which I have taken on board and you've given me some very good ideas for things to include in future videos, and we definitely want to focus on the sustainability angle. Country life and country living is still very new to us, and we're learning multiple things on a daily basis, so thanks for all the info. I'm strapped for time today to reply to all the points above, but wanted to address the comments about RSPB and DEFRA by going off on a slight tangent. We live in an area where we are surrounded by grazing, arable farmland, national trails and parklands. For the past six months the community has been opposing a planning application for an intensive poultry unit (IPU) that would produce over one million chickens for meat each year. Large broiler developments like this application are categorised in environmental regulations as being equivalent to crude oil refineries, nuclear fuel processing plants and chemical installations. So the pollution and environmental impact is massive. What's astonishing is that the application documents cite numerous "solutions" for things such as manure spreading that are in direct contravention of DEFRA guidelines and best practices. They also pay no respect to hedgerows, trees, wildlife, insects, birds, etc. and they'll hack and destroy whatever lies in their way to potentially build this IPU. We contacted our local RSPB for advice and support to oppose this massive broiler unit as the ammonia that would be spewed from this factory will have a detrimental effect on vegetation and insect populations, and would therefore affect the numerous birds that are around us (from finches through to birds of prey). The RSPB would have nothing to do with it stating that this would not directly affect one of its sanctuaries, which we found to be a bit hypocritical as they are The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. They wouldn't formally object (even via email or via the planning application portal) to the development to protect birds and wildlife, or the welfare of broiler chickens that are raised from chick to slaughter in just over 30 days.

Thanks again for the feedback Ferdinand. Greatly appreciated.

Better yet: Souf Ifrican.

Thanks for the detailed comment Ferdinand. It's interesting that we're coming across in such a way that our content is instructional, because it's certainly not supposed to. The point we're trying to convey is that we're "city slickers" that moved to the country and for the first couple of months we used all manner of DIY guys (some were good, others not so good) to help us with various projects; given the varying level of work, I undertook some DIY tasks, and they turned out pretty well. So we're trying to show that even though you may never have used a power tool or done DIY work, it's not impossible to get a good job done yourself if you're prepared to give it a go. So from you list, we were very much aiming to satisfy criteria A and B from your list above: sustainable living with product reviews that are helping us getting things done. We certainly were not aiming to come across as instructional, so to me it's very interesting that you think we come across this way, and I'll definitely take this on board. I do, however, want people to see that urban people moving to the countryside shouldn't be daunted by a chainsaw, hedge trimmer or mitre saw. It was intimidating to me at first having not done anything of the sort before, but I was able to work these tools and fix stuff. So your point is valid Ferdinand, and maybe we'll show less of how we turn things on and do things, and more of me just using it. At the same time, we do want to convey some of the features of products, in a review style, so bridging that gap may be tricky as it may come across as instructional. Your feedback is invaluable, and would like to thank you for taking the time to share this, because this will allow is to modify and nurture a style going forward. In closing, if you really enjoyed the video, would you be so kind and like it and also subscribe to our channel. All these little things help.

Ditto that. For the price point, quality may be an issue. We want a tap that’s going to last a few years.

Will check them out today. We like the Grohe brand, but some of their prices are insane.

Wow. We’re in a renovated Victorian place, which is relatively well insulated... would love to pay a lot less for heating. Oil last year winter was a financial killer.

We typically buy branded stuff, but the build quality of the Stihl feels really well made compared to other brands. Will definitely consider them in the future.

Maybe ?

My wife is looking to buy a kitchen pull out tap. There are some insanely expensive taps out there. Can anyone recommend a good quality pull out kitchen tap, that’s not going to break the bank?

Are those figures annual?! Not wanting to pry, but why are your heating requirements low? Houses in the uk require loads of heating.

Awesome - looks like we've purchased a decent unit. Do you need to sharpen the blades?

I'm getting a bit apprehensive about the efficiency - I really hope it costs us a lot less to run than the old oil boiler we had.

We purchased Stihl's HSE 71 hedge trimmer to keep the hedgerow that shields us from the lane that passes our property neat and tidy. This is the first time we've purchased or used a Stihl product, and we've assessed it to see what it's capable of: YouTube video: Blog post: https://myhomefarm.co.uk/stihl-hse-71-hedge-trimmer-review What does everyone else think of Stihl? Are they reliable as a brand?