As a result of astute intervention from a valued customer at Twickenham
Farmers market, here I am putting pen to paper on our NEW, revised website
! I hope you enjoy the new format
Thanks to Tracey Forey
for patiently reading my wafflings and translating them into this! Our
aim is to try to keep you all up to date with all our produce old and
new.
We want to know what you like/don't like and to respond with produce
that we can all be proud of.
Do not cancel your date with the Archers yet though, my input may be
a little sporadic !
So here we are in gorgeous Surrey woodland. Cold nights and ground
frosts here still
Lots of veg coming on in our newly covered polytunnel though. (I wish
we had paid somebody experienced to put the cover on and then we wouldn’t
have all these dreadful creases on the door ends! hey ho, maybe next
time?
Desperately planting out all our seeds and transplants to meet the ever increasing
demand for our local organic produce. It has always been a bit touch and go
but this year WE ARE SERIOUS! French beans, runner beans, sweetcorn, lettuce, peas,
butternut squash, spinach, leeks are all queuing to take the plunge into our
heavy old clay!
We cannot sow direct because we probably house more slugs and field mice
per acre than you could shake a stick at and they just LOVE IT when fresh
seeds go out early spring.
The upside of our record breaking pest density is the amount of predators
we support; barn owls, hobbies, buzzards and kestrels abound and feast on our
thieves.
Our polytunnel
It looked like a soup kitchen for field voles in April. We were trying
to start our peas and squash off indoors and EVERY night most of the seeds
were carried off by rodents unknown! We ended up having to suspend the
seed trays from the roof using baler twine to thwart their nightly raids.
Being organic, we cannot reach for poison and slug pellets so we strive
to devise ways of sidestepping problems or adapting planting regimes to
minimise our losses !
That is the plan and I will let you know if it ever works!
Cows and calves are now all out and grazing round the chicken fences (so
that we do not have to mow them)
Last few to calve are near the vegetables at the moment, in our "haut
and blind field" by the house, where we can cast a beady eye. The leader
of this maternity group decided she was bored with all this green stuff
and would lead her gang through the fence last evening and sample those
nice frizzy things in the next field (our prize lettuces).
Maisie heard a commotion and we all ran out just in time to avoid a
vegetable massacre! Close call and nil nil luckily (except for fence,
which needed first aid and counseling! )
Sheep are running everywhere! The lane is like a lamb derby in the
evening, with a bunch of up to twenty spring lambs racing one another
(or a visiting car) the length of the track, only to dive into the hedge
at the last minute and do it all again. One of our neighbours came to
my local farmers market in Cranleigh recently and when I told him that
our spring lamb would be ready very soon, he replied that he felt he
knew them all personally as they had chased his car or got into his
garden. !
Getting ready to shear the ewes next week. One of those jobs that is
great once it is finished! We shear all our own sheep and an increasing
number of other peoples as well. I only learnt to shear because we had
such trouble trying to get contractors to shear such a small number.
It is great fun, and although very tiring and taxing, it marks a happy
time of the year for us. It is a chance to handle the lambs and work
together. (and moan about which bit aches the most and which sheep is
being the most contrary!) After the ewes have been shorn, they often
start butting one another as if each one is an imposter in the flock;
just imagine if you were only recognised by your latest hairdo? Bless!
