Plans for Garden Re-Set

Hello Everyone,

Bob and I hope you are all very well. We have had an extremely busy week of visitors. All grandchildren have spent lots of time here on the farm. It has been delightful. The boys are here lots and lots. Our granddaughter has stayed this last week for the first time as a curious little one. As you can see from this week’s gorgeous photo, the tomatoes were a great draw. Not only the taste but the colour must attract everyone to the tomato tunnels. Suffice to say, many tomatoes were eaten along with cucumbers, peppers and raspberries. A bath was needed after the wander around the farm, I don’t think she had had such mucky hands! 

Yesterday, we had our final ‘gardening course’ for this year. Thankfully, the weather played its part and was very pleasant. The farmer was harvesting in the next field which was pretty noisy, but this did not stop the interesting chat. 

There are many reasons individuals have attended our courses this year. Some need a little extra knowledge, some are attending as the recipient of a gift, some have arrived with lots of know how but would like to ‘go organic’ or ‘go no dig’.

Yesterday’s group was an amazing idea - a family came to learn together in order to help each other in some way. One was the gardener but did need extra knowledge, one did not want the garden to become an allotment looking garden, more of a designed colourful edible garden, one wanted to eat the produce but to be able to potter in the garden and help. The course was going to allow the family to design, plan, plant, grow, tend, harvest and eat all the produce together. How good is that!

We had a very important mornings discussion on Thursday. The crew and ourselves sat down with coffee and croissants to go through our planned ‘re set’ of the farm. It was extremely exciting (I know, I know, easily pleased). We probably all knew the future plans and tasks required. However, it was good to sit, discuss and list everything. Now Bob will collate the tasks into an orderly list and believe me it was a huge list. Some things can be done now, for instance a big tidy of the barn, gathering the tools together, sorting the covers for the beds. Other tasks for instance the really big task of re designing the outside growing areas, a mammoth task, will be planned for the winter/early spring when all crops are out of the ground. The white board will now become the timeline of tasks for the coming months.

So I will crack on,

Take care,