Updates All Round

It has now been a year since these daffodils first greeted us when we were first looking at the land.

Bluebell time has passed as has the wild garlic which had a strong smell. The bluebells, the 'english' ones, are poisonous but the bulb makes a good paper glue, so I have read. However what the Scots call a bluebell, and the English call a Harebell, has an edible bulb. Hence it's a good idea to learn the latin names.

There is still a lot of hope for things to come.
Apple blossom, on the tree that bore fruit last year. Rich has spent a lot of time and energy trying to help suppoort the trees against the wind.

Yes there have been and still are many obstacles.
This was the level of the pond on Jan 6th .

This is a more recent photo. As you can see the level has dropped as we seem to be having a mini drought. The level is even lower now but I haven't been taking photo's of it. More about the drought in another posting.

Richard is good at preserving and caring for material things. This is one example of it. We both painted the sunniest side of the barn.

Rich has had 'fun' planning and setting up a ways of getting water from one tank to another as well as down the hill. A pump he bought to pump water up the hill was not strong enough. Fortunately the previous owner must have had similar ideas as he left a load of blue piping which was the right length to reach from the shed all the way down the slope to the spring and across to the pond.

Fiddling with some connection in the piping down by the pond.

Here is Rich branding the side of his hives with a branding tool he made himself. The brand is Astrid initials, AW, with the side of the A and W shared. He did this because he could not make rounded letters. It won't stop them getting stolen but it may help them get found. He has also stamped each frame with our postal code.

The other weekend when it was very windy and Rich wasn't feeling too well he took things 'easy' and carpeted our 'bedroom'in the caravan. It feels quite warm now. He also put filters over all the vents and returned the light covers that he had taken off so all the dead flies in them could be washed out.

This photo was taken by Astrid. There is a lovely, now that it is blooming, rose bush by the caravan. Roses always make me think of my Gran.

I should have taken these potatoes out of the dark at least a week before I did. Then they should have been brought out into the light and, I have on good authority, they should have been planted at least two weeks after I planted them when the earth would have been that bit warmer. However having let them grow so much and thinking that I was running late with planting I did not let them harden off in the light, which makes them stronger. I thought I should plant them straight out. A frost did affect some of them but it was a late frost anyway. The process of putting the seed potatoes in the dark and then in the light before planting out is called chitting.

This was round the beginning of April. Just as well I put the canes in to mark some of the potatoes so I had an idea of where to water them. At that stage I didn't know I'd have to be watering them within two weeks. Saying that, I planted some potatoe plants outside the veg patch about 4 weeks later, didn't water them nearly as much and they have come up.

The potatoe patch last week. There are Sunflowers at the back. I planted a marigold with each sunflower, all of them have been eaten by slugs and snails, as has most of the two hyssop that I planted a little later.

This is a bucket full of bits of rubbish that get turned up from the mulch. Every time I'm in the veg patch there are bits of plastic, glass, material or other rubbish that has surfaced. I took this photo after planting the potatoes, a process that took the best part of a day, 40 potatoes planted. I had a long time to find and ponder over all the plastic and rubbish in the world. I try to be philosophical rather than depressed about it. That way I'm still looking for deeper meanings and hoping to find some positive answer somewhere in all my musings.

This is where all the plants begin. Well nearly. Most of them have started on a windowsill indoors and then graduated to slightly larger accomodation outside.

I have been trying to grow the plants as big as I can accomodate them before planting them out in the harsh conditions on the farm. Here are some squash and tomatoe plants nearly ready for transfer.

Every plant that is planted out at the farm has to be transported there. Here are the sunflowers ready for planting out.

In the foreground is what remains of my attempt at planting the 'three sisters', sweetcorn, squash and a bean. The idea is that the bean grows up the sweetcorn as well as fixes nitrogen in it's roots while the spuash protects the roots of the other two plants. I am not sure what type of crop, if any, I'll get as the plants have already had to contend with frost, strong winds, drought and slugs and I don't know how many stones are at their roots.

Of course some plants are kept at home. I hope we get at least one, preferrably more, of every type of squash I've raised from seed.  I've had melon (I know it's not a squash but its leaves look like one), pumpkin of course, gemsquash, patti pan and something called vegetable spaghetti. I'll try to remember to take a photo of the veg spaghetti once it's cooked. It's supposed to look like spaghetti. Problem is the ss's love the leaves of the squashes. Squash also needs a lot of water and we just aren't getting enough at the moment. A lot of the squash seem to be staying the same size or are growing very slowly.

 

If I tell you I dug 14 holes to plant out 2 comfrey plants and 12 feverfew would you believe that all the stones and small rocks that you can see in this picture came from those holes? Well when I said there were lots of stones I meant it. Sometimes I ran out of soil to seat the herbs properly because I had taken a couple of big stones i.e. the ones on the ground. When the horses were on the property Rich reckons the farmer must have hoisted hey and straw over the trees and just dumped it with one of his big machines, from the road. Anyway however he got the straw and hey there there were a few area along the top fence were the stuff was just left after the horses were taken off the property. These areas made their own little 'no dig' space by smothering all the plants under them. So, needing areas for planting the herbs for the bees (and us when I know more about them), I am using those areas to plant stuff in. The slugs and snails don't seem to go for feverfew, which is apparently good for headaches, so I took the chance.

I will show you some pictures in another posting of another area outside the veg patch where I am planting herbs. Here is a young Hyssopus Officianalis that I planted about 2 weeks ago now. Other Hyssop on the farm have been eaten by the ss's but not these, so far, because they were planted where a big fire had been and the ss's apparently don't like crawling over ash. I was really pleased last weekend that some bumblebees had made a little nest at the base of this herb.

I have had a thought about planting plants. When you plant something you are planting hope.