Working with Nature

Hello Everyone,

Bob and I hope you are all very well. 

Thank you for returning the boxes, this really helps us here on the farm, as well as the environment. We are doing ‘our bit’ when it comes to recycling, reusing and reducing our waste. The boxes, including the egg boxes, are all reused until they are of little use as packaging. We then will put some to use in the creation of our growing beds. The cardboard acts as a base before we add new compost on our new beds. Some boxes are placed as a layer in our compost bins. If we have any boxes which do not cater for the above, it is then that we take them to the recycling depot.

Our compost bins are beginning to fill again, not only with the cardboard, but with any excess greenery and plant material which is a result from harvesting and emptying the beds. There tends to be a lot of growth on our cauliflowers, for instance, which is not given to you, our lovely customers. All of this will go into the compost bins. We tend to fill the compost bins to the point of being over filled, bulging with excess greenery. But, this soon reduces in just a matter of days. I would like to say that our compost heap gets ‘turned’ on a regular basis, however, due to time constraints and that it being the last job any one of us wants to carry out ‘turning’ the compost sometimes gets delayed. What we do do is cover each compost bin with a thick polythene cover which helps to raise the temperature within the bin. The high temperature does help the process, however, we do not want to create too high a temperature as the essential bacteria needed may succumb to an untimely end. The science of composting!

Our compost is used as a mulch or an addition to our growing areas. We use and place our very own compost on to our beds when the compost becomes black and crumbly. We will never make sufficient compost for all our growing areas, but we will make as much as we can over the seasons. When re establishing our herb gardens earlier this year, we were able to use our very own compost as a topping…very satisfying. 

Over the last ten days we can safely say that all our growing areas have gone berserk! All the requirements of good, solid, fast growing are firmly in place…light, heat and water. We now have day light for a good seventeen hours each day. The heat has been provided by the blue skies and bright sun shine. The water, distributed by ourselves, one way or another - over head watering, ground irrigation, sprayers or hand watering. Having these three components has created the correct environment for our organic goodies to thrive. All our growing areas are a wonderful thing to behold. Both Bob and I often take ourselves off for a walk around our little farm and sometimes feel quite overwhelmed with what we have…especially during the summer season.  

The Summer season offers us humans the chance to see the magic of Mother Nature. She really is able to put on a show at this time of the year. Everything grows quickly. The produce provided tastes fresh and delicious. The colours are intense, the Sage above being a prime example. The flowers some crops grow are pretty and perfumed, once again Sage is a prime example. The life just oozes from all our growing areas. Job satisfaction guaranteed (at this point I am missing out the aching knees, hips, necks and backs from all the work force while we keep up with Mother Nature). 

We hope you are all enjoying eating our Fresh Local Organic Produce and looking forward to more great choice as the ‘hungry gap’ ends. Yay!!! 

We await your orders for this week, take care,

Ann👩‍🌾