Ann's Farm Journal

Keep up with all of our updates from the farm including what’s new in season!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter

Hello everyone, 

Happy Easter Weekend to you all. 

At this time we can celebrate a Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Christian Orthodox religious festival. This is very rare for all celebrations to occur at the same time. Whatever your religion…peace and happiness to you all. 

On the farm we enjoy a huge amount of peace and happiness. Bob and I absolutely love what we do. We get tired and end the day groaning with gardening pains (along with our getting old pains). We now, subconsciously, make that moan the more mature person makes when moving.

Our family and friends ask ‘why do we do this, you should be enjoying your retirement’. Well we are. Or should I say, we are enjoying our new career path. 

Occasionally something happens to disrupt the peace and enjoyment. This disruption occurred just last week. The story…many of you will have seen the Land Rover Defender we used to deliver the boxes with. However, since acquiring the electric van, the Defender is hardly used. We therefore decided to sell it. Bob being Bob has spent the last month making sure the Defender was looking brand new. The wheels were sand blasted, painted and cooked (who knew!), the rusty screws replaced, new wing mirror were put on, the body work made good, the paint work made good, all the black rubbers cleaned, all the upholstery and dash board cleaned and polished, the back interior cleaned and polished, the foot steps all painted and cleaned with the whole body polished at least three times. It looked amazing. Good as new! 

We put it up for sale last Sunday night. Sold it, by Tuesday, to a lovely local guy. Due to this long weekend, all paperwork was going to happen next week. Thank goodness we were not mid flow with the paperwork, as some toerags came on Tuesday night and tried to steal the Defender. We have always kept the Defender behind a locked and padlocked gate, and the steering wheel has always had a lock around it. The thieves still removed the door locks and tried to drive it away. They lucked out on stealing it so proceeded to take all the lights from the front. This allowed them to remove the immobiliser and pop the bonnet. They stole the bonnet (apparently a much sought after item), and took the Engine Control Unit (expensive item), which is like the brains of the engine. It controls the electrics and technology within the engine. Job done and we didn’t hear a thing! 

We felt sick to the stomach and really annoyed that our peaceful home had been intruded upon. But we are well and truly over all of that now. Stuff like this happens, we know it shouldn’t, toerags are everywhere and these were professional toerags. They knew exactly what to do, what to look for and no security was going to stop them. The police have been informed and they did pop around to see the damage done. They informed us that it would have taken only minutes for the thieves to complete the job. The insurance people have been consulted. The garage we use has now got the Defender and all will be made good again. Bob did all the phoning, emailing and paperwork necessary to put the clear up, of the damage done, into place. Unfortunately it set us back nearly a whole day of farm and box scheme work. If your box was later than expected or any other issue occurred we do apologise…but we can and will rectify any issues. 

Here endeth the story. Not a great one but all is back to being totally peaceful and happy on the farm. Bob and I are enjoying the long weekend. We are pottering…tidying the polytunnels after a hectic harvest last week, planting potatoes for the summer harvest, waiting for the delivery of 90 tons of compost (probably nine deliveries in total over a number of days) which will be going into our new growing area in the Orchard Field. The first delivery arrived yesterday and Bob and I are well on the way for our summer six pack! The compost is placed onto cardboard, which we have been saving for months. One delivery and the cardboard is gone! The local supermarkets have given us permission to take as much as we need and we will certainly be taking them up on their offer. Placing cardboard on the ground before the compost goes on, helps to reduce the weeds and grasses growing. It all helps with our ‘no-dig’ approach to gardening. 

The compost arrives in an enormous trailer pulled by a gigantic tractor. The compost is unloaded, creating mini mountains of ‘black gold’. We level it all, by hand and rake, to a six inch depth. Hence the six pack (this is wishful thinking of course). This huge new area is already looking good. Once the paths of wood chippings are in place, creating twenty five new beds, this huge area will look amazing. By the end of April we will be able to start using the area for crops, which are coming along very nicely in the greenhouses, cold frames and numerous areas of the polytunnels. We have an enormous amount of assorted summer plants to transplant out. 

This is always a busy time of the year, so I am going to crack on. But never fear, I can guarantee we will be eating chocolate to get us thru all this busyness. It is the Easter break, so we can have as much as we can eat. As one lovely customer (thanks Sarah) said of Bob and I this week, we are ‘Active Resters’ and I like this and will be using this phrase often. 

So, from the Active Resters, Take care,

Ann👩‍🌾