Ann's Farm Journal

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

Minerals are Important

Minerals are Important

Hello Everyone,

Well, we thought we would be saying to you that our pregnant pig is a mother pig by now. Kate, the mum’s name, has been placed inside the barn due to her pregnancy and the inclement weather. She has regular fresh bedding, extra greens and pellets, fresh drinking water on tap and plenty of loving. Maybe Kate is enjoying the unbelievable attention and extra food that she has decided to cross her legs and hold on to her babies?!? Or maybe we did not mark the calendar properly. Royal and Kate were ‘together’ for sometime, so maybe they just teased each other before the passion began! But as soon as we hear…you will hear…I will be posting any news of piglets on Instagram.

March is here and the broad bean plants will be transplanted during the first two weeks of March. Bob has planted the first of our early potatoes. This early variety is Casablanca and has proved to be very reliable over our previous years, so fingers crossed for this new potato in the coming three months.

The overwintering crop is now growing vigorously and will soon be on the harvesting schedule. The leaves are still thriving and are enjoying the extra daylight and the warmth of the sun when it shines on the polytunnels. When the sun does shine, all the crops inside the tunnel enjoy quite a few degrees of extra heat and the workers thoroughly enjoy this too.

The outside areas in the pond field have had a coating of volcanic rock dust. This is an organic fertiliser. It contains minerals and trace elements…such as potassium, molybdenum and boron for instance. It really is dust from volcanoes and our supply comes from Scotland. It is dust from volcanoes which erupted eons ago. We discovered that our soil is lacking in these trace elements I mentioned earlier. The discovery was made when we were finding it really hard to grow cauliflowers….cauliflowers need boron and molybdenum. We can now grow really good cauliflowers and brassicas as a result of us adding the dust to our soil….we are constantly learning and improving.

Have a good week,

Ann