Strawberry season has arrived

Hello Everyone,

Football is not the only sport we are watching, although thankfully England are into the semi-finals…whoopdewhoop! Wimbledon is also delighting us with emotional scenes of Andy Murray and his swan song and fab tennis. Sooooo, it must be strawberry time!

As you can see, Bob has been helping to harvest the thousands of strawberries we have in our strawberry patch. They taste delicious…and on the website now! Think jam, jelly, meringue, trifle, coulis, ice cream or just as a fruit. Delicious.

Summer is in full swing…strawbs, peas, beans are all a good start…bit late to the party though, as we are in the second month of summer. All our crops are looking lush and growing swiftly. We have cucumbers, aubergines, peppers and chillies all fruiting nicely. The tomato vines are now my height with many flowers becoming fruits. Such a lot to look forward to.

Thank you for being very understanding last week. We have enjoyed a week of uninterrupted gardening. We feel the farm looks as if we are now, much more in control. We did need to get to grips with the crops…for instance we needed to tidy all the tomatoes, make sure the cucumbers were heading in the right direction upwards, feed the crops, direct sow more carrots, spring onions and beetroots and begin the big garlic harvest. 

Once again we are delighted with the garlic harvest. So far our harvest is looking mighty fine. They are being removed from the ground, cleaned and tidied, then placed on our drying racks to cure. The Hexhamshire Organics Garlic is also on the website now. 

Yesterday we had our first ‘Gardening Course’. The day was really enjoyable and we hope our ‘students’ learned a few new gardening snippets to take home with them. We were lucky with the weather, questions were fired at Bob, great interest and curiosity was felt and food was consumed. The people who attended were our ‘Guinea pigs’ and the response was extremely positive. On to the next one in a few weeks time.

One conversation we did have over coffee was the lack of butterflies, ladybirds, bees, wasps and many other insects. It has not gone unnoticed how quiet these essential bugs have been. There is a definite shift in the climate and activity these seasons. It is quite unnerving. Not sure if you are thinking the same. It means that Bob and I are thinking of a restructure of our little farm. More on this in future journals.

We hope you are looking forward to your goodies again this week. We really appreciate your support and kind words of encouragement.

Bob will see you during the week,

Take care,

 Ann 👩🏻‍🌾