Blue skies and summer sun
Wild Flower Garden outside the bakery
Hello
What a beautiful summer we have had so far, with balmy sunny days and warm moonlit evenings it has been glorious here on the farm.
The birds seem to have been doing well, with doves, wrens, sparrows, blue tits and woodpeckers ( to name but a few) all raising their families in the safety of the nature reserve. Although there don’t seem to be as many swallows and martins this year.
We have also noticed butterfly and bee numbers are down, possibly due to the harsh winter. The setaside areas have come in to their own providing a mass of thistles & teasels for the goldfinches, with plants such as yellow dotted loostrife, coltsfoot & cut leaf cranesbill flowers also spreading nicely.
The team veggie patch is now highly productive, we’ve been enjoying courgettes, tomatoes, beetroot’s, new potatoes and fresh herbs for our team lunches. With squash and pumpkin plants on the way on the dung heap we should have a fresh veg supply through the winter too.
We decided to dig up the fruit patch ( as the fruit bushes had suffered from a long dry April!) and plant the seemingly hundreds of tomato plants that we successfully grown from seed in the poly tunnel. Also and a couple of bags of seed potatoes that our local garden centre were giving away – waste not want not!
We are very excited that plans are now under way for our new community resource centre, we are recycling an old mobile classroom that is retiring from a local school, this will house our office and mail order shop packing area, meaning we will then have an extra room to turn into the centre, we’ll then be able to invite local schools and groups to visit the farm, learn about local food production – with info about local food producers and a tour of the bakery, tour the nature reserve and contribute to our nature table and wildlife log book, enabling us to teach them more about nature and conservation.
We are keen to show how Bee Green is linked to everything we do – so for example all of the cardboard we use is shredded and turned to horse bedding, this is transferred to the dung heap where it rots down, then ends up on our raised bed to fertilise the veg plants, which we then serve in the Bee shack cafe.
In June we visited the Green Scythe fair at Thorney lakes, Nr Langport in Somerset http://www.greenfair.org.uk/ This wonderful event happens every year and I would highly recommend it, with live demos, a scything competition, local crafts, lovely food and a fun packed kids area complete with Play Hay’! It was a brilliant day out.
We are looking forward now to visiting the Oak fair in Aug http://www.stockgaylard.com/oak-fair/oak-fair-at-stock-gaylard.html which has similar stalls, an art exhibition and food tent. With a conservation area, with a wealth of information from all of the wonderful local conservation organisations and charities.
Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, Thanks for reading
Charlotte
Lovely Veg