Sitting here in my cosy office (now the only warm place I can find), on a bright frosty morning, I can imagine you all out there beavering about in all that glorious fresh air and sunshine.

Caroline and I are having a challenging week, for a change. All the usual stuff, vans breaking down, water purifier died, heating oil delivery didn’t arrive (again) (ordered on 4th Jan), ran out of oil on nursery on Monday and in the house yesterday. We have only one heated tunnel, for our microprop weaning, and it only runs at 10C at this time of year but still worrying as we have a lot of high value young plants in there. We put emergency electric heating in there for 24 hrs, before managing to get some oil transferred from my brother-in-laws tank to get the boilers restarted. Didn’t have enough to top up the house tank, so we now have the electric heaters in there, no Aga for cooking (microwave or eating out) or heating, no central heating, a weenie bit of hot water and a rapidly cooling house. It is amazing how cold a house can get when your main heat sources are lost. It reminds me a lot of many places I lived in as a youngster, caravans, chalets, rented flats etc where it never got warm and going to bed fully clothed was a regular winter occurrence. This has happened once before when someone, who shall remain nameless, forgot to order the oil at all. I’m telling you, that was a frosty few days in more ways than one! I am now very much looking forward to the simple pleasure of having a shower in a warm bathroom with a warm towel.

The two trouser regime is running even stronger now, due to the position we are in, and despite her best efforts Caroline was unable to wrestle them off me for a wash this morning (normally a tussle I would enjoy, but there was too much at stake!). I very nearly wore them out on the street yesterday, but luckily caught sight of myself in the mirror as I was leaving the house.

Eco Update

After last week’s excitement when we went public with our plans for erecting 3 ‘small’ wind turbines on the hill above the nursery, it has gone suspiciously quiet. So far the feedback to us has all been very positive, we’ll see. The project has been picked up in a couple of the local papers and reported quite positively. The local LibDem man is coming to see us to help promote the sustainable direction we are taking our business. Just need to get the other political groups behind us and it could be quite exciting.

You can see the outline proposal in our ‘Dear Neighbour’ letter and the full details of the planning backup documentation at;

http://www.kirtonfarm.co.uk/ and http://www.hairypotplants.co.uk/

Nature notes

Big garden bird watch this weekend. We have no Ospreys to report, lots of finches, tits (no long-tailed recently), a couple of blackcaps, robins, lots of blackbirds, too many pigeons and a big seed bill.

It’s great to be able to see into the ponds again after all the ice, no frogspawn yet, but a surprising amount of things swimming about. It doesn’t seem possible that such little things could survive in such a long cold period then be active again so quickly, I suppose they have their own version of the ‘two trouser regime’.
Don't forget to do your bit.
Have a good week.