Another week slips by and it’s the end of July already, how did that happen? I think it’s something to do with how the weeks fill up with so much stuff. This week we had a big compost delivery, a container of hairy pots to unload and store, two work experience girls on their final week, two days of birthday cake coffee breaks, harvest starting on the farm, several orders, lots of potting, irrigation installation, setting up a hairy pot stage display at a local village flower show, a bat survey and a computer melt down.

The worst thing in a busy week is getting off to a dodgy start, it’s so difficult to catch up. I had a particularly frustrating IT problem when on Monday morning when I turned on all the computers and none of them would talk to each other. It worked fine when I turned them of late on Sunday night, but no amount of network messing about or turning it all off and on again could sort it out. After hours of messing about, showing one computer to the other so that they could see each other and maybe communicate I tried turning off the firewall software and sure enough that sorted it. McAfee had sent an virus update in the night and it completely stopped all file sharing with the main computer. So despite all my personal insecurities surfacing and blaming myself for the problems, it turned out to be someone else’s fault! Still not fixed despite McAfee’s help but at least we can make things work now if we need to. The joys of mixing high tech stuff and old people!

Eco news

At last the bat survey has been done, The combination of equipment, personnel and weather all came together on Wednesday night and an overnight survey was completed. A very well informed young chap turned up at 8.30 in the evening to set it all up and do a bit of a hand held, walk-about survey. We heard him slip away (in his top of the range Volvo 4-wheel drive) at about 11.30, so he had done a good shift. We caught up with him the next morning when he came back to collect the recorded over-night data and dismantle his two tall masts to see what he had discovered. He only detected one bat with his hand-held kit and that was down behind our house, where I said I regularly see one feeding, but had heard nothing up by the turbine sites. What the microphones will have recorded from the masts we won’t know until the man who runs the software that reads the recordings, comes back from holiday in two or three weeks. So another likely delay there. One day it will all come together!

Don't forget to do your bit. Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries