Monday 30 August 2010

At last the sun has come back out, just in time for the holiday weekend, hurrah. So here I am enjoying my weekend, sowing a few seeds, de-limescaling the fog nozzles and sorting out the watering. Things are looking pretty good here, a couple of extra staff this summer has kept us on top of most jobs and the nursery is looking good and is pretty full, ready for the spring onslaught. Actually we still have lots to do but there is a definite feeling of control and progress, rather than the usual organised panic to get everything done in time.
Hairy pots on BBC TV last Sunday! Spotted by one of our eagle eyed, keen and Sunday morning TV watching customers! It was on BBC2, ‘Something for the Weekend’ on the cooking spot! You can see it on the following link (it is 1hr 18mins into the programme, if you can’t watch the whole thing! It’s very exciting, I don’t get out much!) http://bbc.co.uk/i/tl5b3/

Needless to say, the office is in chaos again, the computer firewall issues remain and to add to the excitement we have had a new phone system installed, well nearly installed. With assurances that it was a two day job and the lines would only be down for half an hour we thought it was going to be easy, especially as I wasn’t involved with the installation, it was done by professionals! They started on Tuesday and I’m sat now here on Saturday, still sharing my limited desk space with the computer screen and the fax, as the job is still not finished. All the kit is now in position but they can’t get the programming right, so at the moment all the phones and extensions work, but we have no messaging service, our separate internet number doesn’t work and the fax won’t send out through the fax machine (it’s ok sending out via the computer and receiving is ok). The promises of better, cheaper and easy are all a distant memory. So if you call and there is no reply please try again later, the messaging/answer phone stuff will be back but not for a day or two.

I call console myself by admiring my potentially valuable rock I brought back from Cornwall. Unfortunately I have missed the boat on cashing in on it’s value by about 5,000 years, as it is a chunk of Gabbro rock from the Lizzard Peninsular. It was prized in ancient cultures as the best cooking stone. They used to cook their food in pottery vessels (before metal was widely used) which couldn’t stand the heat of the open fire, so they heated stones in the fire then dropped them in the pot. Other rocks would shatter after a very short time potentially breaking the pot or at least making the meal a bit gritty, but gabbro lasted ages. Apparently you can boil a pot of water in about 30 seconds so it’s quicker than the kettle! It is only found in the UK on the Lizzard and in Skye, but it was traded all over the country and sometimes incorporated into clay to improve heating properties of pots. It is still quarried today as a road-stone. We made a special trip to this beach to collect it, how sad are we? It’s funny but we hardly saw another soul on our trips out.

Eco news

A letter in the local paper stood out today saying that Lloyds are predicting oil supplies to fall behind global demand bu 2013. Oops, that’s going to be exciting. Having spoken to a Shell employee a short while ago he was saying how things were starting to get a lot more difficult with oil extraction, the problems were on two fronts, more extreme environments to extract from (eg very deep sea sites) and more extreme political locations for drilling.

We are looking at all sorts of options for the house now, reducing electric consumption, upgrading the insulation and installing a wood burner to reduce the oil consumption will be a start.

Bat survey results are in and have been forwarded to the planning dept. Results were perfect for the turbine planning but not so good for the levels of bats in the area. Only one common little one detected foraging down by the nursery not up on the turbine site. All looking good for the planning application now with everything in place although by the time the ecology report is updated with the bat survey info it isn’t expected to go to the planning committee until October!

This year’s nursery electric consumption is now down by 22.51% (at end of July).

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