Central heating turned off again last week as the weather warms up and the insulation does its thing . The house copes well with the odd beautiful frost like this morning and it looks like it is only cooler for another 24hrs and we will be basking in 17C by the end of the week! What is going on?

Loads of exciting stuff last week, we had a new part time lady, Gillian, start work on Monday which is always fun for all and two of our regular agency staff returned after their winter break. It’s always nice to see regulars coming back for more. The orders have started picking up a bit so that has kept us busy and we installed a bigger trial of the capillary matting trial in one of our prop tunnels. We organised delivery of two more trials of different peat free composts to assess spring potting performance and managed to get the irrigation up and running again after the freeze up.

The new irrigation spray-line air flushing system seems to have worked so far with no split pipes. I had to flush again yesterday ready for the frost and as I have had to water a couple of tunnels today I will have to repeat it again this afternoon. The flushed water goes onto the crop so no waste there, it just needs the air compressor running for a couple of hours to push all the water out, the irrigation programmer opens and shuts all the valves in turn to work round the site so I only need to be here to set it going and turn off the compressor at the end. It’s nice when something goes to plan, it doesn’t happen often!

Other things I squeezed in were attending a local driver awareness course, oops. Got caught doing 35 in a 30 over Christmas. First time for me in 34 years driving, but still naughty. The course was very effective, sensible and practical. It highlighted the fact that we rarely read the highway code after passing our test, we forget stuff over that time and the code and law change. So we were updated on some basics, like if there are 3 or more streetlights you are in a 30 limit unless there are reminder signs advising otherwise and the 2 second rule for keeping your distance behind the vehicle in front (4 seconds in the wet). There were the horror stories of what happens when things go wrong, the Saab convertible that wasn’t one before the driver went to retrieve a text message and ran into a tractor trailer but most impressive of all was the extra damage caused to pedestrians if hit at only slightly high speeds. That few MPH extra does make a huge difference and can result in a changed lives for all concerned if things go badly. Take care, it can happen to anyone, 95% of RTA’s are human error.

On a brighter note last week saw Valentine’s Day come and go, so I hope you remembered. I took Caroline out for a delicious pizza which sounds pretty good for me. Mind you it did involve about 20 others and a skittles game so perhaps not perfect. Still it went down better than the bag of fresh spinach I got her a few years ago, it was organic.

Eco News

At long last we received our first FIT payment this week so we can start paying off the turbines.

I did a little 20 minute presentation to a farming group on Thursday on our turbine project along with a solar installer and an anaerobic digester expert. I think I was the light relief at the end, as my presentation perhaps wasn’t as slick as the pro’s but I did get more laughs! Does that count? Overall the reaction was very positive with the vast majority preferring wind power to the others despite the fact that in this area it is the others that are being installed. Still as long as someone is looking to do something we can move on.

If anyone lives in Hampshire and is short on house insulation check out www.insulatehampshire.co.uk where you can now get free cavity wall insulation and either free or very cheap loft insulation to top up to the minimum requirement of 11.5 inches.

Nature Stuff

There must be an influx of Blackcaps, we now have three in the garden and we have heard of several others locally in the last week or two. No frogspawn yet.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries