Morning all,


End of October and a cool blast brings Christmas a bit closer. Good for those seasonal sales if you are into that sort of thing. Mild panic this end as I haven’t got my wood supplies fully sorted yet for this winter and we are off on our short Autumn break towards the end of the week so too much to do before then to get wood ready. Ooops. Luckily we have enough in to get by so no chance of getting too cold too soon and I suppose we could always turn on the central heating.

We have started updating our pest control measures this week. The rabbits, pigeons and mice have had a field day over the last year or two as numbers have built up as the cats age. We have never seen so much pigeon damage as we have had this year, they seem to pick on a few crops and decimate them. The tunnels are open ended which has allowed easy access, but no more. We are wire netting the tunnel ends with the entrance way covered with a small split plastic curtain, cut up from spare tunnel cover bits. The netting is wide enough to allow in the smaller birds which feed on a lot of flies etc but keep the big ones out. It will take a while to fit all this as we have 112 panels to net and 66 curtains to make, but at least we will be making a stand and hopefully eliminating the losses. We are re-rabbit proofing the nursery boundary with some recycled farm gates and a couple of patch repairs to the existing fence, so by Tuesday we hope to be secure again. Then all we need to do
is remove the resident population that lives inside the fence. This all started when we installed the fence 12 years ago, we hemmed in a small population which somehow got bigger. Should have paid more attention in Biology. The one working cat is still knocking off the occasional smaller bunny to bring into the house and consume and yesterday we caught our first adult in our new trap so we hope to win out eventually. Carbon costs a bit high as I had to drive the rabbit a couple of miles away to release it! The mice don’t get off so lightly with 40 snappy traps about to be laid under little lengths of guttering.
As well as having a productive week I had a great day yesterday. The sun was out, we did the holiday grocery shop (the excitement mounts), had a tasty breakfast, went to Alton for a hard fought game of hockey, collected and stacked a load of straw for the donkeys on my return (enough until Christmas) and went to Newbury to see Marcus Bonfanti (young award winning blues musician). Although the concert was brilliant and Caroline got a kiss from Marcus (never washing again) the best bit was the hockey game. A bit of a tough local derby and we only had 10 men, so to win 3-0 was great, especially as I scored the opener with my best goal of the season so far (it was my first!). Even better than that was the second goal which was completely against the run of play. We were under lots of pressure when the ball was cleared to me inside their half, I split the defenders with a diagonal cross field pass for our right winger to run on to, putting him in behind the defence, the ball got returned to me at the top of the circle and I put it in the top left corner past the diving keeper. Quite pleased with that as
you can probably tell. Might retire now as it won’t happen again.

Naked Coir pots

Our pot supplier is now offering you the chance to retail cartons of empty coir pots (10 pots in a carton). The pots are a smaller size than those we use but the pack looks great and I said I would attach his promo flier to our lists for a while. They would make an ideal stocking filler, if a little scratchy. The whole deal is an entirely separate operation from our nursery, not run by us, so please contact Joe if you are interested. His details are on the flier.

Sustainability promo

Had my visit from the bankers from NAT West to see our sustainability efforts last week. I think they just wanted to see how things look in the flesh when you apply sustainability from the core of a business rather than as a tack-on feature. Slightly disappointed with the lack of ambition to change their own organisation, but they seem keen to promote and financially support sustainable projects to their own customers which must be a help.

Sustainability is not all nut cutlets and sandals, this is important stuff that everyone needs to think about, not just for the good of their planet but for the health of their jobs and businesses. Look at the energy cost increases over the last few years and that is in a recession when demand is subdued. What will happen as the population increases, supplies become more difficult to get at and economies start to move again. Then there is all the other stuff associated with population growth and increasing worldwide standards of living . Where are all the raw materials going to come from and the food? Now take a look at the waste we create with our life style. There is no point blaming anyone we just need to start addressing it and do stuff, big and small. These changes don’t all need to be painful, it depends how you approach them. They are challenges, which create opportunities that can be exciting and rewarding. Over to you.

If you need a fax list please let us know, pick it up from the website or alternately send an email address.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries