Morning all,

Just a quick one this week as I have to get back to computer mending. My favourite job! How come everything goes so smoothly for months on end then all of a sudden it all goes pear shaped.

We had a great start to the week with getting all this seasons picture labels delivered, bundled up and filed away under our new storage curtain (keeps the light off the elastic bands to prevent perishing and storage baskets from going brittle, as well as keeping things cleaner). We also ‘redesigned’ the waxed card tray inserts which are supposed to slow the drainage from our wooden trays allowing a little more time for the plants to absorb the irrigation or rain water. The original design had only very small gaps in the corners to allow water escape and was performing a bit too well, holding the water too long, especially apparent when last year proved to be a little on the damp side. We are enlarging the drainage outlets in each corner with the highly skilled application of the office guillotine. We have more of less finished resetting out despatch after a major lean management project was done, just a bit of price label organisation and storage to complete and we should be there.

After that I decided to tidy up the computer backup problem we had with the link failing between the computer and the external hard drive. I also tried fitting a small device in the lab growth room which is supposed to send us an email if the temperature goes out of its safe range. All seemed to be going well when it became apparent that something had gone wrong with a lot of the devices connected to our network. Sometimes they would talk to each other and at other times they would not. The computers seemed ok it was all the other stuff. By Friday morning we had no printers working other than the fax, the hands-free dect phones were out of action and the backup refused to find its destination folder. At some point the IP addresses of a lot of the stuff on the network changed and consequently the network path was lost. After spending all Friday and Saturday morning on it we now have everything back except the phones. This morning (Sunday) I found a ridiculously simply fix which allowed the devices to find each other automatically, which they were supposed to be doing anyway. Thank goodness for Google searches coming up with a solution. Not actually sure it has sorted it 100% but fingers crossed. Catherine helped me out on Saturday trying to get things right, she would read out an ‘easy solution’ and within 3 or 4 words a haze came over both of us, it just didn’t make any sense, it was like a foreign language. Just tell us what to do and which buttons to press.

Hopefully I will have time on Monday to do a little preparation for my appearance at Contact 3013 on Thursday. I am part of a panel of growers and compost producers sharing our experiences of peat reduction and peat free composts in a couple of workshops. Unless I write down something I will end up forgetting it all, gone are the days when I could retain more than a couple of facts at a time.

Nice to see the sun out today, and a nip in the air is right for the time of year. Just hoping the cold doesn’t get to bad. We still haven’t put the central heating on yet this winter, the wood burner, aga and insulation have done us proud so far.

The extra insulation on the pipes in the prop tunnel has done well too. We now have to put a heater on when we are working in there! Can’t believe we didn’t do it before.

To take a look at or download our 2013 wholesale catalogue follow this link;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u7wtu2qyspp3p26/herbaceous%26herb%20catalogue%202013%20Dec12%20nopr.pdf

It is also available on the nursery website www.kirtonfarm.co.uk For pricing details please drop me an email.

Nature notes

Owls all over the place this week. Barn owls hunting down the road and a couple of tawny owls calling around the nursery and garden at most evenings.

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