What a lovely spring day. I just walked past one of the nursery ponds and there was a lot of splashing about as all the frogs took cover, they are very active today in the warm sunshine. I’ve been active too in an exciting 0-0 draw early today in Petersfield. Feeling a bit weak now and very nearly fell asleep in front of the rugby but couldn’t afford the time. It’s a busy day today, lots to fit in with groceries, hockey, availability lists, irrigating, seed sowing and present opening, then later I’ve birthday visitors, turbine inspection and curry, ace! Caroline is looking after me on my big day by disappearing off to see Saints play in another important game still pushing for promotion. Had some lovely presents including the now regular nest-box (I think that’s about six in the last three years, this time it is a very smart sparrow terrace) chocs and beer, and best of all two packs of mixed grill from the fantastic local butchers in Stockbridge.
Had a great day out last Sunday on our over 50’s cup trip to Jersey. Exciting flight with high cross winds making for a lively approach and landing and warranting a round of applause from many on touchdown. I think we were still reliving the plane trip in the first few minutes when we went behind, but we pulled ourselves together and made a good game of it nearly getting it back on several occasions. However it would have been terribly rude of us to win as they had funded most of our trip and looked after us so well, so we were satisfied enough with a good game a nice beer and lunch at the pub. I managed to attract a strip search in airport security on the way out which was a novelty, not something we experience on our trips into Cornwall! I don’t think it was my shifty appearance particularly, just the old man’s back brace I was wearing to hold myself together. Things are building up on the nursery with sales picking up and the potting and pricking out well underway which gets us all in the spring mood.
For anyone visiting the nursery to pick up plants we can now quickly deal with card payments with our new card terminal which means that even I can cope with taking a payment by card. Thankfully I don’t have to remember any pin codes only you do, so I’m much more capable of taking your money than getting out any of my own!
Watch out for 5 planets in the sky over the next night or two, apparently it doesn’t happen often. Check out the Google sky app on a smart-phone to identify what you are seeing.
I’m off to polish up my iron-age cooking stones to impress Brian our visiting archaeologist. Not sure if he will be that excited really but it gives me a buzz when I’ve picked them out of a trench in our field.
Eco News
The wild flower strip we sowed last year as part of the ecological development to compensate for putting up the turbines is looking well established. We will be extending it this spring as it is keeping the willow-herb and bitter-cress weeds at bay and will attract a wider range of predator insects which we hope will help our pest control. We now have our plan set out of predator introductions for the coming season with the first batches going in towards the end of this month when the temperatures get high enough for them to be truly active. Until then we will spot spray any problem outbreaks so that the predators get off to a nice balanced start. This means we need a small pest population for the predators to get stuck into and establish themselves then they can spread successfully and keep on top of things.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Showing posts with label archaeologist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archaeologist. Show all posts
Monday, 12 March 2012
Monday, 23 May 2011
Morning all,
Good to be here, the world didn’t end after all.
Yet another flat tyre started the week but managed to get it to the menders for a replacement valve so it worked out ok in the end. After that things got more exciting as the week went on, culminating in a couple of hours off yesterday to do the supermarket run and have breakfast out!
We had a very welcome splash of rain overnight, but it’s now sunny and very windy so it’s all evaporated again. We have been topping up the puddle in the yard for weeks now to help out the house martins building projects and the water bill is mounting (we do use a bit on the nursery too!) I wouldn’t mind as much if all the wind was pushing our turbines round but all I can think is that all the wind for the year will have been used up by the time they are up and running. I’m not sure yet how much this very dry weather has affected the farm cereal crops, certainly the barley is in ear already which is very early and the hay crops are very poor. Could be another year of hay and straw shortages which is bad news for we donkey fosterers.
On the brighter side the wind turbine project got active again this week with at least some dates being set (see below) and the chicken enterprise has kicked off. We are now proud owners of a chicken run and a small batch of rescued free range chickens. No eggs yet but they are a surprisingly entertaining gang making very pleasant contented chicken noises. We have never kept them before so I could well be wrong on the contented interpretation but it sounds very therapeutic to me. Hot news straight from the horses mouth, or should that be the hens bottom, we have our first egg!
We put in our order for a table of tickets for the local business awards dinner next month. We are in the final of the green award section and selected for the final of the overall business of the year. I’m not sure we press enough of the right buttons or tick the appropriate boxes to win but it is nice to get some local appreciation of our efforts and a good opportunity for the staff to see that at first hand. It is a black tie event, so it will be quite exciting to see how some of them scrub up, smart dressing is not something we see much of on the nursery!
Eco news
This week I have been organising all the different suppliers and installers of the turbines as we received a date for the foundation installation. They are starting on Tuesday 31st May and expect it to take all week for all three to be prepared and concreted in position. Then it’s several weeks for the concrete to cure enough to put the masts up, a date was set for 24th of June but that has already been postponed now until w/c 4th July due to a delay in mast making. There is quite a bit of sorting out to do before then anyway, with cables and poles to come down, trenches dug and cables to come in and be buried, substations to be installed and various electricians sorting out each end. Then there is also associated water works to accompany some trenching. Work starts on Monday with the digger man coming to remove the top and subsoil on the three sites, each 5 meters square. This work needs to be started ahead of the foundation installation so that the archaeologist can check we are not digging up anything ancient and if we do, they can take appropriate action. I now need to go and set up the protective fence around the nearby hedges to prevent damage before all this starts. Tension mounts!
Nature notes
We are getting round to clearing a few tunnels now and it’s great to see the number of frogs and toads hopping about, they must be doing some good. The long native hedge/windbreak we planted 11 years ago is not only doing a great job as a windbreak and natural habitat site but looks fantastic at the moment with waterfalls of dog-rose cascading out.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Good to be here, the world didn’t end after all.
Yet another flat tyre started the week but managed to get it to the menders for a replacement valve so it worked out ok in the end. After that things got more exciting as the week went on, culminating in a couple of hours off yesterday to do the supermarket run and have breakfast out!
We had a very welcome splash of rain overnight, but it’s now sunny and very windy so it’s all evaporated again. We have been topping up the puddle in the yard for weeks now to help out the house martins building projects and the water bill is mounting (we do use a bit on the nursery too!) I wouldn’t mind as much if all the wind was pushing our turbines round but all I can think is that all the wind for the year will have been used up by the time they are up and running. I’m not sure yet how much this very dry weather has affected the farm cereal crops, certainly the barley is in ear already which is very early and the hay crops are very poor. Could be another year of hay and straw shortages which is bad news for we donkey fosterers.
On the brighter side the wind turbine project got active again this week with at least some dates being set (see below) and the chicken enterprise has kicked off. We are now proud owners of a chicken run and a small batch of rescued free range chickens. No eggs yet but they are a surprisingly entertaining gang making very pleasant contented chicken noises. We have never kept them before so I could well be wrong on the contented interpretation but it sounds very therapeutic to me. Hot news straight from the horses mouth, or should that be the hens bottom, we have our first egg!
We put in our order for a table of tickets for the local business awards dinner next month. We are in the final of the green award section and selected for the final of the overall business of the year. I’m not sure we press enough of the right buttons or tick the appropriate boxes to win but it is nice to get some local appreciation of our efforts and a good opportunity for the staff to see that at first hand. It is a black tie event, so it will be quite exciting to see how some of them scrub up, smart dressing is not something we see much of on the nursery!
Eco news
This week I have been organising all the different suppliers and installers of the turbines as we received a date for the foundation installation. They are starting on Tuesday 31st May and expect it to take all week for all three to be prepared and concreted in position. Then it’s several weeks for the concrete to cure enough to put the masts up, a date was set for 24th of June but that has already been postponed now until w/c 4th July due to a delay in mast making. There is quite a bit of sorting out to do before then anyway, with cables and poles to come down, trenches dug and cables to come in and be buried, substations to be installed and various electricians sorting out each end. Then there is also associated water works to accompany some trenching. Work starts on Monday with the digger man coming to remove the top and subsoil on the three sites, each 5 meters square. This work needs to be started ahead of the foundation installation so that the archaeologist can check we are not digging up anything ancient and if we do, they can take appropriate action. I now need to go and set up the protective fence around the nearby hedges to prevent damage before all this starts. Tension mounts!
Nature notes
We are getting round to clearing a few tunnels now and it’s great to see the number of frogs and toads hopping about, they must be doing some good. The long native hedge/windbreak we planted 11 years ago is not only doing a great job as a windbreak and natural habitat site but looks fantastic at the moment with waterfalls of dog-rose cascading out.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)