I can’t believe it’s October already, that’s the end of another financial year, so lots of stock taking to do this week and hopefully the figures will come out ok. There are nearly always surprises when they are sorted out, but not usually nice ones!
This year is looking ok so far which is a relief as it has been such a struggle over the past few years to make sense of it all. Things are looking much more together now as we get our ranges and priorities sorted out and the current combination of great staff, customers and stock, as well as continuing positive business developments are making 2011 look even more exciting. Luckily we all get more out of this than major financial gain but with some cash return things are certainly easier.
A touch autumnal last week and next week looks the same, at least the reservoirs around the country will get a good topping up. I had a bit of a water related week with a trip to Lowaters Nursery to an irrigation orientated open day. They have installed a rainfall harvesting system to reduce their reliance on the increasingly expensive mains water supply and ensure future supplies as demand increases. It was very impressive with a range of collection ditches and ponds supplying a new large reservoir. The reservoir water was filtered through a series of iris beds to remove contaminants before going through a fine particle filter and returning to the new main nursery irrigation tank. They had researched the system very well (with some funding help) and have constructed a very sustainable and cost effective solution for their situation. Water has been cheap and freely available in most areas for a long time but as prices rise and continuous uninterrupted supplies possibly coming under threat in the future, it is something that many nurseries like us who currently rely on mains supply will need to address. The exciting bit was that the payback period was 4 years even without grant funding, which not only makes it sustainable but a great investment. Unfortunately it is yet another ‘jam tomorrow’ project, but does show the importance of finding enough funds to invest in the future and how this does help keep future costs down. Unfortunately there were probably only a dozen nurseries represented there and many of those were the inspiration behind a lot of the systems incorporated in the Lowaters project. Buffet lunch was great too!
Got the propagation tunnel finished on Friday after getting the double sheet attached the week before. It needs to be well sealed so that we can inflate it for the winter heating period. We don’t heat much until late Winter, but any heat we can conserve helps and running a weeny fan to inflate the double cover works brilliantly. Although it costs more for two skins they effectively protect each other so last quite a bit longer and the running costs of the fan are minimal.
Eco news
Spent most evenings this week raking the loose insulation in the loft. I’ll be back up there this afternoon to finish it off, it has recovered from 3 or 4 cm in depth to a nice fluffy 7 or 8 cm, so I will just need to top it up slightly to the rafter tops and we are there. Next is having a go at fitting some insulation under our suspended wooden floors. When the wind blows hard the carpet has been seen to rise off the floor which is not just inefficient heat retention but does bring on a feeling of motion sickness and that isn’t something you expect while watching telly!
Electric consumption on nursery down by 23.37% for 2010 up to the end of September.
Water consumption down 15.6%.
Nature notes
Last of the summer sights this week with a large flock (100+) of house martins feeding over the nursery. Red Kite spotted over the nursery last week.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Showing posts with label irrigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label irrigation. Show all posts
Monday, 4 October 2010
Monday, 26 July 2010
Another week slips by and it’s the end of July already, how did that happen? I think it’s something to do with how the weeks fill up with so much stuff. This week we had a big compost delivery, a container of hairy pots to unload and store, two work experience girls on their final week, two days of birthday cake coffee breaks, harvest starting on the farm, several orders, lots of potting, irrigation installation, setting up a hairy pot stage display at a local village flower show, a bat survey and a computer melt down.
The worst thing in a busy week is getting off to a dodgy start, it’s so difficult to catch up. I had a particularly frustrating IT problem when on Monday morning when I turned on all the computers and none of them would talk to each other. It worked fine when I turned them of late on Sunday night, but no amount of network messing about or turning it all off and on again could sort it out. After hours of messing about, showing one computer to the other so that they could see each other and maybe communicate I tried turning off the firewall software and sure enough that sorted it. McAfee had sent an virus update in the night and it completely stopped all file sharing with the main computer. So despite all my personal insecurities surfacing and blaming myself for the problems, it turned out to be someone else’s fault! Still not fixed despite McAfee’s help but at least we can make things work now if we need to. The joys of mixing high tech stuff and old people!
Eco news
At last the bat survey has been done, The combination of equipment, personnel and weather all came together on Wednesday night and an overnight survey was completed. A very well informed young chap turned up at 8.30 in the evening to set it all up and do a bit of a hand held, walk-about survey. We heard him slip away (in his top of the range Volvo 4-wheel drive) at about 11.30, so he had done a good shift. We caught up with him the next morning when he came back to collect the recorded over-night data and dismantle his two tall masts to see what he had discovered. He only detected one bat with his hand-held kit and that was down behind our house, where I said I regularly see one feeding, but had heard nothing up by the turbine sites. What the microphones will have recorded from the masts we won’t know until the man who runs the software that reads the recordings, comes back from holiday in two or three weeks. So another likely delay there. One day it will all come together!
Don't forget to do your bit. Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
The worst thing in a busy week is getting off to a dodgy start, it’s so difficult to catch up. I had a particularly frustrating IT problem when on Monday morning when I turned on all the computers and none of them would talk to each other. It worked fine when I turned them of late on Sunday night, but no amount of network messing about or turning it all off and on again could sort it out. After hours of messing about, showing one computer to the other so that they could see each other and maybe communicate I tried turning off the firewall software and sure enough that sorted it. McAfee had sent an virus update in the night and it completely stopped all file sharing with the main computer. So despite all my personal insecurities surfacing and blaming myself for the problems, it turned out to be someone else’s fault! Still not fixed despite McAfee’s help but at least we can make things work now if we need to. The joys of mixing high tech stuff and old people!
Eco news
At last the bat survey has been done, The combination of equipment, personnel and weather all came together on Wednesday night and an overnight survey was completed. A very well informed young chap turned up at 8.30 in the evening to set it all up and do a bit of a hand held, walk-about survey. We heard him slip away (in his top of the range Volvo 4-wheel drive) at about 11.30, so he had done a good shift. We caught up with him the next morning when he came back to collect the recorded over-night data and dismantle his two tall masts to see what he had discovered. He only detected one bat with his hand-held kit and that was down behind our house, where I said I regularly see one feeding, but had heard nothing up by the turbine sites. What the microphones will have recorded from the masts we won’t know until the man who runs the software that reads the recordings, comes back from holiday in two or three weeks. So another likely delay there. One day it will all come together!
Don't forget to do your bit. Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Nearly the end of June already, how did that happen?
Busy as usual, but a slight lull in madness has allowed a bit of development planning to take shape as we try and think of more ways to do it all better for the coming season. The wind turbine project seems to have developed it’s own momentum and progressing along it’s slow pathway to hopefully it’s eventual erection.
We are now looking at pushing along other projects big and small. Perhaps some replacement hose to replace the old multi-repaired ones that are past their best and super frustrating when they continually catch on things as you drag them about, usually just as you have got near the far end of the tunnel and have to turn off and walk all the way back to release! A couple of new small sprayers to bring the equipment up to date and make the whole job easier. Then we have a collection of irrigation projects to start ranging from a new storage tank and pump, to installing some new application kit. We are going to try and introduce more wet/dry cycles into the plant production process in an effort to toughen the plants up, reduce the growth of liverwort and moss on the compost surface and reduce water and labour use. We are also looking at starting to experiment with the installation of some of the infrastructure to harvest the rainfall to reduce mains water use, trialling tunnel guttering and drainage channels etc. Although we can’t put in a large reservoir at the moment to store all the overwinter rains, we can put in a smaller storage tank and adopt a ‘use it up as we go’ system where we use up any rainfall we get during the 8 irrigating months of the year, to dilute mains use. In theory we could reduce mains use by at least 50% at a relatively low cost.
Unfortunately this is the usual story of jam tomorrow! Lots of spending and work to put it all in place, with the promise of an easier life in future. One day. Trouble is, it’s so easy to get carried away with all this nursery shopping ‘cos it seems such a good idea at the time.
Now my 'old gits moan off the week' goes to our nearest village parish council and their objection letter to our turbine project. Now I know it’s not everyone’s idea of good countryside development which is fair enough, but they have really gone to town, bringing to light a list of objections most of which are irrelevant on the planning issue and others I took personal offense at. They complained about a lot of stuff one of which was that their questions had not been satisfactorily answered and there was not ‘proper’ consultation. I couldn’t have made ourselves more open to queries and info, they had months to ask questions and visit the site (one visitor) or arrange to go and see a similar installation. They also suggest that the comments letters are mostly from non locals and all have a suspiciously similar content (not many objections from local individuals), they really are cheeky monkeys. If you want a look it’s on page 6 of the comments page;
http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/PlanningWeb/Results.aspx?ID=10%2f00895%2fFUL&tab=0
As usual we will be donating a collection of plants to the Sparsholt fete at the weekend, only the council objected, not everyone in the village, and I’m not bitter!
Dragonflies and damsel flies now appearing over the ponds. A stunning blue Broad-bodied Chaser got trapped in one of the tunnels during the week but I managed to rescue it with a plastic shovel! I tried to ‘push’ it out and it simply landed on the orange blade and I carried it out 150ft to the open. The easiest ‘rescue’ I’ve ever done!
Don't forget to do your bit. Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Busy as usual, but a slight lull in madness has allowed a bit of development planning to take shape as we try and think of more ways to do it all better for the coming season. The wind turbine project seems to have developed it’s own momentum and progressing along it’s slow pathway to hopefully it’s eventual erection.
We are now looking at pushing along other projects big and small. Perhaps some replacement hose to replace the old multi-repaired ones that are past their best and super frustrating when they continually catch on things as you drag them about, usually just as you have got near the far end of the tunnel and have to turn off and walk all the way back to release! A couple of new small sprayers to bring the equipment up to date and make the whole job easier. Then we have a collection of irrigation projects to start ranging from a new storage tank and pump, to installing some new application kit. We are going to try and introduce more wet/dry cycles into the plant production process in an effort to toughen the plants up, reduce the growth of liverwort and moss on the compost surface and reduce water and labour use. We are also looking at starting to experiment with the installation of some of the infrastructure to harvest the rainfall to reduce mains water use, trialling tunnel guttering and drainage channels etc. Although we can’t put in a large reservoir at the moment to store all the overwinter rains, we can put in a smaller storage tank and adopt a ‘use it up as we go’ system where we use up any rainfall we get during the 8 irrigating months of the year, to dilute mains use. In theory we could reduce mains use by at least 50% at a relatively low cost.
Unfortunately this is the usual story of jam tomorrow! Lots of spending and work to put it all in place, with the promise of an easier life in future. One day. Trouble is, it’s so easy to get carried away with all this nursery shopping ‘cos it seems such a good idea at the time.
Now my 'old gits moan off the week' goes to our nearest village parish council and their objection letter to our turbine project. Now I know it’s not everyone’s idea of good countryside development which is fair enough, but they have really gone to town, bringing to light a list of objections most of which are irrelevant on the planning issue and others I took personal offense at. They complained about a lot of stuff one of which was that their questions had not been satisfactorily answered and there was not ‘proper’ consultation. I couldn’t have made ourselves more open to queries and info, they had months to ask questions and visit the site (one visitor) or arrange to go and see a similar installation. They also suggest that the comments letters are mostly from non locals and all have a suspiciously similar content (not many objections from local individuals), they really are cheeky monkeys. If you want a look it’s on page 6 of the comments page;
http://planningapplications.winchester.gov.uk/PlanningWeb/Results.aspx?ID=10%2f00895%2fFUL&tab=0
As usual we will be donating a collection of plants to the Sparsholt fete at the weekend, only the council objected, not everyone in the village, and I’m not bitter!
Dragonflies and damsel flies now appearing over the ponds. A stunning blue Broad-bodied Chaser got trapped in one of the tunnels during the week but I managed to rescue it with a plastic shovel! I tried to ‘push’ it out and it simply landed on the orange blade and I carried it out 150ft to the open. The easiest ‘rescue’ I’ve ever done!
Don't forget to do your bit. Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)