Alluims and Stallions
October has bounded around again and this means only one thing....Time to plant out your Elephant Garlic seed! This year was our first year growing this type of garlic and we were very pleased with the results considering we were late planting it due to being uprooted ourselves. This season we have made sure everything (ourselves included) were in the right place at the right time. Our new soil at the new patch is also absolutley amazing and have never seen so many worms in the soil, literally like spaghetti!
Our Elephant Garlic seed delivered
We also supplied our favorite local restaurant No.9 with it and wayne created a fabulous lamb dish with a elephant garlic puree which relly show cased it.
No.9 Church Street Stratford Upon Avon which we are supplying.
www.no9churchst.com
During our little break we had the opportunity to have a little walk around our town and had a look at the competitons baskets towards the end of the season, as a new business in Stratford this year we had the epic task of being the new guys on the block. We visited a lot of local businesses in the town and they were obviously a bit dubious due to it being new and a little bit different but we were delighted that so many were so receptive to our ideas and new business. We have had so many lovely pictures, phone calls and emails sent to us all praising our baskets and flower displays and for our first season i dont think you can say fairer than that!
As you may have read our new patch is actually just outside Mickleton and we have been looking for an excuse to move out to somewhere in the country for ages so we think it would be good to take the plunge in 2013 and make the move. We were very lucky to go and stay out there for the whole week living amongst sheep,pheasants and everything else furry. Not quite the relaxing week i was expecting (visions of walks through the estate ect) as we looked after x2 ex show jumping horses, x25 odd chickens, x12 chicks, x2 Guinea fowl chicks and x2 Bavarian bloodhounds. By the time everybody had had their breakfast there was not a lot of time for mine but i must say i really miss it being back at home now. Neither myself or Lydia have had any experience with livestock and were totally thrown in at the deep end, but the good thing with that is that you learn to swim very quickly, that or you drown! So still breathing and not getting too wet i must say im rather proud of ourselves for doing all that and feel really confident about a lot more things than i did the week previous, plus i loved feeling like Sylvester Stallone in the film Rocky where he chases the chickens for his training, jesus those things are hard to catch!
Some of our chickens for the week, (apparantly they love to just fly straight at your face and then leg it!) *Again.... not told about this
Baby chicks about 4 days old at this point
Guinea Fowl chicks about 4 minutes old in the incubator!
And the chickens even started laying whilst we were there so added bonus of fresh eggs :)
This is Eva one of the Bavarian Bloodhounds, what a gorgeous pooch but god is he strong!
Hendrix catching up on a bit of me time in front of the fire
Little and Large (i think Hendrix may have had an inferiority complex the whole week, best buds though
Just some of the views of the beautiful Burnt Norton Estate which we were lucky enough to call home for the week
Signing off for another few weeks as we have many many projects coming up at raspberry corner including, ploughing up the raspberry field, renovating the farm shop and planting out lots and lots of beautiful vegetables! i shall leave you with one last thought, enjoy x
