It’s now October on the farm, and as always, the weather continues to be a challenge…. We’ve had some rain, but some hot weather too (is this what they call an Indian Summer?) meaning that our reservoir levels are still low. We’re praying for some rain over the next few months! The blue pipe in the image below is underwater when the reservoir is full!
Even so, we're delighted to see that we're still getting great strawberries! The plants are starting to slow down with their fruit production though, and we believe this will be our last month for picking. Compared to the peak of the season, when the fields were producing exceptional quantities of fruit each day, we're now harvesting less than one fiftieth of that volume as the plants reach the end of their season
But – as always with the circle of life – our Little Scarlets are progressing well for next years crop. Field maintenance has now been completed, the coir bags are being put in place, and we’re making plans to get the plants themselves in place over the next few weeks.
It’s not just about strawberries – our Medlars are approaching readiness, and we’re planning on picking them next month. The medlar is a very curious fruit – it may have been cultivated for as long as 3,000 years, including in Ancient Greek and Roman times, and was particularly useful as one of the few fruits that become edible in winter. It also has a very rude name in medieval England, which we’re not going to repeat here!
It’s been a great month for bird-watching on the farm – we’ve had Heron and Egrets down by our Goldhanger reservoir this month, and we’ve installed new owl and kestrel boxes are both Tiptree and Goldhanger. Still no sign of those pesky owl chicks though – we know they’re there, but they clearly want to keep our Farm Co-ordinator Dan on his toes!
