Early harvesting.

Although it is still only the middle of June we already have crops for winter storage.

Another 3lb of Strawberries.

We have had a bumper crop of strawberries and they are  continuing to produce,

 

                                      I have made the first lot of strawberry jam.

8lb of rhubarb, ready for chopping up and freezing.

The rhubarb has been superb this year and I have frozen twelve bags ready for winter desserts, there will probably be more to come. The first early potatoes are just beginning to bloom so we should start harvesting them next week, for some reason the main crop is well in bloom, this could possible be because it was our own seed potatoes, saved from last years crop so acclimatised to our area. We also have an excellent crop of onions and garlic.

Success in growing Garlic at last.

Garlic is one of those things that we have struggled with in the past, even in Spain we failed to grow a good crop. this year I took advice from Michael the organic veg man in the farmers market, success! They look great.
We had already had a good crop of cauliflower although they all came at once, a lot of them got frozen for use later on in the year. Broad beans and spinach are cropping well.  The Blackcurrant and Redcurrant bushes are laden, the blackcurrants already showing colour. Another success are the Gooseberries, again this is a crop that we had had little success with in the past, but here our bushes are full of fruit. Clearly this is a very good growing area.
The pigs are growing well, they love having visitors and know how to play to an audience, they are still clearing the bramble patch for us. They love their food,  mornings they have their cooked breakfast consisting mainly of root veg , potatoes, carrots, beetroot, sometimes there is celery which adds flavour for them, and on occasions asparagus! a handful of rolled barley and a couple of handfuls of pig nuts and they are set for the day. Tea time is probably their favourite meal, normally consisting of lots of fruit plus their nuts and barley. Apples are their favourite closely followed by peaches, grapes and bananas.

Todays donation, plus two sacks of potatoes.

 All this fruit and veg is donated to us by our local fruit and veg shop and a couple of supermarkets, we collect this daily, it is amazing to us just how much fruit and veg is destined for dumping, but our pigs are very grateful. So far they have proved to be very economical to feed.

The Geums give a lovely splash of colour along with the Lupins.

The flower garden is blooming,

the roses are now all out, and once again the air is perfumed.

Plants that I had forgotten I had planted spring up daily, always a nice surprise.

Sweet Rocket, beautiful perfume.

Last week we lost our beautiful cat Sparky. he was run down and killed in our lane by the inconsiderate farmer who owns land at the end of our lane. He uses this lane as a race track, he had already smashed into us last year, writing off our car, he didn't even have the decency to come and tell us that he had run our lovely boy down. Sparky was just a year old and so much fun, the other cats are lost without him, we are heartbroken.

Viburnum, the snowball bush.