Costa del Fen

Happiest when planting cabbages

Everyone topped up their farm tans this time round at CropShare as the sun was out and definitely had a hat on. CropSharers planted out crops for autumn and winter harvest, like cabbages and lettuce on the tractor-mounted planter.

Sunny fields!

Concentrating too much to pose for a photo

Farmer Paul adjusting the planting machine

Of course the tropical weather meant that anything going in the ground needed a good slosh of water to keep it green and upright. Go CropSharers Go!

Water- the stuff of life.

We just love watering cans

We also hoed all the different kinds of squash plants we planted before.

Hoeing with style

Good lookin courgette!

Too cool for CropShare

Impressive squashes!

Hoeing squashes

The plants are loving the sun and really going for it!

Courgette plant growing away really well

BEES! We had another bee swarm delivery from CropSharer Dave, this time they travelled in style by bike trailer! Thanks Dave!

How the latest batch of bees arrived on farm today!

Dave the Bee Man!

Hive now full of bees 🙂

The hive is up one field from the orchard and next to the broad beans where they can hopefully get busy doing some pollination for us! There’s plenty of wild forage around the farm to keep them buzzing too – we’ll be doing a plant life survey of the farm soon this year so stay tuned for that on the blog if you’re a plant geek like me.

CropShare gang at work today

Lettuces are looking great today and we gave the successional plantings done by CropSharers a good weeding.

Look at them grow…

However for every success story… The Brussels sprouts have been badly damaged by pigeons having a cheeky nibble this year.

Brussel sprout plant- slightly pigeon-pecked

Some worse than others…this poor plant has hardly any leaf left – take him to sprout A&E…

Poor brussel sprout plant hammered by pigeons 🙁

Obviously this really damages the plants as they loose resources and leaf area with which they could be photosynthesising. They will spring back, and the worst hit ones are now protected by bird-proof mesh so they get a chance to re-grow. At least Farmer Paul can still laugh about it…

We can laugh about it now but at the time it was terrible

As pigeons forage by sight we have a new theory that needs testing… will they leave darker leaved crops alone as they are less easy to pick out against background of soil? Oi! Pigeon! Leave our crops alone!

Spot the red-leaved lettuce

More tasty red leaves

Great CropShare lunch as ever! Time for eating, chatting, relaxing…

Lunchtime in the sun

On da farm

It’s ferret tiiiime!

A big slice for me please!

Everyone else was inside getting pudding I think… where is everyone?

Ah they were reclining in the shade.

Also had time for a bit of farm gymnastics!

Go Farmer Doreen Go!

I’m flying!

We had a new CropSharer today- Khalid who is really intersted in organics and was interviewing CropSharers in the fields to prepare for an article. Hopefully we’ll be able to feature that on our blog!