Dear All,
It has been Harvest Festival this weekend with a supper and talk on Saturday and guest speaker this morning. The talk on Saturday was by John Marshall the local rep. of “Send a Cow”. The organisation was started by UK farmers and has been going for 20 years currently working in seven African countries. Cows are donated to individual families and the first calf is passed as a gift to another family. There is a back up for vet services and advice on organic growing based on the dung and urine collected from the cows. I had heard that donating animals to Africa was not a good idea because of the overgrazing and erosion they cause but these are all zero grazed and the scheme appears to work very well.
Harvest Display plus cow
One of our former Covenanters was the guest this am in the form of Anita Darashah, she is now working for the Billy Graham organisation and gave a very confident (and emotional) presentation.
On Wednesday we hired the trailer for winter cricket pitch maintenance from March; this contains a scarifier, aerator, soil spreader and lute. We learnt from last years experiences and purchased some Ongar loam recommended for topping up and levelling the square. I kept the soil collected from the scarifier and had enough to fill my new raised bed in which I hope to grow summer raspberries, thus avoiding Phytoptera foot rot which is common in Over.
We completed the Icknield Way on Thursday our 11th stage, I think we did about 120 miles from Ivanhoe near Dunstable to Hopton near Thetford, as we deviate to end at a pub if possible.
Icknield Way
For those who know Chris & Susan Kean their third child was born this week, Isaac Toby Tomati Kean (Tomati is Maori for Thomas and they have an obsession with NZ).
The garden continues to perform well and I harvested my first ever successful peanut yesterday, for those that don’t know the flowers are pollinated above ground the spiral downwards into the soil and develop like potatoes.
Over (rated?) Peanuts
Peanuts growing between Aubergine and Sweet Potatoes
Aubergine
We hope to go to Northumberland next Saturday for a week so you are more likely to receive a postcard than a letter or blog.
Love
Mike & Kate
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