daytime

Sunday, 29 September 2019

29th September 2019

Dear All,

Autumn seems to have arrived this week with Harvest Festival, Gransden Show, Cricket pitch maintenance and a trip to Wisley.

I had a judging day at Wisley on Tuesday and it was not a great journey. Kate came with me to share the driving and the journey down featured heavy rain, clouds of spray and a couple of decent traffic jams so took 3 hours 15 minutes. We were assessing Fennel and Spring sown Onion trials. The fennel was easy as some had bolted and others hadn’t but 30 onion varieties took more sorting out.

Fennel Rondo

Onion trial

Wednesday was End of Season Maintenance day for the cricket square. Since we have increased the size to 7 strips it has become a larger job to aerate, scarify, fertilize, reseed, and add 10 bags of Ongar loam per strip and level. Intermittent rain made it more difficult than usual, but as we hire the equipment for a day we had to press on.

Spreading loam

Thursday’s walk was the first sticky underfoot outing of the season but it stayed fine beginning at Howlett End south of Saffron Walden. After I took Jim Burr to Biggleswade to collect extra vegetables for the harvest decorations.

Wimbish Green

Inquisitive observers

We had Arthur and Grace again on Friday and Arthur was struggling with a rattling chest. Later that night he ended up in Addenbrookes again and was still there last night having had antibiotics, oxygen and a puffer.

Yesterday was Gransden Show – a small agricultural show that has survived. It is the first time we have been and we were very impressed. There was a large attendance and a good number of sheep, horses, cattle and pigs being judged as well as fruit, vegetables, flowers and cooking on display.