An update from Ashley

How about them apples!

Bouts of frost over the previous months have left ground foraging furry critters such as rabbits on the search of alternative food and apple trees are a particular favourite due to their thinner bark.

Rabbits don’t stop there though; they will continue to nibble at the living tissue underneath – severely damaging your trees ability to feed itself.

Ash showed us the damage from one of his trees ‘’This damage was done to my Apple tree by rabbits in the last cold spell when the ground was frozen. As you can see the plastic tree guard has degraded in the sun. I have now replaced it, but it could be too late as the bark has been stripped all the way around the trunk.’’

He goes on to warn us – Make sure before the next cold spell all your trees are guarded!

Ready, set, Rosa Rugosa

To those who have seen our beautiful courtyard in the summer you’ll have seen our rosa rugosa shrub hedges blooming with stunning pinks either side of the path. At the farm Ashley has some particularly eager rosa, already coming into leaf.

This is very unusual and about 8 weeks earlier than expected but we are rooting for it!

Bedding the cattle

This group of tenants at the farm were very happy to receive fresh bedding earlier this week.

‘’Bedded the cattle down today, I usually do it twice a week, every week during the winter. Its spreading bales of straw in the sheds which they lie on, the new straw covers up the cow poo they make on a regular basis, it means they stay clean, it’s like having clean sheets twice a week.’’

Anything For a friend

Some great friends of ours just moved house before Christmas, their new house is being built and not yet finished.

They planted a beautiful flowering cherry tree on one of their Son’s birthdays when he was a child.

Obviously they didn’t want to leave behind the tree, so I offered to dig it up and have it at our place until their new garden is ready later this year!