Well we seem to have come to the end of our crisis for now, thankfully. Dad is back at home, I took him home last weekend, and he seems fine, albeit rather weak. He's just going to relax and regain his strength over the winter and come out fighting a little bit fitter next spring. Phew!
Onto to smallholding matters again for me -
One crop that always does well here is potatoes. I say it does well, but only because we are vigilant about their watering through the summer as they are definitely our winter staple.
The ground is double dug in February/March and heavily manured with rotted stable manure. Usually three long trenches are hand dug to accommodate one bag of second earlies and one bag of main-crop. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the second earlies we had this year, but the main-crop is Cara - a firm favourite of ours as it does so well on our light, sandy soil.
Michael spent the day last Sunday digging up all the main-crop; I had used the second earlies before this straight from the ground. They were OK, a red skinned variety that suffered a bit with scab, and therefore not good enough to sell, but fine for us to use.
The main-crop are excellent. A good variety of sizes with some really big ones in there two. Out of one bag of seed potatoes Michael has harvested five paper sacks full (the 25Kg size). We are chuffed to bits. Hopefully that will mean we won't have to buy any this winter and they will see us through until next spring when the new potatoes that we always grow in the polytunnel will be ready, but more on that topic in the new year.
Stats today -
Eggs produced = 4
Sales - Nil
Expenses - Nil
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