On the Smallholding | July
July has been a month of keeping on top of things. With the heatwave showing no signs of letting up, that's been no small feat.
New arrivals
Three ducks have joined the smallholding. They are, as yet, unnamed. Suggestions welcome 🦆
A first for Pontybat Farm
We ran our very first Build a Bug Hotel experience this month, and the family who came declared it their best experience with us yet. That's a wonderful thing to hear, and a very promising start for a brand new addition to what we offer here.
The harvest
July has been surprisingly productive on the harvesting front, despite the heat.
2.3kg of rhubarb came in, which has been turned into rhubarb and ginger conserve - enough to make the rhubarb, ginger and orange fudge next spring, with one jar spare for Gwilym's toast. The raspberries that the birds and Holly hadn't already got to have been picked, the wayward canes outside the fruit cage cut back, and the remainder split between raspberry liqueur and the freezer. And 1.5kg of blackcurrants yielded blackcurrant liqueur, a baked cheesecake, and a first attempt at crème de cassis.
There may be a theme developing here.
The rhubarb, raspberry and blackcurrant liqueurs are earmarked for Christmas presents, if they last that long!
On the pond
The bottom pond has dried up completely in the heat, and we've been finding frogs turning up near the house in the evenings, desperately looking for water. We've been splashing some around in the undergrowth when we water at night, which seems to help. Hopefully the newts have made their own way up to the top pond.
Around the smallholding
The flower and foliage seeds sown for the back garden last month - over a thousand of them - have, sadly, not produced a single seedling. Not one. I did chance my luck by sowing them so late. This'll teach me to think I know better than the back of the seed packet!
A green fence has gone up around the boundary of the yard, and the storage signs are now up on the road. Worth mentioning that this isn't our doing, as there has been some confusion. It's for Gordon, the new owner of the big barn. We're just the neighbours.
And there's something new in the pipeline for autumn. Flower and foliage bushes are been planted in readiness. More details coming soon 👀
The numbers
It wouldn't feel right not to mention what keeping on top of a smallholding in a heatwave actually looks like. This month: 20 hours watering, 6.5 hours strimming, 4 hours on harvesting, deadheading and planting, 3 hours spraying, and 2.5 hours hoeing.
Twenty hours of watering. In a month 🤯
Until next month,
Annabelle x