1st June

 Last week we had two surprises one in the tractor and one in the planter.

The First was a bird’s nest at the back of the tractor, it has four eggs in it.

A couple of years ago I had a squeak coming from the back of the tractor, I spend days trying to find out wat the problem was, eventually I climbed up the back of the tractor, and right under the cab was a nest with four chicks in it, we had thought it was funny that a oyster catcher had been flying around with us every day and chirping away, well she is back again with another four eggs.

Then we seen a Blue tit, constantly going into a wee space at the top of the planter, and in here she is sitting on a nest, we don’t know how many eggs she has yet, she has always been sitting on her nest every time we check.

Erin and Calum are fascinated by this, and now they will see them grow from an egg into flying little birds over the next few weeks.

I have put photos on the Facebook page, and we will keep you up to date on how they are doing.

Last Friday and Saturday we had a couple of days of stormy weather, rain which we needed and 50 mph winds and gusts that were stronger.

The rain we were really needing, but the winds I could really do without.

All Saturday I was watching the tunnels and was taping up any tears that I seen appearing.

Out in the field I was going around with a spade and putting more earth onto any part of the fleece that was trying to blow away.

Everything was ok when I left at 7pm, and the winds had died down a wee bit.

But when I went out on Sunday morning, we had one tunnel with no polythene left, and Fleece of off the courgettes, and one fleece which was covering some of the cabbages ripped to shreds.

The courgettes faired the worst and I think we might have lost a couple of hundred plants; we had planted one thousand four hundred, but luckily all the other plants are ok.

It’s funny weather we have in Scotland from that wind and rain and only 8 degrees, we ended the week with temperatures rising every day to finally hitting 29 and zero wind, exactly a week after the storms.

Last week we finally got the last of the leeks planted and started bed weeding.

All we have left to plant this week is the Pumpkins.

As soon as the Pumpkins are in, all we will be doing is harvesting first thing, then out in the field it’s brush weeding and bed weeding, for months.

We do get a break from that with little bits of blocking seeds for re planting the tunnels throughout the season, as soon as a bed is cut, we re plant right away.