Spring Newsletter from The Really Wild Bird Food Company, here at Street End Farm
Well, who can believe that it is May already and it is so cold I have put my socks back on!
A reminder for you............
Many of you may well remember our news last summer when we were visited by Tiger Aspect film crew and Alan Titchmarsh, to film for a four part documentary about the Great British Seasons. I promised to let you know when the series was starting. Well, it begins on ITV on Sunday evening 9th May and kicks off with Spring. We think our sunflowers and farm will feature in the Summer programme, however we are expecting the 4 hours of filming to condense down to a small glimpse! Although we have made the front cover of the DVD!! Still it was exciting at the time and you may get a glimpse of where your bird seed originates from!
Helping our Local Primary School
I had great fun with our local primary school in Upham recently. The school is a small village school with only 98 children and as part of their ambition to achieve 'Green Flag' status, the school was keen to improve biodiversity within their school grounds. The 'Green (Eco) Team' invited me to help them so we donated a bird table, a range of bird feeders and bird foods, some fat products, some logs etc and I attended one of the school assemblies to talk to the children about the importance of supporting garden birds and other wildlife, and about simple things they could do at home in their own gardens to help. Most of them loved the idea of not having to mow the lawn!
The project coincided with the Big Garden Birdwatch and the children took turns counting the species of birds which appeared in the school grounds. The results were amazing! Within one week of starting to feed, they had an incredible number of birds, including bullfinches and a pair of nuthatches! Which all added to the excitiement and fired up their enthusiasm. Now there are home-made bird feeders hanging all over the school grounds and the childen are much more aware of the birdlife which is co-existing with them.
Spring on Street End Farm
This is a really busy time for Richard on the farm since he has to prepare the ground for most of the crops which are ingredients in our wild bird seed. At school we were always reminded of the 6Ps Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance and it is very true when it comes to our bird seed crops! This year Richard will be planting plain canary seed, red millet, white millet, naked oats and buckwheat as well as a large acreage of sunflowers. Each one of these crops requires different planting conditions to maximise the chances of a good yield and healthy seed. So Richard spends hours and hours cultivating the ground before the seed beds are just right for the seed. Currently it is still a bit cold to start sowing but we hope to get underway in the next couple of weeks and within two to three months the farm will be ablaze with all these crops!
We have a lovely wood on the farm which we actively manage and I thought you would like to see a picture taken last week of the bluebells and a Roe Deer- it really is a beautiful time of year!
Photo courtesy of Stephen Baldwin |
Look out for my next news letter which will have details of some special offers for you and your garden birds during the busy fledgling season and a competiton too! And while we are thinking about fledgelings we have a great new offer on dried mealworms. Buy 500g for only £10 (normally £14.95) or Buy 1kg pack for only £18 (normally £20)
Enjoy your birds
Best wishes
www.streetendfeeds.co.uk |
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