Newsletter

Welcome to our summer newsletter! Firstly, I must apologise for the delay in getting this newsletter out to you. For the last month I have been hard at work painting the barns on the farm. It has been quite a few years since they were last done and the farmyard was looking a bit neglected. We are hoping to host some evening farm walks for our customers next summer – so this has been a big incentive to smarten the farmyard up. The hot weather has been ideal for painting (not so ideal for the workers!) and the barns, now sporting ‘British Racing Green’ look much better. I think I now have enough experience to add ‘spray –gun operator’ to my c.v.

Problematic Pigeons
As I sit and write this, Richard is harvesting the wheat. We are quite glad to see that we actually have some wheat left! For the last couple of months we have seen more pigeons than ever before descending on the wheat. We think that due to the prolonged hot dry weather they were desperately thirsty and were seeking out the moisture in the non-ripe wheat ears. We are now harvesting it at a moisture content of 13% (which is very dry) and, not surprisingly, they have moved on………

Stunning Sunflowers
Our sunflowers are looking fantastic and have really benefited from an application of boron during their ‘growth spurt’ at the beginning of July. Boron is one of the six essential trace elements required by plants. Sunflowers are particularly susceptible to low soil boron concentrations which, this year, were likely to be caused by the very dry conditions on our chalky soil. Interestingly, boron is thought to increase nectar production by flowers- which attracts pollinating insects –which is just what we are trying to encourage on the farm. And here are a couple of pictures I took yesterday

Two bees working on a sunflower

Naked Oats
We have grown our own naked oats this year. They have yielded very well – but gosh- were they dusty to combine! Naked oats differ from traditional oats in that they do not have the fibrous outer husk (hence the term ‘naked’). This means they are more digestible and are higher energy than traditional oats. Our naked oats are included in many of our wild bird seed mixes – particularly the higher energy mixes -so your wild birds get more energy from less volume of food. Hypothetically – they should need to eat less – but feeders still seem to empty at an alarming rate!

Read on for details of our Special offer and Summer Competition………………

Special Offer On Peanuts
Why not take advantage of this great offer and stock up on peanuts for the winter months……

Summer Competition

And finally -why not try our summer competition? You could win a 20kg bag of our Tidy Garden Mix- a high energy mix which will leave no messy husks and sprouting seeds – birds love it and it really does reduce the mess left around bird feeders and tables.

All you have to do is identify the plants in the following 4 photos –and email us back the answers. All 4 plants produce seeds/grains which are used in our mixes. All correct entries will be entered into a draw and the winner will receive 20kg Tidy Garden Mix. Closing date for entries is 30th September. Good Luck!!

Photograph 1		Photograph 2
Photograph 3		Photograph 4

Best Wishes and enjoy your birds
Lesley