The welcome swallows that nest in our shed have returned and we saw the first bumble bees in months. These sightings make us happy. Unfortunately we can’t pick our visitors and the moths are also returning, with the first eggs spotted (and squashed) on kale seedlings. But there are plenty of reasons to smile in springtime, including the blossoms multiplying on the fruit trees, implying that Christie’s learning-by-doing pruning was not a disaster. The weather has covered all seasons over the past three weeks, with a record-breaking 26-degree day in August as well as a day with 35mm of rain and week of wind with gusts exceeding 100km/hr at their scariest. Happily, the hessian windbreak has passed these tests with flying colours!

We’ve been enthusiastically sowing seeds into trays and the ground as we try to scale up so that we’re ready for November. We think we have the beginnings of a system to get the “base” of the weekly harvest right, sowing a harvest’s worth (with a buffer) of radish, lettuce, carrots, beetroot and spring onions each week. It’s clear that some of the vegetables we had planned for our first November boxes won’t be ready in time so we’ve been planting faster growing crops like pak choy, kohlrabi and mustard greens to try to make up some time. The return of the bees means that broad beans are a possibility. We’ve also been transplanting some seedlings we started early. However, the cleverness of raising snow peas in trays where mice couldn’t snack on them was completely undone by transplanting them just before four days of strong winds. They’re looking battered and bruised and we won’t do that again!

Harvests have been small while we wait for the spring crops to start. Unfortunately our winter experiment with carrots in the tunnel did not quite work – the carrots didn’t grow as big as we hoped. But they’re certainly edible, if not sellable, so we’re all enjoying them. Ebbi is especially pleased about this and Christie’s carrot top pesto is also of consolation. We’re still figuring out how to grow radish reliably. Some grow out of the ground instead of into it or don’t develop a nice bulb. It’s still a mystery but we’re hoping to crack the case. Growing lettuce under fleece has been a great step as they’re protected from the wind and rain, just as they are in the tunnel. The other proud moment was when Alex took the side off the compost bay to unveil his winter work: a large amount of very dark compost. Needless to say, he was extremely pleased with himself, though the worms deserve some credit too!