11th August

Before we can put the bed weeder away for the year, we still have one job to do.

We still need to get the fleece of off the over winter crops and go through them with the weeding machines, and then once over hand weeding with the bed weeder.

But from Monday right through to Friday we have had high winds every day.

That is not the best weather to be trying to take fleece of off a field.

Hopefully, we will get that done next week.

In the tunnels the cucumbers are producing like mad right now.

The tomatoes are the same and there are loads of vines of tomatoes hanging of off every plant.

But cucumbers only need heat to make them grow and be ready for eating, the tomatoes on the other hand can grow and produce hundreds of tomatoes, but they need the sunshine to ripen them up and turn them red, so many years in the past we have had a great start to the season with plenty heat, which makes them grow and produce huge amounts of tomatoes.

We cannot feed with anything to help them ripen, we need the sunshine and not just a day here and there.

So many times, in the past when it comes to the end of July into August the constant days of sunshine leaves us with tomatoes that get harvested for chutney.

Fingers the sun shines and turns all our tomatoes nice and red.

One bit of sad news this week.

And not a complete surprise.

John our self-employed driver who a lot of you will know, is retiring.

John has been with us for over 20 years, and turned 79 this year, he was going to keep going until the end of the year or possibly into next year.

But his van has decided it wanted to retire first, so with a heavy heart he has decided to retire at the end of next week, there is no point in buying another van when your 80th birthday is around the corner.

We wish him all the best, and his handicap on the golf course will come down now.

We are all going to really miss John at Bellfield, as I am sure his customers will too.