7th September

Quick wee note to start with, next week we will not have any power for two days.

Wednesday being the main day, but it might include Tuesday and Friday, Scottish power are replacing some of the old wooden electricity poles, not ideal for us, but there is not a lot we can do.

So, if no emails are getting replied to this will be the reason.

We can see now why our electricity bills are so high, one lorry came in with four different poles to get dropped of in different areas, two men on the lorry one to drive, one to then go on the back and lift them of with the small winch.

Two days later another two appeared in a wee van, these two were to drill a couple of holes, through the ploe and bolt a metal bar onto it, they had one drilling and one watched.

That’s four men using two modes of transport, would it not be better giving the lorry driver a drill, he could possibly get out of the driver seat and winch the pole of, then drill a couple of holes to bolt a bar on, or am I being daft.

That’s like me sending four men out to harvest four crates of leeks, one drives the tractor, the other lifts the crates of, followed by another tractor going out, one driving the tractor and the other lifting the leeks, I must be getting old and crabbit.

Now onto farming, last week we got the golden ball turnips planted, one man planted them and carried them to the tunnel, another wee trial, like I said last week they are small sweet turnips, that can be sown early in the year, usually they get direct sown in the ground, but after the success we had with blocking the swede and beetroot we thought this would be another seed to try this way.

I can’t see why this shouldn’t work, and if it does, we will do a few batches early in the new year, and they will be a great start to the veg deliveries when there isn’t much to harvest early in the season.

This week coming we are planning on planting another three thousand lettuce plants that are ready, then we have the last batch of spinach and ruby chard of the season ready to go in the tunnels, but we need to finish harvesting one tunnel first, as we have no room left.