Tredarrup - catching up

So with a busy summer season blog entries have escaped us.....so time for a quick catch up.
A summer with both our cottages full and visitors enjoying the space of both Mill Barn and Stable Cottage, and plenty of homemade cake, during a summer of mixed weather.
In the chicken world, plenty of eggs and a patient that resulted in a trip to the vets - yes we took a chicken to the vet - as she pushed out far too big an egg and ended up in chicken hospital....but the damage has been repaired and she's back laying eggs! Many broody hens and much more news soon...
Our cattle - all 4 girls are in calf so we're looking forward to new arrivals in Oct/Nov this year and will keep up with updates.
The vegetable patch - yet another bad year after being full of promise, blight on potatoes, tomatoes destroyed, courgettes so full of water turned to mush and little growing with so much rain and not much chance of planting more out....
More news coming soon from our new look blog so watch this space....

Celebrating Food and Farming

With Cornwall being a county full of so much local and seasonal produce, buying great food that's at the right time of year and not had many air or other miles is not that hard to do. september 07 to July 08 has been the Year of Food and Farming, a nationwide effort to reconnect to the countryside and raise awareness of the origins and impact of our food on our health and the environment, so to celebrate Cornwall's food and drink the Eden Project are celebrating this weekend with a Midsummer's weekend in Eden's Garden, a great reason to visit for the first time or once more!

Know your onions - strawberries galore

Anyone that grows their own will know that last year was not the best of years, blight on the potatoes & tomatoes, early sun, rain at the wrong time - so not a very productive year. But for 2008 so far so good, great sunshine with an odd sprinkle of night time rain .......the onions are looking good, potatoes have reached flowering so about to be harvested, tomatoes, salad, courgettes all coming on - but in top place is our strawberries!!! Every year we yield a good harvest and eat punnet after punnet throughout June and into July, can't get fresher and can't get more local - just plain as you pick, with a bit sugar or in true Cornish tradition with a dollop of clotted cream or Kelly's vanilla ice-cream or possibly with homemade elderflower sorbet, delicious! There's always some for our guests, especially Stable Cottage as their planters are bursting with them - then when we just can't eat them as quick as they ripen it's into the freezer, turned into sorbet or ice-cream or cheesecake topping...yum yum!

Waste Neutral - reduce reuse, recycle

The inspirational Eden Project remains one of the most popular visitor attractions in Cornwall, our Tredarrup visitors included. And with reading so very much at the moment about recycling, waste and climate change the Eden project are champions of many such things including the Waste Neutral scheme. And so some towns in Cornwall are following the example of others and are now plastic bag free - some of the small steps to make a difference.
Apparently we create a staggering 500,000 tonnes of waste every year in Cornwall - a population of aprx 500,000 but with aprx 5.5million visitors a year. And with everyone feeling the pinch as food prices, along with a lot else, continue to rise, frightening that in the UK the amount of food thrown away is at a cost to our pocket of £8billion a year !!!

Sunshine and loads and loads of foxgloves

Blazing hot sunshine and a blaze of hot pink, in all our walls and in all the hedgerows -loads and loads of foxgloves more than I've ever seen before....

All green and lush

With the sun and rain, all the countryside has come alive. The mixture of weather has meant that our Cornish hedgerows are full of flowers and the grass is lush and green (our cows can't keep up with it!) and the farmers have already started their first cut of silage and wheat with the fields now turning into a patchwork of colours. Our strawberries are coming on with the first ripe one today and vegetable patch is both growing and gone wild where I have yet to clear back all of the winter's growth - behind as always.... potatoes in full flow so all crossed for no blight this year.
The birds are busy around the place, getting through 2 feeders a day, they have so many young and all the new chickens are now laying so 6-8 eggs a day, until they start moulting that is!

Tredarrup Magical Moments

The 1st of May brought with it some beautiful weather - warm sunny days, sunburst night time skies and magical clear mornings. We wake early at Tredarrup and it is a time that was once described to me as 'the birds' time of day' and it really is. Much of Tredarrup is about the animals and birds and over the past 5 years we have nurtured our bird population, and it shows. The morning stillness and silence is a time to watch and listen - the tens of house sparrows flitting about and feeding, our many swallows swooping through the air feeding on the wing and looking where to build this years nest. The pied wagtails pottering about and cleaning their feathers with the early morning dew, the blue tits feeding their young - any many more.
And our chickens of course (you've yet to meet the newest ones) , that come 7am are already queued by the chicken shed door waiting to come outside. PURE MAGIC...........