What a glorious summer day on the farm. Today Ian, Steve and Jacqui harvested mugwort, nettle and borage. The borage was amazing and just hummed with the millions of bees all amongst it . Shame they are not ours as the honey would be amazing. We are going to establish some hives next year and will be attending a biodynamic bee keeping course. Made quite a few litres of assorted tinctures, just as well as it's herbalists open day in a few weeks, our first ever open day !
Well, not too much work done today, aside from some weeding. We packed that up mid afternoon to join the fabulous party that Dawn & Mark throw every year. People camp and it goes on till the early hours. There are bands and a DJ and an open mike for anyone who wants to have a go at entertaining. Steve was a hit with his slide guitar! Off to give a talk now to the Embody group, they want to know all about the work we do at the herb farm !
Today, some of the gang started harvesting the limeflowers. Now for any of you that have tried this, it's a very time consuming job, quite fiddly, but relaxing none the less. Amazing smell. Only trouble is that the flowers are so light that you need loads to make just 1 litre of tincture, that's why it's a little pricey! But we think your worth it !
Pressed out our Elderflowers tincture today and omg it was totally amazing, even though we do say so ourselves. We also made dome roman chamomile tincture and that too was rather excellent. Can't wait for you herbs to taste these tinctures we are making!
Well, today was all about Hawthorn really. It's out early this year, so trying to get as much as we can. Some people don't really care for the smell of the flowers, but these were so fragrant and the structure of the flowers are so beautiful when you see them up close.
Also found some Lamium album, so we tinctured that too ! It was a great bank holiday weekend and we got tons done, so roll on to the next one!!!
Continuing in this glorious weather, today's activities were mainly building work on the straw bale roundhouse, a bit of digging in the herb field and rescuing the feverfews that were damaged in the incredibly wet months at the beginning of the year. We lost a few things to the wet, so will have to replace them, which means reduced yields of those herb tinctures. But, that's the weather for you. Nature has informed us that raised beds are the way to go so that's what we are doing.
A big shout out to all friends and family for the spontaneous assistance in moving and carrying all the wood for the roundhouse, including the youngsters.
At 2 o'clock, work ceased, and the play commenced, with family and friends. There was an Easter Egg Hunt for the youngsters, and much sitting around chatting, eating, drinking and generally chilling to the Reggae playlist put together by Steve and Jacqui!
Today in the sweltering heat, most of the team worked on the structure of the wooden roundhouse. Much sawing and preserving of wood. Everyone is getting very coloured by the sun.
Jacqui subjected herself the the heat of the polytunnel, whilst pricking out some more seedlings. Why pay money for an expensive health spa??? Just come into the polytunnel and sweat off some excess weight !! She could only stand it for about an hour, and then went off to start the Hawthorn harvest, with some help from friend Jo. Hawthorn is very early this year due to this magnificent weather, in fact we think a lot of things are goiing to be early, we have already looked at the elderflower and it won't be too long if this weather keeps up !