Ale Farm

👻Last Saturday we had a Halloween party and it was all expertly organised by Rachel, aka the Lorax! In addition to extremely creative decorations, spooky food and drink, she organised a Halloween game.               We had to free Gilbert the gourd from the clutches of the evil pumpkins using clues, a treasure hunt and teamwork. We had an hour's time limit and we did it with 7 minutes to spare.

Last Saturday was one of those beautiful, crisp, sunny autumnal days.  We decided to explore some of the footpaths around Ale Farm and head for one of our closest pubs, The Lantern.  We were spurred on by the prospect of enjoying their special brunches. You can just see our greenhouse in the trees of this photo.  The sunny white cliffs of Thanet (Ramsgate) are in the distance.  We could see the sea for a lot of our walk.     This is one of the farms we passsed through.  The pathway goes past the house on the right and up the hill.  In addition to goats they had horses, cattle and chickens.    After leaving the farm we got a little lost and ended up walking along a road.  The roads are narrow and very quiet. It's sometimes difficult to find the well trodden footpaths when the fields have been recently harvested.     Eventually we found our way to the village of Martin.  It's a quiet village with some attractive houses....

We recently hosted 15 people who were interested in seeing our new orchard.  They were from the Tree Council, Natural England, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, four local authorities and Kent County Council, the organisations who funded and administered the Trees Outside Woodland programme that gave us the grant.   They were a very interesting group of people.  We really enjoyed talking to them and hearing their ideas and advice.  They're welcome back any time! This is the illustration I (Mandy) did of the various fruit trees we've planted. It's now framed and was displayed on the day. We planted: Apples - Gala, Discovery, Ashmead's Kernel, Cox's Orange Pippin and Bramley Seedling. Cherries - Sunburst and Stella Plums - Victoria, Greengage, Opal and Reine Claude d'Oullins Pears - Conference, Concorde and Bonne Louise d'Avanches  We're pleased to say all the trees are still alive.  The surprise Discovery apple (from the last blo...

Our new orchard, planted only four months ago, is bearing fruit!  We really didn't expect this.  It's a baby Discovery apple.  We've seen apples forming on the matron cooking apple tree (below) but this one is extra special.  The 23 new trees (apple, pear, plum, cherry and cobnut) are only very small but they're doing well. We were able to plant our orchard due to a grant from the Trees Outside Woodland scheme.

 We spent a creative weekend practicing with glazes and enjoying a Raku pottery firing.  Raku is a low-firing pottery technique involving reduction and thermal shock. We started by glazing existing biscuit fired pottery.  It was then was put into a kiln just to dry.   From there the pottery went into two kilns for firing.  After they were 'cooked' they were taken out and immediately put into tins of sawdust with the lids put quickly on the tins.  The resulting smoke got into all the cracks in the glazes and the resulting colours were very impressive. We were all surprised and pleased with the results.  The whole session was led by Mike Childs, a highly experienced local potter, and it took place between two of our barns, sheltered from the wind.  We plan to have another Raku firing before the end of the summer.

 On May 1st we had a dual celebration - our new orchard and the launch of Silas' pizza van. The orchard is planted and doing really well.  Even though all but one of our trees is newly planted, four have managed to blossom (2 apples and 2 pears).  We were able to plant our orchard thanks to a Kent County Council Trees Outside Woodlands programme. We can't wait to see how they develop and grow over the year.  As explained in a previous post, we have apple, pear, cherry, plum and cobnut trees.  Wesley, who cleared the land of dense brambles and planted the trees, came to our celebration and gave the existing matron apple tree a special present.  It's a weather teller and protects the orchard.  He carved wood from the old apple tree after he pruned it.  See the photos below. For almost a year Adam and Silas have been converting an old van into a pizza van, using an Ale Farm barn.  We're really pleased to see it just about finished and Silas made...

  We moved in on 5th March but it's been so busy I've only just found time to update this blog.  We still have boxes to unpack, furniture to arrange and more things to take to charity shops.   Outside is still a bit of a building site.  However, we love it.   It's so quiet apart from noises from wildlife.  When there are no clouds at night we can see the stars clearly.  The photo below is the moon behind our walnut tree. The trees in our new orchard are coming into leaf and we've planted potatoes between the trees.  We hope to have a forest garden there eventually.  The greenhouse is being cleared, thanks to Rachel and Adam.  More on that in a future post. Our new second hand mower is wonderful.  A friend gave us a trailer and it's been so useful moving things around, especially up the hill.  There's so much to look forward to and now the weather is improving we can't wait to do more outside.