Ale Farm

  We may not have had snow but we've had some frosty days recently.   The snow drops and primroses seem to have survived fortunately.        The orchard looks bare but there are buds on the trees and even four tiny Gala apples (see below).            The pathway out of the badger field is easily passible now and there don't seem to be so many rabbit holes being dug. Our lovely walnut tree is bare and so it lets the sun shine through its branches to the house.   I wonder whether we'll have snow before winter ends?

  This will be our first Christmas at Ale Farm! We've managed to get some lights up outside, even if they don't cover the whole house.   Inside we've decorated but we haven't bothered to put up our 40 year old plastic tree as we're still looking for the box of baubles!      We certainly have a lot of greenery on the farm that can be used for decorations.  We have a lot of wild rose hips too for that touch of red. This is one of our fields with our lovely big walnut tree overhanging in the foreground. We plan to turn this into a wildflower meadow.  As it's chalk downland it should eventually have some interesting plants. First we need to remove some of the grass.  We planted some yellow rattle to help with that. Here's our new orchard, planted in March this year.  So far all the trees have survived and we've even had some tiny, tiny apples on the gala and discovery trees. The orginal cooking apple tree is doing well and has supplied us wi...

This year we joined the Deal Hop Farm.  Deal is one of our nearest local towns.  In more than 300 sites in and around Deal, people grow hops in their gardens, balconies, allotments, etc.  We got two hop rhizomes and twine from the friendly, helpful people who organise the hop farm. At home on the edge of our new orchard Greg put in some poles and over several months the hops grew up the twine.  As it's our first year we didn't expect a lot of growth, however we were pleasantly surprised - and that was after the initial shoots were chewed off in the spring.  These first two photos are from August.   In September we harvested our hops, along with everyone else involved in the Deal Hop Farm.  We all brought our hops to the Captain's Garden (Deal's community garden) where they were weighed, put into big sacks and sent off to local breweries. We were proud of our little bag of hops, even if some people had massive sacks of hops. 😊 It was great working with...

👻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...