Lambing, Eco Fair & Seed Swap, Grafting Apple Trees

A beautiful , smiling sunny morning with a light haze over the valley & blue skies...perfect weather for lambs. We are in the middle of lambing & are having a goodly number healthy of twins  & good strong singles. If this fine weather continues they will be out either in the orchard when they are just a day or so old or in the fields once they are several days old.


Yesterday the Farmer & I went over the National Wool Museum (http://www.nationalmuseumofwales.gov.uk/) which is in Drefach Velindre, about 5 minutes away from us, to an Eco-fair. Many of our friends from the local Energy & Housing Group & the Teifi Food Circle (http://www.teifitransition.org.uk/) were there and it was good to catch-up with so many of them. The socialising aside, the event was very good with a  Seed Swap stand where people brought along saved seed of fruit & vegetables & swapped them for other types & varieties. If you did not have seeds to swap you could put whatever seeeds you desired in the small envelopes provided and put a donation in a jar. It was very popular. We came away with seeds for tomatoes, a black radish, which appparently  has to be planted after the summer solstice and crops in the autumn & is used like swede or turnip & cucumbers & beans.

Last weekend we had some friends come over to demonstrate how to graft aple trees. We have some very old apples trees in one of the orchards. They are a good 150 yearsold and whilest they are still good croppers and healthy trees we thought it would be good idea to graft them onto some new rootstock. M. & her husband are setting up a forest garden about 10 miles away (http://www.theforestgarden.com/) and were keen to do some grafting from trees in an established orchard. The rootstock have now been planted in a safe place and we will wait to see how the grafts take & how the new trees do.