Having lived in Spain for over five years we are still traditional with the Sunday roast. The veg are of course fresh from the garden, roast potatoes, carrots and french beans, the beef we always buy from our local butcher, his beef all comes from local farms, all within 10k of his shop, he is so well respected for his beef that a lot of it is sold to the restaurants in Madrid. The horseradish sauce is still Colman's, we are however now growing it, but must wait until next year before we start harvesting it. We were minus the Yorkshire puds this week as I had left Simon in charge.

The first batch of plum and fig chutney has turned out better than I thought it would, it is a very good combination , nice and spicy, look out Branston!

The plums are now ready and it is a bumper crop, we estimate that there is around 140 lbs, far too much for us to bottle or make jam and chutney with , so a lot will be given to friends to do whatever with, so far I have bottled 16 bottles, experimented with plum and ginger jam which is delicious. I do have a few more kilner jars, but it also looks as though we have a large peach harvest, so have to keep jars back for them. I will be making chutney, with ginger and figs,although have not tried this combination before, it should work out fine.

Yesterday we had long awaited heavy rain, the garden needed a good drenching, however, at 4am this morning I was awoken by the sound of funneling wind, I heard things crashing but was not prepared for the sight of our maize crop being flattened, from the sight of the crop it would seem that we had a mini tornado which has flattened the centre of the crop, it remains to be seen if we can do anything about it over the weekend.

Adding insult to injury the wind had blown open the tunnel door, the hens took full advantage of this and decided that dust bathing in the middle of the lettuces was a good idea, so we have to plant

more lettuce, might just eat the hens instead!

At last the incubator has arrived [ 2nd dispatched one] after a two day stop over in Belgium, and it was delivered to our door! So well done Parcelforce, you managed to deliver where other couriers have feared to tread. It still remains a mystery as to the whereabouts of the first one, all we need now is for the quail to start laying, as we had expected our first eggs by now I think we had better check their sex ourselves, however, we will do a few hens eggs while we are waiting for the quail to start laying.

After numerous emails, lots of stupid questions, and wondering just whose responsibility it is for the safe delivery by courier, the latest update is that the aforesaid item is now in SPAIN! whether it gets to us is another matter, there's already one incubator that's fallen into a black
hole, just hope this one is luckier.







Thanks to today's rain at last I have managed to get some work done in one of the tunnels, I even found some ripe tomatoes, plus some rather nasty looking spiders, I'm not bothered by spiders, but I did give these a wide berth, Simon however was not impressed ! it's only in the past few weeks that I have found out that he really does not like spiders and we've been married over twenty one year

Message for BETTE NOIRE, if you leave another comment it should go to my email address, I can then answer you in full

It's RAINING!!! after two months of virtually no rain we are celebrating, watering the veg every other day does not compensate for a good downpour. Perhaps the rain dance done by a friend has worked, not so good for her though, she's still waiting for a new roof.!

Although it means we cant work outside, I can get on with planting and weeding in the tunnels and Simon might get some logs cut.

We had experimented with growing onions in a tunnel this year, they were planted by one of our helpers in Jan, the result has been great with an average weight of 1lb 3oz or in new money 517grams, we have now harvested them and are drying them in a barn before plaiting them, so cheers Simon H.

We had made two further plantings in the garden, but they are no where near as large , but we are hopeful that we wont run out of them this year. i think we might try growing the garlic in a tunnel with the strawberries next year, as it's not done very well outside, maybe the soil was not rich enough.

There is still no sign of the incubator, and appears to be stuck in Belgium.