Victoria Plums!

One of my favourite harvests is at it's absolute peak this week - The Victoria plums. 

Supermarket plums from warmer climbs are such a disappointment, they're like a whole different fruit. These fresh from the tree (or local shop) are a different thing all together. Sweet and delicious flesh and so far the grub count inside them has been low (not saying I haven't eaten a maggot so far this summer, but if I have I haven't noticed). 

This tree is 13 years old and this is the first really heavy crop I've had from it. Unfortunately a little too heavy and one branch has snapped, reducing our harvest by quite some amount. Still enough to pick some fresh every day and stuff our faces. 

I know the space for fruit trees is a luxury, but fruit trees pay back so much from their initial cost if you can put them in. This was a £5 supermarket tree, it owes me nothing! 

Have different plums ripening elsewhere as well! 

What's your favourite plum to grow?

 

Hive Inspection- My Young Beekeepers Learning The Ropes

 My girls are keen to expand our bee keeping operation, they have their sites set on using it to help make their pocket money rather than a Saturday job (although people are already asking them about baby sitting and cooking). 

So my plan with the bees is to make sure theyre trained up as much as i am. If we can do inspections quickly, with the three of us looking we could have more hives and more possibilities for them. 

This week was a fairly simple inspection but it's great to look through both hives and get a feel for what the bees are doing. 

I'm really pleased with how they're taking to it, it really reminds me of how I was with sheep growing up. And their young eyes really help when having a look for different problems. 

The video is more for my own record as I record this journey, but hopefully makes for interesting watching. 

Camp Out In the Field

 A few Sundays ago I suggested we should have a camp out in the field. Unplanned, it made it quite fun for the children. 

The kids set up both tents and the fire, I topped a small patch first. 

The only tent we own is one from before we had children (maybe before we got married to be honest. I didn't fancy buying some just to use a couple of nights a year, so instead we borrowed the ones from scouts. 

Dehydrated Cherries

The week before last we got invited to our friends farm again and got to gleam the end of their cherry harvest again. 

This is such a great opportunity and it gives us so many options when it comes to preserving them.

Most years we can loads, but we still have a fair few in the pantry, so this year we decided to freeze the lions share and dehydrate the rest. 

Alviti Rescue

One of the things in my life that makes everything easier is having such good friends and family around me. I'm truly blessed in that respect.

Us Alviti's are a tight knit pack, and look after each other. We also have friends who we treat like family. Yesterday, one of those friends broke down and the breakdown company were being terrible. It was going to be nearly midnight before they got picked up. So a quick phone call to my dad (who never seems to stop), he got a trailer there, and we got her car on it, swapped the trailer onto my truck. Then drove it back to our village and to the garage. And got Sarah back home (she backed the car off the trailer rather bravely!)

Wasn't what I was intending to do that evening, but these guys would do anything for us and have done many times in the past.

They were the ones we rang when my wife went into labour (the second two times) to look after the other children, or when I broke my jaw they were the first we rang for help. Or when our daughter got diagnosed with type one diabetes they learnt about it and helped support us. Or when the only toilet broke and my wife was heavily pregnant and I couldn't fix it on my own!