Autumn Musing

The season is unfolding. The trees are turning a burnished shade, shedding leaves and their wonderful produce; conkers, acorns or apples. It feels like a good time to have a clear out ahead of Christmas, to ready your house and store cupboard with jams and chutneys and gather warm bedding, throws and blankets to ensure warmth over winter.

Our hedges have been cut by lovely farmer Walter and their crisp edges look great against the returned verdent green of our fields. The alpaca and sheep spend their days eating this good Autumn grass to stock up, pre the cold season returning.

We’ve taken delivery of lots of new stock for the website and for the Autumn and Christmas sales we are attending. New 100% baby alpaca fleece scarves are already selling out, as are our alpaca knit mittens. Cute new fleece creatures, like mini sculptures - each unique, are proving popular as Christmas gifts and our alpaca pillows, duvets and mattress toppers are being bought n d shipped throughout the UK and around the world. Our last overseas order went to Angola and the US before that! So funny how a tiny smallholding, perched on the Shropshire Hills, can be in touch with the world thanks to technology.

Several of our breeding females are pregnant, so we look forward to new babies next year from 3 new studs. Watch this space in April.

We will be back at Chelsea Flower Show and many of the other RHS shows again in 2019, our 4th year selling our Lou’s Poo, Alpaca Fertiliser range. Try it for your plants, a little goes a long way and our commercial growers and flower farmers love it.

Oh well, time to work in the fields today before gathering up our stock to go to yet another Autumn sale on Friday, this time in Newbury in Berkshire. Onward and upward.

Lou.

Circle of Life.

I'm not as prolific a writer as I used to be. Sometimes this is because I'm mad busy and life gets in the way of talking about life, other times I overthink it and the moments are lost. Occasionally I know I have something momentous to impart, but by the time I've treated a lamb, fed the alpaca or checked a fence, I have forgotten I ever had a point to make. I also try to make a point of not blogging, posting or tweeting when I'm in poor spirits. Over the past few weeks this has been my excuse, I have been a little low. I'm not depressed, I know friends with depression and I'm aware that this is not me, I've just been a little low.

The weather in August was quite inconsistent and we almost lost our hay, (the positive being that we did not.) Our lambs thrived. We birthed three gorgeous cria, with more due in April, and I was determined not to be disappointed that they were all boys. We've had a bit of a spate of boys in recent years and I longed for some girls. The alpaca babies took a longer time to arrive than expected, also a consequence of the weather and I was restricted to the site, awaiting babies. It makes you a little stir-crazy. But they were happy and healthy when they arrived. Then suddenly one was not; happy or healthy. I worked hard with our vet, but the baby developed an infection, pneumonia set in and he passed away. It hit me hard.

Rest in peace little Diablo.

It's taken three weeks but I'm back on track. The farmers say 'livestock, deadstock,' it's a bit harsh but it means that if you breed livestock, you'll have times when issues occur and you won't be able to save that animal. It's life. I realise I haven't quite come to terms with that. Born in St John's Wood, I'm definitely a smallholder rather than a farmer.

My family, friends and my garden have kept my spirits high. It's hard to be down when you have special people in your life. Nature's bounty is always uplifting and it's hard to be down when the kitchen garden groans with fruit, veg and flowers for the house, dahlias scream hello in their showy way, grapes are ripening, sweet pea are filling the air with heavy scent and fat hedgehogs waddle gown the path at dusk. Life is good and I'm grateful.

Selling our range of natural fertilisers at Chelsea Flower Show and Hampton Court was fabulous this year again, thanks to Todd's Botanics and their wonderful team, of which I now count myself as a virtual member. Don't forget to order Lou's Poo Beans if you are planting spring flowering bulbs and our limited edition Christmas bags are on sale now. www.TheArchersAtTheLarches.com.

Post Chelsea Flower Show 2017 - Part 1

For the second year running, The Archers At The Larches Ltd have sold our branded Lou's Poo, Dried Alpaca Fertiliser at RHS Chelsea Flower Show. We wouldn't be there without the fantastic support of Mark Macdonald, owner of Todd's Botanics, Plants Delivered and Vaso Toscano. Mark is a champion grower and a firm believer in our fertiliser. He uses it to feed the nursery and loves specific products, like our Shredded Lou's Poo, for feeding his tree ferns or our Beans, for feeding his olive trees.

In conjunction with Mark, we created our Lou's Poo, Compost Tea Mix with added comfrey, especially formulated to feed flowering plants in their flowering season. At Chelsea, this was particularly well received by those growing agapanthus, chilli and tomato growers but it suits all indoor and outdoor flowering plants too.

This year I was lucky enough to attend the Chelsea Flower Show Press Day and Gala Dinner hosted by the RHS on the Monday before the public opening. I was stationed on my Plants Delivered stand eager and waiting to see who I might see. First to pop by was Julian Cleary and his mum. Juilian is astoundingly beautiful. I remember him from his early days on TV and imagined him short and skinny. He is tall and elegant. I passed him my card as no celebs seemed to be buying much. 'Ah,' he said in a considered drawl, 'Thankyou. One never knows when one might need some alpaca poo.' 'Quite.' said I. 

Next I was lovey-kissed by Ainsley Harriott, most excellent. He's even taller than Juilan! He walked away chortling when I passed my card over. Lovely man, I have his BBQ book somewhere.

I saw Judy Dench and the beautiful Duchess and countless other celebs, like all the Radio 2 BBC crowd; Chris Evans, Jeremy Vine, Jo Wiley, Anneka Rice. It's exciting but I'm not altogether sure if all these personalities were there for the flowers.....the real stars for me, of course, are the growers inside the Grand Pavilion and the garden designers outside. The growers, in particular, work their fingers to the bone 24/7, seeking RHS medals and caring customers to purchase their stunning plants. My top picks were:
Todd's Botanics, for drought tolerant plants, tree ferns, olives, the unusual, agapanthus and iris, garden design and wholesale planting solutions. T3 Wall End Nursery for unusual plants, salvia and abutilons. Avon Bulbs for stunning bulbs and seeds. HooksgreenHerbs culinary, medicinal and scented pot-grown herbs and seeds. Mamoth Onion  W. Robinson & Son, Seeds and Plants Ltd for fantastic vegetable plants and seeds. Check out their websites.

In my next blog post I'll share a little more of my pictures and comment on the gardens I liked/didn't, but for now I d like to say a massive thanks to my Poo Crew for the week; Kathy, AM, Ori, Cathy, Erin and Bryony plus French Antionne! You all rock.

The joys of living rurally.

Part of the joy of living in the countryside, is the thrill of having a septic tank. It delights me that our family outpourings are located in a field and that every two years a man in overalls, and presumably no sense of smell, comes with a lorry and a strange looking vacuum to suck it up and take it all away. Today is that day.

I have a sickly 14yo home at the moment. She is full of flu. I was loath to leave her in the house while I fed the livestock, in case the 'sludge-gobbler' came and she was forced off her death bed to answer the door, so I phoned the company first thing; I was told he was on his way and to expect him by 10am. He arrived at 12.30pm. Hungry livestock.

A small, unsmiley man, (but then, who can blame him,) he moaned as soon as I opened the door. It was a long way to our house, (correct, though to be fair it depends where you start,) he had a bigger rig than he was used to, he wasn't sure the access to our drive was big enough, the field was grassier than he'd expected and he didn't have a shovel..... Lordy. I suggested he start by driving onto site, I'd get him a shovel and I'd make him a cup of coffee. 'Weak,' he said, 'Very weak.' I retreated indoors to let him sort himself out. Not sure I trust those that drink weak coffee.

I made the insipid, watery beverage and even wrapped a home-made, mini victoria sponge in some tin foil: Us Poo professionals ought to stick together, (though not literally.)

On our driveway I was greeted by the unsmiley one, even more unsmiley than he'd been before. He'd managed to badly misjudge our overhead electricity cable to the barn. The very barn I need to lamb in shortly. The wire was draped over his lorry like a poor attempt at bunting. 'Is it live?' he asked. 'Yesss!' said I, with more force than I'd planned. 'Oh,' he said, 'I thought I could make it.'

Annoying.

Anyhoo, three hours later and our stinky tank is empty, the smell is slowly drifting away. Electricians from the company have been to see the damage and will return tomorrow to fix us. I am less fraught and I even had some kind words for the unsmiley one: I valiantly held back from telling him that I think he's in the wrong job.

The 14yo is feeling marginally better and I've baked some lovely granary bread. I'm expecting indigestion any minute now, not from the antics of the day, but rather from the slab of hot bread and equal slab of salted butter I've just sampled!