Now that I have a whole year of newsletters, I can look back and see what was going on when the earth was last at this point in its orbit around the sun.
The post from this time last year (when I had 20 subscribers) was called “Winter is here”. Apparently, last first-monday-in-October, I woke up to a frost of minus 6 degrees.
This year, warm rain.
All that rain that we didn’t get all spring and summer came to visit us in September. I think it’s doing the forest all manner of good, and the mushrooms are going crazy.
Every year on the barracks has seen wildly different mushrooming conditions. In the first year, there were carpets of King Boletes the size of my head, the second and third years saw very few of anything interesting, and this year the keyword is cornucopia. Literally dozens of different varieties testing your knowledge. And in fact, hardly any of the really easy to recognise edible boletes.
I complained a lot on twitters, or maybe it was on the instagram, about the helicopter buzzing me all week. At the most intense, it was flying over the barracks once every three or four minutes. They are dusting the forest floor with limestone, a job which gets done every ten years. I’ve been thinking about liming here. I have plenty of opportunity to create just about all the goodness I need for the soil right from the bare ingredients at the barracks, but lime (calcium) is really important too. I think I mentioned in a newsletter past that I was looking for natural limestone rocks in the vicinity and came up a blank. I think it would be good to mix some into the compost bins, and I have a suspicion that the orchard is lacking in this trace nutrient as well.
You have to be careful with lime. It changes the pH of the soil very effectively, and should be added sparingly, but it is also essential for the health of just about any plant you might want to eat. So yeah, I guess for the barracks, a small amount every 10 years is probably a good idea. How much? Oh, I dunno. About the amount you can carry back in two saddle bags, maybe? As a rough guess.
This week, far from the false start of winter of this time last year, we are looking at a “Golden October” as they say around here. For historical accuracy, it is worth pointing out that this was promised last year as well, but this time I believe them. And this is good because I need to:
Mow everything. And I mean everything. A whole day on the mower.
Dig up all the rest of the potatoes
Harvest the quinoa, climbing french beans and sunflowers
Sow the winter rye, and winter wheat. (I did get the winter onions and the garlic in this week though! Almost forgot to mention that).
All of these need to be done when it is dry. Actually, on the second day of dry would be nice. It’s been a month since we had two consecutive days without rain. It would be really good to have three or four this week.
And finally:
I have another journalist coming this week. I have decided to let them into the Loft. No journalist has been allowed to come in here with their reporter hat on before. This is a big thing for me, and I am going to have to spend a significant amount of time tidying up! I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to speculate why a team of three is coming, and not the usual one journo and their notebook deal. I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!
I’ll let you know how it goes next week, and until then, be excellent to each other and warm pirate hugs to each and every one of you
love
The Pirate Ben
xoxo
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Those mushroom pics are gorgeous! Well done :)
Flippin’ fing still makes me subscribe every time I want to like or comment on the post. 🙁