I had settled on Bramley, but then I received some suggestions from you about a name for the hare that has taken up residency in the orchard. Some of them were thoughtful and good, others were thoughtful and frankly bad, but all were gratefully received. Upon seeing it most days last week I started greeting it with ‘Bramley’, in a voice an octave or two higher than my normal pitch. I don’t know why I felt the need to do that but it’s in the same falsetto that I call the cat in before bedtime. Anyway, upon reflection I have decided that Bramley is a little bit twee, and so, still on the apple theme, I have switched to D’Arcy. There is a variety of apple in the orchard called D’Arcy Spice, its name coming from the place where it was bred in 1785 – Tollshunt D’Arcy in Essex. D’Arcy is gender non-specific – it is a female name, as in Darcey Bussell the former ballerina and ‘Strictly’ judge, but is also used for males, particularly down under. It was also the surname of the brooding eye candy in Pride and Prejudice. I have tried emerging from a lake in a white shirt but it just doesn’t work in the same way that it did when Colin Firth did it. D’Arcy (the hare) is still present most times that I venture in to the orchard, and there has been another on a couple of occasions, but that one tears off when it sees me.

I have told you before that a badge is regularly visiting overnight and is stealing anything that it fancies. Evidence of its presence is given away by the multiple badger toilets that I keep discovering dotted around the place. These are substantial holes dug at least 6 inches deep filled with….well badger poo. In my head I was thinking it was a solitary opportunist beast foraging, but Alan the farm manger, whose garden looks out over the lower half of my patch saw three of the blighters the other evening heading very purposefully in the direction of where the bounty is to be plundered. “Can’t you stop them from coming in?” I hear you say. My reply to that is, have you tried stopping a determined badger? No I thought not. They are like bulldozers, if they are set on getting in they will dig under, climb over, or just force their way through any barrier that gets in their way. There are hundreds of acres of woodland and pasture for them to roam in, but the grass is very much greener on my side of the fence. Only crops that are covered by netting, or those that they are not interested in survive.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. 68! There are a few of you that have been with me for so long that you may remember me announcing with a sense of horror my 50th birthday. That seems far more recent than 18 years ago. It’s frightening how rapidly the time flies by. I remember people from when I was young being my age now, and they seemed so old, and I suppose that’s how I appear to the younger generations of today. But do I feel old? Well sometimes, when my joints creak and my muscles ache, but generally not, in my head I am still young…ish. Granted, I am less tolerant and even more grumpy and curmudgeonly than I used to be, but 68?? Surely not.

I told you last week that the season has changed, and this week’s shop will bear that out. Gone are the beans, cucumbers and courgettes. There are some stragglers, but not enough to offer on general sale, so those that I have will probably appear at the farmers market next Saturday. There is another flush of sweet peppers coming on, but they are all green, so I will give them a week or two to ripen, but if they drag their heels I will sell them as they are. The tomatoes have really slowed down, but I am hopeful that there will be enough this week. There should be oakleaf lettuces again, and there is perpetual spinach and broccoli. Savoy cabbages make their first appearance of the season, and there will be a limited number of cauliflowers. At £2.50 each they seem expensive, but Riverford are selling them for £3.50, so maybe it’s a fair price? Other than that it’s mostly the same stuff, though I am getting in a small quantity of parsnips. Really you should wait until they have been exposed to some frost, but I thought that we should see what they are like. What feedback that I received on the melons after my request last week was positive, so I have ordered more for this week.

After the rain of last Tuesday the soil was moist enough for me to do some cultivating of it with my tractor. In the next couple of days I will be sowing some green manures and overwintering cover crops to improve the soil and return nutrients and organic matter to it. Meanwhile, in the polytunnel I planted some spinach and lettuce. The cucumber plants can all be removed from the beds in the greenhouse now to make way for some greens. I ended up harvesting just over 600 cukes this summer, that’s up a little on the previous year. Tomatoes on the other hand are well down when making the same comparison. I think that it was just too hot for them at times during the summer. Another disappointment was the yield from the winter squash. I brought them all in early last week to cure on the staging in the greenhouse. I couldn’t risk leaving them in the field any longer because of the damage that voles were doing to the skins. Compared to last year I must be down nearly 50% – lack of water innit?

I haven’t received notification that my apple juice is ready yet. I will be picking fruit again this week and will hope that I can collect the bottled juice the next time that I drop off a batch of apples to be pressed.

Right I’m off to tap-up a crypto currency billionaire for a donation to my birthday fund – there appears to be no shortage of cash about at the moment. Maybe they could make a donation to the RNLI rather than paying for more balaclavas.

Have a good week.

Phil