Spring beginnings

We hope you have had a wonderful Easter, we certainly did. We were back in the house, all completed after the flood renovations and had a lovely time with family and friends, hence the lack of blogging.
The lamb, ordered from our local farmer's shop was absolutely delicious done on the Smoker. It went for many meals afterwards too. We hope to begin some Smoking courses in the autumn, so if you are interested, please email us so we have an idea. We will start by offering morning courses looking at smoking things like fish, cheese, nuts and garlic and maybe offer a full day next year where we can show you how to hot smoke things like chicken or sausages as well as cold smoke.

The new chickens are settling well and we have had our first novice egg from one of them. A tiny egg in comparison to some of the old timers! Still delicious all the same. I'm currently growing beans through the Jack in the Beanstalk topic at work. I wonder if I could get any of the girls to lay a few golden eggs for us?

One of the new Sussex crosses thinks she is a cat and will always come running for a stroke when I go in to feed them or shut them up or throw some corn! It's quite comical to see her running for attention and trying to climb on my lap.

We are building up quite a client base for our eggs now too, which is lovely to see. People are happy to support local growers and want to know where their produce has come from. We now have several regular orders and still manage to sell any surplus at the gate.

The seeds are now all planted under cover in the greenhouse. It is still too early to sow outside here as there is still a potential risk of frost. However, the way the wind is gusting I would suggest they're more likely to be blown away at this point! I have built the wigwam for the beans and it is still standing this morning, so I feel especially proud that my girl guide lashing has held it all together!

We have also taken delivery of our beehives. We won't be getting any bees until next Spring, but it is exciting to have this chapter in the adventure starting. I am on a beekeeping course this weekend myself and then I will paint them and set them up in the garage. There is no point putting them outside until next Spring as they'll just end up having an unnecessary winter battering, I'll just have to suppress my urge!

All the cider from last autumn has now been bottled and we have graded it according to taste and superiority. It has been given a good session of tasting both from us and friends and has the Thornhill House seal of approval! Watch this space for courses on making cider in the future.


There are still places on the Spring Chicken beginners course, please email if you would like to take up a place.

Have a lovely week and weekend and be back soon!