Wisteria-watch

For those of you who try to time a visit to Iford to coincide with your favourite wisteria being out, I am running a feature this year called Wisteria-watch.  By examining the various wisterias (wisteriae?) in photographic detail, I hope you will be better informed to judge when is the moment juste for your visit.  After all, it is never quite the same from year to year and with the odd continental weather we are having at the moment, particularly hard to to predict.


Not to panic, though.  It looks like this at the moment:

Some Signs of Spring

Some pictorial signs of spring appearing.  Undeniably weird weather, and we desperately need rain...

Compost time

Nothing like a good photograph of some compost to lighten up a gloomy Tuesday.  Our compost is all home-grown, as it were, fuelled by the output of the tearoom, grass clippings, cuttings, and all manner of other recyclable remains.  Free nutrition for plants!

Spring is most definitely sprung

 If there had been any doubts at all, the Iford valley was undeniably kicked into Spring today.  Blackbirds, enjoying the sunshine and warmth, sang their hearts out with myriad songs.  Blossom yielded up its sweet scent, and this evening I saw my first bat of the year, foraging around the bridge for some early season mosquitoes presumably.

 

Cutting the miscanthus.

Our energy crop was cut this week - miscanthus (elephant grass) is used both as a fuel for space heating and can also be co-fired with coal in power stations to reduce the amount of coal being used to power the UK's homes.

There is a valid debate about whether we should be using land for energy production which could otherwise be used for food. At Iford we have taken the view that it is acceptible to turn a relatively small acreage over to miscanthus production especially if in the future the crop can be used by us on site (although at present we do not use it ourselves) - all part of ensuring that Iford manages its carbon footprint and uses renewables if possible.

By the way, if you buy your electricity from Good Energy, some of your electricity is notionally being produced by our Hydro plant. Which is nice.

A winter walk in the morning frost

A sharp frost on Monday this week enticed me out with the camera.  Chilly, and owing to the [foolish] lack of a jacket, a distinctly swift walk.

(Click on the images for larger, slightly sharper versions)

Hydro update - 20MWh and counting

All running well, and pleased to say that we have today exported our 20th Mega-watt hour of electricity.  This means, I gather, that we can generated enough for four average sized homes for a year, and we've only been running for four weeks or so.  Good news, I'd say.