A Week on the Estate: Peak Heat, Garden Harvest & Cheesy Choice

What would once have been considered extreme or eccentric weather events are becoming routine challenges for the farming community. We believe that by looking after the land, the land will look after us when we need it to.

Harvest season is imminent out on the land and has started in earnest in the Walled Garden. The Saturday Club picked an abundance of produce last weekend, including enough raspberries, beans and cherries to fill buckets and crates. We suspect we’ll be eating recipes featuring those ingredients for months to come. The team also enjoyed an enrichment talk from Henry Heyes of Welton Garden Services on all aspects of tree care and maintenance. Thanks, Henry!

A little bit of selective wildness in the garden can pay dividends. Clint happened upon two baby hedgehogs making good use of last autumn’s leaf litter in the Walled Garden. We do like a bit of organic, four-legged pest control. The slugs and snails had best look out.

Finally, huge thanks to all who suggested names for Mark’s new cheese in our Facebook competition. We were bowled over by the enthusiasm and creativity on show. Now it’s time to cast your vote.

After days of frantic head-scratching, Mark has whittled it down to two contenders: ‘Oester Dale’ suggested by Paul Gertner, and ‘Bluestone Red’ suggested by Kay Gardner and Rebecca ‘Maidens’ Agate.

By way of background, Oester Dale is the valley to the west of South Ormsby Hall which lends its name to the beck which flows through the Estate and feeds our lake. We’re not entirely sure of the origins of ‘Oester’: it may have something to do with the Germanic goddess of spring, ‘Eoster’ (whose legacy is preserved in ‘Easter’), or (less likely) it‘s connected to the Dutch word for ‘oyster’ or ‘penny pincher’. If you know the real origins of this name, we’d love to hear from you.

‘Bluestone Red’ is a handy thumbnail sketch of our landscape, combining Bluestone Heath Road, which crosses the north of the Estate and commands some of the Wolds’ most arresting vistas, with our familiar, native-breed Lincoln Red cattle.

Vote for your favourite by heading to the post pinned to the top of our Facebook page HERE and naming it in the comments underneath. Please vote only once: only your first vote will be counted.

You’ll have until midnight on Friday 29th July to comment. Good luck!

If you’d like to share your opinion on anything you’ve read here, we’d love to hear from you. Just head to our Facebook page HERE and comment beneath the latest blog post. As ever, thanks for your support.