A Week on the Estate: Peas Please, Connected Landscape & Working World
We’re looking forward to another week of two halves. The harvest is in full swing wherever we look and some of our crops could do with a tad more sunshine to finish them off. The coming week looks mostly fine and dry after a wet start, with broken cloud, sunny spells and a temperature range of 23C-12C.
Work to improve the Lake continues apace. As we discussed in last week’s blog (if you missed it, click HERE), the most substantial and important aspect of this work is returning the Lake to its intended volume and keeping it there. This involves removing 10,000 tons of silt and restoring the depth from 10cm to 2m. It also involves managing our land for generations to come in a manner that promotes soil cohesion and mitigates the effects of droughts and deluges.
In short, we want to keep our soil where it’s meant to be; we don’t want another 10,000 tons of silt to flow back into the Lake over the next 50 years. Instead, we’ll avoid working the land right up to field edges and ploughing arable fields in winter. We’ll grow winter cover crops and leave trees, hedges and natural greenery between fields and water courses. We’ll keep planting hedgerow and protect what we already have. By appreciating that everything in our landscape is connected, we’ll keep the Lake healthier for longer.
We always say ‘yes please’ to fresh peas! Harvest 2023 is rolling on between the showers and this week’s crop included a fine yield of organic peas. Getting up early and keeping up a brisk pace are of the essence; peas need to be frozen within an hour of being harvested to lock in all those useful nutrients.
