Thank you to everyone who came to help us this week: Maud, Arian, Bart, Emily, Lorenzo, Stijn, Jona, Loïc, Anouck, Annick, Mamitcho, Brenda, Jesus, Antonio, Hilde and Bart. I take this opportunity to warmly thank my small fixed team: Jojo, Bram en Tom. Without your help, the continuation of Plukrijp would not be possible.
Bart, Emily and their children Lily-Louise and Florian came to spend a few days with us. They enriched us with their knowledge at the Project Managing level.
We took advantage of the sunny days to undertake the heavy work of sorting the many tiles stored behind the family home and on the street side. For this, we had to build a solid structure to store them. We decided to keep only a few varieties. The others are available for those who could do something with them. If you are interested, let us know! While sorting the tiles, we discovered a whole stock of asbeth tiles that we took to the recycling park.
Tom has repaired the gutter at the back of the family house so that rainwater that falls on the North side of the roof can also be collected in one of the cisterns. Tom also repaired a leak in the watering line towards the closed tunnel. Thanks Tom!
Bram finished sorting the workshop and we have started sorting through all the wood we received during the winter, which was waiting patiently under tarpaulins.
On the left side of tunnel 2 we had sown beetroot & planted onions, but as the season progressed we noticed the very small amounts of beetroot standing. A cold & wet spring combined with potentially not the right timing of scratching, led us to decide to scrap the bed of beetroot & to seed lines of carrots instead. Where the onions had come up nicely, we seeded lettuce in between & seeded carrots for the rest.
We scratched (lightly) & weeded the right side of the open tunnel 5 where the first potatoes are already showing.
We weeded and scratched open tunnel 3.
We cleaned the exterior and interior of several caravans so that they are ready to welcome our many supporters.
We repaired the front wheel of Tom’s trailer by welding in a scrap part that we had in stock. It is in these cases that we appreciate the full value of our storage system from the many materials we receive. It is very rare that we have to go and buy something at the store.
Bram’s old yellow van continues to serve us well on the farm thanks to the technical experience of Bram, Antonio and Tom.
We mowed the grass all over the farm.
The leek we planted 15 days ago has taken root well and is already growing. We watered it to help it in its development.
We redid our “nursery-system” following Hugo’s visit and advices. This motivates us to create a sustainable system for years to come. As we fell behind in the production of young plants, we bought some plants.
At the Hei, we scratched between the carrots & parsnip. The beds were full of weeds, we think because of digging up the paths & waking up new, buried seeds. The second halves of the beds are also not germinating as well as we thought, we think because of the digging up – we noticed it was a bit less digested towards the back.
At Hei, we put more straw in the paths, harvested leek that was in seed, cut back the berries next to the potato bed (& weeded all the nettles & weeds taking over the berries).
We seeded more pumpkin & corn in pots.
We watered the closed tunnels in preparation for the planting.
We went into the closed tunnels and planted tomatoes & cucumbers in center tunnel 1, tomatoes in center tunnel 2 and paprikas on the right side, & melons in tunnel 3.
We also planted yellow & green courgettes in open tunnel 3.
We started to rebuild the small garden playhouse for the children.
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