Nick's Notes

Sunday was brilliant in so many respects, having the extra boost of 10+ workers via Camille's meditation group in the morning, (at coffee break I noted there were 20 people), then picking the broad beans and our first early potatoes (Accent) was special moment too.

Chicken house is nearly ready and the glasshouse has moved forward too.

The Big Lunch picnic attracted 30-40 people including enough children for a football match! Great atmosphere of friendly socialising and enjoyment of the wide variety of food presented. Amazingly the rain held off all day after an initial downpour at dawn and only started up again at 4.00pm.

Gradually other visitors turned up for the farm walks to see what we are doing, the new born lambs didn't want to be part of any close encounter and found the amount of people daunting. The pigs were easily tempted into being sociable by offering them last seasons potatoes and they were happy to receive lots of petting and scratching from our visitors.

After more SHG errands in the evening, Heather and I finally sat down to supper at 8.45pm and it was a fantastic meal, our first ever that was entirely made of produce from SHG, the meat, the new potatoes and broad beans were all absolutely perfect, tender, fresh, succulent and flavourful. It doesn't get any better than this (I said) and Heather said it was the best lamb she had ever eaten. Shetland has a reputation of being the most flavourful. Admittedly the accompanying wine was imported.

Please forgive my waxing lyrical about this significant day, but it was such a positive event that I wanted to share it with you.
Thanks to all who helped make this happen.