Broome Park Farm, Farmhouse Bed & Breakfast Accommodation Cleobury Mortimer, Shropshire

I spent a very enjoyable afternoon yesterday touring a selection of private gardens in and around Cleobury. They ranged from the absolutely stunning to the quirky, each one with something different to comment on and inspire. I came away with lots of ideas but not sure if any will come to fruition!

The harvest is a bit hit and miss at the moment - when the weather is fine nothing is dry enough or ripe enough to combine, as soon as it is - it starts to rain! All the malting barley has now been collected and hopefully will soon be made into delicious Hobson’s Ales, my favourite being Twisted Spire.

One of the cockerels went to a new home on Saturday - I hope the girls won’t miss him too much! There are 2 young cockerels amongst the chicks we hatched out at Easter and there are 3 more eggs due to hatch out any day now - fingers crossed they are all hens!

Whilst out walking this week I haven’t had to use the bridge to cross the Ford just below Broome Park. On Tuesday there was absolutely no water going over it at all! This is a sign of how dry this year has been, whilst it hasn’t been particularly warm or sunny it has definitely been exceptionally dry.

The combine finally left the shed this week and has been busy harvesting barley, some for animal feed and some for the local Brewery - Hobsons, so hopefully it will be used in some award winning beer! (And we will get some free samples!). The chap from the Maltsters was here today to take a sample and check it is suitable. Only 1 variety, Maris Otter, is generally used for malting, but this has a lower yield than the more commercial varieties so the jury is still out on whether we will grow it again next year!

Rain stopped harvest today but hopefully the weather will be better over the weekend and we can start on the wheat.

I created this border, as you approach the house, last summer, when I had some Swiss friends staying and so it has become known as my ‘Swiss’ border! I have planted it full of bee friendly plants and have noticed no end of bees and butterflies enjoying the flowers. The photo doesn’t really do it justice!

Yesterday Sandra and I finally managed to paint the queen in one of our hives - we actually felt like proper beekeepers for a moment! Still no sign of the queen in the other hive but there are lots of bees and lavae so she must be in there somewhere! There also seemed to be a reasonable amount of honey so hopefully we will be able to extract some more towards the end of August.

Sorry I haven’t blogged for ages but we have been on the ‘holiday of a lifetime’! Hence the photo of a glacial lake in Iceland! This is Jokulsarlon and the opening sequence of the James Bond movie ‘Golden Eye’ was filmed here. It was my absolutely favourite place amongst the host of extraorinarily beautiful and amazing places we visited.

Other highlights were The Blue Lagoon - an outdoor geothermal spa; Hotel Anna where we lazed in the hot tub and enjoyed excellent local food and Akureyri, the capital of the North, where we ended up when part of the Ring Road was washed away and we had to do a 600 mile detour the opposite way round the island. Certainly a holiday to remember and somewhere I would love to return to!

The weather hasn’t been too bad today so John decided it was time our ewes were sheared! Fortunately there are only 6 so it didn’t take too long. Some of the fleeces will be kept for spinning or felt making and the rest will be sold - not that they are worth much, less than the cost of paying someone to shear them! Hopefully the weather will stay mild now so they don’t get cold!