We started size-grading and packing the daffodil bulbs today. The machinery is running nicely after my maintenance frenzy at the weekend. I had to fetch my drill and pop-riveter when everyone went for their tea break to make a few tweaks to stop the dust blowing about but the task is actually running as smoothly as it ever has.
Goodness knows this was a pig of a job when I first started doing it twenty-ahem summers ago. I used to dread it. It was dusty and strenuous and felt like we would never get to the end of the job. All my friends were off doing interesting summer things but not me. We used to put all the bulbs into small wooden trays to dry and I would have to lift thousands of them each season. Now we handle them in larger wooden bins with a forklift; this is much better for the bulbs but the change in practice and the twenty-ahem winters since explain why my tummy isn't as flat as it used to be. It is only when you look back that you can see the shift because it has only been achieved a step at a time using experience, effort, imagination and gradual investment.
We are sufficiently well-organised in fact that I am going to get a few days off in July for the first time in my life so I'm going to recapture my lost youth at a festival. I'm even camping. I can't wait.
After years of plugging away at this bit of the business I can't convey how relieved I am to feel in control. It takes a lifetime to learn how to do this job. I feel much more confident as a daffodil grower now and I can concentrate on improving what we do. We are adding a few different cultivars to our range this year and are selling some of the more disease-susceptible stocks, these are going to be processed into a drug to treat Alzheimers. I am also hoping to buy back a variety which my Grandad grew decades ago because it will fill a small gap in our flower programme and keep the flower croppers in full employment and the customers smiling (or scowling less anyway). This winter I am turning my attention to improving the hot water treatment process and trying to incorporate a biopit and we have plans to modify our harvester a bit.
Once the machinery was humming along nicely, I managed to get a proper look around the farm and I spent a couple of hours at our trial ground. The crops around the farm look remarkably well considering how little rain we have had and the potatoes will really benefit from the shower this afternoon.
The best bit, however, was behind the old potato store at Welland House where we compost our organic waste (potato grade-outs, delphinium leaves and daffodil bulb husks). There were two small Owls perched on a branch (there were also 12 rabbits loitering around but I'm not mentioning them - the rabbit population has exploded in the banks and hedge bottoms).
The owls quickly flew into the hedge when they saw me but I'm pretty sure that they were young Barn Owls and not Small Owls. We have Barn Owls nesting at Welland House most years. The irony is that this year they have snubbed the nesting box in favour of a gap in the large stack of wooden trays. The same trays that we once used for daffodils bulbs.
Eh? How's that for a neatly-rounded entry?
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