Stockland Fair and another major 2025 job complete

The second Bank Holiday Monday in May always means the Stockland village fair. It’s an eclectic mix of entertainers, games and market traders to keep people amused, and this year was no exception. There was an electric mini train you could ride on, children’s face painting, exotic animal petting, vintage tractors and camper vans, and all sorts of games such as welly toss, bat the rat, hook a duck and hoopla. Local organisations were demonstrating their skills – including sheep shearing and hedgelaying (who were actually making a wooden chair). We wandered round stalls selling everything from handmade crafts and plants to clothes and bric-a-brac. You could even pick up pet chickens from a local poultry seller. And throughout the afternoon there were performances from Honiton Band, a flea circus and a folk group. It’s always an enjoyable way to spend the afternoon and catch up with our various friends we see there.

We spent most of the rest of the long weekend getting through gardening jobs. There’s always so much to do!! The most important job – and one of our ‘major jobs for 2025’ was to mend the covers for our vegetable beds in the kitchen garden. We’ve already had our vegetables nibbled (or in the case of some of the lettuce and chard, completely demolished) so delayed planting most of the vegetables out until the covers were done. The hinges on the vegetable bed covers had rusted closed so John had to force them off with a mallet and screwdriver before replacing them with exterior stainless steel hinges. The corners of the frame had also been damaged because of the hinges, so he had to reattach them and reinforce them with metal corners. It took us so long to make the covers that we’re very keen to keep them going as long as we can!

In preparation for the covers being finished, I planted out the first two beds with all our brassicas (exciting to finally get these in the ground as they’ve been ready for a while!) and re-sowed the carrot and swede seeds which haven’t really taken. We had a few dwarf bean seeds that had germinated, so they went into the bed as well. It’s always easier to plant the beds before the covers go on as you end up crawling between the beds otherwise.

We also planted out spring onions, sunflowers and lettuce in the beds, and courgette, nasturtium, tomatoes, marigolds and stocks in planters in the kitchen garden. We’re trying to mix vegetables with pollinator flowers – the nasturtium and stocks are an added bonus as they’re edible flowers. We potted up our first set of tomatoes out with marigolds and carnations and moved them down to our house where we have a bit more space. And we planted out the climbing beans in the pea and bean frame – we had to add extra netting between the poles at the back to make space for all the plants, but fortunately we had a piece that fit perfectly. It’ll be exciting to see how the peas and beans turn out in our new bed!

John repaired both our sweet pea corner frame and the blackberry arch in the orchard, which had been damaged by one of the winter storms. We’re also experimenting with a new sweet pea wall – since we took the ivy off the kitchen garden wall and had it beautifully repaired by our neighbour’s dad, we’ve now draped a net over it and planted sweet peas in pots at the bottom. Hopefully they’ll take and we’ll have a wall of sweet peas by the walk to the games room that attracts pollinators to both the kitchen garden and the orchard vegetable beds.

Planting everything out means I finally managed to make enough space to pot up more seedlings and plant out the next round of seeds. During our build, our architect kindly gave us a device you can use to make pots out of newspaper which is a complete gamechanger to keep on top of all our seedlings as we don’t have enough pots or enough space for the larger pots. I’ve spent a long time potting up seedlings into newspaper pots until we’re ready to plant them out. Now we just keep running out of newspaper…

We managed to fit a couple of other jobs in this weekend too. John cut back the branches around the benches in the wood, so that any guests using them have a lovely view across the valley. And we made another batch of damson jam ready to take to Daisy’s Dairy when they run out.

We reached a major milestone this week with the Farmhouse – our 50^th booking came through (and our 51^st now as well!). Our current guests – who are staying for a week over half term – are our 32^nd party. To date we’ve had 202 people and 43 dogs to stay! We only have one weekend left empty now until September so hopefully we’ll attract a last minute booking – it’s a shame to see the house standing empty especially during the summer months.