Thursday, 30 April 2015

GOOD FENCES - The Garlic Farm (Part 2)

Once again, my post is from the series about The Garlic Farm. I photographed these beautiful Hellebores that were at the bottom of a fence leading to the shop which was full of wonderful goodies. The remaining shots are self-explanatory. Please enjoy.

This is Colin, the hands on owner of The Garlic Farm just checking how the work of clearing some of the shrubbery in this field is getting on. There were 2 Highland cattle in this field. More photos of them and others on Saturdays post.

The man operating this machine was 82 years old and loved working

at the farm. The Garlic Farm employs nearly 50 people.

Yesterday I showed you Colin’s mother and her home and this is a beautiful wooden sculpture of two Hares in the grounds of her garden.

These are some of the greenhouses where they sort and pack the garlic.

There are quite a number of Hens and Rooster’s wandering around.

One of the houses on the farm.

I published a post about Tory, the biggest horse here when he was supposed to have entered the Isle of Wight Grand National. CLICK HERE for more photographs. Unfortunately he became lame the day before and could not run however he did well this last weekend at Royal Artillery jump off at Lark Hill, Salisbury Plain.

Colin sent me this photograph yesterday of Tory who is on the right ridden by Tatty in the IOW Team at Larkhill. They came 5th out of 21. Thanks Colin.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I linking it with GOOD FENCES.

Many thanks for leaving comments on my post.

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

The Garlic Farm Revisited (Part 1)

You may remember that I visited the Garlic Farm on 1 January this year and posted about it HERE however it was so busy that it was difficult to get photographs so Colin Boswell, the owner invited me to come back the next time I was visiting the Isle of Wight and he would show me around which he graciously did for about 3 hours. So over the next 7 posts I will endeavour to tell and show you the story behind The Garlic Farm.

There is quite a bit of reading however if you wish to know how the Garlic farm started, that is the way to do it. I found it fascinating.

Martin Boswell

Colin’s wife Jenny also manages to rent 6 cottages with one of their sons on the property.

Colin and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Colin took me to see Norah, his mother who now lives at Parsonage Farm, Newchurch village which is not far a way from The Garlic Farm.

Before meeting Colin at 9.00am, I managed to photograph the shop and all it fantastic variety of goodies. What I didn’t realise was that most of the fresh garlic grown last year was nearly finished as the next harvest was from June to August so I will make a return visit as I really want to see and photograph the 35 varieties grown on the farm.

Quite a variety of garlic plants as well as these Asparagus crowns were for sale.

These Gold awards were won at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

I meet Colin in this main restaurant for coffee although there is another eating place at the Garlic Farm Heritage Centre.

I do not know whether you can read this however I will tell you more about that in next Monday's post as the whole area dates back to the 4000BC and when Colin and I later were in one of the garlic fields we made a great find.

I just had to take a shot of my delicious cup of coffee with a garlic design on top as Colin and I looked out of the windows where the Red Squirrels were coming to feed on whole unshelled Hazel nuts.

I hope you have enjoyed the first post in this series of 7 posts as I have lots more interesting information and photographs to share with you.

Thank you for visiting and also to those who leave comments.

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY - Birds seen around Seaview Cottages

Following on from my post yesterday when I showed you Seaview Cottages which overlooks Hersey Nature Reserve, today I will show you more birds that I photographed as I walked round and also from the hide at the reserve.