Alas, the Cornish summer comes to fruition. As the summer holidays arrive, a deluge of wind and rain howls across the county, gleeful almost in its energy and mocking-like in its timing. It spoils beach-days and sends children packing, destined for the doom and gloom of the television and the inescapable wailing of the ‘back-to-school’ crowd. For farmers, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Harvests up and down the country have at best been delayed, and in the worst cases cancelled altogether. Crops that sprang sprightly from the summer soil just last week now lie jaded against the earth, flattened by weather with all hope of retrieval washed away in the mizzle. At Trelonk, our crops are standing up to the beating remarkably well.
The deep taproots of the Hemp, Borage and Sunflowers secure them safely in the soil, and the Calendula field simply sways and dances with the wind. Agronomically speaking, 50% of the farm is now ready for harvesting, or at least for cutting (our Borage and Hemp will remain out in the field as part of the next steps in their harvesting process). Obviously, we will await calmer climes, but the excitement of seeing fields of flowers morph slowly into fields of seeds has now reached fever pitch.
Finally, it is a pleasure to report that the ‘budding’ stage of the rose production process is now over, and we can bid a warm and grateful farewell to our contractors. The roses will see out the summer before being ‘headed-back’, a process that involves cutting the root stock ‘head’ away to allow the preferred species ‘head’ to flourish. All Images © Trelonk Ltd
