the Farm
As one does when faced with months of lockdown and an open field… I asked my husband if we could use a little bit of the field behind our house to set up a “test garden”. Low and behold, the crazy man said “yes”! Our original plan (and now subsequent plan) was always to turn that field into a wild flower meadow and orchard, so we put that scheme on hold for a year, plowed the field under and built the trial garden. It was successful beyond my wildest imagination. We are blessed with good, free draining (albeit rocky) soil and I was off to the races. It all made me stop and think, maybe this is what I am meant to do? It brought me such joy to wake up every morning to see the what the “sproutlings" (as my husband refers to them) had done, and even more joy to spread the blooms to local friends and family. It was then that Marlston Farmgirl was born...
the Seeds
Once we had determined this was the path we were on, we set about the farm looking for a bigger space, one that we (hopefully) could expand in. At the back of the farm was a beautiful piece of land that seemed ideal. While we wanted to employ the least invasive method to the land as possible to create the farm, establishing raised beds or a no-dig farm in field this size seemed daunting. We plowed a small strip to see what soil we were working with and THANK GOD, because while the soil was silty and free draining it seemed as if there were more rocks than soil! Undeterred, we decided to plow the whole area we had staked out and do the best with what we were given. Eight lorries of organic compost, mushroom compost, a LOT of organic amendments and weeks of back-breaking rock picking later we had our field. As I sat and sketched out what the field would look like, I kept going back to the drawing board(s) time and again, because it always seemed like it wasn’t enough space for all the flowers in my mind. When the plan was complete (about five versions after I started!), I had broken the field into quadrants and had room for perennials, annuals, bulbs, a hedgerow and dahlias...about a zillion dahlias. In 1637, the world was gripped by Tulip Mania…fortunes were lost by people going crazy for the rarest breeds of tulips. I kind of feel like I have experienced the same thing this year with dahlias. My calendar alarms were set for the opening days each breeder started their sales, and I was crushed when I missed out on a prized variety. I woke up one day and realized in my madness I had bought 648 dahlia tubers…gulp! In the end though, one day around mid July they will be all be blooming in the field in a rainbow of color, and will make me (and hopefully all of you) happy.
