Marina gave us gooseberries! They are amazing. We have been overwhelmed by Marina and Mark's generosity of spirit, knowledge and harvest. Although perhaps we should not be surprised as permaculture is all about connections and relationships. 

"The core of the principles is the working relationships and connections between all things.” Juliana Birnbaum Fox

​Nothing is going to stop when they leave and we arrive. Nature will keep doing its thing and hopefully we will keep the flow going. This will undoubtedly be thanks in great part to them passing us the baton with such care. 

So we made gooseberry and almond cake. The bottom right picture is this year's gooseberries at the Growing Communities Saturday market and we have high hopes about bringing glorious, fruity baked treats to the market from August onwards to sell alongside the freshly picked fruit. 

It went down a treat at our big father's day feast this evening, eaten al fresco in our Hertfordshire garden.

We think it needs more gooseberries so we will be making batch 2 next weekend to take over to Mark and Marina's to get their seal of approval when we next visit. We are contemplating adding ginger although the gooseberries are so tart and delicious we might just make them sing for themselves.

Here is the cake, still bubbling fresh out of the over. 

We're basically getting a bit ahead of ourselves but we have heard from so many of you who want to come and stay. So we have already lined up a bell tent to add to the two caravans that are on site. If you are itching to come and visit from mid August, drop us a line! There is a bit more here about accommodation and ways of visiting and using the facilities. 

We will be very ok with fire pits.

We will be extremely happy for people to visit with children (as long as they play with ours and stay out of the pond). 

We will be extremely happy for people to come and pick apples!

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Meanwhile, still in Hertfordshire, we have mixed up our veg beds this year to develop more poly culture growing spaces in the garden. Broad beans at the back with climbing sweet pea, peas and onions in the middle, radishes and lettuces at the front and flowers and herbs in the gaps. It's a little bit weedy, it's a bit self sown (lettuces left to go to seed from last year and a few strawberries for good measure) but it's very productive and wonderful on the eye. Here's lunch!

We went running and walking in the Dedham countryside. We found caterpillars, butterflies, dragonflies and fish. Grandad was the fastest runner.

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