Farming continues

We'll things should be quieter now, but since the new shed is going up probably on Monday, the shed preparations seem to be taking all the time. Since the Boscastle Flood I think more about storm/roof water drains so we've been putting them in. Picked 15 finished cattle aswell today. The holiday business is full at the moment but is quiet after mid October - things do go quiet at this time of year but normally half term does provide a peak.

Happy that harvesting is over

Harvest is over, so now we're turning our attentions to shed building, drains, landscaping and such. The Hotels Boscastle website seems to be going well for an experiment, getting a few hits from google and yahoo, which is good for the time of year I think. The Boscastle Information page definitely need more work, so maybe that will be the job for this weekend.

Boscastle is still dry

Well it stayed dry today, and probably will until Saturday at out Self catering business. This also meant that on the farm, we finished harvesting barley, always a good thing. 120 acres all safe, bales and stored.

Self catering season Change

Harvesting is going well, only a third left, and Sunday is a pleasant break.

Self catering changes at this time of year, the school holidays are over, and the cottages are predominantly filled with couples, taking in the more peaceful autumn in Cornwall. The weather is often fine and dry this time of year too and we're full upto the 17th October.

Boscaslte Hotels - New Website

Well we're still waiting for harvest on the farm, the weather is looking better for tomorrow so fingers crossed. The Boscastle Hotels is a new source of Hotel, self catering and B&B's for the area, with some local information thrown in.

Self Catering Holiday Website Expansion

I've added new information section to my website, each helps to advertise the cottages and also aims to capture other markets who might like to change to self catering. Relevant titles are Boscastle Hotels, Bude cottages, Crackington Haven cottages, Launceston cottages, Tintagel cottages, Widemouth Bay cottages and surfing. Self catering accommodation is obviously our key market and our Location page near Bude and Tintagel has also been updated. For those interested, we now have a Thomas Hardy information page.

Can anyone tell, it's been raining this week, so instead of doing the much needed combine harvesting, I've been stuck looking at other thing!

Boscastle Cottages

Well our guests never cease to surprise me - about three weeks ago, the first phase of the digital switch over happened, to cut a long story short our Boscastle accommodation ended up with very few channels, no BBC and having to flip between analogue and digital to get channels. No one complained - thats just strange!

Harvesting and cottages

Well it's corn harvest time again on the farm, more specifically Spring Barley, we started last week and did a couple of days. We've been looking after cattle today. The self catering cottages are full as normal for this time of the year.

Well some detail about spring barley - it's tilled usually from February to May (March for us usually.) It it used by us for feeding cattle, for replanting next year, and other for brewing.

Self catering recycled

Well I've come home to piles of recycling - the new bins that make things obvious and explanation has ended up in at least a doubling in volume. This green policy seems to be having an effect, which is nice!

A camping we will go

Well am off camping for 5 nights. Finished silage on Saturday, at last, three weeks late at least and now for some fun down in the West of Cornwall. The self catering cottages will take care of their selves for a few days.

Farming today

Well it's been the turn of farming to fill today. We've been bailing arable silage or whole crop. Peas, Barley and grass. The bale grab broke three times today but we got it all finished in the end. thank goodness for some nice weather.

Cottage in a web

Just been adding my website to some directories to hopefully improve my google ratings, not sure am ever going to make my fortune from the process, but it is a challenge. There are alot of cottages in the boscastle area.

Bins, Bins, Bins

Oh well, just ordered the recycling bins today. To go in Cargurra Cottage and also the Barn, our self catering cottages near Boscastle. Arriving soon along with some good explanation should reduce our landfill greatly.

Recycling at the Cottages

I've put new information into all the cottages about how to recycle in North Cornwall. When we first started recycling at the cottages, we had to go to Boscastle to recycle paper and glass split into colours. Now the council does everything and provides bags, and even uses carrier bags to take glass.

So this afternoons task is to get some recycled plastic bins from The Green Stationery Company so that people have something to carry recyclables in and also a visual reminder because they have the logo on and are a strong colour of blue.

Going Green

We've joined the Green Tourism Business Scheme to improve the sustainability of our holiday cottages. We get an inspection every two years and the first one will be at the end of this year.

There are lots of things the get organised before the end of the year, recording our environmental impact in many ways, energy use, waste etc. It's interesting and after doing the green tourism btec level 2, I know more of what to aim for.

Two big things to sort out are energy use and waste. This weeks target is recycling and reuse. So I'm getting more bins at the rubbish area to collect the 4 kinds of waste that our council collects. Probably the most important thing is signing the whole thing up - this mornings task.

First Posting about the cottages

First posting of the Cargurra Farm blog, well writting things for the web, and to be interesting will be a challenge.

On the farm we're waiting for a nice bit of weather to do 30 acres of silage. The cottages are full until the end of August and people seem to be enjoying themselves.

We've just bought some really nice prints by the local artist Helen Setterington - she has gallery in Boscastle. We've been them up in the cottages Saturdays. She does wonderful paintings of Boscastle and the local coast.

Julian