2024 Round Up
As 2024 draws to a close, yesterday's snow still lingers on the ground can mean only one thing. Yes, correct, another turkey dinner on it's way.
No, that's not it. Clearly, I have time on my hands to tidy the web site and add this summary of 2024.
Now that we're here, 2024 seems to have flown by, but we have accomplished a fair bit and are still munching our way through mountains of food grown over the year.
January
Bore hole drilled, 31 metres down.
Started the north side shed extension to house the bikes and larger tools (cement mixer and rotavator).
February
Reached this milestone.
Unbelievable Jeff.
February
Bore hole pump installed and commissioned, distribution hose set up to deliver water to the irrigation tanks and hose points. Solar powered irrigation system started. February was unusually mild.
March
Greenhouse bursting into life - early salad leaves et al for harvest before the tomato plants went in. Very busy month in the garden.
April
Game Changer! 13 horse power beast for ploughing and rotavating. Doubled the size of useable cultivation land for 2024. Will expand again for 2025!
May
The outside tomatoes making good progress. Still planted them too close together. Potatoes behind, peas, beans, corn and butternut squash to the left.
Essentially up from dawn to dusk in the garden.
June
The gluts begin! First major one is the Mulberries. White here, the red ones are about 2 weeks later.
Many jars of jam.
June
First of the second earlies. These potatoes are Purple Rain - delicious.
Bought the seed potato from Ireland, nearly furthest point in the EU from us.
(Have ordered next year's from them too).
June
Cucumbers, broad beans 4x potatoes and courgettes, thousands of them!
July
Knows his onions
July
Most made into canned tomatoes, which we are still working our way through at the end of December. So tasty compared to anything from the shops.
July
Drove down the coast from Burgas to Resovo, with Turkey the other side of the River.
August
Sunrise from Nessebar
August
It's getting hot in here.
August
Twisting my melon man.
August
Collecting chilli seeds. We have a few!
August
Chilli powder
August
I love figs, fresh and also turned some into jam and a chilli and fig jelly.
September
Potatoes looking rather sweet.
September
Roman Amphitheatre in Plovdiv. Joined a group on Facebook for American Muscle Cars and attended a "meet".
Was a good day - though mortified that some young kiddies called my Mustang the granddad of the other Mustangs!
September
We don't get many rainy days, but when it does....
September
We do get some occasional blustery days with the wind howling down from the north.
We lost 4 trees in this storm, along the boundary with our neighbours (on both sides). Amazingly missed hitting anything of importance!
October
Having started in January, make a start on finishing the bike shed!
October
That's half of this year's wood. Haven't cut the other half yet!
Having to use the bike shed, as the wood store on the other side of the shed hadn't been started, yet.
October
The van edging towards it's final resting place. Will start designing the chicken coop and runs
October
Welcome to Smelly. Lives up to his name.
October
The super hot chillies have a much longer time to reach maturity.
November
How it started
November
Frames welded and concreted in.
A few bits to buy, install the aluminium profiles for mounting the panels, then wire up the inverter and batteries in the shed.
On the home straight.
December
Thank you Santa!
Treated myself to a top dollar metal detector, Have joined a National Federation and hopefully will get out to start finding gold!
So, that's it. A year in a few pictures.
Good progress made on the infrastructure projects, hopefully generating electricity by the Spring.
A productive year in the garden. The irrigation system both excellent and disappointing. Everything watered by drippers flourished. The plants along the leaky tubes not so well once the temperatures starting rising. The water was probably evapourating before it had chance to get into the soil. Have bought more drippers, but will try again with the leaky tubes, will bury them a bit deeper but also make provision to water the plants with the garden hose.
Here's to 2025.
If you've read more than one page on this site, you deserve a beer, so I'll have one with you наздраве.