News From the Hermitage

Hello everyone! Our new season starts at the end of September 2010, and we know, that by the time September comes around, we will be longing for some warm sunshine. August is such a cold, damp rainy month, but the late evenings are wonderful, curling up with a hot cup of coco, and a good book, listening to the rain lashing down on the roof. Sometimes its so loud we can barely hear ourselves talk.

Plenty of agricultural activity going on at the moment, David has planted some varieties of old traditional rice, that are no longer in commercial production. We have no idea how they will respond to our environment but we are keeping our fingers crossed. Last year our vegetable production for the guesthouse was a near total disaster, the herds of deer, were relentless in raiding our vegetable patch! Finally we just gave up, this year we hope to enclose all that we intend growing behind netting or mesh. So perhaps with a little luck you will get to eat plenty of fresh organic produce.

We hope to fill our shop with more variety this year. Sold plenty of quilts last year, we did some up in black and white and they were a great hit. As usual there will be jams, pickles and preserves, and our farm products, turmeric, pepper, long pepper, and dried chillies and so on. My mother in law Marie, now lives with us and her needle work is well appreciated.

David now has a tractor, and he loves it! You might get to drive it! What a difference it makes to farming, I was’nt sure about the noise but it kind of fits in, like it belongs. We still use bulls occasionally, they definitely still belong!

Katrina lives in Bangalore at the moment, writing up the last few chapters of her thesis. She has worked on the ecology of Fericretes in the Western ghats, Londa Range, she hopes to hand in her research work in September. She has really worked hard, and so we hope that she will be well rewarded.

We have had our ups and downs. We lost our beloved Scully to Doberman hepatitis. She lived two years with the disease, but finally sucumbed on the 20th of April. How we miss our wonderful companion. Badmash was not keeping well with a nasal tumour and was being treated in Bangalore by Dr. Pampapathi, but passed away recently. Bahadur is with us.