Fun in the Sun!

Hurrah! We are now in full swing summer season, welcoming guests to the garden – especially to discover our honey bees, taking to the road with chickens, bees, and food classes, and lining up the festivals for lots of fun in the sun.

Half Term has found us running Bees for Children or Bees for Teens every single day, that’s a total of 60 people donning bee suits and holding frames of honey bees from the hive, and it’s always great to hear how people have found us. This week we’ve had a mother and son who had heard about us after the younger son visited on a school trip, we’ve had a family travelling from Dorset for a fascinating afternoon, a father and son whose mum had been on a recent corporate event, families that have been following Hen Corner for a while and the good old repeat visitors who come back to try new courses each season (knowing that they get a 20% discount!).

We even had a family join us for a bee keeping course because they had picked up a postcard when we took the chickens to the Spring Market at Syon Great Conservatory and, guess what?, we are back there again in a few weeks time.

We just *LOVE* Syon Park, House & Gardens and are delighted to join in with a number of events throughout the year. Last week we brought our chickens to their Countryside Learning schools’ day and popped back at the weekend to the Foodies Festival, next month, we are supporting a private corporate party with Bee Keeping workshops and are bringing our chickens back for the Summer Market curated by Dapper & Suave on Sunday 29th June.

We have such a special relationship with the Syon Park estate team that we even pop back in the winter to collect yew trimmings to make our Christmas wreaths…

Come for a fabulous family day out with a festival feel and say hello on 29th June…

London Permaculture Festival Competition

I’m excited to have been invited back as a guest speaker to the London Permaculture Festival on Sunday 6^th July at Cecil Sharp House, Camden. Its a great opportunity to come along for 20 workshops and demonstrations, a stalls market, a pop-up unusual edible perennials plant stall and a ‘families at the festival’ zone. Enjoy discussions, networking and learning about creative solutions for a sustainable, healthy future.

I will be bringing some bees in a glass hive for a Bee Keeping workshop along with copies of my book for sale and signing as part of my Living the Good Life in the City workshop.

Competition

The festival have kindly offered us a pair of tickets (worth £40) exclusively for subscribers of this blog.

If you’d like to come, leave a comment on this post (below) to let us know and we’ll enter you in the draw (please double check that you’ve subscribed to our blog – bottom of page).

Competition closes on Sunday 8th June and we will notify the winners by email on Monday 9th June.

Along with the courses and events that are open to the public, we are also doing lots of schools work, some in partnership with School Food Matters, corporate & private events and we’ve even got a group of Homesteaders from the USA coming to visit and see how we’re Living the Good Life in the City – I’ll be making them traditional English Scones that day….

Coming up at Hen Corner:

Other news:

Plants from the green house are being transferred to the kitchen garden and allotment – nearly all grown from seed this year.
We are now up to TEN colonies of bees (over 3 sites) – how did that happen?
Our cheeky little black Pekin bantam is broody again, trying to hatch 12 eggs at a time

Jobs for the week:

Make greengage jam with fruit from the freezer (as this year’s fruit still needs a couple of months on the tree)
Start extracting some early spring honey
Make a squirrel proof cover for the Italian flat peach tree

Are you enjoying the good outdoors?

I hope to see you soon,

Sara