Week Ending 28th April 2013

This weeks entry is going to be a little thin on the ground as all we've really done during the week is wait.

With life on Flat Holm now due to begin on Monday next week, we have found ourselves in a situation with little to do and little money to spend until then. A good curry and a beer on Wednesday night has been just about all we've gone out of the house for all week!

As we're unable to transport any of the plants I've started growing at home to the island, I've potted them up and handed them on. Hopefully the recipients will enjoy some tasty home grown sweetcorn in the summer. As you can see from this picture I started the plants growing in food containers that I had recycled, and this week it was finally time to pot them on in order to give them away.

Why buy plant pots when everyday food containers do the job perfectly?

With a bit of luck we should have a small veg garden on the island, but due to an issue with the lead content in the soil there all of the veg will have to be grown in grow bags and containers. We'll let you know how it's getting on when it's all set up!

So onto this weeks news, and two articles have caught our attention this week. The first one feels especially appropriate, as living on the island we will have a limited food budget and crucially no shops! All of our food will be ordered and brought across from the mainland. So how much money do you really need to create healthy balanced meals? The lady in this article will be happy to show you...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22263706

And finally for this week. Everybody in Britain has been tired of the weather over the past 12 months, namely the snow, hail and rain. But in this article the residents of the town Zedelgem in Belgium have discovered a type of rain that they really don't seem to mind...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22295366

See you next week!

Week Ending 21st April 2013

Welcome to the first installment of our new blog which is called This Week I Have Mainly...

Finally we are starting to see some colour in the garden!

So this week we've finally seen some sunshine and the first signs that Spring might finally be on it's way. The main news on our front this week though is that our hunt for employment is finally over (temporarily), as we have been offered a 6 month placement as Trainee Conservation Wardens on Flat Holm Island. "Where?" I can hear you asking. Well Flat Holm is a small island in the Bristol Channel sitting roughly between Cardiff and Weston Super-Mare and is classified as being Welsh.

All being well our stay on the island will be beginning toward the end of this week, and we are both very exited about the challenges it will bring. During our time on the island we will be learning a wide range of conservation and land management techniques, with tasks ranging from wildlife surveys to acting as guides for visitors to the island.

Badger Faced Sheep (yes that's their real name!) and the island's lighthouse in the background

I won't go into too much information about the island for now as I need to leave some things to tell you over the coming weeks. 

One thing that we are keen to do in each edition of this weekly blog is to find a news article or two from the week that really made us smile or laugh. 

So we'll leave you with this weeks winning article, and it goes to a worker from the Border Force Team at Stansted Airport who decided to leave his job in order to spend some more quality time with his family. The way that he tendered his resignation was fairly sweet too...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-22168676

See you next week!