Happy Easter

It has been a busy March. Getting ready for lockdown lifting and welcoming guests again. And moving furniture about.Glad I have had a strong man to carry things about to do most of this. But not one to be stuck and wanting it done now rather than later, I sometimes did as a carthorse would do when I was small when backing a cart... put my behind on it and pushed. .I havent mastered carrying a fridge yet but had help. So now can revel that when you come to stay with us we can offer you a room with its fridge,microwave, toaster and enough bits and bobs to make snacks and small meals. During lockdown we have realised it is not altogether about going out to eat, but to be able to get a take away, some nice deli food and enjoy local bits and bobs suffices. I know when we have had holidays abroad in the past how much I enjoy shopping and eating local produce. Live like the locals so to say. So true is the saying a change is as good as a rest. And if you want a delivery just say, you order what you want and I will stack it inthe fridge for you ready for your arrival. I have also been busy getting plants growing ready to put in the garden as it warms up . It has been over 20 degrees here for the last 3 days but as it probably wont last for too long I have commondered my Dads passage way to grown my seedlings on as I have run out of windowledges here. Also it helps he has far more green fingers than me and they stand a better chance of surviving . My first planting was rhubarb seeds,they have grown really well.They say when you become a gardener you dont say rhubarb for example you would say Champagne or Victoria. Potatoes are not potatoes, but Maris Piper, Charlottes and Kind Edwards. I have even bought a white peach tree and it is treated much as a baby in a pram, take it out on a nice day, bring it in as the day gets colder just incase there is a frost. A white peach but with lovely pink blossom I am tempted

to buy another one. Tom has been busy digging up some of our most robust bushes as I want to create a framework of greenery around a very sparse looking covered over sitting areawhich looks more like a bus shelter at the moment. I have some hops which are very delicate at the moment. Again they have gone to my Dads for that extra bit of care and it didnt help that Dorothy - the young cat, like to sleep in the same plant pot as them here. It is nice to see that there is some grass now for the deer to eat, as they had a very lean time over winter. They are regualr visitors although we can't guarentee them coming every day. They do come more late afternoons onwards and come within 20 to 30 foot of the house. Just dont eat my magnolia bush. It will be nice to see the grandchildren over the Easter holidays as they are around just before they go back to school. No doubt it will be hectic as the sugar rush of chocolate will be rocketing. There is something about Easter eggs that taste different to a bar of chocolate. It is ok this on line shopping lark, but to me nothing beats going into the shop and seeing and sme ling what is on offer. Oh and just incase you have forgotten, I prefer milk chocolate -thank you Well I must crack on ,the birds are beginning to sing and the sun is just getting up .Jack is in for his breakfast as he has been out with dogs and ready for something to eat and it isnt 7am yet. I dont know about you, but lockdown I hardly known what day of the week it is, and clocks well my body clock is all out of sync. I look back on the year and think where has it gone. Nicholas is busy on the farm with lambing and hatching as eggs are coming by post for him to put in his incubators. And he has just hatched out a pair of alligators Happy Easter, and sorry no alligators just Aprils Fools Day

Friluftsliv ... are you up for this .

#Lockdown 2 - We have added the word "Friluftsliv" to our vocabulary . We are also taking "Friluftsliv " to another degree here at Carr House Farm .... more to follow very soon.

Just in case you didn't know what "Friluftsliv" means -open air living, fresh air and embrace what is all around us in the countryside. We are lucky to have mountains of it around here . Offering another choice of what you do when you come to stay with us here in the heart of the countryside.

So as Friluftsliv opens up into our lives more than ever before, we have something else to thank the Vikings for .

We all need something to look forward to and to get us through this trying time. Everyone will have highs and lows until Spring comes again. We always feel better with sunshine and long light days but I always think if you have something to look forward to ,enjoy something new whether it be an experience or learning something or a small gesture of kindness. It is not about huge expense it is about filling our hearts with joy from the small things in life.

Until then I have been down to Castle Stores -Bentleys Wool shop in Helmsley to buy some wool. I won't be knitting socks for soldiers as the saying goes but I actually find it quite therapeutic until the cat decide to commandeer the ball of wool and wont give it up

All in Order .

Just to let you know that when we feel the time is right to open our doors to welcome guests through our doors we are already ready .We understand the rules and regulations. We understand the precautions we need to take to make your stay as safe as we possibly can.

We are not opening for the time being as we feel that as lockdown eases that the virus will rear its ugly head again. With my dad been 97 and Jack and I the wrong side of 60  we feel for us it is not the right time. 

We do miss having guests here and I love to cook, so I miss the breakfasts ..the smell of cooking bacon. I miss cracking the eggs with their deep yellow yolks. I miss the smell of toast.  I miss your ohs and ahs when I set your plate down in from of you and I miss your cleared plates when you have finished. I miss the satisfaction I get form giving you pleasure of unexpected treats, of sharing our knowledge of the area. 

 

 

Team building, Summer and Family

Talk about the Adventures of the Enid Blyton 5 .. We have our very own 5 ,when the children come . We are lucky to have the beck that runs down through our woods near the house and water has always been a fascination to children over the years . They don't seem to feel the cold , icy cold water. So today as the temperature peaked into the 30s there was no better place to be. We have waterfalls and they jump down into them fearless, but they want the water deeper .Only one way then is to dam the water up. They worked like little beavers as I sat on a moss covered stone watching them all do their bit . At one stage they started to make a mudslide but I could see accidents about to happen so the idea of that had to be aborted as they had took off their wellingtons and filled them up and pass them along for one to the other to make it quicker and easier for them.
They ended up taking their dirty clothes and washing them in the water like the people do at the side of the River Nile. Then putting them back on again. Emmy had just got some new Joules wellies which had a ruler marking on the back of them  which can in very useful. So off the wellies used to come off to see how deep the water was.
I said they were like water nymphs. But then maybe they were just wood fairies. So after happily playing for over 2 hours  with no fall outs ,they had fairy buns  and a change of clothes and went home smiling .
Mission accomplished.

Sunday Update ,getting ready to come out of Lockdown in North YORKSHIRE

Can't believe it is 10 days since I wrote a blog. After writing one every day throughout lockdown I felt it was time to open out a little more. For you to go out and about as you felt fit and for me to focus on how we can think to reopen and what we need to do to make you feel safe and happy in your holiday surroundings.

So this is what I have come up with ..

I have bought enough hand sanitiser, disinfectants ,wipes and the like to sink a ship. Well maybe not a ship but it certainly weighed my car down at the back end. 

I already use a steam cleaner in bathrooms and will continue to do so and use it in the bedroom were possible .

Our laundry is professionally cleaned offsite in any case and the laundry services has had over 100 years experience and we have every confidence in them.

Booking will be for 3 days or longer as we intend to not have straight turn around .So there will be 3 days before you come into a room no one will have been before you and for the two days after you leave to safeguard me as well .

Any booking in 2019  we will take no deposits. Leaving you free to cancel ...but please let us now if you are not going to be coming to stay.

Our rooms have their own front doors so that if you prefer you do not have to have any contact with others you don't need to have. 

We are still thinking about breakfasts which we know are an important feature of why you come to stay with us. As we get more guidelines from the government we can put things in place.

Unless you are part of the same party, guests will sit at separate tables and if prefered seperate rooms. Or if the weather is nice maybe you would even like to enjoy it outside as we have done so many times over the last few months.

We are opening up more and more garden,field and forest space for you to enjoy. So if you just need to get away and not venture far but just come for a change of scenery and air we are hoping you will be pleased at what we can offer you.

We would like you to ring us 

to discuss your needs, your preferences and your worries too on 01347 868526.

In the meantime I will leave you with a few photos of life with us. I am still keeping my hand in cooking breakfast as Jack doesn't say no

Not my last post but as Lockdown is easing

 All the way through lockdown I have been writing a post every night .
I felt I owned it to everyone to read them and enjoyed them to keep going. Some of my day are very much the same, eat, sleep and work or maybe sleep ...I love to sleep, so contact me up to 12.30 past midnight I am rarely in bed by then but when I don't have guests in I  sleep in . I sometimes don't even feel the urgency at 7.30am when someone rings to pick up the phone . It would be Jack's mate who wants some advice about his sheep or Jacks cousin Stuart who I am sure rings up at some unearthly hour to wind me up.  I plan to have a code if my Dad wants me. So the secret is out ,when I have been invited to do webinars and zoom meetings early doors you know why I dont accept the offer. Susan Briggs' zoom meetings I really look forward to.  I try to make them all as she has worked so hard during the lockdown to keep us all going I try not to miss those. So even if she did them at 6am I would crawl out of bed to listen in.

As you probably know I do a lot on social media and always trying to help other businesses and also during lockdown other than the telephone it has been a great way to keep in touch with people.

I set out with great intentions at the beginning of all this lockdown to get certain jobs done. One thing I really want to do is to finish a book I have been writing for some time, so this is why I am going to write random blogs probably once or twice a week. Forgive me, but by the time I write a blog, double check the spelling and still get words wrong. Find photos from my jumbled up photo library, it is nearing 12 midnight when I get these posts up ..often taking me around an hour.

Again we have had rain today, which as well as refreshing things has made the weeds wake up too so I really must spend some time before our little jungle becomes an even bigger one. It was 10.30 pm when I came indoors from the garden this evening  and it is twilight I love these Summer nights. There is some bonus to living in the Northern Hemisphere .

I will leave you this evening with some photos of what Nicholas has got going on at the farm. He runs Wass Grange Hatchery and here are some of today chicks that have hatched out . So I will retreat to my "hatchery" and bring you news again before too long.

Stay safe, dear people. Stay strong and remember we only one chance to get it right. So try to stay at home  and look after yourselves. Dont take any notice of other people if they want to venture out and be silly bs that is their choice. I would like to think we will all still be here tucking into our Christmas dinners and moaning about the sprouts.

If you know of anyone who wants any eggs hatching or chicks Wass Grange Hatchery has a facebook page and all contact details are on there.



 

if you like trees and water and peace

What do you have when you step out of your back door.

When you live in a place like we do I suppose we take it for granted and some people would spend a lot more time up here than we do . I like to be near water and near trees and sometimes away from the telephone too . Here is a short video to show you just some of the things what you are missing.

When Jack is near the trees he usually has a chainsaw in this hand.

Getting the wood in for winter and as you will see there are a lot of fallen branches to keep us busy. When guests come to stay with us they often get in their cars and go off for the days. To visit stately homes and castles ,walled gardens and even plant centres. They come for all sorts of reasons. But what better place to go some take a book to read,others an easel and some just nod off in the peace and quiet. So as we hope to be coming out of lockdown before too long we are starting to think that people may just want to have a bit of space to themselves ,to feel safe and not to join the multitudes but to come and stay with us and simple enjoy our "back garden" They need to bring their cameras too as you never know what opportunity is there for you to catch , a deer with young ,the woodpecker , the fragile life that live in the woods, fungi and microorganism ...here today gone tomorrow.

Friday is #NationalBiscuitDay

Have you ever heard of #NationalBiscuitDay  I know they have all these#Days but one for biscuits.  So what am I doing at 11pm on a Thursday night making biscuits for tomorrow. 

I could have done without it but as I had 3 and a half very ripe bananas which I need to either throw out or use I started googling banana biscuit and low and behold there was a recipe .

So I read it once, read it twice, and then made up my own recipe as the recipe I read only used 2 bananas and had cinnamon in it . I think of cinnamon as a winter seasonings. I still work in ounces and pounds rather than grams but this was in cupfuls  that is too fiddly for me .So we have cups of varying sizes. So here is my recipe 

3/4 tub of Lurpak so approx 400 grams 

sugar to match and a bit more

 a large egg

a bit of bicarbonate of soda  a dig in with a teaspoon and then a bit shaken off

a pinch of salt as my mother used says it brings out flavours.

I substituted the cinnamon with two handful of white chocolate buttons which I broke up .

I started off with one handful and thought lets go mad and put 2 handfuls in .

 and as it is  this "Biscuit Day' 

They are still in the Aga so will have to show you the finished results later but can tell you I will probably be up till daybreak as those quantities will make enough to feed a regiment.

Also Blogger has updated its format so hopefully this comes out right  and the biscuits do too. 

Be careful what you wish for

I would have loved to go to Whitby or Filey or anywhere along that stretch of coastline over the last few days as the weather I hear from my friend who lives there has been glorious. Far too many people about and really I never go to the seaside on Bank Holidays as I think it is the very worst time to go . The world and his wife seem to descend on the shore and most leave their brains at home. And especially this year when we are in /out /nearly in/nearly out of lockdown there was no way I was sitting in a traffic jam for hours to risk getting Covid.

So we have spent sunny days and balmy evenings in the garden.

In the post yesterday arrived my Simple Things magazine which is the first of three I have bought on subscription I have been deliberating whether I should bother and finally after 2 +years I decided to bite the bullet and order it .
So there I was laid in bed last night reading or rather flicking through the pages as I was too tired to set on to read much and they was a recipe for ... and crab... Ah crab, I thought, oh I wish I could get hold of a couple of crabs.

When I was a child I was allergic to them and got an itchy rash if I ever ate them and had to be taken to the doctors, who duly gave me a course of turquoise  tablets and I had a few days off school . So even though I got this very unpleasant rash I took any opportunity to eat crabs, so I could have time off school . Now you realise how much I hated school .If anyone who didn't know I wasn't supposed to eat crabs and I was offered them in a sandwich I munched them down quite happily knowing I would have a few days off school .

I grow out of my allergy as well as growing out of school. Both Jack and myself love a good crab sandwich. I mix the cooked meat with a blob of mustard which seems to enhance the flavour. My Dad is partial to crabmeat too, so there is one for him .

People talk about their prayers been answered ,well today my thoughts had been answered and Mark's friend who used to be a trawlerman off Whitby  arrived with a  bag and handed it to me at arms length .
They had arrived as fresh as anything trying to crawl out of the bag at 5pm this evening and now they are cooked and in the fridge ready for our crab sandwiches tomorrow.

When Jack was a bit younger he was determined to tempt fate and eat the dead men . He survived and I really not sure if they would do you much harm but I am not going to try them as even the feel of them put me off .But boys will be boys however old they are.

First Yorkshire strawberry

First strawberry of the season. 

Can't believe they have started to ripen so quickly .It was only the other week that the flowers were on them and I was weeding the strawberry patch at my Dads .My strawberry plants have formed fruit on them but probably need more water as we have hardly had any rain. My Dad tends his plants very well and tonight we shared the first strawberry. He sits in the shade of a tree in his deckchair and has the hose pipe in his hand watering his garden. It is good that the weather has been nice and he can sit out and enjoy the sunshine but some days when he has been in the greenhouse it gets rather too hot when the thermometer reaches 120 degrees

I hope there are some more that will ripen before too long as our three little "blackbirds"[grandchildren] arrived to stay with their Daddy the other day and are here for 2 weeks.  Martha is a really fruit lover and will probably pick a handful for "later' but she always like to share with her great granddad . The first week that there are here on the farm we are not seeing them  other than over the fence. We will be careful as with my Dad so old now we take all the measures we can to keep him safe in this Covid time. He loved to see them and they like to come to see him too . Now they are older they say we have just come to see if you are alright . They know where the goodie tin is too  and are partial to his store of toffees. Saying that they are very good as if it is near meal times they take one for after dinner.  Whether they eat it in the stackyard on their way home is another matter .

Tomorrow they will be having some new potatoes as Rubi helped her Daddy to plant them and they always taste better straight out of the garden  with a bit of butter on them

Was my eyes playing tricks in Lockdown ..or is it just a topsy turvy day again ...

So Sunday was a strange day today ... Jack wondered what I had done to his Yorkshire puddings .I had added mint to the batter rather than put it in the gravy.  I cooked him a dozen and my Dad and I share a dozen with a few left over for my Dads dinners in the coming days.
As I was coming back from the farm I looked across the field and  thought by gum them sheep look white .
In fact they are a flock of Meat goats called The Boer goat 
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A commercial Boer goat buck

Commercial Boer goat buck

Boer goat, Doe

Boer goat kept as a pet

The Boer goat is a breed of goat that was developed in South Africa in the early 1900s and is a popular breed for meat production. Their name is derived from the Afrikaans (Dutch) word boer, meaning farmer.

They were probably bred from the indigenous South African goats kept by the Namaqua, San, and Fooku tribes, with some crossing of Indian and European bloodlines being possible. They were selected for meat rather than milk production; due to selective breeding and improvement, the Boer goat has a fast growth rate and excellent carcass qualities, making it one of the most popular breeds of meat goat in the world. Boer goats have a high resistance to disease and adapt well to hot, dry semi deserts as well as here in North yorkshire 

Boer goats commonly have white bodies and distinctive brown heads. Some Boer goats can be completely brown or white or paint, which means large spots of a different colour are on their bodies. They possess long, pendulous ears. They are noted for being docile, fast-growing, and having high fertility rates. Does are reported to have superior mothering skills as compared to other breeds.

So if you fancy trying some goat meat to eat you can always call Wass Farm Shop  on 07779340799 or look on the Facebook page to see what they have on offer at the moment.

Today they were enjoying the sunshine and looking at the oil seed rape which is in bloom at the moment in the next field.

Where was the lone goat herder as the song goes. https://youtu.be/UmmOJx_Hxto

eating his Yorkshire puddings I suspect 

Carr House Farm in Lockdown.. roadworks and how we are making plans to welcome you back safely.

Just because we are in in Lockdown please dont think we have forgotten about our guests and are getting ready for when we can welcome them back through our doors or...doors as the case could be to begin with.

We are lucky that our ground floor bedrooms have their own front doors which lead straight out on to the garden. They do have a step up but other than that it is all level and in two of our rooms.
We will be able to offer breakfast to your bedroom or if you prefer you can bring your own breakfast things with you and we will provide you with a small table and chairs so these can be either used in your room or  you can lift them out into the garden and enjoy the view.So if you are worried in the beginning to have any contact with us we can offer seclusion and or semi seclusion.
 We will limit the amount of people who will be able to stay at any one time and also have a few days in between bookings to deep clean but also to protect both you and  ourselves we will not go into the rooms for a specific number of days before and after your stay with us .

Then we come to the big things we are doing this year and the weather has been kind to us .After all the floods we have had in the winter

and heavy downpours of rain our road was getting to look and feel very sad. So this week and part of next we are having out drive way made a lot better. Next week the concrete comes . You will see from the photos below how we are getting on with it .

Friday ... and appreciating what we are surrounded by

Lockdown for us is watching nature carry on undisturbed and we know we are lucky. I have to write and tell you  about this little blackbird. As much as I dont like blackbirds when they have robbed me of fruit in the garden.  The nursery rhythm of 4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie , doesn't sound like a bad idea on these days. .But this little character doesn't just sing from the roof top he sings from the highest point which is on the top of the  chimney pot.  He sings from morning till night.  Here you see him getting ready for bed as his song isn't quite a trill. He is obviously tired and looking to going to his bed .The second little snip shows him flying off to bed. He preens and prunes between his trills and has a look around. You could actually sit in the garden for ages just listening to him and how he is part of a choir that all have their own parts to play. Or even sit in the shade in the porch by the front door and watch the other birds and their activities around the garden. One lady has noted 32 species of birds in 24 hours. There is the green woodpecker which very rarely comes before May and likes to have the length of the drive as his own race track. Were as the black and white woodpecker is a visitor to the garden most days through out the year. bringing a splash and dash of red with him .  We have seen the swallows, they can a few weeks ago and I worry this cold snap will be detrimental to the breeding pattern with the lack of tiny insects they feed on and catch while in flight.  Unfortunately we haven't heard the cuckoo near the house. I always think this makes Summer but it has been heard  a field away.
The Live Cam is back on, but not always on to the bird table now as it in the winter ,but over the countryside so you can enjoy the scenery even though we cant be open yet to guests . You can find this on the right hand side on the home page of www.carrhousefarm.co.uk

Walking from Our Doorstep through the countryside

As we are having our road mended in a big way... I took to walking to the farm today with my basket on my arm. I tend to take food over for my Dad even though he is able to cook his own .It is always nice to eat what someone else has cooked or baked too. Apparently the cake I made him this week needed"a bit more oven" and wasn't as good as last weeks. So if anyone feels they want to make him one, I wont feel offended and just leave it on top of the post box near the back door and all efforts will be gratefully received.

We like to go out and eat and I think this is the thing I miss most about the Lockdown. So there I go I bake another chocolate cake to compensate for this small inconvenience.  So what better way to burn off the calories than to do a bit of walking.
It is lovely to see the animals in the fields. The grass is so green and the trees are bursting into leaf now. Despite the frost we had last night all is good in the countryside.   The frost nipped off the top of 3 rows of potatoes my Dad had got in his garden. One row was what Rubi and her Daddy had planted and were well up .

The elderflowers, give it another couple of weeks will soon be out as I am running my supply short on elderflower cordial. I am  ready with washed out milk containers to put it in for this years harvest.  It has kept remarkably well and as well as being delicious it also has health benefits too. I will come back in a later blog with the recipe and you can see how I go along with making it .

So I hope you like the little video of the cattle in the field . The bull with his harem of wives and their offspring.

And remember if you are coming to stay with us and would like to take one of our dogs with you for company on a local walk you are very welcome.

Memories ... the good Old Days were the Best

Today has been the best day yet in Lockdown . I was watching the men doing our drive and a car pulled up and it was my best friend for school. We applied social distances and spent the next hour or so chatting about school days

We go back 53 years and it doesn't matter how long it is ..a year some times 2 and maybe 3 or even 4 years and in some cases has been even longer we can just carry on from where we left off. Best Friends are the ones who comes to stay for 2 weeks and stay 5 week and you are sad to see go. Give her a cup of tea and she is happy.  She is always the person I would like to have lived in her shoes . Her family went on holiday and where some of the first to enter into Russia when it opened up . Their home was very Scandinavian and they had beautiful set of china and it amused me that we ate off plastic plates as her mother wouldn't trust us to not break her collections. I love quirky and their life was certainly that. Maybe she loved my farm life and animals as much as I loved her family's ways.

We talked about our days at secondary school... the antics we got up to , the boys , our friends, the ones we liked, the ones we didn't. What had happening to them these days. Where they had gone ,who they had married, who the had run of with . And unfortunately some that had died. We came to the conclusion that most of the lads we knew had not aged very well especially the ones who were great heart throbs when we were young.  So Willie Pirie if you are reading  this ...you are the one who had keep his good looks the best. Joanna Carr, you still look great and Wendy Barker has never changed.

We talked about the barbecues we used to go to near the Zoo [ now known as Flamingo Land]  and at Barton -le -Street where there was a live steel band. Where JAAH /// her initials ./// gave her telephone number to a boy from Pickering. We had left the BBQ and gone back to her parents home and were sat in the kitchen talking about our night when the telephone rang at 3am ..needless to say it was this boy Nicholas S from Pickering. My friends mother came down stairs and was not amused at being woken up by the phone.

A time when we wore "hot pants" "kinky boots and Afghan coats and mini skirts. Smoked Sobranie blacks and on special occasions had Sobranie cocktails and drank Black Russians ... It was as if it was yesterday. I just wish my granddaughters would have these wild carefree days in front of them but I guess they wont have. When we rode ponies bar back across the fields with the wind in our hair.  Health and safely hardly existed in those days.

But what is interesting to know which I didn't know before today was her grandchildren and mine go to the same school .

And I still think this special friend looks like this today.

So if you were at MGS [Malton Grammar School ] in the1960s early 70s or hung about with us you will know who this is

How does your tomatoes grow...

My Dad is the professional ,when it comes to growing tomatoes.  This year as we have all this extra time to do the things we used to do .When we were young we pack so much into a day. We worked hard, played hard and still found about 4 hours to sleep .This years I set out to grow some tomatoes and see how they compare to my Dads.
 Tonight as I was setting my lemon tree straight in a new pot and some John Innes No 3 instead of citrus compost as it didn't seem to like that. I went across to look at my tomatoes. They will soon need rodding so they dont fall over. My dad said yesterday he had flowers on his .In fact he had rung up to tell me the flowers were on his Shirleys . Now proper gardeners talk about the plants by name but not by species. When I called today he was still on about his Shirleys having flowers on . I know what the flowers look like, but mine were lucky to be growing and no yellow in sight .
We have had a busy day. We went to see a tractor that Jack is wanting, so he can top the grass in the dog field and extend the garden making another part of the field for us to make us even more self sufficient . I wonder, will it just feed the rabbits and deer who come on a night when we are in bed.
Then we are sorting out having the drive concreted . The bad weather in the winter and heavy rains has taken its toil on the drive and so we are taking advantage of not be able to  having guests here that we can crack on with it . We have decided to go for concrete instead of tarmac as we had the entrance done a few years ago and it is just more resilient than tarmac .
The first stage is to have a drain put in on the high side of the drive to take in the water that drains off the field and what runs down the road.
So just before I turned in for the night I took a closer look at my tomatoes and lo and behold my 4 largest plants have flowers on them...Now the race is on to see who has the first formed baby tomato or Shirley as my dad would refer to them as .