One week from today we will harvest our bigger mud ponds and bring our nisai and older Koi either into a sales tank or indoor growing on tank. It's not something that we invite lots of people to because, to be honest, our main focus is on looking after the fish coming out of the ponds and not taking care of people.

We are usually lucky enough however to have a few friends lending a hand and will also be joined by those of you who bought Koi on the Koi Quest Day in May and returned them to the mud pond to be grown on.

It's an exciting day for us as we have been getting tantalising glimpses of these fish throughout the summer but never getting a really good look at them, so this is the first time we will have seen them all properly since the spring.

The Koi in our mud ponds have all been really happy and have had a great time swimming around in small shoals, munching on daphnia, rooting about in the mud and sun bathing. Two of the Chagoi managed to get themselves surn burned this year but it doesn't seem to have bothered them particularly and it hasn't caused them any problems.

When we carry out our harvest we always manage to get most of the Koi out of the pond but there are usually one or two escapees that we catch when we drain it down a day or two later. This year however, we will be keeping our fingers crossed that none of the escapees are Questers grow on Koi!

We will start harvesting the ponds at about 10.00 am beginning with the nisai in number 3 pond and then after lunch we will move on to the big guys and the Questers grow on fish in number 4 pond.

Let's hope we get some nice weather!

Lisa