Tomatoes 2015

This year we believe we've produced the best selection of tomatoes to date, with plenty of colour and variety, but also great tasting. Here's some photo's from our polytunnel taken the other day.

Berner Rose, new this year, a large rose-coloured juicy tomato.

Chocolate cherry, new this year, a chocolate-brown cherry tomato with good flavour.

Costoluto Fiorentino, new this year, probably our most attractive tomato, a large ribbed juicy Italian variety.

Galina, new this year, a yellow cherry tomato.

Gardener's Delight, an old favourite red cherry.

Golden Queen, large juicy yellow tomato.

Jen's Tangerine, new this year, a large orange tomato.

Moneymaker, standard large red tomato for general use.

San Marzano, an Italian plum tomato.

Sungold, the tastiest tomato we grow (also the only F1 we do), a delicious orange cherry.

White cherry, new this year.

Yellow Submarine, a tasty pear-shaped yellow cherry tomato.

Those are 12 of our varieties this year, but there's at least one (Stupice, a tasty large red and green tomato) that doesn't appear here - sorry for overlooking you in the tunnel! Seeds for most of these tomato varieties are available to buy from Tamar Organics and the Real Seed Catalogue (search for them online).

Harvest celebration, Sunday 4th October.

Everybody is invited to come along to the farm on Sunday 4th October from 11am till 4pm to help us celebrate this year's harvest.

Linda, Aurelia and Hanna

Linda from Germany, who was with us for 5 weeks, and Aurelia and Hanna from Switzerland, who volunteered for 2 weeks, all left the farm recently to continue to their next wwoof destinations. As always we'd like to thank them for their hard work, and wish them well with their onward adventures in organic farming.

Linda loading hay onto the tractor with Kieron.

Hanna (left) and Aurelia (right) about to leave the farm and cycle to Perranporth.

Farm shop

Our farm shop (in the packing shed just off the farmyard) is open every day of the week from 11am till 6pm, and sells a large range of our own veg, plus chicken eggs, organic bread, organic milk, local cheese, quail's eggs, honey from our bees, chutneys, sauces, jams, raw chocolate, candles, lip balm, soaps, and gifts.

Your shopkeepers today!

Veg box 18th September

This is today's small £6 veg box, proudly featuring mixed salad leaves and flowers, half a kilo of tomatoes, the first of this year's Picasso pink-eyed potatoes, 2 peppers, 2 ring o fire chillies, and half a kilo of mixed courgettes. The £10 standard veg box had extra potatoes, plus the first of this season's parsnips, 2 extra chillies, an extra pepper, a bulb of elephant garlic, and rainbow chard (but not the salad).

Veg box 11th September.

This is the small £6 veg box from last week - the last of our Maris Peer potatoes, plus rainbow chard, courgettes, sweet peppers, tomatoes and bulb fennel. The standard £10 box had extra potatoes, plus a salad bag, cucumber, and French beans.

Recent harvesting photos.

This year's courgette selection - goldy, summer crook-neck, cocozelle, rondo di nizza, nero di milano, and summer ball.

Ian with a barrowful of bulb fennel he's just harvested.

An early array of sweet/salad peppers (with the early and prolific "Amy" Hungarian wax pepper in the centre).

A colourful mass of tomatoes - late to fruit this year, but they're trying to make up for it now despite a sprinkling of blight.

Raspberries for sale in the farm shop (the globe artichoke flowers are for display only!).

Marazion School visit.

On Tuesday 8th September the farm was visited by 23 students from Marazion School, ages 7 and 8, plus members of staff, for 5 hours. In the morning the students split into 3 groups and engaged in 3 different activities:-

1. A visit to the polytunnels and market garden, where they learnt about different crops, the importance of bees, how climate affects our food, and also tasted some of the vegetables we grow (such as wild rocket, French beans, tomatoes, nasturtium flowers, physallis etc.).
2. A visit to the chickens, where they collected eggs and interacted with the birds.
3. A nature hunt in Home Field, where pairs of students were asked to collect 10 different things from the field (a dandelion flower, pine needle, snail shell, ripe blackberry etc.) - but nobody found a four-leaved clover.

After lunch (a picnic on hay bales in the sunshine) we had some fun games in Home Field - a welly-wanging contest and tug-of-war - before waving the students goodbye. The weather behaved, as did they, and we hope they had a good time and learnt some useful things about farming and wildlife.

Many thanks as always to our group of volunteers who helped on the day.

Hay 2015

Mainly due to the wet summer we weren't able to cut our hay until the first of September, but a week of dry breezy weather gave ideal conditions to eventually cut Home Field, which yielded 180 small bales. These are now stacked in the open barn, and are on sale at £3 per bale (we also still have some of last year's hay at the same price).

The hay was baled on Sunday 6th, and this is Monday morning when we stood them up for their final drying.

Kieron and Linda loading bales onto the trailer. The three of us brought all the hay in in one afternoon, being 6 trailer-loads.

Stacked in the barn, watched over by a Bee-Gee. July 2014 cut on the left, 1/9/15 cut on the right.

Our first customers for the new hay were local pony-owners, who sniffed it, declared it "lovely stuff", and bought 2 bales....

Kali, Jack, Domenico, Felipe and Lena

Kali and Jack from England, Domenico from Italy, Felipe from Brazil, and Lena from Austria have all left the community farm in the past few weeks to continue their travels and/or wwoofing, or to go home! We'd like to thank them for their work whilst with us, and wish them the best for their onward journeys.

Kali, Domenico and Jack in the farmhouse kitchen.

Lena (left) sorting potatoes with Kieron in the packing shed (sorry Felipe but I didn't get a photo of you!).