Veg boxes 30th October

This week's small £6 veg box -"marvel of four seasons" lettuce, Picasso potatoes, cabbage, onions, peppers, fresh coriander, and "Jack be little" squash.

The standard £10 boxes also included mixed salad leaves, tomatoes, and bulb fennel, plus extra potatoes.

Veg boxes 23rd October

Small £6 veg box with mixed salad leaves, potatoes, kale, coriander, parsnip, peppers, and a rocoto chilli.

Standard £10 veg box with a lettuce, kale, mixed salad leaves, potatoes, carrots, coriander, peppers, parsnip and tomatoes.

Claire

Claire (on the right) bagging chard with Charlotte in the packing shed.

Claire, from Brittany in France, helped as a volunteer on the farm for one month, and left last week to visit friends before heading home. Thank you Claire for being such a good wwoofer, and also for all those cakes! We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Chyan Harvest Fayre

On Sunday 18th October Bosavern Community Farm attended the 'Harvest Fayre' at Chyan Community Fields near Penryn. It turned out to be a brilliant celebration with fantastic weather, lovely music, food & people. We took along a stall of our produce and it went down very well indeed. It was great to support another local community project and we thank the organisers for putting on such a fantastic day and inviting us along. Looking forward to next year already!

Recent Cornishman mentions

Bosavern Community Farm has been mentioned in the Cornishman twice so far this month - in a letter about free-range milk (which we sell in our shop and supply with our veg boxes) on 2/10/15, and in Fi Read's "Community Spirit" column on 16/10/15.

Chakchouka recipe

With plenty of peppers, tomatoes and eggs available in the farm shop (and in our veg boxes) here's a delicious recipe that uses them all. Chakchouka is a spicy North African dish that I first ate when travelling in the Ethiopian highlands in 1997.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 large onion, halved and finely sliced
1 garlic clove, finely sliced
2 or 3 peppers, cored and finely sliced
half a teaspoon of hot smoked paprika
500g of tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 eggs
salt and pepper to taste

Method
Heat the oil in a large ovenproof pan, fry the cumin seeds for a few minutes, then add the onion and cook for 10 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and peppers, cook over a low heat for 20 minutes until soft, stirring often. Add the paprika, tomatoes, and some salt and pepper, then cook for 15 minutes.
Take the pan off the heat, make 4 hollows in the surface of the sauce, break an egg into each, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake in a moderate oven for 10 minutes, until the egg white is set but the yolk still runny. Serve immediately with some crusty bread.
You can also experiment with adding chopped parsley or celery leaves, or jalapenos or chillies for extra heat.

Bon apetit!

Veg boxes 16th October

Small £6 veg box - cabbage, salad leaves, 500g potatoes, 250g tomatoes, celery, peppers and jalapenos.

Standard £10 veg box - salad leaves, 1500g potatoes, cabbage, celery, 500g tomatoes, jalapenos, globe artichoke, peppers, French beans and fresh coriander.

Linda and Gideon

Linda (who came back for a brief second visit) and Gideon (who volunteered with us for 3 months) left on Friday to travel to another farm in Cornwall, and we'd like to thank them both for all their help on the farm this summer. Special thanks go to Gideon for installing a water-harvesting system on the third and final chicken shed, and for redecorating the farmhouse bathroom!

Linda and Gideon processing eggs on their final day on the farm.

New farm video.

A friend of ours has put together a short video-montage about the sustainability of Bosavern Community Farm - follow this link:-

 http://mycommunity.org.uk/videogallery/bosavern-community-farm-nature-to-plate/

The more views of this video we can clock up, the more chance we have of winning a prize in the Cornwall Sustainability Awards, so please post this link to all your friends too!

Bug hotel

As part of our harvest celebration last week, Nikki led a team of helpers to the market garden where they built a bug hotel out of reclaimed items they'd found lying around the farm (pallets, bamboo canes, flower pots, clay tiles etc.). The idea is to provide a home for beneficial insects, such as hoverflies, close to our crops.

St Just In Bloom

Nikki, Pete, Hugh and Alice receive the certificate on behalf of the farm.

On Friday 9th October, representatives of Bosavern Community Farm were delighted to attend the awards ceremony for St Just In Bloom 2015, where we received our certificate for taking part in the "It's Your Neighbourhood" section of the competition. St Just won gold in the South West In Bloom area competition, and the farm came in the top 10 out of 500 entrants for "It's Your Neighbourhood", so congratulations all round.

Bosavern chillies

We love growing chilli peppers here at Bosavern Community Farm, and this year we have our usual three varieties on offer (but this may increase next year....). Information varies as to which is the hottest of the three, but by our own taste tests we think it's the Ring of Fire (though some sources rate the Rocoto as hotter). Chilli heat is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHUs), ranging from 0 for a sweet bell pepper (which we also grow several varieties of) to about 2,000,000 for the Death Strain chilli.

Here are the three we grow (all available in our farm shop and market stalls at only 20p each):-

Jalapeno pepper, 2,500-10,000 SHU, often used on top of pizzas

.

Rocoto chilli, 30,000-50,000 SHU (though we've also found it rated at 100,000-350,000), quite a hot fleshy pepper, with black seeds and good flavour.

Ring Of Fire chilli, 70,000-85,000 SHU, arguably our hottest.

All three varieties, ready to send to St Just Farmers Market yesterday morning.

Cob build phase 3, with living roof workshop.

The third phase of our cob roundhouse build ran from Monday 21st to Wednesday 30th September, with an emphasis on putting the living roof onto the existing structure.This was accomplished with some long days towards the end, and lots of helping hands from across the community - the roundhouse is now roofed, but there is still more to do when phase 4 comes around!

Finishing off the rafters at the start of phase 3.

The roof completed at the end of phase 3.

Thanks as always go to all the volunteers who helped with the build, and to Jo and Kate for organising the build and workshop. Please watch this space for details of phase 4 in the spring!

Veg boxes 9th October

Small £6 veg box - potatoes, tomatoes, salad leaves, kale, peppers and a bunch of carrots.

Standard £10 veg box (with added bread and eggs) - potatoes, bulb fennel, kale, salad leaves, peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, courgettes and a bunch of carrots.

Kieron

Kieron, from London, left today after five weeks volunteering on the farm, and we'd like to thank him for his hard work, affability and enthusiasm during his stay (and good luck in your new job!). Kieron is seated on the far right in the last photo of the previous harvest celebration entry.

Harvest Celebration 2015

On Sunday 4th October we held our annual harvest celebration, which is a free event for everybody and anybody to come along to the farm and see for themselves what we get up to, and help us celebrate this years harvest. Although the Cornish weather turned from glorious Indian summer to proper autumn through the day, more than 100 people attended, with friends old and new, and people from as far afield as Devon and the USA!

Three views of our farm shop ready for the harvest celebration.

Pumpkin display in the shop entrance.

Alice preparing the farm's outdoor cafe for custom.

Alice's speciality, chard pie - delicious!

The farmyard starting to fill with people.

List of the day's activities.

Matt of the Cornish Black Bee Company on his honey stall (honey from Matt's beehives kept on our farm).

Visiting musicians playing by the campfire.

Viv with our competition marrow, which weighed 5.06 kg and was won by Councillor Sue James.

Craft workshops in the hive - stick dolls and wands.

Kelsey with the "Land and Sea" choir singing by the campfire, having walked and sung to the farm from Market Square.

The farm tour in the cob roundhouse, which easily accommodated 45 standing people.

Our farmyard full of harvest celebrants.

Most of the team who packed away at the end of the celebration, finishing just as the rains broke.

We'd like to thank everybody who came along on the day and helped make the community farm what it is. Special thanks go to all those who helped in the build up and on the day itself - you are too numerous to mention!

Veg boxes 2nd October 2015

Small £6 box - Picasso potatoes, kale, mixed salad leaves, peppers, courgettes, tomatoes.

Standard £10 box -rainbow chard, mixed salad leaves, kale, Picasso potatoes, marrow, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, carrots.

If you would like to receive a regular veg box, or just try one out, please give us a ring on 788454 or email vegbox.bcf@bcents.org