This season's first cucumbers

 

The first cucumbers of the season are slowly starting to appear in the farm shop, just a couple a day as they get going, but there will be more and more over the coming weeks. We nearly always manage to get cucumbers towards the end of May, and this for us signals the beginning of the end of the notorious Hungry Gap, when we can begin to dream of the bumper summer crops to come. These are Passandra F1 cucumbers, a lovely squat European variety, one of the few hybrids we grow.

Veg boxes 21st May

For the second week running the only produce we could source to buy in was organic potatoes, so the rest of the contents for 101 veg boxes was harvested by us from the farm over 2 days, showing that we are slowly starting to climb out of the depths of the Hungry Gap.

Our first crop of outdoor salad this year.

Friday morning's 8am salad picking team - Courtney, Gerogia, Polly, Heather and Bea - on the way to 11kg of fresh leaves.

Friday's veg boxes contained:-

Small box (£7) - potatoes, salad leaves, rainbow chard, kale, mixed herbs, and a dried chilli.

Standard box (£11) - potatoes, salad leaves, rainbow chard, kale, mixed herbs, fresh elephant garlic, purple sprouting broccoli, and a headed lettuce.

Delivering to St. Just, St. Buryan, St. Ives (community hub), Penzance, Ludgvan, Gulval, Porthcurno, Sennen, Pendeen, Hendra, Cot Valley, Lamorna, Newlyn, Sancree, Grumbla, Newbridge, Zennor, Treen, Mousehole, Paul etc....

Bosavern Tagine

 https://www.bosaverncommunityfarm.org.uk/recipes/

Follow the above link to find our new video on our website - cooking a Bosavern Tagine, and picking and packing veg for veg boxes.

Many thanks to Florence Browne for this delightful short film.

Veg boxes Friday 14th May

We find ourselves in the darkest recesses of the Hungry Gap, where even our local producers can't help us out with any veg, and the only Britich organic veg on offer from the national wholesaler that we buy from is potatoes. Thankfully last Friday we managed to pull 100 veg boxes out of the bag, all our own produce (except the potatoes), containing a selection from - fresh elephant garlic, new-season kale, mixed herbs, rainbow chard, potatoes, mange-tout, rhubarb, purple sprouting broccoli, and salad leaves.

Harvesting elephant garlic.

Tonight we made a leek, elephant garlic, and lemon risotto, which was delicious. All of the garlic can be used - bulb, leaves, stem, flower bud - with the tougher leaves being used in the stock.

Planting rainbow chard

 

Bea and Heather getting stuck in to the first bed last Friday.

We have begun to tame our permanent outdoor raised beds after a productive winter of kale, spring greens, and purple sprouting broccoli. As part of our crop rotation the beds will have no brassicas in them this year, so will mainly be filled with chard, bulb fennel, broad beans and peas (plus other miscellaneous crops).

1000 rainbow chard seedlings planted over the weekend (mainly thanks to Georgia and Hector) to fill 3 of the beds.

Today we sowed about 1000 Ambassador peas ready for planting out next month, all being well.

Robin chicks

A pair of robins nested in a crate in our Propagation Station polytunnel, and last week all the chicks fledged, leaving us with just an empty nest and memories of the sounds they made when a parent flew in to feed them.

Robin chicks in their nest in our polytunnel.

This week's empty nest...

Nick

One of our local volunteers, Nick, who was on furlough, has now had to go back to work. Nick helped at the farm five days per week for much of the past year, and became an "honorary wwoofer", even joining the farmhouse bubble for several months, and spending Christmas Day with us. Luckily he has arranged to come and help pick and pack the veg boxes on Thursdays! Many many thanks to Nick for all his help during the busy pandemic, and we look forward to seeing him tomorrow.

Nick, second from left, with our farmhouse bubble.

Nick, on the right, planting potatoes with Hector.

Plant sale

 

On Saturday 1st May we held a plant sale at the farm, selling our own plants (produced by Ian before he left), and with two other local plant-producers selling their plants too. The sale ran from 10am till 1pm, outside in the farmyard, with social distancing and face-masks in place, and was a big success. It was wonderful to welcome local people to the farm for an "event" for the first time since the Covid pandemic began early last year. We will be holding more on Saturday mornings, weather permitting - please keep an eye on Facebook - and are open to offers of more stalls attending - please email us at info@bosaverncommunityfarm.org.uk.

Ian

Ian, who has been volunteering on the community farm (and on other projects in the local community), has moved back up north to be nearer to family, and is already being sorely missed. Ian has put time in at the farm most days for the past seven years - watering plants, potting-on seedlings, opening polytunnels, picking herbs and edible flowers, picking salad early on a Friday morning, planting wildflowers in the meadows, planting pollinator-friendly plants in the farmyard, leading Monday's wildlife gardening group, leading farm tours on open days etc..etc.. - but most of all sharing his wide knowledge with everybody, and being a friend of the farm. 

Ian dressing leeks in 2015.

Ian picking parsley in 2021.

We'd all like to thank Ian for all the help he has given the farm over the past seven years, and we wish him all the best, and hope the move is going well.

Veg boxes May 7th

 

Sam and Sylvie packing purple sprouting broccoli.

We have 98 veg boxes ordered for tomorrow, delivered all over West Penwith, containing:-

£7 small box - mange-tout (or purple sprouting broccoli), cauliflower, potatoes, parsnips, salad and mixed herbs.

£11 standard box - mange-tout, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, parsnips, salad, mixed herbs, spring greens, and chard.

April showers?

April is a month renowned for wet weather, but we have just endured the third dry April in a row. In spring in 2019 we had 10 weeks without rain, 2020 was 4 weeks, and we have now in 2021 come to the end of 5 weeks without rain. Maybe dry springs are the new climate? It's the worst time of year to be so dry, as we are desperately trying to bring on the new season's crops, and taking hours each day to water seedlings in the field is time (and water) consuming, with some plant losses. The first showers of April came to great relief on the 26th, and there have been more since then, mixed in with hot dry days and easterly winds. By yesterday the ground was parched again, but a lot of rain overnight and this morning has come to the rescue.

Bartinney Beacon seen from the farm, after the nature reserve on it was devastated by wild fires.

Salad plants bolting due to heat in one of our polytunnels.

Rain this morning, wonderful!