Tom Hunt at Rock Oyster Festival

www.rockoysterfestival.co.uk/events/tom-hunt/

This week we were delighted to be asked by Tom Hunt to supply fresh produce for his cooking demonstrations at this weekend's Rock Oyster Festival - please follow the above link for details. We sent him two of this week's standard veg boxes (French beans, Ambo potatoes, rhubarb, blackcurrants, tomatoes, rainbow chard, garlic, cucumbers and peppers) plus dill, mint, basil, more tomatoes and cucumbers, a tray of eggs, 2 jars of mayonnaise from the farm shop, and some New Zealand spinach.

Tom runs a tapas bar in Bristol (www.pocotapasbar.com) marrying his passions of good food, cooking, and sustainability issues. He has also published a book entitled "Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet" (https://tomsfeast.com/).

Thank you for choosing produce from Bosavern Community Farm, and good luck with your cooking demonstrations tomorrow.

Plant Sales

We held a series of plant sales in the farmyard in May, June and July, on Saturday mornings, with local growers coming along to sell their plants. These were well attended, providing a safe outdoor social occasion, as well as augmenting the offerings in our farm shop.

Farm shop entry

 

As of July 19th we decided to allow one customer at a time (or a small "bubble") inside the shop to browse and choose their own shopping from the shelves. Our shop is quite a small space and mainly staffed by volunteers, and we decided last year to serve customers at a table across the doorway to help protect both them and us. Hand-washing facilities are available outside the shop, hand sanitiser at the entrance, and we will continue to wear our masks - we politely ask that anybody entering the shop does so too. Customers without masks can still be served at the table as before.

Many thanks to everybody for helping us with this.

Georgia, Hector and Imogen

Three of our "Third Lockdown" wwoof volunteers have recently independently left the community farm to pursue their next projects, and we'd like to thank each of them for all their help and hard work and enthusiasm whilst volunteering with us - Georgia for ten weeks, Hector for six months, and Imogen for four weeks - and all the very best for their futures.

Georgia, in the foreground, planting tomatoes with Courtney and Hector.

Imogen, on the left, exhausted at the end of the first day of hay.

Hector picking kohl rabi in a polytunnel with Heather back in the spring.

Hay harvest 2021

Last year we were so busy in response to the coronavirus pandemic that we had no time to make hay, but this year we found a bit of time to return to some "normality", if the hecticness of making hay can be called that. The hot dry spell that we have just endured (it reached 30 degrees Celsius in our farm shop and 42 degrees in the polytunnels) was perfect hay making weather, so we and all the other farmers in the area got busy doing just that. Oliver mended the power steering on our tractor for us, Clive and Kieron cut and turned and baled four fields for us, and teams of volunteers brought it in off the fields and stacked it in the barn for storage and sales. This year we cut Carn, Top, Standing Stone, and Hotel Fields. It was cut on Monday, turned on Tuesday, baled on Wednesday, and all 489 bales in the barn by early evening on Thursday, surely the fastest hay making in Bosavern Community Farm history, and lovely dry light-green hay it is too.

Rosie and Hector loading the trailor (60 bales at a time) in Hotel Field.

Wednesday team - Imogen, Hugh, Jake, Rosie, Hector and Matt.

Thursday team - Matt, Hector, Ed, Jake, Hugh and Imogen.

Hay all stacked in the barn. The remaining few bales of our 2019 cut is stacked at the front to protect the fresher bales from the weather (we'll use these for chicken bedding).

The hay is now for sale from the farm shop, at £3.50 for this years cut, or £2.50 for the remaining bales from 2019.

Many thanks to everyone who helped with this big itchy sweaty task - doing this work in those conditions is energy-sapping - and to those who didn't get into the above photos - Polly, Andy, and the other Matt.

Series 2 of Bosavern Training & Work Experience

Series 2 of Bosavern Training & Work Experience is well underway with our new recruits. In just two weeks, with support from Ross, these guys have lain all the mypex in the polytunnel, harvested lettuce, kale and nasturtium leaves, earthed-up the potatoes, weeded onions and Jerusalem artichokes, potted-on tomatoes and basil, sown seeds, repaired a wheelbarrow and constructed new raised beds from timber and also from old tyres. These beds are now layered and filled with well rotted horse manure and compost from the https://www.greenwastecompany.com/ ready for planting. Great work guys! In addition they have kept the touch points clean and cooked delicious lunches to feed the key workers with guidance from our Cookery Tutor Ali for which we are truly grateful.

If you know anyone who is unemployed and looking for something constructive to do as part of a supportive team on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the Summer, do get in touch!

training@bosaverncommunityfarm.org.uk 01736 272367

Bosavern Training & Work Experience is funded by the EU and Cornwall Council.

 

Planting squash

Last week we planted 400 squash plants in the Market Garden (and have since followed that up with 200 courgette plants to supplement the 100 already in).

Hector, Polly and Matt get the ball rolling.

Rob, Ben, Evan and Matt nearing the end.

We spread two trailer-loads of our own compost on the patch, rotovated it in, covered it with mipex (woven black weed-suppressant), planted squash through holes cut in the mipex at 1m intervals, put a tyre round each plant, and covered the whole lot in mesh until the plants settle in.

Many thanks to all the planters - and compost spreaders, tyre carriers, mipex layers etc...

Veg boxes

Our veg boxes at the moment are made up entirely of our own produce from the community farm. We deliver to homes in St. Just, St. Buryan, Carbis Bay, Penzance, Newlyn, Mousehole, Zennor, Pendeen, Newbridge, Lamorna, Sennen, Carnyorth, Trewellard, Madron, Heamoor, Ludgvan, Trewellard, and places in between, as well as community hubs in Penzance and St. Ives, plus from the farm itself.

We produce around 90 boxes a week, at £11 for a standard or £7 for a small, with optional extras of our own eggs and honey, and local organic bread and milk.

Veg boxes at the moment contain selections from the following (8 or 9 items in a standard, 5 or 6 in a small) - redcurrants, rhubarb, garlic, new potatoes, rainbow chard, perpetual spinach, kale, mixed salad leaves, mixed herbs, basil, lemon verbena, French beans, cucumbers, green peppers, globe artichokes, dried chillies - and soon we hope to have beetroot, carrots, tomatoes, broad beans, grapes and courgettes. Fingers crossed, as always.

Summer flowers

There are a lot of flowers on the farm at the moment, in the wildflower meadows which we manage for wildlife, in the crop plants that we have left to self-sow, in the pollenator areas where we grow special pollenator-friendly flowers, and in the ornamental beds around the farmyard and car-park. In fact, everywhere you look, whether we want them there or not - some are weeds and some are not (we have lots of weeds at this time of year, so if you enjoy weeding or just being outdoors please come along and volunteer to help us get on top of them!).