Yerin and Jihu

 

We are sending huge thanks and festive wishes to Yerin and Jihu, who left the farm this afternoon after their volunteering stay with us (although they will be back caring for chickens over the Christmas weekend) - many many thanks to you both.

Christmas veg box picking and packing team

 

Merry Christmas everybody! Today's veg picking and packing team took a short coffee break on their way to getting almost 100 veg boxes and special orders ready for tomorrow's collection or delivery. Many thanks to all!

Christmas veg boxes

This week we will be delivering about 90 boxes around the area (and collected from the farm) on Friday December 23rd. They will include the following:-

small box (£7.70) - parsnips, carrots, Brussels sprouts stalk, potatoes, seasonal herbs, and kale;

standard box (£12) - parsnips, carrots, Brussels sprouts stalk, potatoes, seasonal herbs, kale, spring greens, swede, and a cauliflower.

We are buying the parsnips and carrots from Trenow Organic Market Garden near Marazion; the sprouts, swede and cauliflowers from Cargease Organics near Crowlas; and the potatoes, herbs, kale and spring greens are from the community farm.

More of Polly's art

Polly's small painting on board of two of our polytunnels.

Polly's mural on the packing shed wall by our farm shop entrance.

Many thanks to Polly for creating these two beautiful paintings whilst with us!

Christmas Social

Yesterday morning we had a little social gathering in Castle Dracula polytunnel, with food and drink brought to share by the 24 people who attended - staff, local volunteers, WWOOF volunteers, allotment holders, board members, and friends and family of the farm.

Many thanks to all who came, it was lovely to see you all, and for all the festive nibbles you brought.

Chris

Chris, on the right in the photo, stayed with us as a WWOOF volunteer in spring 2020, just before the first Covid lockdown. We found out recently that Chris very sadly died of cancer earlier this year. We remember you with great affection, for your enthusiasm and humour and willingness to help, and the plans you had for renovating your camper van to go travelling. It was a true pleasure to have you here with us Chris. Thank you.

 

 

Pauline

 

Pauline came to WWOOF with us recently (seen here picking salad for last week's veg boxes) and has now moved on to her next volunteering adventure. Many thanks Pauline for all your help whilst here and have a lovely Christmas!

Bruce

Bruce, from Aberdeen, volunteered with us as a WWOOFer until he left on Monday, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank him for all his hard work and humour whilst with us, and wish him a lovely Christmas! Thank you Bruce.

Woodland wildlife scrapes

Earlier this year, up in our Community Woodland, we put in some wildlife scrapes, funded by the Penwith Landscape Partnership. At the time they were dry, and they stayed dry until November, but the largest scrape now has a good amount of water in it, and some of the smaller ones do too.

This shows that we now have the highest level of groundwater this year so far. In fact, last week the farm was the soggiest that it has been for several years, but ten days of dry weather now has led to some drainage, so we are not as swampy as we were. After a horribly hot dry summer, when we were chasing our tails trying to irrigate badly suffering crops, this is a blessing. Unfortunately though, heavy downpours last month led to our farm-shop flooding on three seperate occasions, which is very rare.

Holiday Hunger and Community Veg Box Fund

We have two collections currently taking place in our farm shop - one of food for Holiday Hunger and one of money for our Community Veg Box Fund.

Holiday Hunger donations

On December 23^rd we will be delivering 25 Christmas food boxes to LiveWest tenants in the local area, containing seasonal veg plus eggs, funded by the LiveWest Holiday Hunger scheme. If you would like to donate any durable food items for us to put into the boxes, as added extras, purchased from our farm-shop or elsewhere, please place them into the crate in our shop.

Please help us to make some difficult Christmases a little better.

Community Veg Box Fund

Please help us to provide weekly veg boxes to local people who otherwise could not afford them and who may struggle to access healthy food. This initiative is funded entirely by private donations but is due to run out of money at the end of December. Please place your money donations in the jar in our farm-shop, whether cash, cheque or card, or if you wish to donate online please ask for our bank details (or take a veg box joining form, our bank details are on the second page, and when paying please put “veg box fund” as the reference).

Many thanks indeed.

Shop times

As of November 2022, we have decided not to open our farm shop on Sundays, or on bank holidays. So we will be open from Monday to Saturday 10am till 5pm.

We will be open on Christmas Eve 10am till 5pm, then closed for three days, re-opening on Wednesday 28th. We will be closed again for four days from New Year's Eve, re-oprning on Wednesday 4th January.

Thank yous

We need to thank two local firms for helping us out recently:-

1. Leswidden Building Supplies - for lending us 6 sections of security fencing to enable us to create a user-friendly enclosure so our chickens can have some outdoor space during the latest ongoing avian flu lockdown.

2. Moomaid of Zennor - for giving us 200 of their once-used ice-cream tubs to box up portions of greens for our veg boxes. These tubs are re-usable (please remember to return them every week!) and keep our member's kale, chard, salad, squash, herbs etc... nice and fresh in the fridge all week.

Many thanks to LBS and Moomaid!

Today's veg boxes

This week we produced 83 veg boxes, which we delivered to people's doors around Penwith, or to one of our four community collection hubs for our members to pick up from - here at Bosavern Community Farm, St. John's Church in St. Ives, the Redwing Gallery in Penzance, and Newlyn Fermentary (our newest hub, with many thanks to Rachel and Ben).

Jihu and Yerin digging potatoes on Wednesday.

This week our small box (£7.70) contained mixed salad leaves, a stick of lemon grass, 1kg of Carolus potatoes, purple-top turnips, a lump of Crown Prince squash, oriental greens, and leeks (all grown here on the farm).

Pauline, Jihu and Yerin, picking salad on Friday.

Our standard box (£12) contained mixed salad leaves, a stick of lemon grass, 1kg of Carolus potatoes, purple-top turnips, a lump of Crown Prince squash, a cauliflower, perpetual spinach, kale, 3 jalapeno peppers, and leeks (all grown here on the farm except the cauliflowers, which are local and organic).

Please email us at vegbox.bcf@bcents.org.uk to join up.

Daniel

One of our WWOOF volunteers, Daniel, from Italy, left us this morning to head back to London then Italy. Many thanks Daniel for your help, your singing, and your cooking, and we wish you a merry Christmas back home with your family.

Digging potatoes on Wednesday morning.

Polly, Warren, and Rosie

Three core members of the farm team left us this autumn (as well as Heather and Bea - see earlier post) - Polly, Warren, and Rosie.

Polly snedding coppiced willow ready for planting as whips.

Polly came to the farm as a WWOOF volunteer in November 2020 and stayed for two years, acting as our host for residential volunteers in the farmhouse, as well as helping on the farm and with delivery rounds (and many other things including amazing art work...). Polly steered the farmhouse, and its occupants, through some very difficult times during various lockdowns, for which we are incredibly grateful.

Warren with the chicken pop-hole door that he made and decorated.

 

Warren came to us as a WWOOF volunteer in October 2021 and stayed for just over one year, helping on the farm and assisting Polly in the farmhouse, as well as creating more amazing art work (such as the farm map), and other things...

Unfortunately we don't have a photo of Rosie, which is an idication of how busy we were this summer. Rosie first came as a volunteer in 2021 for 2 days per week, but returned for 5 months in 2022 as our Assistant Grower, working 3 days per week. Rosie brought a lot of very good ideas to the farm some of which we have managed to implement.

We are so grateful to Polly, Warren, and Rosie, for all their hard work, art work, ideas, friendship, energy, and the huge help they all were during their times with us, and we wish them all the best in their futures.

Squash harvest 2022

Despite the horribly hot dry weather this year, and our plants going into the ground about 3 weeks too late, we still harvested more than 500kg of squash at the end of October, just in time for Halloween. Most of our squash are Crown Prince, which is probably the best squash there is, but we also have some Turk's Turban, and we did have some Jack-o-Lantern but they have already sold out. They are for sale in the farm shop and at farmer's markets priced at £2 per kilo (and also being eaten at the Dog And Rabbit and the Gurnard's Head).