Andy, our Assistant Grower on the farm for almost 6 years, decided to leave us this summer to pursue a career in gardening. Andy played a huge part in the farm for those 6 years, fulfilling many roles, and with his help the community farm has gone from strength to strength. We would like to wish Andy lots of luck in his new endeavours, and we hope that he still calls in for a coffee whenever he is passing! Many many thanks Andy.
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| Andy sideshooting tomatoes in June 2017. |
We have been so busy this summer that our blog has not had many updates, and one thing we always like to post on here is a photo of each WWOOFer who comes and goes - but we haven't managed that since James left at the end of May! So here is a big thank you to all the WWOOF volunteers who have come and gone since then - Daniel, Maddie, Liam, Shivani, Ruby, Elena, Lily, and Toby. Our apologies to those of whom we do not have photos.
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| Elena (on the left) and Shivani (on the right) picking redcurrants with Heather (middle) back in June. |
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| Toby (front middle) helping to stack hay in the barn earlier in August. |
Holiday Hunger. With funding from LiveWest and help from Pendeen School, this summer during the school holidays we have been providing veg boxes to LiveWest tennants in Pendeen and Boscaswell, in particular families with school-age children. We began by parking the farm van in the village and distributing veg boxes to anybody who came, but word has now got around, and yesterday we delivered 24 veg boxes directly to people's homes. All the veg and eggs in the boxes are produced here on the community farm. This scheme is only funded during the school holidays.
Community Veg Box Fund. An anonymous donor recently gave a sum of money to the farm for us to provide veg boxes to people in the local area who are struggling to make ends meet. So we set up our Community Veg Box Fund, identified five local recipients, and we have been delivering a weekly veg box to them over the summer. This fund will run out in September.
The Street Food Project. Throughout 2022 we have been donating fresh produce most weeks to the Street Food Project in Penzance, which provides hot meals every evening, free of charge.
Family Picnics in the Plen. A small group of local people set up this project for the summer, to help families with young children in the local community, and we are one of a number of local producers and businesses who have donated food. Two picnics have already happened, and the final one is scheduled for the 31st of August.
There are many ways that you can help us to help our community:-
Please contact us at info@bosavern communityfarm.org.uk.
Many thanks.
For the past two weeks the weather was only good for one thing - hay - so we took the opportunity to harvest ours. The temperature hit 32 degrees Celsius outside, and 54 degrees in one of our polytunnels, so this was very hot work. Because of these horrible weather conditions it was our fastest hay harvest to date, as it was dry before we even cut it, so didn't need turning or drying in the fields. There was not a drop of moisture anywhere. We cut the ragwort out of the fields on Tuesday, Clive cut the hay on Wednesday, then baled it on Thursday, we brought in 5 trailer-loads on Friday, and the final 2 on Saturday morning.
We couldn't access Hotel Field this year because of the allotment drainage channel being dug through the gateway, so we left that field standing, and cut Carn Field, Top Field, Far Field Middle, Far Field South, and Standing Stone Field. Top Field is a small field and had so little hay in it that we didn't even bale it, but the other 4 fields yielded 418 bales between them.
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| Byron and Ross loading hay in the field. |
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| The final 61 bales of hay loaded and ready to lead to the barn. |
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| Team stacking in the open barn. |
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| "Fiesta del campo" at the end of Saturday - drinking cold cider on the hay stack - with Abbie, Warren, Polly, Toby and James. |
This year's hay is now for sale in the farmyard, at £3.50 per bale, and some of last years' too. Local delivery is available by arrangement.
Many thanks to everybody who helped with this year's hay harvest - Sim, Caedmon, Abby, Warren, Toby, James, Heather, Bea, Ross, and Byron - and also to Rosie for putting St. Just market together by herself because we were too busy, Polly for delivering the bulk of our veg boxes by herself because Hugh was on the tractor, and Holly for not only delivering veg boxes on the St. Just to St. Ives route, but also for buying all the cider!
This past week has been one of the craziest weeks on the community farm ever! We are suffering severely from the ongoing heatwave and drought, which is really affecting the quantity and quality of crops that we have now, and will have through the coming winter, so we have been irrigating as much as possible just to keep things alive in the hope of rainfall soon. At the same time, we are having a land drain installed across the top of the Allotment Field, to try to prevent the allotments getting so wet in the winter. The digger doing this work burst our water mains on Tuesday morning, so we had several hours with no water on the farm at all, and we had to take drinking water from our neighbour's kitchen just to keep ourselves hydrated. Tuesday's main task was removing ragwort from the hay meadows - very hot work.
We have also been renovating the farmhouse kitchen, replacing both the floor and the ceiling, as well as many of the fittings, which resulted in both the power and the internet going down for some of Tuesday afternoon.
And we cut the hay, and brought it all in to the barn, one of the biggest itchiest sweatiest most-stressful jobs of the year - but we got it done (more on this later).
And St. Just Market began again, the first one since March 2020 (in the W.I. Hall from 09:30 till 12:30 every Saturday from now on), meaning more harvesting and packing and logistics, added to Sennen Market every Tuesday.
And two of our shop volunteers couldn't make it this week, and our two volunteer delivery drivers were both away, so well done and many thanks to Polly and Holly for stepping in to deliver 70 veg boxes between them as far afield as St. Ives and Ludgvan, on routes they'd never driven before.
Add to this our production of 90 veg-boxes all of our own vegetables, keeping the farm shop stocked daily, looking after 350 free-range hens, and it has been quite a week.....
