Sam

 

Sam returned to London today having volunteered as a WWOOFer here on the community farm - many thanks Sam for your help and we hope to see you again someday!

Harvesting polytunnel garlic

Yesterday we dug up our two beds of garlic from inside The Sausage polytunnel. This seems to be an end of May event annually, which is lovely, and a good sign that there is a light at the end of the "hungry gap" tunnel. This year we have dug up about 640 bulbs of good sized garlic, which is currently laid out to dry, and should be available for veg boxes and in our farm shop by the end of next week. We still have about the same quantity of outdoor garlic to harvest, but it will be ready later, and looks smaller.

Planted in October, this photo was taken in January.

Patrick harvesting the garlic yesterday.

unknown moth

 

This moth was in one of our polytunnels yesterday - does anybody know what kind it is please?

It's a buff tip moth! Thanks to Karl for the identification.

Tomorrow's veg boxes

 

Today's veg box picking and packing team (not all of them appear in this photo) are Ross, Polly, Joel, Shivani, Alice, Noe, Awa, Yvonne, Sam, Patrick, Jamie, Ben, and Hugh.

As we struggle and muddle through this deep hungry gap, this week's veg boxes will include:-

£8.50 box - a beetroot*, 2 dried chillies, mixed herbs, fresh lemon verbena, mange-tout peas, Ambo potatoes*, rhubarb, and salad leaves^.

£13.50 box - a beetroot*, 3 dried chillies, mixed herbs, fresh lemon verbena, Ambo potatoes*, rhubarb, salad leaves^, mixed greens, an elephant garlic, and 2 globe artichokes.

* bought-in UK organic produce

^ salad is a mixture of our own leaves and bought-in local organic leaves

To join our veg box scheme please email vegbox.bcf@bcents.org

Planting onions

Earlier this month we planted about 14kg of Sturon brown onion sets by hand in the market garden. They have gone into the section earmarked for this year's courgette patch, because the ground was too wet to work with a tractor out on the field, whereas this area had been covered with black plastic all winter to prevent weed growth (the courgettes are about to go into what was to be the onion patch). So we removed the black plastic, pulled out the few weeds there were, marked out 1m beds, gently hoed or raked them to break up the surface, laid a 5cm layer of greenwaste compost over the top, and planted our onion sets into holes dibbed through a 20x20cm frame.

Preparing the onion beds.

Completed onion beds.

While we were at it, we thoroughly weeded the shallot and red onion beds that we planted earlier in the year, and squeezed some more beds of brown onions in alongside the rhubarb patch. These are all in addition to the overwintering onions out on the field, which now also need a weed, but are looking good, and should be the biggest harvest of overwintering onions we've ever had. They may be ready in June.

Many thanks to all the helpers with planting onions, and to Alsia Cross market garden for donating their leftover sets - we now have our own leftover sets free to a good home if anybody wants any? Please come and ask in the shop, we'd rather they were used than wasted.

Local volunteers

Bosavern Community Farm is very fortunate to have an incredible team of local volunteers who come and get involved in every aspect of the farm, whether on the Board of Directors, running our shop or market stalls, delivering veg boxes, admin tasks, looking after chickens, running our allotments, helping with events and open days, weeding, harvesting, sowing, planting, watering, tree care, wildflower sowing etc....

Ailsa planting echiums in the farmyard.

Chris loading the farm van for veg box deliveries.

All of our lovely volunteers deserve a great big thank you from the community for all their effort and endeavours here on your farm. I will now attempt to list them all, in no particular order, but there are so many....

Holly, Alan, Katie, Dom, Fran, Ian, Kate, Nick, Terry, Ailsa, Lil, Ross, Rose, Yvonne, Rosa, another Yvonne, Ben, Richard, Clem, John, Ali, Jos, Sue, Chris, Richard, Joe, Lyndz, Rebecca, Jez, Rob, Mick, Louise, Otis, Esme, Lyla, Karl, and others....

To get involved please email us, or phone 788454, or ask in the farm shop for a volunteer form.

Tomorrow's veg boxes

Our globe artichoke patch this morning.

Today's veg box picking and packing team is Lil, Ben, Jos, Richard, Clem, Esme, Jamie, Noe, Awa, Sam, Patrick, Ross and Hugh (all multi-tasking with looking after chickens, collecting eggs, serving in the farm shop, irrigation, preparing lunch, brewing coffee, and writing blog entries).

Tomorrow's veg boxes will be comprised of a selection of the following:-

Our own produce - salad leaves, mange-tout, mixed herbs, mixed greens, globe artichokes, and elephant garlic.

Bought-in UK organic produce - Ambo potatoes, beetroot, and swedes.

Local organic produce - some of the salad leaves mix will be from Trenow market garden.

Our boxes cost £8.50 for a small and £13.50 for a standard. Extras include eggs, bread, milk, yoghurt, and honey. We will deliver almost anywhere in Penwith, for a £2 charge, or they can be collected from the farm, our hub in St. Ives, the Redwing Gallery in Penzance, or Newlyn Fermentary.

Emily

 

Emily, one of our team of WWOOF volunteers, left the farm this morning to begin a job up in Scotland. Many thanks to Emily for all her help and good-nature during her time here on the farm, and we wish her well in her new position.

New chickens

For the first time since October 2021 we have introduced a new flock of point-of-lay hens onto the farm. On Tuesday we brought 150 new birds and put them up in their own shed in our current chicken field. Hopefully they will start laying soon and we will no longer have to supplement our own egg production with eggs from local free-range flocks.

New hens in their lovely clean house.

We hadn't bought new hens for so long because of the ongoing bird flu pandemic, but our flock was ageing and dwindling, as was our egg production. The demand for our eggs is high, we have had no cases of bird flu on the farm, and general consensus is that we should have hens here, so we have taken the plunge.

We also dragged our three sheds up the field and spaced them out in lovely fresh biodiverse pasture, which our older hens are enjoying, and our new flock will start to enjoy tomorrow morning once we let them out (when they have been "hefted" to their shed).

Gina and Jonas

Two of our WWOOF volunteers have left us recently to continue their travels and experiences.

Jonas cleaning a chicken perch up in the chicken field last Wednesday.

Gina, on the left, planting potatoes on the back of the tractor.

Many thanks to Gina and Jonas for staying and helping us for a while, and good luck with their/your onward travels.

Today's veg boxes

 

Packing veg boxes during yesterday's Thursday volunteering session - Emily, Sue, Yvonne and Gina.

This morning we picked the salad for our veg boxes first thing, and they are now being delivered across Penwith, or awaiting collection at the farm.

Small £8.50 box - Twister potatoes, a cauliflower, mixed herbs, mange-tout peas, mixed greens, rhubarb, and elephant garlic.

Standard £13.50 box - all the above plus swede, salad leaves, and extra herbs and greens.

It was difficult squeezing everything into the boxes this week because the cauliflowers are the size of footballs (thank you Francis at Cargease Organics), and the elephant garlics are up to one metre long!

Bank Holiday weekend

Tomorrow, May 6th, there will be no farmer's market in St. Just, but our farm shop will be open as normal from 10am till 5pm, and fresh bread will be available.

On Monday May 8th, which is a bank holiday, our farm shop will not be open - we will be opening again on Tuesday at 10am as per normal.

We wish all our customers and supporters a happy bank holiday!

A new skin on Valentine polytunnel

Yesterday's Tuesday volunteering session was all about putting a new skin onto Valentine polytunnel.

On Monday, Jamie and Hugh did some final bits of preparation for the big Tuesday job, removing bits of old plastic, and nailing some batten around the door frames.

We had a good team of people to help (seen here filling in the trench with earth after the skin had gone on) - Ross, Hugh, Emily, Patrick, Gina (who also looked after our chickens and prepared lunch), Jonas, Jamie, Katie, Jez, Ben, Rob (who also ran our stall at Sennen Farmer's Market) and Nick (not to mention John in the shop and Rebecca organising veg boxes in the office).

Lunchtime in the farmyard.

Getting towards the end of the day, filling in the trenches, levelling the ground, and preparing to re-hang the old doors.

The cover and doors all finished. Now we need to weed and clear!

Another big Tuesday job well done - many thanks to all!

There is a video we made of this process which can be found on our Facebook page (thank you Katie!).