Recent volunteers

Thanks must go to all our volunteers, but in particular we'd like to thank four people who volunteered with us recently, and whose photos may already have appeared here on the blog.

Florina, a WWOOF volunteer from Switzerland, who helped for one month on the farm.

Otis and William, two work experience students from Mounts Bay Academy, who were with us every day last week.

And Juliette, who stayed with us for three weeks, having walked all the way from London!!!

Many thanks to all of you, and all the best for your futures.

Picking and packing, checking and stacking

We start to get our veg boxes ready on a Wednesday afternoon, but most of the picking is done on Thursdays, by a team of volunteers led by our small growing staff team, before being delivered on a Friday.

Picking rainbow chard in the Market Garden.

Picking blackcurrants in the fruit cage.

Picking spring onions in the Mothership polytunnel.

We are always open to new volunteers, either in the fields and polytunnels, or in the packing shed and shop, or in the kitchen preparing lunch for our volunteers, or delivering veg boxes on Fridays, and other opportunities too. If you are interested please email us at info@bosaverncommuntyfarm.org.uk and we look forward to welcoming you into the team.

Garden Tiger moth

We spotted this little beauty on our front doorstep on Monday.

veg boxes 21st July

Some of our first tomatoes of 2023.

We love this time of year. New produce coming through and looking wonderful and fresh. Such a relief after the Hungry Gap.

Our veg boxes this week should contain:-

standard veg boxes - rainbow chard, a cucumber, a garlic, kale, a bunch of spring onions, onions, a kilo of new potatoes, rhubarb, and tomatoes;

small veg boxes - French beans, a cucumber, kale, a bunch of spring onions, onions, and a kilo of new potatoes.

All grown here on the community farm.

Please contact us to join our veg box scheme, or call into the shop to fill out a joining form, or at St. Just or Sennen farmers markets.

Some of our first new potatoes of 2023.

Lafrowda Day 2023

This Saturday, Lafrowda Day, we will have a stall on Fore Street from 10am till 2:30pm, selling a range of fresh veg from the farm, plus other produce. You can also sign up to join our veg box scheme, or to volunteer with us, or to buy community shares in the farm. 

There will be no farmer's market in the WI Hall this Saturday, and our farm shop will be closed for the day, as we concentrate on the festival.

Please come along and support us, and Lafrowda too.

Veg boxes 14th July

The only bought-in produce this week is the organic new potatoes from Herefordshire, all the rest is from the community farm, and this is the last week of bought-in potatoes because we will begin to harvest our own from now.

French beans and cucumbers growing in Valentine polytunnel.

This Friday we intend for our veg to contain the following:-

standard box (£13.50) - purple basil, French beans, blackcurrants, 2 dried chillies, a cucumber, a garlic, kale, spring onions, brown onions, new potatoes, rhubarb, and salad leaves.

small box (£8.50) - rainbow chard, mixed herbs, kale, spring onions, brown onions, and new potatoes.

Please contact us on vegbox.bcf@bcents.org to join our not-for-profit veg box scheme.

Planting broccoli (and cabbages, kale, and leeks)

 

What a good team effort it was yesterday! And continued this morning too. We weeded and reclaimed the four long beds where all our overwintering onions were harvested on Monday, then they were hoed lightly, before we planted all our purple sprouting broccoli, winter cabbages, and more kale. Once the winter brassicas were all in we made a start on the leeks - but there are many more to go...

A big thank you to all our volunteers who were involved in this - Jez, Rob, Rebecca, Ben, Otis, William, Luke, Juliette, Florina, Louis, Bruno, and Clement.

Owen

One of our WWOOF volunteers, Owen (seen below harvesting onions), left us on Monday to move on to his next farm, and we wish him all the best with is onward endeavours, plus many thanks for all his help whilst with us.

Spring onions

 

Our first bunches of spring onions for sale in the farm shop.

We don't usually put much effort into growing spring onions, but this year we have pushed ourselves, and been rewarded with a lovely crop of them, from the Mothership polytunnel. We sowed 200 modules on February 21st, 7 seeds per cell, White Lisbon onions, then planted them into the polytunnel on May 9th, at 20cm spacings. Our first bunches have gone into the shop today, at £1.50 each, and we plan to have a bunch in every veg box next week.

Veg boxes for 7th July

 

Overwintering Radar onions drying in a polytunnel.

It is probably safe now to declare an end to the Hungry Gap... Hooray!

This week's veg boxes are expected to contain:-

• £8.50 box - new potatoes, carrots, onions, salad leaves, garlic, and cucumber.
• £13.50 box - all the above plus redcurrants, kale, mixed herbs, and dried chillies.

The new potatoes and carrots have been brought in from UK organic farms. All the rest of the produce is grown here on the community farm. We expect to begin harvesting our own new potatoes in 2 weeks time.

More rain!

 

Rain flowing down the polytunnel skin (seen from inside!).

When we first took on Bosavern as a Community Farm back in 2010 (where has the time gone!) we never thought that a few years later any rainfall would become a bloggable event. Yet here we are. After the hottest June on record (and surely one of the driest too for Cornwall?), as soon as July came, we have been treated to some gloriously wet and cool weather conditions! The farm is looking so much better for it, human stress levels are down, and our maincrop sowings have actually germinated out in the fields.