Planting salad

Our task for Tuesday's horticultural volunteering session was to fill our Nigel polytunnel with salad. We had already stripped out the 340 tomato vines and associated basil plants that had grown there through the season, and weeded the edges, so after boradforking and hoeing the beds, we dibbed holes at about 12cm apart, in 4 lines down each of seven soaker-hoses, and planted about 2800 salad seedlings (mostly brassicas such as rocket, mustard, pak choi) between 10am and 3pm. A great effort by our team of Tuesday volunteers who deserve a big thank you. This is our second polytunnel of salad to see us through the winter, we also have an outdoor patch of about the same size, much of which was direct sown in August.

Recent WWOOF volunteers

As you can probably tell by the number of blog posts this year I haven't had much spare time! 

We have, as always, had lots of lovely volunteers come to the farm via the WWOOF scheme (a highly valued educational and cultural exchange), and here are some of them to have joined us since April.

Ben.

Carol and Coraline.

Florina and Hamish.

Florina, Tommy, and Hamish.

Ilaria.

Kirara.

Libby, Jess and Jared.

Hamish and Louie (in the foreground).

Molly and Liam.

Nadya.

Pierre, Barbara, Kirara, and Aloyse.

Yaqub, Nadya, Emily, Aloyse, and Kirara.

Linn, Chahat, Shuet, and Ben (with Hugh and Ross).

Libby, Romina, and Shuet.

Nadia and Ben.

Huge thanks to all our WWOOFers and other volunteers for their help! And apologies to all those of whom I failed to get a photo - Jode, Wilfred, Thomas, Svenja, Rex, Ben, Brice, Luc, Marion, Anne, Sam, Lauren, Bianca, Ellie, and Noelle.

Hay harvest 2024

Last week we finished our biggest, latest in the season, and most stressful hay harvest ever! This year we cut five fields, producing 1080 bales, and we had to wait until mid-September for a decent spell of weather. The hay was cut on September 6th, and baled a week later on the 13th and 14th, then we brought it all in on the 17th, 18th and 19th, all of which were superb hay-days with hot sunshine and a dry easterly wind. We are all still exhausted, and have coined a new term, "hay-ngover"...

Hay is now available for purchase through our farm shop, open Monday to Saturday, 10am till 5pm. Hay is £4 per bale. 

One of our fields wasn't cut last year, so the hay from that one is coarser than from the others, therefore we recommend coarse bales for seating and bedding, and fine bales for feeding - the two types are piled together due to space limitation but are easy to tell apart.

Hay bales in Far Field South, one of the five fields we cut this year.

Our barn full of hay!

Libby, Romina, and Shuet, stacking hay ready for loading in Hotel Field.

Nadia and Ben loading the final bales onto the trailer.

Huge thanks to everybody who helped with the hay this year, especially the 11 local volunteers, 5 WWOOF volunteers, and 2 members of staff who did all the heavy lifting! Not to mention Clive for cutting the hay at what turned out to be the perfect time...

Potato planting 2024

At last, after a two-month delay due mainly to wet weather (but also a snapped pin on the tractor steering), we managed to plant our acre of potatoes on the 1st and 3rd of May, only the second time we've ever had to plant as late as May. We ploughed the field back in early February just before the rains began, and couldn't roll or rotovate it until late April due to the wetness!

One acre of the chicken field ploughed in February, and left for the chickens to pick over (we also hand-pulled as many dock roots as we could find).

Jess and Ross planting potatoes last Wednesday.

Planting potatoes last Wednesday - nice view!

Libby and Louie planting potatoes last Monday.

This year we have planted four varieties - 5 sacks of Casablanca first early, 5 sacks of Maris Peer second early, 12 sacks of Cara maincrop (because Ambo was not available), and 16 sacks of Carolus blight-tolerant maincrop.

Veg boxes 3rd May

 

Digging fresh elephant garlic.

Spinach harvested ready for veg boxes.

Spinach beds in the "hungry gap" section of the market garden.

Small £9.50 veg box - dried ring-of-fire chillies, a fresh elephant garlic, mixed herbs, Twister potatoes, salad leaves, spinach, and a swede.

Standard £14.50 veg box - all the above, plus chard, a bunch of icicle radishes, oriental greens, and rhubarb.

Today's veg boxes

 

Today we have delivered (or had collected) 78 veg boxes, thanks to Chris and Richard, our two volunteer delivery drivers. The boxes contained:-

Small box (£9.50) - purple sprouting broccoli (Cargease Organics), carrots (UK organic), a cauliflower (Cargease Organics), potatoes, a bunch of icicle radishes, and mixed salad leaves.

Standard box (£14.50) - carrots (UK organic), a cauliflower (Cargease Organics), chard, oriental greens, mixed herbs, parsnips (UK organic), potatoes, a bunch of icicle radishes, rhubarb, and mixed salad leaves.

To sign up for one of our not-for-profit veg boxes please fill out an online form at www.bosaverncommunityfarm.org.uk/veg-boxes/

Cargease Organics.

 

Our good friend, Franics Sampson, of Cargease Organics near Cockwells and Crowlas, is semi-retiring, and will no longer be growing organic veg to sell. Francis is one of the UK's leading organic field-scale growers, and many box schemes in Cornwall and across the country have relied on his veg to fill their boxes each winter. We have been buying Francis' veg since we opened our first farm shop in 2013, and over the years his cauliflowers in particular have been staples in our veg boxes in the winter (along with his purple sprouting broccoli, swedes, cabbages, leeks, and Brussels sprouts, and there have also been potatoes, carrots, beetroot, and celeriac at times). We have his caulis and PSB in the boxes this week, and that will be the end...

We wish Francis a very happy semi-retirement - after 50 years of picking caulis his back deserves a rest! A huge thanks to him and his team for all the wonderful local organic veg over the past eleven years!

More recent WWOOF volunteers

 

Thibault.

Tom.

Nim.

Jojo.

Amber.

Spring Open Day

Yesterday was our spring open day, with the main theme being "getting yourself ready for the growing season".... Despite the waterlogged fields preventing any car-parking at the farm itself, lots of people made the journey down from St. Just on foot, so the day was well-attended and a great success.

Our pop-up cafe in the farmyard - tea, coffee, cakes, soup, chilli, homity pies, green salad, coleslaw etc...

Cheese and olive stall.

Cornwall Wildlife Trust information stall.

Jam and preserves stall.

Joe with his foot-powered treadle lathe for green woodworking.

Kate on the farm's wildflower plants stall, with Marie on the National Trust information stall behind.

Lunchtime in the farmyard.

Nick's carved wooden spoons.

Andy with his upcycled planters and garden plants.

Plate garden workshop.

Sustrans and their bicycle repair shop.

Terry talking trees as part of the one-hour farm tour (centred on the market garden).

Tom with his scything demonstration (there will be a full day workshop later in the year).

Victor's tool-sharpening station (Oliver had another tool sharpening station in our workshop).

There was plenty of other stuff happening too (raffle, seed swap, farm shop etc..) but this is what I managed to photograph on the day. A HUGE thank you to all our volunteers who made the day such a success!

Recent WWOOFers

Many thanks to our volunteers from World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms who come from all over the world to further their knowledge of regenerative agriculture here at Bosavern Community Farm. The following three WWOOFers have all left recently having come to the ends of their stays with us.

Ana, helping to clean out the chicken sheds last Wednesday afternoon.

Jamie, digging out nettle roots before planting onion sets, on the market garden.

Laura (on the right) with Jojo (who is still here), harvesting nettles in Home Field.