Tomato harvest.

The end of September and still continuing into October has seen our biggest polytunnel "New Baby" producing masses of tomatoes. After a slow start to the season, with the tunnel not completed until May, then the strong easterly winds of July ripping the plastic off it, our tomato plants have recently started performing to their full potential. We pick twice a week, last week totalling 170 kg of tomatoes, and today harvesting another 92 kg. These are sold at £3 a kilo through our veg box scheme, local farmer's markets, gate stall, and wholesale to many local pubs and cafes. How long will they continue? Maybe another 2 to 3 weeks....

Charlotte picking tomatoes this morning.

Caroline.

We'd like to send a big thank you to Caroline from the USA, who came to wwoof for two weeks and stayed for three, helping to finish the onion harvest and read stories to visiting school groups, amongst many other things.

Caroline picking salad in the Mothership.

Harvest 2013.

After a kinder growing season, more people working on the farm, some rabbit fencing, an extra polytunnel, and general expansion and improvement of the farm's operations, 2013 has been the best harvest to date here at Bosavern Community Farm. Most notable are the best harvests ever had of potatoes (despite the onset of blight in mid-July), onions, beetroot, carrots (with no sign of carrot root-fly - yet), parsnips (we've only just started harvesting them, but the bed is big and looks amazing), runner beans, celery, chard, rocket, physallis, cabbages, kale, squash, tomatoes, aubergines, tomatillos, basil, radishes, spinach, and celeriac (also yet to be harvested). We'd like to thank all the volunteers, both local and through WWOOF, who have helped us to make this possible.

Harvesting potatoes - with David, Ed (from Chagford CSA), Martina, Franziska, Jim and Alice.

Parsnip bed.

Our harvest of onions drying in the barn before storing.

New polytunnel full of 300 tomato plants.

Helen

Many thanks to Helen, from Australia, who left this morning after 9 days helping on the farm (our 99th WWOOF volunteer!).

Helen harvesting salad in the "mothership" polytunnel.

WWOOF statistics.

Our 100th WWOOF volunteer arrived yesterday! Nyssa, from the USA, has come to help on the farm for the next 6 weeks. Which seemed like a good point at which to crunch some numbers, particularly helpful (maybe?) to people or organisations wondering whether to become WWOOF hosts or not, indicating whom they can expect to come......

So, out of the 100 WWOOFers we have hosted to date:-
Nationalities in descending order - British 24, French 18, German 17, American 10, Canadian 5, Australian 5, Italian 4, New Zealanders 3, Chinese 2, Swiss 2, Austrian 1, Dutch 1, Japanese 1, Belgian 1, and Portuguese 1.
Females outnumber males by 67 to 33.
In the same time period (just under 3 years) there have been 3 WWOOFers who have failed to turn up.
Of those 100 WWOOFers, 98 have been good (some of them have been excellent), and there have been only 2 that we wish we'd never taken on.

This year's tomatoes.

Gardener's Delight - delicious cherry tomatoes.

Moneymaker - productive big slicing tomatoes.

Quadro - for cooking or slicing.

San Marzano - plum tomatoes primarily for cooking.

Chris

Thanks also to Chris, who called in to help for 5 days on his cycling and wwoofing tour of the south-west (see photo below).