Rebecca.

Heaps of thanks also to Rebecca, from the USA, who left yesterday morning for Dartmoor after helping on the farm for one month.

Rebecca helping to trench the polytunnel.

Camille.

Many thanks to Camille, a French agronomy student who has just left after wwoofing for two weeks on the farm.

Camille bringing cauliflowers in from the field.

Latest Mortgage News.

We are in a desperate position today at Bosavern Community Farm as the Co-op Bank has turned down a mortgage for us to buy the farm. The Lottery has said we need to buy the farm by 30th November or it will retract its offer of £215k.
Bosavern is doing so well with a real bumper year of food, we've had all the local schools up learning about where our food comes from, workshops galore and community events. Please don't let us lose this great community asset.
WE NEED A LOAN OF £100 000. That could be 1000x£100 or 100x £1000, to buy the farm by tomorrow. 
Please forward this to anyone who may be able to help.
Kind regards
Lynne Dyer

Preparing to re-skin the old polytunnel.

Over the past ten days we have been renovating our oldest polytunnel. This tunnel, the Mothership, was already on the farm when the community came here, and we believe it to be 10 to 12 years old. Within a year of us being here the front timbers were starting to come apart, being unable to cope with the weight of tomatoes pulling on them. We have continually patched and repaired the tunnel, but strong winds earlier this month started to tear it apart drastically.

Storm damage, early November.

 Both the plastic and timber needed replacing, so we spent two days digging these out and removing them.

Rebecca and Chris digging the old plastic out (after lengthy heavy rain!).

Front timbers removed, but plastic still on.

 A strong overnight wind did most of the work of removing the plastic for us. Once off we reconstructed the timber ends of the polytunnel both front and back, finishing this work today. We have also constructed new windows and doors or repaired the old ones, and covered these ready to be re-hung, and begun adding the additional plastic panels at front and back.

Back end timbers replaced and ready for plastic.

 The tunnel will be ready to re-cover on Thursday 28th November. The weather forecast is good, with low winds and no rain, and we are aiming for a 9 am start (subject to alteration...). Our usual volunteer session will start at 10 am, but if our regular volunteers can come one hour earlier that would be much appreciated. We are hoping for 10 people, until the cover is secured, and already have 5, so please come along and join in.

Farmers' Market, Advent Fair, and Shop Opening.

This Saturday 30th November there will be a farmers market and craft fair here on the farm from 10 am till 3 pm, with activities based on the beginning of Advent. During the event we will also be opening our brand new farm shop for the first time, selling mainly produce from the farm, but also selected goods from the surrounding area. Please do come along and support your community farm!

Advent food and craft fair.

From tomatoes to winter salads.

Over the past two weeks we have converted our biggest polytunnel from tomatoes (with a few aubergines, tomatillos, physallis, squashes and courgettes thrown in) to winter salads.

Alice, Charlotte, Phil, Amelia and Friederike digging beds

First we harvested the remaining tomatoes, both red and green (for chutney), pulled out all the plants, chopped them up and added them to our compost bins. Then we rolled up the woven black plastic mulch, marked out beds of 1.2m width, and dug them over to a spades' depth removing any living couch roots we found (not many, surprisingly). With a good team of volunteers this took two days.

The beds all dug over, and trays of salads ready to plant.

We had sown thousands of salad seeds into modules one month beforehand, so they were ready to plant when the time came (although they were quite small, we're not sure the compost was good enough quality). So we relaid the irrigation pipes, added four more, and planted salad seedlings 10cm apart in two lines, one either side of each irrigation pipe, making 24 lines of salad in total.

Martin and Rebecca planting the first salad seedlings.

 The plants have responded well to getting their feet into the soil, and we hope to start harvesting them in early December. We planted a mix of brassica salads (mizuna, mibuna, rocket, senposai, tat soi, serifon, sessantina, shungiku etc.) plus winter spinach, claytonia, watercress, and red salad bowl lettuce. As always, many thanks to all our volunteers for their invaluable help.