Picking peas.

This week was our first harvest of peas of 2015, yielding over 8kg. We love it when the new season crops start to become ready for picking and we move out of the hungry gap and into the productive summer. We are now picking our basil, broad beans, climbing French beans, courgettes, cucumbers, the first few tomatoes, strawberries, new potatoes, rainbow chard, salads, borage flowers, carrots and physallis, with more to come.

Ian and Pablo picking peas on Thursday morning ready for Friday's veg boxes.

Our first harvest of peas.

Our first harvest of basil - sweet Genovese, purple, and lettuce-leaved.

Veg box 10th July.

This week's small £6 veg box - new potatoes, broad beans, baby carrots, peas in their pods, rainbow chard, and three types of basil (sweet Genovese, purple, and lettuce-leaved). The standard £10 box also included cucumber, courgettes, and mixed salad leaves, plus extra potatoes and basil. All of these veg were grown on the community farm.

Bee-keeping workshop.

The last weekend in June saw the farms' very first "Introduction to Bee-Keeping" workshop which was run by our very own bee-keeper, Matt Pitt, with funding from "Awards for All" and Councillor Sue James' "Community Chest Fund". This enabled seven people to learn the basics in the classroom and to discover hands-on if bee-keeping is for them. The feedback received after the workshop was brilliant and we are already fully booked for our next one. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for further upcoming courses or contact the farm if you are interested in learning the ancient art of bee-keeping!

Matt demonstrating out at the bee hives.

Shop opening times for the summer.

Through July and August the farm shop will be open seven days per week, from 11am till 6pm. Our summer produce has started to appear on the shelves, including French beans, cucumbers, courgettes, new potatoes and black Tuscan kale, and there will be more to come (peas, tomatoes, carrots etc.). We also stock local milk, fresh bread, our own eggs, local cheeses, plus a range of goods such as raw chocolate (made by our friend Darren in St Just), pulses, chutneys, honey (from our own hives), hand-knitted socks, jams, soap (made by Jean in St Just), leather work, hand-made cards (made by our friend Willow in St Just), Cornish seaweed, pewter bees etc..

Planting squash.

We planted just over 140 squash plants out on the market garden on Wednesday 1st July, of 11 different varieties, some tried and tested and some experimental.

A labour of many hours spread over many weeks, the squash patch covered in dung ready for rotovating.

Mipex laid on the ground (salvaged from our destroyed polytunnel, with holes already cut but at tomato vine spacings).

Wind mesh erected around the patch.

Sarah and Alice planting a squash in every third hole.

The patch fully planted (including 24 plants that didn't fit inside the mesh, planted next to it along the outside).

Veg box 3/7/15.

These are the contents of our "small" veg box from last week (3rd July) - 100g of mixed salad leaves and flowers, 200g of rainbow chard, 500g of broad beans, 1kg of new potatoes, and 2 courgettes. This veg box is shown with optional extras of 1 litre of organic milk from Treen (£1.20), half a dozen of our eggs (£1.50), and a large organic sourdough loaf from Vicky's in Helston (£2.90).
The standard £10 veg box had an extra courgette, a cucumber, extra 500g of new potatoes, a bunch of radishes, French beans instead of broad beans, and a globe artichoke (but no salad leaves).

Claudio, Maxime, Pablo and Iris

Four of our wwoofers have reached the end of their stays on the community farm over the past week - Claudio from Turin, Maxime from France, Pablo from Zaragoza, and Iris from the Netherlands - and we would like to thank them for their hard work and to wish them well on their onward travels.

Claudio (the only one not to have already appeared on this blog) seen here loading up with cattle manure to fertilise the squash patch.