Amel

Amel, a French teacher of English, has left the farm this afternoon to head back to home and work, having volunteered with us for almost two weeks. This photo is of Amel preparing beetroot this morning to go into veg boxes for tomorrow's deliveries. Thank you Amel!

St. Mary's School visit the farm

St Mary's C of E Primary visited the farm on Tuesday 28th January. The year 2 class were extremely enthusiastic and well behaved and enjoyed a variety of activities including visiting our hens to collect eggs, harvesting, weighing and bagging some of our produce to take back to school with them, building a super bug hotel and sowing a patch of wild flowers around our well to help the bees.

 

The bare area by our well in Home Field, sown with wildflower seeds by the school pupils.

The bug hotel in our willow copse on the market garden, built by the school pupils.

fitting a new floor in chicken shed 1

Of our three chicken sheds, shed 1 was the only one that hadn't had a new floor since the community farm began in 2010. The old floor was made of bits of wood found in the outbuildings when we took on the lease, and was a few years past its best. So today we treated our oldest birds to a lovely new plywood floor.

The old floor taken out.

Adrien fitting new support struts.

Adrien and Andy fitting the new floor panels.

All done and the chickens allowed back in.

Many thanks to Adrien and Andy who did nearly everything between them in less than one day.

climate

As the climate changes and the weather gets less predictable and more freakish, here's some photos comparing this February to last year.

Our polytunnels bathed in a February heatwave, 27/2/2019.

View to the coast on the walk to work this morning.

Our polytunnels on 28th February last year.

Almost the same view on 28th February 2018.

Cornish hedge repairs

The tall Cornish hedge by the back door of our packing shed has been slowly bulging at the base for years, pushing further and further across the doorway, scraping the skin off our knuckles when going in and out with wheelbarrows of veg.

The bulging hedge encroaching across the doorway, threatening to collapse.

Before the hedge fell down of its own accord (which could have hurt one of our team of volunteers), we took it down, and built it back up again.

All the stones from the hedge laid out ready for rebuilding.

The rebuilt section.

No bulge, and a clear safe run through to the door.

compostable bags

In 2015 we started using degradable plastic bags to pack our leaves (salad, herbs, chard, kale etc..) instead of standard plastic. These break down over time so as not to litter the environment, but are still manufactured from oil, and are not recyclable (unlike the standard plastic bags that they replaced). We wanted to use compostable bags, but none were available at the time. Technology has now caught up with demand, and we are pleased to have found some compostable bags ideally suited to our use. These are made from potato starch and "other biologically sourced polymers" such as wood pulp and sugar-cane waste. They will compost in three to six months in a home compost heap (quicker than that in a hot composting system). Our leaves are now being sold in these bags. They are substantially more expensive than the degradable bags that they replaced (which were substantially more expensive than standard plastic), so we have had to increase the cost of our leaves by 10p per bag in the farm shop.

Information in our farm shop.

Our new compostable bags in action on our farm shop shelves.

The bags can still be re-used before composting, but they can't be recycled. The only other packaging that we use for our own veg is brown paper bags. We support the "Plastic-Free Penzance" and "Plastic-Free St. Just" movements, and you can find out more about them on their facebook sites.

seeds for sale

Our farm shop (which is open 362 days of the year from 11am till 6pm, and run almost entirely by volunteers) has a new range of seeds for sale. These are from the Seed Co-Operative, a community owned organic seed company based in East Anglia, an organisation with a lot in common with Bosavern Community Farm and whom we are pleased to support. We have used their seeds on the farm before and found them to be of good quality and good value, plus they are organic and open-pollinated (no hybrids). We have 30 types of seed for sale including lettuce, peas, beans (runner, broad, and climbing), phacellia green manure, coriander, basil, parsley, parsnips, cabbages, carrots, leeks, pumpkins, courgettes, tomatoes, beetroot, kale, chard, radish etc...

Adrien, our long-term French volunteer, has built a display rack out of pallets and an old clothes horse, which looks superb. You can find out more about the Seed Co-Operative at www.seedcooperative.org.uk