Tomorrow's veg boxes

Our globe artichoke patch this morning.

Today's veg box picking and packing team is Lil, Ben, Jos, Richard, Clem, Esme, Jamie, Noe, Awa, Sam, Patrick, Ross and Hugh (all multi-tasking with looking after chickens, collecting eggs, serving in the farm shop, irrigation, preparing lunch, brewing coffee, and writing blog entries).

Tomorrow's veg boxes will be comprised of a selection of the following:-

Our own produce - salad leaves, mange-tout, mixed herbs, mixed greens, globe artichokes, and elephant garlic.

Bought-in UK organic produce - Ambo potatoes, beetroot, and swedes.

Local organic produce - some of the salad leaves mix will be from Trenow market garden.

Our boxes cost £8.50 for a small and £13.50 for a standard. Extras include eggs, bread, milk, yoghurt, and honey. We will deliver almost anywhere in Penwith, for a £2 charge, or they can be collected from the farm, our hub in St. Ives, the Redwing Gallery in Penzance, or Newlyn Fermentary.

Emily

 

Emily, one of our team of WWOOF volunteers, left the farm this morning to begin a job up in Scotland. Many thanks to Emily for all her help and good-nature during her time here on the farm, and we wish her well in her new position.

New chickens

For the first time since October 2021 we have introduced a new flock of point-of-lay hens onto the farm. On Tuesday we brought 150 new birds and put them up in their own shed in our current chicken field. Hopefully they will start laying soon and we will no longer have to supplement our own egg production with eggs from local free-range flocks.

New hens in their lovely clean house.

We hadn't bought new hens for so long because of the ongoing bird flu pandemic, but our flock was ageing and dwindling, as was our egg production. The demand for our eggs is high, we have had no cases of bird flu on the farm, and general consensus is that we should have hens here, so we have taken the plunge.

We also dragged our three sheds up the field and spaced them out in lovely fresh biodiverse pasture, which our older hens are enjoying, and our new flock will start to enjoy tomorrow morning once we let them out (when they have been "hefted" to their shed).

Gina and Jonas

Two of our WWOOF volunteers have left us recently to continue their travels and experiences.

Jonas cleaning a chicken perch up in the chicken field last Wednesday.

Gina, on the left, planting potatoes on the back of the tractor.

Many thanks to Gina and Jonas for staying and helping us for a while, and good luck with their/your onward travels.

Today's veg boxes

 

Packing veg boxes during yesterday's Thursday volunteering session - Emily, Sue, Yvonne and Gina.

This morning we picked the salad for our veg boxes first thing, and they are now being delivered across Penwith, or awaiting collection at the farm.

Small £8.50 box - Twister potatoes, a cauliflower, mixed herbs, mange-tout peas, mixed greens, rhubarb, and elephant garlic.

Standard £13.50 box - all the above plus swede, salad leaves, and extra herbs and greens.

It was difficult squeezing everything into the boxes this week because the cauliflowers are the size of footballs (thank you Francis at Cargease Organics), and the elephant garlics are up to one metre long!

Bank Holiday weekend

Tomorrow, May 6th, there will be no farmer's market in St. Just, but our farm shop will be open as normal from 10am till 5pm, and fresh bread will be available.

On Monday May 8th, which is a bank holiday, our farm shop will not be open - we will be opening again on Tuesday at 10am as per normal.

We wish all our customers and supporters a happy bank holiday!

A new skin on Valentine polytunnel

Yesterday's Tuesday volunteering session was all about putting a new skin onto Valentine polytunnel.

On Monday, Jamie and Hugh did some final bits of preparation for the big Tuesday job, removing bits of old plastic, and nailing some batten around the door frames.

We had a good team of people to help (seen here filling in the trench with earth after the skin had gone on) - Ross, Hugh, Emily, Patrick, Gina (who also looked after our chickens and prepared lunch), Jonas, Jamie, Katie, Jez, Ben, Rob (who also ran our stall at Sennen Farmer's Market) and Nick (not to mention John in the shop and Rebecca organising veg boxes in the office).

Lunchtime in the farmyard.

Getting towards the end of the day, filling in the trenches, levelling the ground, and preparing to re-hang the old doors.

The cover and doors all finished. Now we need to weed and clear!

Another big Tuesday job well done - many thanks to all!

There is a video we made of this process which can be found on our Facebook page (thank you Katie!).