Mary and Bertrand.

Many thanks to Mary and Bertrand, from Grenoble in France, for their contribution to the farm during their stay as wwoof volunteers in August.

Mary cleaning eggs ready for boxing.

Bertrand packing garlic in the cow-shed.

Turkey chicks.

On Saturday 17th August, this year's brood of 45 turkey chicks came to live on the farm, where they will stay until Christmas Eve. This year we have opted for 15 white turkeys, 15 bronze, and 15 blacks (as in previous years). They have moved in to their shed and are growing visibly. Please contact us on 788454 if you wish to reserve a turkey for Christmas!

What's for sale on the farm gate today.

Free-range eggs, £1.50 for half a dozen.
Tomatoes, £1.20 for 300g.
Runner beans, £1 for 200g.
Garlic, 50p for 3 bulbs (small but tasty).
Red onions, £1 for 500g.
New potatoes, "Maris Peer", £1.50 for 1kg.
Willow wands, 20p each.
Green chillies, 10p each.
Cucumbers, 50p each.
Courgettes, 50p each (large).
Physallis (Cape gooseberries), £1 for a punnet of 12 (delicious).

Current farm produce (or views from the packing shed).

Over the past two days we have harvested over £400 of vegetables from the farm, half of which has gone into this weeks veg-boxes, and the other half has gone onto the gate stall or tomorrow's farmers market (St. Just British Legion, 09:30 till 12:30).

"Long black" aubergines.

Alice sorting and weighing beetroot.

Carrots bunched and ready.

"Gold rush" and "Nero di Milano" courgettes.

Physallis (a.k.a. Cape gooseberries).

"French breakfast" radishes.

Red onions.

Jenny and Anne weighing and packing runner beans.

"Buttercup" summer squash.

Some of the season's first tomatoes.

Pau and Pau.

Also thanks to Pau and Pau, from Catalunya, for their ten days of work on the farm.

Gerald, Kathrin, and Paul.

Kathrin (left), Gerald (centre) and Paul (right) on cooking duty in the farmhouse kitchen.

Many thanks to three recent WWOOF volunteers for all their hard work on the farm, we were sorry to see you go.

Sowing and planting.

The lack of recent blog entries has been a sign that we have been very busy on the farm over the past few weeks. The end of July is a critical date for getting all our seeds and plants into the ground ready for autumn and winter, which is what we've been up to instead of blogging. Our two crop fields, totalling one hectare of vegetables (not including polytunnels) are now fully sown or planted for the first time in their recent history, and that's a cause for celebration.

Watering 2000 cabbage seedlings during the dry spell.

Our maincrop field is now one third potatoes (topped due to blight, but already harvesting delicious Maris Peer earlies), one third brown onions, 2000 cabbages under wondermesh, and 12,000 swede seeds sown.
Our market garden field is full of carrots (some for fresh, some for storage), beetroot, chard, runner beans, broad beans, mange-tout peas, sugar snap peas, garden peas, borage, squashes, courgettes, spinach, salads, kales, purple sprouting broccoli, green sprouting calabrese, Brussels sprouts, cauliflowers (both autumn and winter), 5000 leeks, red onions, parsnips and early potatoes. No doubt I've forgotten something there. Celeriac, parsley, Florence fennel etc...

Weeding parsnips, a massive task, but they're now looking superb.