Busy time for Camel CSA’s veg growers and pickers

We’ve been working flat out on our site at St Kew Highway to deal with all the vegetable crops.  A solid core of volunteers have been picking, planting, sowing, planting, watering and weeding.

Inside the polytunnel the team have harvested salad leaves, spring onions and baby beetroot for the veg boxes and planted out basil and cucumbers.

We’ve sown tray after tray of cabbage, sprouting broccoli, Brussels sprouts, calabrese, swede, kale and sweetcorn in modules.

Team members have sown more french beans, beetroot, peas, parsnips and carrots outside and planted out lettuce and cabbages. We’ve picked spring cabbages and oriental greens.

Hundreds of pumpkin and squash plants are bursting out of the cold frames. As soon as more outside beds are prepared we’ll be planting them out too.

We’re also been busy painting the potting shed, glazing the windows, hanging the door and putting the felt on the roof. As soon as we get a calm, windless day we’ll be getting the covers on the second polytunnel and the small seeding tunnel.

Many thanks to expert growers Bridget, Jane and Mark N plus the current regulars - Anne, Bob, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Henrietta, Jenny, Mark M, Mike S, Penny, Robert, Trish F.

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Camel CSA member opens Cornish millhouse garden in aid of Cornwall Hospice Care

Garden writer Trish Gibson is opening her beautiful garden at Pendoggett in north Cornwall to the public this Sunday 5 June under the National Gardens Scheme.

Trish has taken time off from her weekly veg box preparation duties at Camel CSA to get the garden ready to go on show for the second year running.

She says: -

Once again, after months of sowing and mowing, weeding and clearing, hedging and edging, pruning and fine tuning, we’re almost ready. It would be great if we could beat last year’s visitor numbers and, more importantly, takings (last year around £1,200). 

Fingers crossed for sunshine – and warmth – on the day. And looking forward to seeing you if you can possibly make it…

The Mill House, Pendoggett, near St Kew is open from 2-5.30 pm on Sunday. Entry is £3 (children free), all in aid of Cornwall Hospice Care. There will be a well-stocked plant stall and irresistible cream teas.

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Country Living comes to Camel Community Supported Agriculture

Our growing operation at Camel CSA in Cornwall has a mention in June’s Country Living magazine. Its Tap into local flavours section highlights what we’re up to. Writer Jane Taylor says: -

Community supported agriculture schemes are the buzzword in local food… no two schemes are alike. Yet their benefits always exceed the sum of their parts.

The article explains what Camel CSA does and includes us in its list of useful contacts. It’s all part of the magazine’s Your Community Needs You campaign, which wants to harness the groundswell of support for local food and regional producers.

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Seasonal local food recipe No 98: Roast beetroot with balsamic, rosemary and garlic

From Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Every Day. He says: “‘Sweet, sticky, garlic-scented roast beetroot makes an ideal side dish for oily fish such as mackerel, or for barbecued chicken or pork. But let it go cold and you could add some soft goat’s cheese and salad leaves and eat it as a dish in its own right.”

Serves 4

Preparation and cooking: about 1 hour 15 minutes

Ingredients
about 1kg beetroot
1 large rosemary stem, broken into little sprigs
1 head of garlic, broken into cloves, skin left on, each lightly squashed
3 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method
Peel the beetroot, cut them into thick wedges and place in a roasting dish. Add the springs of rosemary and squashed garlic cloves, trickle on the oil and season generously. Toss everything together, cover the dish with foil and roast in an oven preheated to 190C/gas 5 for 40 minutes [maybe less for our small Camel CSA beets], or until the beetroot is almost tender.

Remove the foil, trickle over the vinegar, give everything a good stir and return to the oven. Cook uncovered, stirring again once, for another 30-40 minutes or until the beetroot is starting to caramelise. Serve straight away or leave to cool.

More beetroot recipes from Camel CSA

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Seasonal local Cornish veg in this week’s boxes

In National Vegetarian Week everyone will have: -
* lettuce (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
* spring cabbage (Camel CSA)
600g new potatoes (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* baby carrots (Jeremy Brown, St Kew Harvest)

Standard boxes will also have:
extra 300g new potatoes
calabrese (Growfair, St Merryn)
strawberries (Growfair, Saltash or Hayle)

* = grown to organic principles

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Wadebridge the solar town – watch the video

Find out how a bunch of enthusiasts in the small Cornish town of Wadebridge intend to put a photovoltaic solar panel on every suitable roof.

Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network (WREN) want to create Britain’s first solar town in Cornwall. They aim to harness the sun and the wind to generate at least a third of its electricity by 2015.

Discover more at WREN’s inaugural general meeting this Monday 23 May at 7pm in the Town Hall.

Watch how they’re doing so far…

Producer / director: Charlotte Webster, Dorothea Gibbs
Camera: Santiago Posada
Picture editor: Belal Ladkini

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Seasonal local food recipe No 97: A Vietnamese stir-fry

A good way to use this week’s spring onions and some spring greens – from Nigel Slater’s Tender (Vol. 1). As he says, ‘Of all the flavours that seem to bring out the best of the cabbage family’s earthy greenness, few work as effectively as those of Southeast Asia. Ginger, spring onion and garlic have a natural affinity with chlorophyll-rich vegetables of any sort …’

Serves 2 as a side dish

Preparation and cooking: about 15 minutes

Ingredients
about 12 stems or small leaves of chinese greens or small cabbage leaves
2 large cloves garlic
thumb-sized piece of ginger
6 spring onions (though maybe a few more of our CSA baby ones)
2 tbsp groundnut oil
1 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)

Method
Put a saucepan of deep water on to boil and salt it slightly. Wash the greens thoroughly. Peel the garlic and ginger, finely chop the garlic and shred the ginger into matchstick strips. Trim the spring onions and cut each into two or three.

Warm the oil in a shallow pan or wok. Toss the garlic, ginger and spring onions in the oil till deep gold, verging on being lightly browned and fragrant. Drop the greens, whole or shredded as you wish into the boiling water. Leave for only a minute or so before draining. Pour the fish sauce in with the garlic and ginger – it will spit and sizzle – then toss with the greens and eat.

More seasonal veg recipes from Camel CSA

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Seasonal local veg – and fruit – from Cornwall

There’s an impressive amount of our own Camel CSA produce in this week’s vegetable boxes. Our first new polytunnel is enabling us to grow early crops to help fill the annual ”hungry gap“.

We’ve also got the first Cornish new potatoes from Mark Norman, one of our three expert growers.  And more delicious Cornish strawberries from a farmer near Hayle. So everyone will be having:

* lettuce leaf salad bag (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
* 500g Cornish new potatoes (Mark Norman)
Cornish strawberries (Growfair, Cornwall)

Standard boxes will also have:
* extra 250g Cornish new potatoes (Mark)
extra punnet of Cornish strawberries (Growfair)
* spring greens (Camel CSA)
* radish (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

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Seasonal local food recipe No 96: Cauliflower cheese with Lord Dalrymple’s top

An Edwardian dish (great name!) that Sarah Raven says was included in her aunt Fortune Stanley’s 1974 cookery book, English Country House Cooking. Sarah reproduces it in her Garden Cookbook. She says that with a crunchy salad of bitter leaves – our own Camel CSA-grown salad leaves would work well – it’s perfect for a light main course.

Serves 4
Preparation and cooking: 40 minutes

Ingredients
1 large cauliflower
175g butter, plus a little more for the dish
3 tbsp flour
6 tbsp single cream
250g strong cheddar cheese
salt and black pepper
1 tbsp mustard
6 eggs, separated

Method
Preheat a moderate oven (180C/gas 4). Divide the cauliflower into chunks and steam it for 3-4 minutes. Put the cauliflower in the bottom of a buttered souffle dish.

Melt the butter, add the flour and stir over a gentle heat for 1-2 minutes. Add the cream and cheese. Season and add the mustard and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring continuously until the mixture thickens to the consistency of double cream. Take off the heat and stir in the egg yolks.

Whisk the egg whites and fold in. Pour the souffle mixture over the cauliflower and bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes, until the top is browned and risen.

More cauliflower recipe ideas from Camel CSA

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Seasonal local veg – and Cornish strawberries! – in this week’s boxes

This week all boxes will have:

* salad (Camel CSA)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
spring greens (Mark Norman and Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
cauliflower (Restharrow Farm)
strawberries (Growfair, Cornwall)

Standard boxes will also have:
leeks (Growfair)
rhubarb (Mark Norman and CSA member Kitty Hotchkiss)

FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE : the packers found they needed to clear crops in the polytunnel – lettuces and spring onions. So, in addition to the above list, standard boxes had a lettuce and the small boxes had spring onions. Any surpluses were placed by a board saying help yourself (first come, first served).

* = grown to organic principles

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