Grow-our-own veg team have no chance to hibernate

You might think that Camel CSA’s growing team have their feet up indoors at this time of year, browsing through seed catalogues, surrounded by chilli garlands and sustained by large vats of vegetable soup.

No such chance! There are all sorts of jobs to do on our community vegetable-growing plot.

Apart from harvesting the over-wintered stocks for the weekly veg boxes, we’re starting to get the site ready for next season’s crops.

On Sunday morning expert grower Jane helped Sophie and Freddie, two of our junior members, to sow the first crop of early carrots in our second polytunnel.

While they basked in the warmth, the rest of us braved the cold Cornish wind and carried on preparing and planting our new soft fruit area. 

As the ground there is quite poor and stony, we’re using the lasagne gardening method. This was a great success in our tomato, pepper, aubergine and chilli polytunnel last summer where it helped retain moisture and improve the soil.

The rhubarb crowns are already safe in the ground. The rest of the fruit bushes – culinary and dessert gooseberries, red, white and blackcurrants, summer and autumn raspberries – have been heeled in. They’ll be planted next weekend.

We’ve gone through an enormous amount of cardboard  - big thankyou to Laura and Joe at St Mabyn PO and Stores. But we’re fast running out again. If you have any old boxes, please leave them in the potting shed, which is between the tractor shelter and the polytunnels.

Many thanks to expert growers Jane and Mark N and the rest of Sunday’s volunteer growing team – Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Freddie (6), Gillian, Mark N, Mike and Sophie (9).

Chilli festive garlands ready to go in Christmas veg boxes

Camel CSA members got together as planned to create around 40 decorative chilli strings for our Christmas vegetable boxes.

At a ready guess we used up more than 4,000 surplus chillies harvested from the magnificent crop in our second polytunnel.

The garlands make beautiful swags for the mantelpiece, table centrepieces or runners, or Christmas tree decorations.

And, of course, they can be eaten!

Festive greetings to the chilli stringing team – Anne, Caroline, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Evie, Jenny, Kitty, Mark, Penny, Robert, Tess and Trish F.

Hot chilli Christmas garlands create festive fire

Camel CSA’s vegetable boxes have been overflowing with a surplus of produce for months now.

All kinds of chutneys and preserves have been made from the veg gluts, but we’ve been almost defeated by the enormous surplus of chillies cultivated in our second polytunnel.

The problem with chillies is that a little goes a very long way.

They feature regularly in our weekly vegetable boxes. Volunteer veg packer Henrietta has made some into chilli jam. Volunteer grower Mark M (who loves to crunch them up raw) pickled some chillies in vinegar. Membership secretary Cath experimented with chilli oil.

All these culinary enterprises proved extremely expensive and time-consuming. I still have hundreds - no thousands – of chillies drying out slowly on the laundry rack above my boiler at home.

Enter now the artistic wing of our food-growing social enterprise.

The latest plan is to turn the chilli surplus into natural edible garlands to go in our Christmas veg boxes. After the festivities are over, the chillies can be plucked from the decorative string and used in cooking.

We’re holding a chilli stringing evening this coming week, when the hundreds of chillis will be threaded on to fishing line. We’re supplying the wine, the chillies, the materials and the surgical gloves(!) Camel CSA members are providing the labour.

I’m amazed at what people charge for hot chilli garlands, centrepieces and edible chilli and herb garlands, so I’ll be interested to see how many we can string together in just one evening!

‘Cut and come again’ salads are worth the effort

Now I know why oriental salad leaves are so expensive in the supermarkets!

We’re cultivating an assortment of indoor-grown oriental and other baby leaves in our first polytunnel.

These “cut and come again” crops should last us until early spring (with a gap when they stop for a rest in the short, dull days of mid-winter).

There’s quite a variety - spicy red mustard, mizuna and mibuna, pak choi, curly endive, baby chard, parsley (“French” flat as well as curly-leaved) and mixed lettuce.

But it takes two or more people around two hours every Friday morning to pick enough leaves for the 35 or more weekly vegetable boxes. It requires nimble fingers and is incredibly labour intensive.

There’s one big mitigating factor about all this for the volunteer pickers. Salad leaf picking is guaranteed warm, dry work which is also out of the wind.

Arguably much more satisfactory than parsnip, leek or carrot lifting which are cold, wet and muddy jobs.

Camel CSA invites food lovers to join veg box scheme

Keep an eye out for our stunning new posters designed by Emma Julian of Pickle Design in Wadebridge. 

They’re helping to spread the word about our community     grow-your-own project and  weekly vegetable box scheme in north Cornwall.

It’s a great way to support local food and save food miles! Anyone living within a 10-mile radius of St Kew Highway is welcome to join us. We grow a range of vegetables to organic principles. The weekly boxes are ready to collect by 12 noon every Friday.

How Camel CSA deals with veg gluts and surpluses

I love autumn. And there’s no better time of year to be involved in a community agriculture project.

The veg boxes are bursting with our own-grown Cornish produce – including delicacies like raddichio and fresh borlotti beans.

At this moment my kitchen is filling with a tantalising spicy aroma -  a mix of allspice, ginger, pepper, brown sugar, vinegar - coming from a large pan of chutney bubbling on the stove.

The green tomato and apple chutney is being made with our surplus produce – using unripe tomatoes from the polytunnel, apples from our adopted orchard and onions and garlic from our dry store.

Other Camel CSA members are also busy making pickles and preserves from other vegetables. Henrietta has a garage full of runner bean chutney, turnip pickle and tomato marmalade. Cath’s about to start producing chilli oil (oh boy, do we have a glut of chillis!)

We’re not doing anything new, of course. Preserving is a traditional way of using up fruit and veg surpluses that helps provide some variety in the winter months and during the “hungry gap” in spring.

So look out for all these delicious goodies as they start appearing from Christmas onwards in our weekly veg boxes.

Camel CSA joins the Eden Cafe Conversations

Our community supported agriculture project has a guest slot this Wednesday evening at the Eden Project’s Cafe Conversations.

Eden’s new eco cafe is in St Austell town centre. Its free event this Wednesday 19 October from 6.30 - 8.30pm is about the joys of growing, cooking and eating community food. 

I’ll be talking about what we’ve learned at Camel CSA about running a community grow-your-own project – the successes and the setbacks. The other guest is Clive Cobb, creative thinker behind Town Mill Bakery in Dorset and the new Eden Bakery.

In the Eden Project’s words: “Whether you’re a food producer, aspiring grower or just curious to know a bit more, come and join the conversation.”

Why not join us? Find the Eden Project Cafe here.

Apple Day generates juicy treats for us all

Camel CSA’s third annual Apple Day was our best ever – in spite of the Cornish mizzle. All ages pitched in to chop, crush and press around 90 litres of apple juice to share among everyone who took part.  

We’ve had an abundance of apples to juice this year. Most were picked from our adopted orchard in St Mabyn, the rest came from members’ gardens.

Our team didn’t have the time or energy to press the entire mountain of fruit before the equipment had to go back to our friends at Chyan Community Field.

So we came to an agreement with the St Mabyn “Cider Boys” (don’t ask!) and we now have an extra 50 litres or so of delicious juice to share out.

Come to Camel CSA’s annual Apple Day on Sunday

The apples are harvested and the apple press is on its way.

We’re all looking forward to our third annual Cornish Apple Day on Sunday when we’ll be producing masses of delicious fresh apple juice to share.

Come and take part in the apple pressing on our community veg-growing plot between 10am and 1pm this Sunday 9 October. Find us here at St Kew Highway near Wadebridge in north Cornwall.

If you can bring any apples and a plastic juice container with you, all the better!

Another veg box full of goodness from the CSA’s plot

All our own produce again, apart from the potatoes. Everyone will have:

1kg potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* runner/french beans (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* broccoli (Camel CSA)
* salad leaves (Camel CSA)
* tomatoes (Camel CSA)
* red onions (Camel CSA)
* garlic (Camel CSA)
* chillies (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have:
* sweet peppers (Camel CSA)
* aubergines (Camel CSA)
* tuscan/curly kale (Camel CSA)
* turnips (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles