Young volunteers make local food work

More and more young people are getting involved in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s pioneering efforts to promote local food.

Fourteen-year-old Jenny Simmons, who’s at Wadebridge School, has chosen Camel CSA as the volunteering activity for her Duke of Edinburgh’s bronze award programme.

This gives young people the opportunity to become involved in a project that they really care about.

This week Jenny helped prepare the onions for the boxes.  She worked alongside packing supremo Trish and fellow picking and packing team members Cath, Charlotte, Mark M, Mike H, Penny, Robert and Steve.

Marathon

The volunteer growers have at long last completed the marathon task of removing the black plastic mulch from the overgrown strawberry beds. 

They also weeded the beetroot and removed the vicious thistles growing among the Brussels sprouts.   Mark N strimmed the overgrown edges.

Once all the plastic had been dug up and removed, Jeremy got out the tractor and cut back all the surface weeds. 

Now he can go ahead and plough the ground in preparation for sowing a crop of green manure.

 This Sunday’s team comprised expert growers Jeremy and Mark N plus Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Mark M and Mike H. 

We need you!

A big turnout is requested next Sunday when we’ll peel back the protective fleece and assess the damage to the 1500 brassica plants that were planted out last month. 

These are the plants donated by our newest sponsors, Fentongollan Farm at Tresillian.

We must weed the 20 long rows of red cabbage, green cabbage (two varieties), cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli and kale (both red and green).

So please make an extra special effort to turn up.  We need all the help we can get!

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Broken-backed but not beaten

Camel CSA volunteers have almost completed the back-breaking task of removing the black plastic mulch from the overgrown strawberry beds.  Now we can go ahead and sow a crop of green manure.

The hit team comprised expert grower Jane plus Danny, Mike H and Mike S.  Charlotte made a start on the weeds in the beetroot bed.

We’re looking forward with mixed feelings to our next big task.  We need to weed the hundreds of brassica plants that we planted last month. 

Red cabbage, two varieties of green cabbage, cauliflower, red and green kale, and purple sprouting broccoli are all being shielded from predators under huge swathes of protective fleece.

Friday’s picking and packing team included Trish – who supervised the packing - Charlotte, Mike H, Penny and Robert.

Food intuition

We’ve had a visit on site from our newest member Gabriel Evans, a chef from New Zealand, who is author of the Food Intuition online food journal. 

Gabe’s setting up a cookery school in St Columb, near Newquay.  He says:

“There’s lot of misinformation and confusion around food and diet.  My focus is on natural, wholesome food; what it really is, where to get it and how to prepare, cook and eat it.”

We assume that includes the vegetables grown on Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s plot at St Kew Highway!

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This week’s boxes

We are enjoying some more of our recently-harvested onions in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s veg boxes this week. 

The Swiss chard, beetroot and potatoes also come from our own plot at St Kew Highway. 

Our expert growers have provided most of the rest of the vegetables.  Jeremy Brown cultivated some of the cucumbers and the flat-leaved parsley.  Jane Mellowship supplied the salad packs.  Mark Norman grew the courgettes and the remaining cucumbers, which feature in our Recipe No 7 – Cucumber raita.

We have a new local supplier – Polmorla Market Garden, Wadebridge – which provided the freshly-picked runner beans.  Unlike the rest of the box contents, these are not grown organically.

Oops!

The boxes also contain bunches of celeriac leaves, picked in ignorance as they were mistaken for mature flat-leaved parsley. 

These could be used as a garnish on salads or soup.  However they are rather coarse and have a distinctive, strong flavour.

It emerges that I may have caused irrevocable damage to our celeriac crop as a result of this inadvertent act of horticultural vandalism.  This is one of the downsides of relying on enthusiastic amateurs like me. 
S-o-o-o embarrassing!

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This week’s share of the harvest

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Seasonal recipe No 2 – Prickley Green beetroot salad

Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s second recipe is recommended by volunteer Penny Manders.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients
2 large raw beetroot, grated
I large onion, chopped
110g (4 oz) sultanas
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
chopped basil
salt and freshly ground pepper
juice of 1 lemon
1 bunch spring onions, chopped

Method
Mix all the ingredients together in a salad bowl.  Sprinkle the spring onions over the top and serve.

Notes
This recipe comes from Sarah Brown’s Vegetarian Kitchen.  You can cook the beetroot first if you prefer.  Try using some fresh raw beetroot with one of the newly-harvested onions from our vegetable box and garnishing the salad with parsley, again from the box, rather than spring onions.  If you dislike the taste of strong raw onion you could use a red onion, which has a milder flavour, or some chives instead.

There are some interesting recipes for beetroot on the Riverford Organics website, including this one for Chocolate beetroot cake.

For tips on how to prepare, cook and store beetroot have a look at the useful eat the seasons website.

If you have any beetroot recipes you would like to share, please let us have them.  Click on the comments link at the top of this post.

Click here to see all the recipes that Camel CSA members have recommended so far.

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Beautiful plump peas

The harvest from Camel Community Supported Agriculture includes some beautiful plump peas in this week’s share.  Otherwise we are providing a similar selection of vegetables to last week. 

The broad bean glut continues so please think of different ways to use these versatile vegetables. Please pick up your box from St Kew Harvest, as detailed in the e-mail to members. 

Subscribers can expect all or some of of the following: -

• potatoes (Arran Pilot)
• onions
• broad beans
• beetroot
• peas
• salad pack / lettuce
• cucumber
• courgettes
• turnips

 A definitive list and recipe ideas for beetroot will be posted once the boxes have been packed on Friday.

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Our veg boxes are tops!

We’ve had an enthusiastic response from our members to Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s first vegetable boxes.  This is despite some teething problems with distribution.

Tony says:

Our first standard veg box

“The box looks fantastic! We’re looking forward to next week’s already.”

John and Cathy are delighted with the quality:

“The cucumber which was sweet and fresh and the lettuce and onion we used in a salad.”

They like the wide and interesting variety of vegetables and have found new ways of using them:

 ”The beet greens we cooked almost like a spinach or spring greens and had with fish - better than spinach – along with broad beans and potatoes.

 

The beets will be roasted and eaten with a lamb casserole with the rest of the onion, turnips and courgettes and we will try your broad bean soup.  Nothing wasted.”

In the end, both small and standard boxes contained potatoes, broad beans, beetroot, turnip, cucumber and onions.  Standard boxes had a salad pack and small boxes a lollo rosso lettuce.  In addition, standard boxes contained Swiss chard and courgettes.  There wasn’t enough time to pick parsley.

We have a glut of broad beans, so each box was given an extra £4-worth at shop prices!  We don’t yet have our own poly tunnel, so our three expert growers – Jane, Jeremy and Mark – supplied the salad bags, lettuce, courgettes and cucumber.

New team

Grateful thanks to our volunteer picking and packing team of expert grower Mark Norman, Mike H, Penny, Robert and Trish.  Mark says:

” It’s great to see some new faces.  I hope the boxes going out means that we’ll see even more volunteers next week.

 

As first boxes they are excellent.  I hope we can keep the variety going.”

If you would like to volunteer, either picking and packing or planting and cultivating, just turn up on a Friday or Sunday between 10 a.m. and 12 noon.

Compost bin

This Sunday we constructed a compost bin from wooden pallets lashed together with binder twine.  At long last we have somewhere to dump the annual weeds, unwanted plant tops and thinnings.

A great deal of effort was devoted to the backbreaking job of cutting down the remaining dock leaves to stop them going to seed and spreading all over the site.  We were grateful there were so many of us to share this potentially soul-destroying task!

We weeded the Swiss chard, carrots and brussels sprouts.  We planted more radishes to replace the ones which had gone to seed in the hot weather.

A big thank you to expert growers Jane and Mark N and Charlotte, Danny, Ian, Mark M, Mike H, Mike S.

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Our first veg boxes

We’ve done it - we’re starting to eat our own food! 

More than 15 Camel Community Supported Agriculture members receive their first vegetable boxes on Friday 3 July. 

A great deal of human effort has gone into providing these first fruits of our labour.  It’s hard to believe that we only started preparing our site at the beginning of March and sowed the first seeds just a few weeks later.

Our first share of the harvest will contain: - 

• broad beans
• potatoes
• onions
• beetroot
• Swiss chard
• a bunch of curly or flat-leaved parsley
• turnips and radishes – possibly
• green salad

We’ve grown the first eight items ourselves at St Kew Highway.  The salad leaves are being provided by Jane Mellowship, one of our expert growers, who has her own vegetable plot at New Polzeath.

Hard work

We’ve made enormous strides since March – entirely as a result of the dedicated volunteer labour provided by members and expert growers.  Some people said we would never manage it, but we have proved that we can.

Many hours of hard work have gone into preparing the 40-metre long growing beds, spreading compost, digging up dock leaves, sowing seeds, planting out seedlings, hoeing and an enormous amount of hand weeding.  We’re grateful to our expert growing team and all the volunteers who have turned up on Sunday mornings – rain or shine.

Last Sunday we thinned out and hand weeded the parsnips, weeded the Swiss chard, spread compost and dug up yet more dock leaves that were threatening to go to seed. 

A big thanks to expert grower Mark Norman, to members Charlotte, Diana, Mike H and Mike S, and to visitors Donna and Marianne.

Another team of volunteers will be picking and packing the boxes every Friday morning.  If you’d like to be included on the rota, please contact Mark Norman or phone Antonina at St Kew Harvest. 

Box collection

 

“Your name will be on your box, please take your own box and anyone else’s that you are delivering.  Remember to give us feedback as soon as possible.

 

A special thank you to to Penny and Robert Manders and to Mike Haywood for volunteering to help Mark with the first harvest and packing.

 

Happy eating!”

Feedback on box content and any queries about veg box administration should be sent to Cathy at thefarm@bodminmoor.co.uk

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Mid-week volunteering

Members are more than welcome to volunteer to work during the week - not just on Sunday mornings.

Give expert grower Jeremy Brown a ring on 07971762227 to find out when it might be convenient to help out on Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s vegetable beds.  Weather permitting, of course!

He’s there every day as a member of the farming family who own the land and who have generously offered it rent-free to Camel CSA for the first few months.  He grows his own vegetables on the adjoining plot to sell at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop.

Jeremy can arrange to meet you on the site and explain what jobs need to be done.   These might include sowing seeds in the potting shed, spreading compost on new beds and weeding around our emerging crops.

Last Sunday we got several new beds raked, fresh compost spread and more seeds sown, including an extra row of peas and some more radishes.  We planted out beetroot and chard seedlings and hoed up weeds in the pea, onion and shallot beds. 

The devastation to the first rows of peas that had to be replaced was caused by the pea and bean weevil, not slugs.  Apologies all round.  Either the resident pheasant or a partridge has been having a go at the spring onions, but the damage is not lasting.

A big thank you to Sunday’s energetic crew – volunteer expert growers Jane, Jeremy B and Mark N and volunteer members Carolyn, Charlotte, Diana, Kitty, Mike H and Mike S.

We had a useful discussion during the tea break about the kind of activities we want to organise for the Open Day on Sunday 7 June – Open Farm Sunday.  Any suggestions welcome. 

Click here to view our entry on the Open Farm Sunday website.

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Jobs for Sunday

A message for anyone planning to volunteer this weekend from Jane Mellowship, one of Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s expert growers.

“Just to let you know the jobs for this Sunday.

“There are lettuce and leeks to sow in the potting shed and out in the field we need to transplant brassicas and chard.

“A second sowing of beetroot can be made and, as long as the weather is good and a bed can be formed with the tractor, a second sowing of carrots. Other than that, weeding the onion beds and probably the peas.

“See you Sunday.”

Last Sunday a bunch of around 10 volunteers got a lot more weeding done, but had to replant a row of brassica seedlings that had been devastated by another predator.  We should probably blame the resident pheasant this time, as it left tell-tale beak marks and foot prints!

The second sowing of peas that replaced the 30-metre row eaten by slugs is now emerging safely under a protective fleece.

Many thanks to volunteers Beverley, Cath, Charlotte, Mark N, Mike H, Mike S, Jane, Jeremy B, John and Kitty.

This Sunday turn up any time between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.  Remember to bring strong shoes or wellies, waterproofs, gardening gloves, drinks and a snack.  Also tools, ideally wheelbarrows, shovels, spades, forks and rakes.  If the weather’s good you might need suncream and a hat!

Click here for directions to the site.  If you have any questions call Antonina at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop on 01208 841818.

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