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!

But a lack of public awareness means that many more are missing out, according to new research from the Soil Association. 

“Community supported agriculture is an exciting, dynamic, growing movement. It’s all about sharing and giving people proper access to local produce. It’s making a real difference to people’s lives,” Josiah Meldrum of Provenance told the Soil Association’s CSA conference in Bristol.

Indeed, the pace of expansion is impressive. Of the 76 fully-fledged CSA schemes in England, 66 of these got going in the last three years.  Another 120 are in the process of setting up. 

Public understanding  is lacking, however. Two thirds of 1,000 shoppers who took part in a survey had never heard of community supported agriculture schemes like ours in Cornwall. 

The Soil Association commissioned Provenance researchers Nick Saltmarsh and Josiah Meldrum to judge the impact of CSAs in England. They concluded there are enormous social, environmental and economic benefits for members and the wider community.

More than 70 per cent of of CSA members feel their overall quality of life has improved. Almost half believe they’re having a significant impact on the community by bringing people together.

At least three quarters are involved because they want access to healthy, high-quality, sustainably-produced food. Two thirds of them find that the vegetables provided supply nearly all their needs.

Remarks included: 

Food has become interesting again…

I feel involved in the production of the food I eat and have become more connected to the land…

I feel part of something that is truly pioneering, that I am contributing in some way to different more sustainable way of living…

It makes me feel happy – at quite a deep level – that I’m playing a small part in helping such an excellent scheme to thrive…

You can have a more detailed look at the main findings on the Soil Association’s resources pages: -

• Key features and benefits
• Lessons for enterprises
• Introduction for farmers, growers and landowners.

The full report will be published in October.

Camel CSA had the guest slot at the WI’s September meeting in the Egloshayle pavilion, Wadebridge. Afterwards, a small but orderly queue lined up to get membership forms and more details of our weekly veg box scheme. We  hope very much they’ll join us. 

WI secretary Christine Pearn was the lucky lady who won the raffle to take home our veg box.

* lettuce (Camel CSA)
* french beans (Camel CSA)
* purple kale (Camel CSA)
* basil (Camel CSA)
* green onions (Mark Norman)
* gooseberries (Mark)

Standard boxes will also have:
* cucumber (Camel CSA)
* calabrese (Mark)
* turnips (Camel CSA/Mark)

* = grown to organic principles

UPDATE: If you want more of Mark Norman’s organically-grown gooseberries they’ve got plenty more for sale at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop, next door to our vegetable plot at St Kew Highway.

We turned our grow-your-own dream into reality with the support and guidance of the Soil Association via Making Local Food Work. We have £60,000 funding from the Big Lottery’s Local  Food programme and the East Cornwall Local Action Group (part of the South West Regional Development Agency).

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The contents of this week’s seasonal veg boxes came almost exclusively from Camel CSA’s own plot.

Expert grower Mark Norman supplied us with broad beans and green onions from his smallholding in Bodmin. Richard Hore provided Cornish new potatoes grown in his fields above the Camel estuary.

When it comes to making local food work, you can’t get much more local than that.

The volunteer growing team have a variety of  jobs to get through this Sunday morning. We need to: -

• Mark out and form the third lasagne bed in the new polytunnel and plant two rows of tomatoes
• Weed the second brassica bed
• Prepare the second sweetcorn bed and move the sweetcorn seedlings to the cold frame
• Dig the remaining holes in the squash beds and fill each one with two shovelfuls of compost (the rest of the pumpkins and squashes will get planted later in the week)
• Plant the dahlias beside the squashes
• Sow a tray of cabbage, half a tray each of calabrese and turnips (six turnip seeds per module)

That’s why we’re experimenting with a no-dig method known in the United States as lasagne gardening.

This permaculture approach involves placing cardboard on the ground to suppress the weeds, watering it thoroughly and then covering it with newspaper and thick layers of compost or other organic material.

We’re planting the tomatoes and peppers directly into the compost and a hole is being pierced through the cardboard so the plants’ roots get access to the earth underneath.

All being well, there will be lovely friable soil once the cardboard has rotted down at the end of the season.

So watch this space!

• Special thanks to Joe and Laura Brown at St Mabyn PO & Stores for all their recycled cardboard

Our first polytunnel went up in March and is already nurturing our early crops of beetroot, basil, salad leaves, carrots, lettuce, French beans and leek seedlings.

We had to wait weeks for a calm, wind-free day (almost unheard of in Cornwall!) to get the cover on the second tunnel. With barely 24 hours notice we raised a team of six volunteers aided by three helpful WWOOFers – Willing Workers On Organic Farms.

Many thanks to expert grower Mark Norman, ably helped by Bob, Charlotte, Mark M, Mike S, Penny, Robert and an opportune visit by the Rev Dave Matthews (who’s very tall!) The WWOOFers are Matthias from Germany, and Kevin and Martina from Italy.

Standard boxes will also have:
* an extra 400g new potatoes
* baby carrots (Camel CSA)
* sprouting seeds (mung beans) (Mark Norman)
* turnips (Camel CSA/Mark)

* = grown to organic principles

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.