Growers and veg box volunteers sprout up in numbers

We’ve had a great response in the last few days from volunteers keen to help out both on our growing team and our picking and packing squad.

Camel CSA’s volunteer growers worked hard today to weed the veg beds, mulch around the celery, celeriac and sweetcorn with green manure and to harvest the garlic.

Many thanks to expert grower Jane Mellowship and her team – Anne, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Mark, Mike S and Rebecca plus junior members Finn and Keira. 

On Friday the volunteer picking and packing squad harvested quantities of our own Swiss chard, perpetual spinach, salad leaves, lettuces and garlic to match the rest of the veg box contents from expert growers Jane, Mark Norman, and Jeremy Brown of St Kew Harvest.

Thanks also to picking and packing supremo Trish and her squad – Anne, Charlotte, Henrietta, Jenny, Jeremy, Mark N, Penny, Robert and WWOOFer Gillaume, who’s visiting Cornwall from his home in the French Alps.

As Trish said: “It was good fun this morning. What a difference it makes when there’s a fair number of people there to help!”

The garlic’s now strung up inside our packing shed, where it’s drying out.

All the volunteers were rewarded this week with some freshly-picked boysenberries, which are ripening quickly at the perimeter of our plot in this warm, humid weather. 

If you’d like to take part in the growing operation or veg box preparation, just turn up on our site at St Kew Highway on a Friday or Sunday morning at 10am.

We’ve outsmarted them!

It’s doing the trick.  The new protective mesh is keeping the voracious rabbits off our spring greens.

They’ve been hopping all over it and have left droppings everywhere, but they haven’t been able to find a way underneath.

This expensive mesh is proving to be a worthwhile investment. The rabbits can’t chew holes in it, it doesn’t disintegrate and it lasts for years – unlike fleece.

The growing team has managed at long last to plant several rows of garlic sets and sow some broad beans for overwintering. We’re hoping these will give us an early crop next year.

All being well, the rabbits won’t touch the garlic (although earlier in the year they did have a gnaw at some of the onions).

Thanks to expert growers Jane, Jeremy and Mark plus regular Sunday team members Kitty, Mark, Mike H and Mike S.

More and bigger helpings

The extra potatoes in our shares are put there in direct response to a plea from Camel CSA members.  Standard boxes contain 2.5 kg of Wilja spuds this week and there are 1.5 kg in the small boxes.

Our picking and packing volunteers had to dodge some sharp, heavy showers as they picked, dug, sorted and weighed the veg on Friday.  The team’s now rigged up some rudimentary shelter to help them escape the worst of Cornwall’s wild autumn equinoxal weather.

Picking and packing supremo Trish explains:

“We’ve been loaned a gazebo which we put up over the sorting area.  We’re hoping it’ll stay put and not take off once we put a couple of ties into the wall.

 

“It was good to stay reasonably dry while doing the packing and it meant we could leave the boxes under cover at the end.”

Friday’s band of helpers alongside Trish were Penny and Robert, Mike H, Henrietta and Jennie M.

The growing team still have broad beans to sow and garlic sets to plant which we hope (weather permitting!) to get finished this Sunday.  See you then.