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.

Busy growing our own veg

The growing team has been kept well occupied over the past two Sundays preparing beds, sowing beetroot and carrots, and hoeing the borage. We’ve also cleared the last of our own broad beans, which have gone over.

Expert grower Jane Mellowship says:

If we get a good downpour we now need to mulch the celeriac, celery and sweetcorn with the green manure which was cut recently.

We’ve had a good wet spell so it is an ideal time to do this. It will help the soil to hold moisture and improve the soil structure as the green manure decomposes, not to mention reduce weeding!

Veg growing jobs for Sunday

After a welcome day of rain, we won’t need to do any hand watering in the near future. However, as usual there are plenty of things for our volunteer growing team to do on our site at St Kew Highway this Sunday.

Expert grower Jane Mellowship says:

Jobs for Sunday include sowing salad for our own mixed salad bags, coriander and bulb fennel. None of which particularly thrive in hot, dry conditions, which is exactly what it has been of late. So when germinated the crops are going to need some extra care to ensure they don’t get tempted to bolt!

And of course there is always a little weeding to be done. See you Sunday.

We’re raising the roof

At long last we have a shed to shelter our volunteer picking and packing team from the Cornish elements.  

We’re marking the occasion with an informal picnic at the veg plot this Sunday 23 May.  This will start to happen as the volunteer growers finish work about 12.30 pm.

It’ll be a chance to get together and celebrate the season, plus anything else that comes to mind…

Everyone’s welcome. All ages of course.  Please bring your own food and drink and be prepared to share it!  I expect we’ll be on site until around 3pm.

According to a rumour from the Met Office it promises to be sunny and warm, so keep your fingers crossed.

They’re springing up everywhere!

The number of community supported agriculture projects like ours is increasing all the time, notably in other parts of the far south-west of England.

Members of the newly-formed Trevalon Organic Co-operative at Herodsfoot near Liskeard in east Cornwall are coming to see us during our volunteer growing session next Sunday. 

They’re hoping to get a perspective on how we’ve achieved our 50-strong membership and and built up a list of more than 30 weekly veg boxes in just over a year.

St Just Allotment and Growers Association and Lands End Peninsula Community Land Trust have just secured an 18-month land lease from Cornwall Council to set up Bosavern Community Farm at St Just in west Cornwall.  They want to set up a CSA to prevent this 36-acre organic farm from going into private ownership and to keep it in perpetuity for the benefit of the local community.  

In Devon, Chagford Community Agriculture members have got planning permission from the Dartmoor National Park Authority for three polytunnels and two sheds.  This means the project is now eligible for £38,600 of funding from the Lottery Local Food Fund.

The newly-formed Broadclyst Community Farm is based on 32 acres of National Trust land on the Killerton estate near Exeter in east Devon. 

Occombe Farm, which is run by Torbay Coast & Countryside Trust, is setting up a 4-acre smallholding as a CSA scheme.  It’s been awarded £475,000 from the Lottery Food Fund for its One Planet Food project. 

These new CSA schemes in the south-west join the already up-and-running Harrowbarrow and Metherill Agricultural Society (known as Hamas) in east Cornwall, Lowarth Brogh (Badger’s Garden CSA) near Penzance in west Cornwall, and Exeter Community Agriculture in Devon. 

And of course us - Camel CSA at St Kew Highway in north Cornwall.

Cornish asparagus in the veg boxes

At last! We’re getting the first of the Cornish asparagus and Cornish Early new potatoes in our veg boxes this week:

Cornish asparagus (Lower Croan, Sladesbridge)
Cornish Early new potatoes (JH Allen & Sons, Marazion)
spinach (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm)
* salad leaves (Jeremy Brown)
* baby carrots (Jeremy)
* parsley (Camel CSA)

As well as larger quantities of some of the above, standard boxes will also have
* baby beet (Jeremy)

* = grown to organic principles

Time to flex those muscles

Feeling energetic in the spring weather?  The growing team has lots of jobs on the veg plot this Sunday.

We need to spread barrowloads of compost on some newly-formed beds and dig out a base for our new shed. We’ve also more sowing, weeding and planting out to get done.  

We’ll be on the site between 10am and 1pm on Sunday. If you’re able to come, please bring an assortment of spades, rakes, hoes, hand tools and, if possible, a wheelbarrow for the compost shifting. And don’t forget to include gloves and a snack!

Last weekend expert grower Jeremy got the tractor out and formed several new growing beds for us to spread with the compost.  We have carrot, parsnip and spinach seed to sow.

Kitty, Mark M, Penny, Rebecca, Robert and Charlotte performed some painstaking tasks. We dug out thistles from the garlic and onion beds, weeded beetroot and pricked out celery seedlings.

See: -
What we’re growing for the veg boxes this year

Spring salad in this week’s veg boxes

All the veg boxes will have:

potatoes (Gavercombe Farm, Tintagel)
onions (Rest Harrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* salad leaves (Jeremy Brown)
spinach (Rest Harrow Farm)
cauliflower (Rest Harrow Farm)
leeks (Rest Harrow Farm)

Standard boxes will have extra potatoes and:
* bunched beetroot (Jeremy)
* parsley (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

Veg growing jobs this Sunday

There’s plenty to do on our community veg growing plot at St Kew Highway this Mayday weekend. 

We’ll be on the site on Sunday morning between 10am and 1pm as usual. Do come and join us.

We must sow more salad spinach leaves, weed the onions, garlic and beetroot, and prick out the celery seedlings.  The boysenberry plants also need tidying.

Please bring hoes, rakes and small forks.  Don’t forget waterproof jackets and boots as rain is forecast.  

See you there!

Seasonal recipe No 42 – Sweet-and-sour marinated cabbage

Largely from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook but with a few tweaks from Camel CSA member Henrietta Danvers. It’s great with cold meats, smoked fish, cheeses, almost anything. You need to make it at least the day before you need it so that the flavours of the spices really come through. It will keep in a screw-topped jar in the fridge for two to three weeks.

Serves 6-8

Preparation: 15 minutes plus at least 24 hours in fridge

Ingredients
½ white cabbage
100ml cider vinegar
100g soft brown sugar
large bunch of dill/parsley/mint/coriander
3 tbsp sunflower oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 tsp dill or fennel or caraway seeds
2 tsp mustard seeds
salt and black pepper

Method
Cut the cabbage into quarters and remove the hard core, then slice very thinly. Don’t use the stem.
Heat the vinegar in a small pan over a low heat and then stir in the sugar until it has dissolved. Leave to cool.

Finely chop the herbs. Mix the oil, garlic, seeds, salt and pepper. Add both herbs and oil mix to the sweet vinegar. Dress the cabbage with this marinade. Put in a jar or container and leave for at least 24 hours in the fridge.