They’re determined to eat local at Shayne’s house

One of Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s veg box members is going all out to make local food work in north Cornwall.

Shayne House, co-founder of the Tea Appreciation Society, demonstrates in his blogpost Stuff the Supermarkets how to source food locally without going to a superstore. He says:

Everything in my stuffed marrow recipe excluding the balsamic vinegar was produced in Cornwall. If I ignore the salt, the rest of the food came from within a 15 mile radius of my home. My food miles were drastically reduced thanks to a number of fantastic local producers.

This is Shayne’s list of ingredients sourced locally in order to make stuffed marrow:

1 marrow – Camel Community Supported Agriculture vegetable box scheme, St Kew Highway
1 small onion finely chopped – Camel Community Supported Agriculture veg box 
scheme
500g lean minced beef – Button Meats, Michaelstow
30g fresh white breadcrumbs – Malcolm Barnecutt Bakery
1 tbsp chopped parsley – Camel Community Supported Agriculture veg box scheme
1 tbsp chopped chives - Shayne’s garden
1 tsp balsamic vinegar – fail
sea salt to taste – Cornish Sea Salt Co, Porthkerris
1 egg beaten – Killibury Nursery, Wadebridge
250ml cheese sauce – cheese from Davidstow Creamery; milk from Bradley’s Dairy, Delabole; flour from The Cornish Mill & Bakehouse, St Newlyn East

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.