The growing team have started spreading our own compost on the potato beds. We make vast quantities of this rich crumbly concoction every year.

A small number of volunteers work throughout the seasons to ensure enough is available. Green vegetable waste, chopped stalks, annual weeds, leafy debris, and grass clippings are mixed with brown layers of shredded cardboard, untreated wood shavings and woodchip.

Regular turning by hand introduces air, helps the raw materials to heat up, and encourages microorganisms and bacteria to complete the breakdown process.

Once it’s matured after several months, we use the fragrant dark compost to mulch and improve soil composition on the no-dig vegetable beds. It helps feed the crops, conserves moisture, deters weeds, and boosts biodiversity. The worms love it!

In a few weeks time we’ll be using even more to plant out tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and chillies in the polytunnels, and hundreds of pumpkins and squashes outdoors.

In all this week’s veg boxes:-
*rhubarb
*mixed salad leaves
*purple sprouting broccoli or red Russian kale
*dried olive green lentils (Hodmedod’s)
cauliflower (Trerair Farm, St Eval)
potatoes ‘Manitou’ (Trerair)

Standard boxes also have:
*leafy oriental stirfry mix
*radishes
leeks (Trerair)

* = grown to organic principles.  Please wash all veg thoroughly  
Produce grown by Camel CSA, unless indicated otherwise 

Want to find out about growing vegetables in a climate-friendly way? Come to our FREE event on Thursday 15 September at 17.30.

Join us for a tour of our no-dig growing site at Treraven Farm and learn how to make compost extracts to promote plant and soil health.

Please get your free ticket here.

Can’t make this date? You can sign up for a similar workshop we’re hosting for the Westcountry Rivers Trust on Thursday 22 September. Same place, same time. Details here.

We regularly donate extra produce to the café at Concern Wadebridge – The John Betjeman Centre. Angie, the centre’s cook, was delighted to be handed a box of surplus sprouting broccoli this week. The kitchen also received the contents of two veg bags gifted by Camel CSA members who are on holiday.

All our surplus produce is given away, or made into delicious homemade preserves to go in the veg boxes. Green waste is turned into compost to enrich the soil in the no-dig vegetable beds

In all the weekly veg boxes:-
*tomatoes
*cucumbers
*salad leaf mix
*potatoes
*sprouting broccoli (Camel CSA) or calabrese (Trerair Farm, St Eval)
*courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
cauliflower (Trerair)

Also in the standard boxes:
*basil
*green onions
*aubergine (Camel CSA) or *French beans (Mark Norman, Bodmin)


* = grown to organic principles.  Please wash all veg thoroughly  
Produce grown by Camel CSA, unless otherwise indicated

We’re seeking a part-time, self-employed lead grower to join our friendly and hard-working team at Camel Community Supported Agriculture in Wadebridge, Cornwall. 

Our community growing scheme at Treraven Farm has been growing vegetables agroecologically for the past 15 years. We supply weekly veg boxes throughout the year to a membership of up to 70 local households. 

The growing team produces indoor and outdoor crops to ensure constant quality and quantity all year round, while providing a weekly veg share that is varied as much as possible throughout the seasons. 

The lead grower is responsible for crop management including seed selection, sowing, propagation, transplanting, crop rotation, composting, weed control, irrigation and pest and disease management on the farm, as well as managing the growing team and supporting volunteers to produce a variety of vegetables. 

We are looking for an experienced commercial grower who understands and is committed to CSA values. There may be days where the work may be done alone, so motivation is vital for this physical job. Much of the work is outdoors in all weathers. 

Working as an effective team, good communication and responsiveness are all important. 

Please apply in writing including a cover letter and CV to secretary@camel-csa.org.uk.

The full job description can be viewed and downloaded below.

It’s hard work doing catch-up but so much easier when the sky’s blue, the air’s warm and the ground’s dry!

Our growers and volunteers are working flat out to get the new season’s crops planted after the unusually wet and windy winter. It’s now the ‘hungry gap’ when there are fewer seasonal vegetables to harvest.

The beautiful spring sunshine has enabled them to push on with preparing beds, weeding, spreading and making compost, sowing seeds and planting out seedlings.

In all this week’s veg boxes:-
*spring onions
*elephant garlic
*oriental stir fry or *salad leaf mix
*Shiitake mushrooms (Forest Fungi, Dawlish)
leeks (Trerair Farm, St Eval)
potatoes ‘Manitou’ (Trerair)

Standard boxes also have:
*mung bean sprouts
*can of fava beans (Hodmedod’s)
red cabbage (Trerair)

* = grown to organic principles.  Please wash all veg thoroughly  
Produce grown by Camel CSA, unless indicated otherwise 

We are facing some unprecedented challenges this spring. And we’re not the only ones.

The home-grown vegetables we love so much are now in the grip of the UK ‘hungry gap’ when overwintered veg are coming to an end and this season’s crops have yet to mature.

In this week’s veg boxes we have an amazing selection of our own salad leaves, stir fry mix, chard, radishes, rhubarb, kale, elephant garlic and beetroot.

Over the next few weeks we’re preparing to buy in an increasing proportion of veg box contents from other growers – sometimes from much further afield than Cornwall.

It won’t be straightforward as all growers are facing enormous challenges, delays and shortages arising from the recent torrential rain.

The upside is that we’ve already prepared lots of growing beds, spread vast quantities of homemade compost and planted all the early potatoes.

The broad beans are flowering and the young pepper, aubergine, chilli and tomato seedlings are growing on strongly. The small propagation polytunnel is full of onion, root veg and brassica plants ready to go out as the ground dries and begins to warm up.

It’s really reassuring to know that it won’t be too long before the weekly veg boxes are almost 100% full of our own homegrown produce again. But as the climate crisis brings more chaos to our weather systems we’re all having to learn to adapt.

In all this week’s veg boxes:-
*oriental stir fry or *salad leaf mix
*radishes or *beetroot
*red Russian kale or *rhubarb chard
purple sprouting broccoli (Trerair Farm, St Eval)
leeks (Trerair)
cauliflower (Gluvian Growers, St Columb)
potatoes ‘Manitou’ (Trerair)

Standard boxes also have:
*rhubarb
*elephant garlic
*can of carlin peas (Hodmedod’s)

* = grown to organic principles.  Please wash all veg thoroughly  
Produce grown by Camel CSA, unless indicated otherwise 

It’s a hive of activity on our site at Treraven Farm at this time of year. Our growers and volunteers are busy preparing indoor and outdoor veg beds and sowing or planting lots of salad leaves, ‘Little Gem’ lettuces, spring cabbage, peas, beetroot, spinach, spring onions, calabrese, turnip, radishes and carrots.

A total of 15 potato beds have been planted up with first and second earlies and dressed with our own lovely compost made from a mixture of green waste and woodchip.

In all this week’s veg boxes:-
*Swiss chard or perpetual spinach
*mixed salad leaves
*coriander
cauliflower (Trerair Farm, St Eval)
leeks (Trerair)
can of fava beans (Hodmedod’s)
potatoes ‘Wilja’ (Colwith Farm, Lanlivery)

Standard veg boxes also have:-
*purple sprouting broccoli  or Red Russian kale
*radishes
*sprouted mung beans

*  = grown to organic principles

Please wash all produce thoroughly.
Produce grown by Camel CSA, unless indicated otherwise

Need some cooking inspiration?
Browse our A-Z page of vegetable recipes – nearly 400 for you to try

Keep up with our latest news on Facebook, on Instagram and on Twitter

An unusually thick frost greeted our pickers and packers at Treraven Farm on Friday.

What’s in everyone’s weekly veg share:
*cabbage
*Bon Bon squash
*pakchoi
*onions
*parsnips
*beetroot or carrots or swede
potatoes ‘Wilja’ (Colwith Farm, Lanlivery)

Standard veg shares also have:
*coriander
*green peppers
*chillies

*= grown to organic principlesVeg grown by Camel CSA, unless indicated otherwise. Please wash all produce thoroughly.

Need some cooking inspiration?
Browse our A-Z page of vegetable recipes – nearly 400 for you to try.

Keep up with our latest news on Facebook, on Instagram and on Twitter

Camel CSA growers Mark and Bridget have begun marking out our first two vegetable growing beds above Wadebridge at Treraven Farm owned by the Gaia Trust.

We’re practising the No-Dig Method of organic cultivation championed by Charles Dowding. A thick layer of mulch will be applied in a few months’ time once the rye grass has died out underneath the black plastic. Then we’ll plant up the surface compost with our first winter crops – kale, purple sprouting broccoli and swede.

Over the next 18 months we’re gradually relocating our polytunnels, growing beds, equipment store, solar panels and packing shed to the new site at Treraven.

**Keep up with our latest news on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter**

Camel CSA is moving to a new veg growing site near Wadebridge.  But not right away!

We’ve secured a new permanent base on the Treraven Farm nature reserve owned by the Gaia Trust when our lease at Benbole Farm, St Kew Highway, ends in two years’ time. The move will be gradual as we start to relocate our polytunnels, equipment store, solar panels and packing shed and continue growing crops on two sites simultaneously until 2020.

Where is our new site?

It’s right next to the car park at Treraven overlooking Wadebridge and the Camel estuary. You can also access it easily on foot via the public footpath from the Camel Trail at Guineaport on the edge of town.

Our new field at Treraven backs on to Gaia Trust’s ancient woodland and  community forest and is situated directly above the trust’s saltwater meadows on the tidal floodplain. The site is larger so we’ll be able to expand our growing area, create a wildflower meadow and plant an orchard. We’ll be able to deliver joint social and educational opportunities along with the Gaia Trust, which shares a similar ethos.

How are we paying for the move?

We’re incredibly grateful to the three organisations that have contributed so far towards our £15,000 relocation costs: Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network (WREN) St Breock Wind Farm Community Fund – £3,349; WREN Middle Treworder Solar Farm Community Fund – £2,000; Cornwall Community Foundation – £1,329.34; Comic Relief – £2,658.66.

We’re about to submit a planning application for the two freight containers we want to convert into secure equipment and packing sheds. We intend to landscape them with sustainable green roofs and wildlife habitat walls so they blend in harmoniously with their surroundings at Treraven.

What can you do?

There’ll be numerous opportunities on special volunteer work days over the coming months to help dismantle, move and reinstate the polytunnels, convert sheds, plant Cornish hedging, install rabbit-proof fencing, prepare new no-dig vegetable beds and spread compost. If you feel you have a particular skill you could contribute just for a few hours we’d love to hear from you.

We’ll continue to post updates here and on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you have any specific queries you can email us at info@camel-csa.org.uk or call/text us on 01208 420014 and we’ll get back to you straight away

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