Some of you with veg box shares may be wondering how to prepare patty pan squash, which looks a bit like a UFO or flying saucer. It’s also known as custard or scallop squash. Its texture and taste are similar to a courgette.

Try these recipe suggestions for patty pan squash:
Stuffed patty pan squash
Patty pan squash and red onion salsa
Roasted patty pan squash and herbed chickpeas

Have you a patty pan squash recipe of your own to share with us?

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.

Camel Community Supported Agriculture member and food expert Gabriel Evans is signing copies of his new book Food Intuition at Relish Food & Drink in Wadebridge between 10am and 1pm this Saturday.

Gabe is a natural food expert, qualified chef, home economist, food coach, health educator and food activist. His book aims to change the way we think and feel about food and health:

Food Intuition reveals the pleasure and wisdom of the way we used to eat for thousands of years and challenges the current message on healthy eating.

It’s packed with all the practical information and strategies you need to make natural food and wholesome eating a workable and enjoyable part of everyday life.

It’ll motivate you to make permanent and manageable changes to your diet and lifestyle that are good for you, your family, your community and the planet.

Buy a copy of Food Intuition for £9.99 at the third official book signing session at Relish on Saturday and you’ll be handed a goodie bags of treats. It’s also available online on Gabe’s website. Five per cent of any profit on book sales will be donated to Compassion in World Farming‘s work to end factory farming.

• Gabe and his wife Silvana are going back to China next week for an extended stay. We look forward to seeing them again on their return to Cornwall. Meanwhile sign up for updates on his Food Intuition blog here.

Now our spring-sown crops are beginning to mature, there’s more harvesting to do for the veg boxes on a Friday morning. So we could use some more volunteers on our picking and packing squad.

The team meets every Friday at 10am in the new packing shed on our plot at St Kew Highway. 

Veg box preparation takes about two hours and involves harvesting and sorting vegetables, weighing them and distributing them among the 25 or so weekly boxes.

Afterwards, there’s always the opportunity to relax and have a friendly cup of fair-trade tea or Cornwall-crafted Origin coffee and home-made cake next door at St Kew Harvest Farm Shop. 

If you’re able to help out please contact Robert Manders on 01208 880022 or e-mail him at manders@waitrose.com  

Don’t forget we’re celebrating The Big Lunch this Sunday 18 July on our site at St Kew Highway, next to St Kew Harvest Farm Shop.

It’s a chance for assorted veg-lovers to meet, eat, discuss, laugh, entertain and be entertained. Check out the details here.

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!

Camel CSA members are hosting our own Big Lunch again this year on Sunday 18 July.

It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to get together in a social setting. Join us on our site at St Kew Highway from 12.30pm onwards.

Please do come along to the Big Lunch and feel welcome to invite friends and family. All you need to do is bring some seasonal food and drink and something to sit on. Be prepared to share your lunch with the rest of us!

Last year in spite of the  terrible weather we had a fantastic time at South Penquite Farm, Blisland at the kind invitation of our treasurer Cathy Fairman. We even managed some musical entertainment.

This year, fingers crossed, we can have this Eden Project-inspired event outdoors beside our vegetable-growing plot, next to St Kew Harvest Farm Shop. We’ll provide a very simple activity for the children (maybe some more straw bales…) And if anyone would like to bring a musical instrument or two, that would be great.

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.

Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s first veg boxes were distributed exactly a year ago today.

Over the last 12 months our volunteer picking and packing team have braved extreme conditions – frost, snow, hail, gales, mud, rain and shine – to prepare the weekly vegetable boxes for our members.

Together with our growers and local suppliers in north Cornwall they ensure that the quality of the veg box contents remains of a consistently high standard.

Between us we’re growing a fantastic variety of fresh seasonal vegetables.

Our veg box scheme has vacancies for new members. So if you’re interested in a regular weekly supply of locally-grown food, please contact us.

We’ll make sure you feel very welcome.

It’s proved an uphill task to cultivate vegetables during this long spell of hot, dry weather. Some very welcome rain is now on the way, but the pace of growing has been very slow. 

In the meantime our volunteer growers have been forced to water in the newly-sown seeds and seedlings by hand, which is a thoroughly time-consuming process.

The upside is that the annual weeds have been easier to keep at bay.  This hasn’t prevented the growing team from having to take it in turns to handweed endless rows of tiny carrots and parsnips – not the most popular of jobs!

Over the past few weeks we’ve planted carrots, parsnips, sweetcorn, Swiss chard, perpetual spinach, beetroot, celeriac, self-blanching celery, salad leaves and bee borage. We’re about to sow some bulb fennel, parsley and coriander.

The over-wintered broad beans are cropping well and the Jerusalem artichokes are growing strongly.  The borage is showing its intense blue blossom and beginning to attract lots of bees.

The remainder of the summer crops for our weekly veg boxes are being cultivated mostly by our three expert growers – Jeremy Brown at St Kew Harvest, Jane Mellowship in New Polzeath and Mark Norman in Bodmin.

We’re also buying in delicious Cornish strawberries from pick-your-own Treworder Fruit at Treworder Barton, Egloshayle, Wadebridge.

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