Our dogged efforts to grow and distribute our own vegetable crops continue to attract media interest.

Both Camel Community Supported Agriculture and our counterparts at the far end of the county, West Penwith CSA, are featured in the latest edition of Taste Cornwall magazine.

Writer Kevin Gray-Roberts waxes positively lyrical about reaping the rewards of harvesting earthy new potatoes, ripe tomatoes and crisp dewy lettuces.

Community supported agriculture is the perfect antidote to the anonymous consumerism that has overtaken food production and retail in the UK.

A certain section of the food-buying public has become so disenchanted with how the conventional food market operates they are taking direct, affirmative action to re-establish control of what they eat.

 The positive spin-offs of this are reduced food miles, packaging and waste, greater stability, security and sustainability for the farms, and community interaction across age and income groups.

Kevin’s article concludes that what we’re doing is superb medication for body and soul.  He urges others to follow our example and get stuck in. 

Not only will your food be fresher, your fitness, your outlook and your social life will all be infused with a new and vigorous growth.

• Taste Cornwall comes free with the October issue of Inside Cornwall magazine.

We are now very close to submitting our final bids for grant funding for Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s growing-our-own-food project.

We’re seeking financial support from the Lottery Local Food programme and from the East Cornwall Local Action Group, part of the South West Regional Development Agency.

We have a clear idea of the sort of money we require to get the project up and running.  For example, in the first year we need: –

• £12,500 for a tractor and its equipment
• £6,600 for polytunnels and a seeding tunnel
• £3,600 for packing and storage sheds
• £2,850 to sink a borehole and install a water management system.

Volunteers will be pleased to learn that we have also budgeted £600 for an upgraded rabbit proof fence.

I’m talking about the rabbits.

They’re devastating our brassicas – the 1,000+ donated by Fentongollan Farm that Camel CSA volunteers planted in monsoon conditions in July. 

They’ve hopped along the protective fleece and created several neat lines of holes by boring down vertically into the centre of nearly every plant.  How do they do it?  Have they got sat nav or is it simply down to their whiffly noses?

The rodents seem to like munching red and green cabbage, kale (both kinds) and purple sprouting broccoli the best.  But, just like humans, they don’t seem to be quite so keen on the Brussels sprouts.

 Slug attack

Those famous Cornish slugs with the orange-frilled stomachs have also been having a go.  There’s been quite a bit of joking about the best way to deal with them.  Slug stir-fry, anyone?

We’ve spent the last two Sundays hand-weeding what’s left of the brassica plants, in the hopes that they will recover from these predatory attacks.

Many thanks to our stalwart volunteers – expert growing team members Jane, Jeremy and Mark N, aided by 10-year-old Callum, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Jenny (14), Keira (3), Kitty, Mark M, Mike H and Mike S in week one.  And thanks last week to experts Jane and Jeremy as well as Charlotte, Dan, Kate, Kitty, Marianne, Mike S and seven-week-old baby Hollie, who slept through it all. 

Provided we’re successful in our funding bids, we’ll be able to invest in some strong predator-proof fencing and netting in the near future.  But in the meantime, please do tell us.  Should we shoot those pesky rabbits – or what?

Holiday nightmare or domestic dream?  Frances is back home after a visit to her parents, who are enthusiastic members of Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s growing-our-own-food project…

“Who’d have thought I’d spend my first morning visiting my parents helping Mum make three lots of soup, the easiest and quickest way to make sure all the vegetables from the box got used.

“Dad incidentally was out of the way, sorry, too busy up at the farm helping out with the other volunteers.

“My favourite soup was the roast tomato and basil (see below), as the tomatoes actually tasted like tomatoes unlike the ones you get from the supermarket in Newcastle!

 “The fun didn’t stop there, with another vegetable box arriving towards the end of my visit. This box contained a wonderfully orange pumpkin which we roasted to make a pumpkin and sage risotto with blue cheese.

“I made up the recipe, simply adding the roasted pumpkin to a basic risotto, adding chopped fresh sage leaves to the stock and cubes of blue cheese on top of the risotto at the end.

“Although the pumpkin ended up being a little bit watery (perhaps we should have stuck to making soup!) the risotto turned out to be very good energy food for dancing the night away at the barn dance in St Mabyn that evening which was a lovely, if not exhausting end to my Cornwall visit.”

Roast tomato and basil soup Ⓥ (adapted from the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book)

Preparation and cooking time: 40 minutes.  Serves 4

Ingredients
2 lbs fresh ripe tomatoes
1 onion
1 medium potato
1 stick of celery
1 carrot
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 litre of vegetable stock
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 bunch of basil

Method
Halve tomatoes and place in baking tray. Sprinkle with oil and a few basil leaves. Cook in a hot oven for 30 minutes.  Chop onion, carrot, potato and celery finely and sautee gently in oil in a large pan for 10 minutes.  Add stock, salt and pepper and simmer for 10 minutes.  When tomatoes roasted, remove skins and add to pan.  Chop stems of basil and half the leaves and add to the mix with tomato paste.  Simmer for a further 5 minutes.  Puree in a blender. Serve with a garnish of basil leaves.

Around 40 enthusiasts aged from eight to 80 lined up for Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s barn dance in St Mabyn village hall.

We shuffled, swung and dosey doed under the expert tutelage of renowned Cornish caller Howard Burrows.

The fun event, organised by demon-dancing fellow members Mike and Yvonne Haywood, raised £55 for Camel CSA funds.

Thank you both!

Camel Community Supported Agriculture has been chosen to host a new type of training event being organised by the Soil Association. 

A total of 23 grow-your-own-food enthusiasts in the south-west, from Land’s End to Totnes, are taking part.  It’s proved so popular that more than 10 would-be participants have had to be turned away.

The horticultural mentoring event for existing and prospective CSA groups and growers in the south west is on Monday 14 September at our site at St Kew Highway behind St Kew Harvest Farm Shop.

It will give us an opportunity to consider soil fertility, crop planning and other important aspects of community supported agriculture.  It’ll also help us build all-important networks with other growing groups.

Advice

The event’s being organised by Ben Raskin, the Soil Association’s learning manager and horticultural advisor, with the financial backing of the Making Local Food Work project.  Ben says:

“The idea is to put growing groups with similar aims into mentoring groups where they can get help and advice.

“There’s been a massive response to these mentoring events from Cornwall and Gloucestershire in particular, which is fantastic. We’ve had to turn people away from next week’s session at St Kew Highway and there is a waiting list of 10.

Cornwall is already playing a leading role in the Making Local Food Work programme led by the Plunkett Foundation.  As Jan Trefusis of the foundation says in a recent magazine article:

“Cornwall really is the star of this programme, with a high proportion of our uptake for the project coming from across the region.”

Tim Deane from Northwood Farm near Exeter in Devon, who founded the UK’s first organised vegetable box scheme, will share 30 years’ experience of crop planning, labour and machinery needs at the event.  

Dedicated

Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s own team of expert growers – Jeremy Brown, Jane Mellowship and Mark Norman – will describe the ups and down of the initial six months of our own local food project.

The initiative to grow our own food and to share the risks and rewards would never have got off the ground without their combined skills and dedication.  They’ve willingly devoted many hours of unpaid work to what’s often been an uphill task.

Jeremy, Jane and Mark have been brilliant; there’s no other way of putting it.  Camel CSA members owe them a big debt.  We cannot thank them enough.

• See and hear what our expert growers have to say on Camel CSA’s latest video – Our first harvest

Various pioneering efforts to grow our own food in the far south-west are put under the spotlight in the September issue of the magazine Cornwall Life.

The four-page spread features several pictures of Camel CSA volunteers at work on our two-acre plot at St Kew Highway.

It reveals how our community project is helping Cornwall play a leading role in the Making Local Food Work programme led by the Plunkett Foundation.  As Jan Trefusis of the foundation says:

Cornwall really is the star of this programme, with a high proportion of our uptake for the project coming from across the region.

Rewards

The article emphasises how community supported agriculture can offer a sustainable way of producing local and seasonal food where the rewards and risks are shared between grower and consumer.

It describes Cornwall’s other emergent CSAs at Harrowbarrow near Callington and in the Lamorna valley and at Lowarth Brogh near Land’s End.  It tells us about plans to set up similar projects at Trevalon Organic Vegetables at Herodsfoot, Liskeard and on a farm near Launceston.

Traci Lewis of the Soil Association adds:

Who knows what can be achieved when we all start supporting each other more?  We look forward to working with more landowners, farmers, growers and communities in Cornwall to find out.

More and more young people are getting involved in Camel Community Supported Agriculture’s pioneering efforts to promote local food.

Fourteen-year-old Jenny Simmons, who’s at Wadebridge School, has chosen Camel CSA as the volunteering activity for her Duke of Edinburgh’s bronze award programme.

This gives young people the opportunity to become involved in a project that they really care about.

This week Jenny helped prepare the onions for the boxes.  She worked alongside packing supremo Trish and fellow picking and packing team members Cath, Charlotte, Mark M, Mike H, Penny, Robert and Steve.

Marathon

The volunteer growers have at long last completed the marathon task of removing the black plastic mulch from the overgrown strawberry beds. 

They also weeded the beetroot and removed the vicious thistles growing among the Brussels sprouts.   Mark N strimmed the overgrown edges.

Once all the plastic had been dug up and removed, Jeremy got out the tractor and cut back all the surface weeds. 

Now he can go ahead and plough the ground in preparation for sowing a crop of green manure.

This Sunday’s team comprised expert growers Jeremy and Mark N plus Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Mark M and Mike H.

We need you!

A big turnout is requested next Sunday when we’ll peel back the protective fleece and assess the damage to the 1500 brassica plants that were planted out last month. 

These are the plants donated by our newest sponsors, Fentongollan Farm at Tresillian.

We must weed the 20 long rows of red cabbage, green cabbage (two varieties), cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli and kale (both red and green).

So please make an extra special effort to turn up.  We need all the help we can get!

It’s time to get those feet tapping and your dancing shoes on.  The barn dance in support of Camel Community Supported Agriculture is on Saturday 12 September 7.30 – 11 p.m. in St Mabyn village hall.

All the dances will be called by Howard Burrows, the renowned Cornish caller.  So you don’t need to have any experience.

The event’s being organised by demon dancers and Camel CSA members Mike and Yvonne Haywood.    They say:

“This is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”

As the proceedings can get boisterous, they respectfully request no children under the age of seven.

Buy your tickets for £4 in advance from Mike and Yvonne on 07966757318 or from St Mabyn PO & Stores.  All the proceeds from this fund-raising event are being donated to to Camel CSA. 

Please bring your own drink.

Three of Camel CSA’s youngest members contributed their own homegrown veg to this week’s boxes.

Lilac (8), Willow (7) and four-year-old August grew all the runner beans and some of the courgettes.

Core group member Antonina, co-owner of St Kew Harvest Farm Shop, explains:

“Lilac, Willow and August wanted to share their harvest grown at their home at St Kew. 

So I paid them £8.60 for lots of runner beans and courgettes and three large marrows which they have grown from seed all by themselves. 

They’ve been following our blog, and got concerned about the beans being eaten!”

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