July 28, 2012
We need carrots! Unfortunately we haven’t got any carrots in this week’s veg boxes as we’ve used up all the indoor-grown crop.
The few we planted in the field have fallen victim to the recent foul, wet weather. There’s some more just showing through the compost in the polytunnel, but they won’t be ready for some weeks.
So we’d like to source carrots from other local growers. Do you know of anyone who’s growing carrots within a 20-mile radius of our site at St Kew Highway in north Cornwall? (We put local food first, so they don’t have to be organically-grown.)
If you know of anyone, please tell us. And if not, please help us by sharing this request – either on Facebook or Twitter.
July 20, 2012
Camel CSA is offering fun and learning opportunities for children during the summer holidays.
We’re running three different workshops in August for under-12s. Each workshop will run from 11am – 2pm (including break) on our vegetable-growing site at St Kew Highway. The cost for each child is £4, which includes art materials, squash/water and fruit/snacks.
Check these workshops out: –
• Wednesday 15 August – COOL AS A CUCUMBER
Tickle your taste buds! The children will be challenged to try a variety of vegetables while blindfolded. More hands-on fun activities will take them around the site as they explore the local environment and discover their senses.
• Thursday 23 August – WHAT’S ROTTING?
Compost, marvellous compost! Explore it very closely and learn why it is so important. Discover that it is full of life and meet our specialists – the earthworms. Find out how long it take for different things to decompose and what’s happening in this process. We will also look into the growth cycle of plants.
• Friday 24 August – READY, STEADY, GROW
Children will touch, feel and smell plants in a range of hands-on fun activities around the site. They will learn how to take care of plants to make them grow strong and tall. At the end they will take their own planted seed home to look after and practise their newly-learned skills.
Please note: parents and guardians must remain on site. Tea, coffee and other refreshments will be available for sale next door at St Kew Harvest farm shop.
Each activity will be led by our workshop leader (and Camel CSA treasurer!) Danny Barry. She’ll be aided by Camel CSA volunteers, all CRB checked.
Booking for the workshops is essential, please e-mail: info@camel-csa.org.uk. If you have any queries, please e-mail dbarry2904@gmail.com or phone Danny on 01208 895083
June 21, 2012
It always helps to have lots of people on our community veg plot. So we took the opportunity to plant out squash and pumpkin seedlings and to dig up more dock weeds on Open Farm Sunday.
June 15, 2012
Photo: Shayne and Lucia House
Enter our slug spotting competition, take part in the National Farm Pollinator Survey, and help us plant hundreds of squash and pumpkin seedlings this Sunday on our plot at St Kew Highway.
There’ll be guided tours of our Big Lottery-funded vegetable plot and polytunnels. Also family fun and children’s activities, a veg box raffle, cold drinks and home-made cakes.
Entry is free to our Open Farm Sunday event this Sunday 17 June from 1.30-4.30pm – rain or shine.
Come and see: –
• What vegetables we’re growing
• What’s in our weekly vegetable boxes
• How we support other local growers
• How we promote local, seasonal food
You can find us on the A39 near Wadebridge at the St Endellion / St Mabyn crossroads, behind St Kew Harvest farm shop at St Kew Highway.
AND even if the sun’s shining bring your wellies!
June 10, 2012
Love local food? Like to eat fresh, seasonal local vegetables? Come and visit our Big Lottery-funded project on Open Farm Sunday – this Sunday 17 June from 1.30-4.30pm.
Come and see: –
• What vegetables we’re growing
• What’s in our weekly vegetable boxes
• How we support other local growers
• How we promote local, seasonal food
There’ll be family fun and games, guided tours, vegetable box raffle, home-made cakes, cold drinks.
Find us on the A39 at St Kew Highway beside the St Endellion / St Mabyn crossroads, behind St Kew Harvest Farm Shop. Look out for the signs.
May 29, 2012
Camel CSA member and garden author Trish Gibson is opening her beautiful north Cornwall garden again this Sunday 3 June from 2-5.30pm under the National Gardens Scheme.
The Mill House at Pendoggett near St Kew is a 1½ -acre country garden on the site of an old mill with ponds, stream and bridges and extensive views across farmland. Entry is £3 (children free) and there will be cream teas and plant sales.
February 9, 2012
Everyone will have:
* onions
* savoy cabbage
* carrots
* beetroot
* jerusalem artichokes
purple sprouting broccoli (Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
Standard boxes will have extra potatoes plus:
* salad bag
cauliflower (Restharrow Farm))
leeks (Restharrow Farm)
December 19, 2011
Camel CSA members got together as planned to create around 40 decorative chilli strings for our Christmas vegetable boxes.
At a ready guess we used up more than 4,000 surplus chillies harvested from the magnificent crop in our second polytunnel.
The garlands make beautiful swags for the mantelpiece, table centrepieces or runners, or Christmas tree decorations.
And, of course, they can be eaten!
Festive greetings to the chilli stringing team – Anne, Caroline, Cath, Charlotte, Danny, Evie, Jenny, Kitty, Mark, Penny, Robert, Tess and Trish F.
December 4, 2011
Camel CSA’s vegetable boxes have been overflowing with a surplus of produce for months now.
All kinds of chutneys and preserves have been made from the veg gluts, but we’ve been almost defeated by the enormous surplus of chillies cultivated in our second polytunnel.
The problem with chillies is that a little goes a very long way.
They feature regularly in our weekly vegetable boxes. Volunteer veg packer Henrietta has made some into chilli jam. Volunteer grower Mark M (who loves to crunch them up raw) pickled some chillies in vinegar. Membership secretary Cath experimented with chilli oil.
All these culinary enterprises proved extremely expensive and time-consuming. I still have hundreds – no thousands – of chillies drying out slowly on the laundry rack above my boiler at home.
Enter now the artistic wing of our food-growing social enterprise.
The latest plan is to turn the chilli surplus into natural edible garlands to go in our Christmas veg boxes. After the festivities are over, the chillies can be plucked from the decorative string and used in cooking.
We’re holding a chilli stringing evening this coming week, when the hundreds of chillis will be threaded on to fishing line. We’re supplying the wine, the chillies, the materials and the surgical gloves(!) Camel CSA members are providing the labour.
I’m amazed at what people charge for hot chilli garlands, centrepieces and edible chilli and herb garlands, so I’ll be interested to see how many we can string together in just one evening!
November 30, 2011
Now I know why oriental salad leaves are so expensive in the supermarkets!
We’re cultivating an assortment of indoor-grown oriental and other baby leaves in our first polytunnel.
These “cut and come again” crops should last us until early spring (with a gap when they stop for a rest in the short, dull days of mid-winter).
There’s quite a variety – spicy red mustard, mizuna and mibuna, pak choi, curly endive, baby chard, parsley (“French” flat as well as curly-leaved) and mixed lettuce.
But it takes two or more people around two hours every Friday morning to pick enough leaves for the 35 or more weekly vegetable boxes. It requires nimble fingers and is incredibly labour intensive.
There’s one big mitigating factor about all this for the volunteer pickers. Salad leaf picking is guaranteed warm, dry work which is also out of the wind.
Arguably much more satisfactory than parsnip, leek or carrot lifting which are cold, wet and muddy jobs.
