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!

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.

Keep an eye out for our stunning new posters designed by Emma Julian of Pickle Design in Wadebridge. 

They’re helping to spread the word about our community grow-your-own project and weekly vegetable box scheme in north Cornwall.

It’s a great way to support local food and save food miles! Anyone living within a 10-mile radius of St Kew Highway is welcome to join us. We grow a range of vegetables to organic principles. The weekly boxes are ready to collect by 12 noon every Friday.

I love autumn. And there’s no better time of year to be involved in a community agriculture project.

The veg boxes are bursting with our own-grown Cornish produce – including delicacies like raddichio and fresh borlotti beans.

At this moment my kitchen is filling with a tantalising spicy aroma –  a mix of allspice, ginger, pepper, brown sugar, vinegar – coming from a large pan of chutney bubbling on the stove.

The green tomato and apple chutney is being made with our surplus produce – using unripe tomatoes from the polytunnel, apples from our adopted orchard and onions and garlic from our dry store.

Other Camel CSA members are also busy making pickles and preserves from other vegetables. Henrietta has a garage full of runner bean chutney, turnip pickle and tomato marmalade. Cath’s about to start producing chilli oil (oh boy, do we have a glut of chillis!)

We’re not doing anything new, of course. Preserving is a traditional way of using up fruit and veg surpluses that helps provide some variety in the winter months and during the “hungry gap” in spring.

So look out for all these delicious goodies as they start appearing from Christmas onwards in our weekly veg boxes.

Our community supported agriculture project has a guest slot this Wednesday evening at the Eden Project’s Cafe Conversations.

Eden’s new eco cafe is in St Austell town centre. Its free event this Wednesday 19 October from 6.30 – 8.30pm is about the joys of growing, cooking and eating community food. 

I’ll be talking about what we’ve learned at Camel CSA about running a community grow-your-own project – the successes and the setbacks. The other guest is Clive Cobb, creative thinker behind Town Mill Bakery in Dorset and the new Eden Bakery.

In the Eden Project’s words: “Whether you’re a food producer, aspiring grower or just curious to know a bit more, come and join the conversation.”

Why not join us? Find the Eden Project Cafe here.

Camel CSA’s third annual Apple Day was our best ever – in spite of the Cornish mizzle. All ages pitched in to chop, crush and press around 90 litres of apple juice to share among everyone who took part.  

We’ve had an abundance of apples to juice this year. Most were picked from our adopted orchard in St Mabyn, the rest came from members’ gardens.

Our team didn’t have the time or energy to press the entire mountain of fruit before the equipment had to go back to our friends at Chyan Community Field.

So we came to an agreement with the St Mabyn “Cider Boys” (don’t ask!) and we now have an extra 50 litres or so of delicious juice to share out.

The apples are harvested and the apple press is on its way.

We’re all looking forward to our third annual Cornish Apple Day on Sunday when we’ll be producing masses of delicious fresh apple juice to share.

Come and take part in the apple pressing on our community veg-growing plot between 10am and 1pm this Sunday 9 October. Find us here at St Kew Highway near Wadebridge in north Cornwall.

If you can bring any apples and a plastic juice container with you, all the better!

All our own produce again, apart from the potatoes. Everyone will have:

1kg potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* runner/french beans (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)
* leeks (Camel CSA)
* broccoli (Camel CSA)
* salad leaves (Camel CSA)
* tomatoes (Camel CSA)
* red onions (Camel CSA)
* garlic (Camel CSA)
* chillies (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have:
* sweet peppers (Camel CSA)
* aubergines (Camel CSA)
* tuscan/curly kale (Camel CSA)
* turnips (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

The apples are picked. We’re all set for Camel CSA’s annual apple juicing day this Sunday 9 October at our veg-growing site site in north Cornwall.

Now the fun part – everyone is welcome to come along and share our bountiful harvest. Juicing will go ahead on Sunday morning between 10am and 1pm on our community plot at St Kew Highway near Wadebridge.

This year we’re hiring an electric-powered crusher, lots of buckets and a large, Vigo hand press from Chyan Community Field near Penryn.

It means we’re no longer having to beg and borrow small, hand-operated presses and should make the whole operation much quicker and easier.

But it does mean we’ll need a lot of apples!

SO… we could aways use more. If you have any apples to share, or know anyone else with some to spare, please do let us know and arrange to get the fruit to us on the day.

AND…please can you all start putting aside containers for the juice. Most effective are 1-litre plastic milk containers, so the juice can be stored at home in the fridge for 48 hours or frozen. But please ensure they’re thoroughly cleaned out first!

A very enthusiastic bunch of families with young children harvested a vast number of apples in our adopted old farm orchard at St Mabyn. We managed to get the task done last Sunday – the final day of our short Indian summer.

Thanks a bunch to our apple picking and tree climbing team – Bob, Bridget, Cath, Charlotte, Dan, Danny, Gav, Geraint, Jane, Jenny, Kate, Kim, Mike S and junior members Arwen, Daisy, Finn, Hollie, Max and Seren.

I’ve not long returned from a Soil Association conference where we looked at the future of community supported agriculture schemes in the UK, like ours in north Cornwall.

One of the recurring themes of any CSA get-together is: How do we attract volunteers? And, once they’ve started, how do we keep them on board?

Camel CSA is like any other voluntary group. We have a dedicated core membership who can be relied on a week-by-week basis to administer the project, grow the food and pick and pack the veg.

But what’s proved interesting is the total number of hours worked by volunteers – not just the regulars. And this total is always far more than we think.

We keep a tally to pass on to our funding bodies – Local Food and East Cornwall Local Action Group.

Over the last year half our members have actively volunteered at some point. They’ve contributed a total of 1,500 hours’ hard graft – the equivalent of nearly 200 working days. The highest point – equivalent to 25 working days – was in May . The lowest, not surprisingly, was in January (eight working days).

All this ties in with the work that Exeter University / Volunteer Cornwall researcher Becky Harrison is doing with us and other social enterprises in Cornwall. Her research into environmental volunteering and well-being involves looking into why people are motivated to volunteer and how they can make the most it.

All I know is that it’s important to remind volunteers how valued they are, to keep them informed, to include them in decision-making and to remind them that we’re all in it together. 

Most of all, we need to remember that belonging to a CSA has all kinds of benefits. Which means making sure the dull and difficult jobs are not always done by the same people.

So a special mention for all the dock weed diggers, bean pickers and leek trimmers out there!

And grateful thanks to this week’s picking and packing team – Anne, Bob, Charlotte, Jax, Mike H, Mike S, Sophie, Steve, Sue, Trish F, Trish G and our expert growers Bridget and Mark N.

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