We now have some smart new shelving in the packing shed to hold all Camel CSA’s weekly veg boxes. Many thanks to Mike and Chris, who constructed it.

All the boxes this week will have: –
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* French beans (Camel CSA)
* spinach (Camel CSA)
* spring onions / green onions (Camel CSA)
* calabrese (Camel CSA / Restharrow Farm)
* cucumbers (Camel CSA)
* Florence fennel (Camel CSA)
* beetroot (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have: –
extra potatoes
* peas (Camel CSA)
* salad bag (Camel CSA)
* tomatoes (Camel CSA)

* = grown to organic principles

We’re holding an exciting programme of fun-filled summer holiday workshops for children. Three different sets of activities aimed at 4-11-year-olds start on Wednesday 15 August.

The action-packed sessions are led by workshop leader Diana Barry, also Camel CSA’s treasurer.

Diana says: “We’re aiming to help children understand exactly where their food comes from in a fun way. They’ll get to touch, smell and taste a variety of vegetables on our plot. They’ll learn how to recognise them, how to sow and grow and also how compost is made.”

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.

Wednesday 15 August – COOL AS A CUCUMBER
Tickle your taste buds! Try a variety of vegetables while blindfolded. Explore the site and discover about our environment during more hands-on fun activities

Thursday 23 August – WHAT’S ROTTING?
 Compost, marvellous compost! Examine it very closely and meet our specialists – the earthworms. Find out about the growth cycle of plants and how long it take for different things to decompose 

• Friday 24 August – READY, STEADY, GROW
Touch, feel and smell plants! Discover how to sow and grow. Learn how to take care of plants to make them grow strong and tall. Take your own plant home

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.

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

A tasty-sounding salad from Nigel Slater’s Tender Vol I: “At first rich, then intensely warm and piquant, this is a perfectly balanced salad for accompanying fish or maybe a grilled steak. It is just the job with freshly dressed crab or smoked trout or eel.” The potatoes should be warm when you dress them.

Serves 4

Preparation: half an hour draining the cucumber
Cooking: 20 minutes

Ingredients
half a cucumber
500-750g new potatoes

for the dressing:
a good pinch of caster sugar
1 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
generous tbsp Dijon mustard
4 tbsp olive oil
6 lightly crushed juniper berries
2 tbsp chopped dill (or substitute parsley)

Method
Peel the cucumber, halve it down its length and remove the seeds with a teaspoon. Slice the cucumber into chunks about 2cm in width. Sprinkly lightly with salt and leave in a colander in the sink for about half an hour.

Put a pan of water on to boil. Scrub the potatoes. Salt the water, add the potatoes and let them boil for about 15 minutes, until they are tender to the point of a knife. Drain and briefly set aside.

While the potatoes are boiling, make the dressing. Put the sugar and vinegar in a small mixing bowl and stir till the sugar has dissolved. Add some black pepper. Mix in the mustard, then gently whisk in the olive oil. Stir in the juniper berries, the cucumber and the chopped dill and set aside.

Slice the warm potatoes, letting them fall into the dressing, then fold them together gently. Leave for no more than 20 minutes, then serve.

It can take a couple of hours each week for Camel CSA’s pickers and packers to harvest our crop of polytunnel-grown dwarf French beans.

Our professional growers have made it easier for us this year by planting a special yellow variety that’s quicker to spot among the luxuriant foliage.

Also in our standard boxes this week are peas, Florence fennel and the first of the tomatoes. And redcurrants from one member’s garden in St Mabyn.

 All the boxes this week will have: –
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* French beans (Camel CSA)
* Swiss chard / spinach (Camel CSA)
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
* calabrese (Camel CSA / Restharrow Farm, Trebetherick)
* cucumber (Camel CSA)
* salad bag (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have: –
extra potatoes
* peas (Camel CSA)
* Florence fennel (Camel CSA)
* tomatoes (Camel CSA)
* redcurrants (Charlotte Barry)

 * = grown to organic principles

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.

I found this refreshing, summery dish while browsing through my Co-operative Food magazine (I like our friendly Wadebridge Co-op).

You can include the courgettes and the spring onions in Camel CSA’s veg boxes, but this week I’m afraid you’ll have to get the carrots elsewhere.

This recipe can be adapted in a number of ways. As I hadn’t got any sesame seeds, I sprinkled sunflower seeds on top. I also used juice from a whole lemon and omitted the honey. You could replace the spring onions with chives for a milder flavour.  

Serve: 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes

Ingredients
2 medium courgettes
3 medium carrots, scrubbed
1 large eating apple
Juice of half a lemon
2 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped
2 handfuls (about 70g) of nuts and dried fruit (optional)
For the dressing
1 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp natural yoghurt
A little runny honey
2 tbsp sesame seeds to sprinkle on top

Method
Grate the courgettes, carrot and apple into a bowl. Add the spring onions and nuts and fruit, if using, and stir together.

Mix together the mayonnaise, yoghurt and honey. Add to the bowl and stir. Sprinkle the seeds over the top before serving.

What a difference ten days of sustained warmth and sunshine can make! Just two weeks ago, our growing team were in despair. Torrential rain, leaden skies, mud, mildew, slugs, snails…

Now, in the space of a week, we have some spectacular heads of calabrese and some enormous cabbages on our plot.

In the polytunnel the French beans are cropping prolifically and the cucumbers are doing well. The indoor tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and chillies are coming along nicely.

The field-grown peas and beans are a bit of a mess and we have few outdoor carrots. But we have plenty of Tuscan and red Russian kale and purple-sprouting broccoli in modules ready to be planted out.

All the boxes this week will have: –
potatoes (Burlerrow Farm, St Mabyn)
* Swiss chard (Camel CSA)
* spring onions (Camel CSA)
* calabrese (Camel CSA)
* French beans (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* garlic (Camel CSA)
* cabbage (Camel CSA)

Standard boxes will also have: –
extra potatoes (Growfair
* mixed salad bag (Camel CSA)
* turnip or beetroot (Camel CSA)
* cucumber (Camel CSA / Mark Norman)

 * = grown to organic principles

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

This simple and satisfying dish comes from Veg Box Recipes. They say: “It’s a comforting dish for rainy weather and the combination of flavours helps make the fennel’s aniseed more subtle.”

Serves 2 (as a main dish)

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients
4 large potatoes (or 6 small), scrubbed
1 bulb fennel
2 gloves garlic, crushed or minced
300ml semi-skimmed milk, or 300ml single cream, or 150ml of each
1 free range egg
butter, for greasing
salt and freshly ground pepper, nutmeg to taste
(optional) tomato slices to garnish

Method

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5 / 190C.

Slice the potatoes and fennel very thinly – ideally using a mandolin. Grease a large baking dish with the butter and arrange the potato and fennel slices in alternative layers with garlic and lots of seasoning in between each layer.

Mix together the cream and / or milk, egg and nutmeg with lots more seasoning. Pour the mixture over the vegetables already in the baking dish, cover and bake for about 1 ½ hours, removing the cover for the last 30 minutes until the top has browned nicely.

The picking and packing team are looking forward to working in the sunshine for once this Friday. Last week we all got soaked in the constant heavy downpour. The veg have suffered in the rain too, but the Florence fennel is doing rather well. 

All the boxes this week will have: –
potatoes (Growfair)
* chard (Camel CSA)
* green onions (Camel CSA)
* carrots (Camel CSA)
* fennel (Camel CSA)
* courgettes (Mark Norman, Bodmin)
* wet garlic (Camel CSA)
* blackcurrants (Mark Norman)

Standard boxes will also have: –
extra potatoes (Growfair
* mixed salad bag (Camel CSA)
* French beans or beetroot and basil (Camel CSA)
* cucumber (Camel CSA / Mark Norman)

 * = grown to organic principles

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