We have a card machine... finally!
Whilst Rosie and Martin have been busy in the field (see below), Chris has been busy getting our online shop and card payment machine working...he was hoping it would be live for when this email goes out but it's touch and go (ie. stressful for Chris!!). He's had to buy a new computer as the one he was using was too old (10+ years old??) and we suspect has been the cause of some of the IT challenges he's been having. Have a look here and see what you think - work in progress, as always.
The idea behind the online shop is that people can order pantry staples as extras to either pick up or add to their box (at the moment it's just set up for pick up). At the moment there isn't veg to order online as this is quite complicated to do but the jars and packets of things are there. And the card machine facility in the shop has been - as you know - a very long time coming but we're hoping it will work this week. Still very happy to take cash, and know some of you like the fact we are cardless, but we do want to make sure we're making it as easy as possible for people and we know sometimes card is just easier/quicker.
A couple of people have started asking about Christmas plans and pre-ordering boxes etc, we'll let you know in the next few weeks what we'll be offering and when we need orders in.
In the field (by Chris):
The plan was always to take down the runner beans this week, however we got a bonus 15kg of runner beans this week, so those with the regular box got bonus beans this week (I know that's a few weeks on the bounce - but they are nearly gone and there won't be any more until next August!). So on Tuesday Martin set to pulling down the wonderful willow structure - the willow will now all be shredded and added to the compost and the beans will be flailed in situ and allowed to rot down.
We've also had a slight stress that club root has been identified whilst we were clearing our spring greens. I've decided to take Charles Dowding's approach to this and try to not worry too much about it. I'm going to top dress the infected bed with a thick layer of compost and manure and just leave it. If we don't dig it then we don't disturb the club root spores (fingers crossed, that's the idea anyway).
Rosie has been flat out sowing and planting out our winter crops, I've lost count how many seedlings she has planted out but it will be somewhere between 500 and 1000 - Kale, Spinach, Chard, Pak Choi, Lettuces, Broad beans.... it is quite incredible the fairly rapid change from Summer to Winter crops.
Harvesting wise, we are still at it: 15 kg of Curly Kale, 4 kg of leeks, 5kg of Beetroot, 15kg of Runner Beans, 10kg of tomatoes, 2kg of cucumbers (these plants just keep on giving!), 1kg of courgettes.
In the boxes:
Small - potatoes, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, curly kale, mushrooms, palermo peppers bananas
Regular - potatoes, carrots, onions, salad, leeks, Uchi Kiri squash, red cabbage, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, apples, plus some bonus runner beans that we weren't expecting to harvest!
In the shop:
Carrots, onions (Bryn Cocyn and Roscoff), cauliflower, red cabbage, hard white cabbage, beetroot, sweet potato, swede, palermo peppers, lots of squash, mushrooms (chestnut and white), garlic, fresh ginger
From Bryn Cochyn: potatoes, onions, padron peppers
From Prion: runner beans, leeks, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, lettuces, salad, sweetcorn, curly kale Fruit: Bananas, apples (Bryn Cochyn), lemons
Eggs (possibly, although these are in short supply at the moment as the seasons change), we've also had to put eggs up to £2 / half dozen. Pentrefelin milk (email us if you want to pre-order this for pick up as we only stock a few bottles to avoid waste), Nant y Felin sourdough (you can pre-order this same as milk if you don't want to miss out). Also all the organic pantry bits - or see our online store (!!).
Really hoping by the end of this week we can say that we officially take card in the shop, but bring cash too this week just in case :)
Seasonal recipe inspiration:
Made this super easy and tasty baked risotto this week for lunch - used up leftover mushrooms and broccoli and didn't require standing by the stove to stir it!
Also made stem soup (not the best name, but says what it is) with cauliflower and broccoli stalks, as recommended by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his Love your Leftovers book - and it tasted good as well as making me feeling resourceful! The recipe has been shared in this blog.
A note on lemons, after some lemons recently have come in fairly green and limey looking! - this was posted by Riverford today:
'You might notice our lemons and clementines are a bit green-tinged at the moment. Your first thought is likely to be 'Why have Riverford sent me unripe fruit?', but the greenness is nothing to do with their maturity or ripeness. We are at the beginning of the European fruit season, and the contrast between the day and night temperatures is not yet great enough - it's this contrast that gives the fruit its solid colour.
So why don't we see more of this at this time of year? Put simply, supermarkets are very unlikely to accept fruit with over a certain % of greenness (that percentage is likely to be very very low). They have tight specifications in place. They would either reject this fruit and buy from further away until the European fruit are a better colour, or treat them with ethylene to change the colour (a natural gas from plants).
The main issues here are that:
1. This attitude will likely cause food to go to waste
2. This reinforces to citizens that green/imperfect fruit is bad, because we're not used to seeing it
But just perhaps, they should give people the benefit of the doubt, and they will likely find that, with the right information and education, lots of people will be very happy to buy green-tinged oranges and lemons at the start of the season. Because ultimately, they taste just as good, mean less waste, and have less food miles. It's win, win, win, as far as we see it.'
Hear hear. We only every buy citrus from Europe and take it as it comes, green or not.
Finally, we have mentioned this before in another post but it's worth a reminder if you missed it - Chris listened to the brilliant Food Programme episode on Best Shop or Market of 2021 (Radio 4 - find it on BBC Sounds here). Things for us to to aspire to....!
have a great week