Lots of news this month! We are very pleased to announce that Tierney, who was our assistant grower, has been promoted to Head Grower. She'll be getting support and mentoring from an experienced organic local grower, Michael Knights. We're very grateful to Michael for his help and looking forward to seeing what they can achieve between them.The change in the seasons has been reflected in our crops already, with summer squashes giving way to winter ones: the last of the tomatoes harvested green last week to ripen on windowsills or turn into chutney and the first of our dried bean crop arriving. The borlotti beans are very beautiful: pink splashed pods of papery white with plump spotty beans nestling inside.
We've a workday on Sunday, 25th September 11am to 3pm. Bring a picnic! Everyone is welcome, so please do come along and bring friends and family. The farm is full of colour at this time of year and a lovely place to spend a few hours. You can find directions on our website.We've been thinking about composting too. We've used up a lot of soil fertility through growing this year and we'll need to work hard to build it back up and then increase it each year. Composting efficiently will be an important part of that. We're on the lookout for keen composters to guide us in our efforts!
Our thoughts are also turning to marketing. We've done well to attract the number of members we have, but in order to be financially viable in the long term we will need more. So we're working on a strategy to keep us in the public eye. Speaking of the public eye, you might have seen us in the EDP last week- we had a good big mention in a piece on the future of farming in the region.
If you'd like to be involved in helping us with our marketing, you'd be very welcome, just drop us an email. We're looking for people to help us at every stage of the process, so whether you're interested in helping us design our strategy or you'd like to put up a poster at your workplace, we'd love to hear from you.
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I'm interested to see you mention Borlotti, Elena as I grew them for the first time this year. Dried beans seem like a good thing because storage consumes no energy and packaging is simple. However I've read conflicting advice about how dry they need to be and how long they need to be cooked in order to avoid poisoning from phytohaemagglutinin. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3588302 has some advice but I'm wondering if TN could organize a bean workshop with an expert - to cover both storage and cooking? I don't think that beans get the attention that they deserve because there is not much scope for supermarkets to 'add value' and make a profit. Time for a bean revival!
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