October 2001

Harvest

The potato harvest is over. At last they're dug, dried and sorted into boxes and stored in the shippon. The crop was really good: loads of beautiful tubers, mostly medium to large, some white, some red. We've grown around eight different varieties - and they're now available for sale.

Winter veg are doing just fine though the cabbage family took a deal of damage from white butterfly caterpillars. We've had to hand pick for weeks, sometimes more than once a day. Even so, the various types of cabbage, brussels sprouts and sprouting broccoli are thriving. We dug the enormous swedes a week or so ago and they're in store.

Carrots are still doing fine. We've had no fly troubles, the biggest carrot pest, because the plants have spent all their lives under floating fleece covers. The flies can't get at them. It certainly makes a difference.

Hedgerow crops

These t urned out to be a bonus. We have several good damson trees and made jam (as well as scoffing them fresh), leaving most because we don't have time to harvest them. A future group could make better use of these.

Blackberries galore, this year. How few people seem to pick them any more where they are free and easy-to-get along roadsides. We have our own wilderness area where Val spent many hours collecting big juicy berries, now frozen.

Polytunnel

This has been the biggest thing around here, both in terms of size and the amount of time taken to build it, for most of the summer. You can marvel over every stage of its construction in our 'farm photos' section. The great tunnel is now complete (it's 30 feet wide and 125 feet long). I fitted the irrigation so that it's now possible to water any sector of the tunnel which is, of course, a desert unless irrigated. This has turned out to be a bonus because as I dig (by hand), all the riot of grass, thistles, docks and other horrors dies and dries out. So I get rid of almost all the perennial weeds in one go.

I've worked out a basic cropping plan which allows for rotations, very helpful though not obligatory in covered cropping areas like this. And I've now got large tomatoes and peppers growing in the very first beds. Since then, I've made more beds and we now have lettuces, ruby chard, two types of carrot, chinese leaves, mizuna and two rescued (from outside) courgette plants growing well. The plan is to complete the cultivation of the ground inside, break up the stony subsoil, barrow in loads of extra topsoil from drainage swales I'm making outside the tunnel to collect the rain run-off and add dressings of rotted manure before sowing more veg. We aim to have green salad veg and carrots growing (slowly) through the winter months so there's fresh veg to offer customers throughout the winter and spring, before the outdoor summer crops come into bearing.

The land

Our land is looking in better heart than it did last year. The combination of scything thistles, docks, nettles and bracken, pulling ragworth and having both sheep and cows grazing at various times have done wonders for the grass.

Future

We hope to get a feature about our farm business in the Caernarfon and Denbigh Herald shortly. This should give us useful publicity to help start up the CSA group. As winter progresses, we aim to complete the polytunnel water-collection system and dig a storage tank. Maybe we can build wind power to pump the water for irrigation? We had a look at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) recently to get some ideas. Other ideas are to convert the shippon into an energy-self-sufficient dwelling for guests - easy to do if you have loads of money. We don't so we have to think carefully what it is we want to do and how we might do it. We'd quite like to build our farm into something a little like the CAT which people could visit to see alternative energy and sustainable development ideas being put into practice. Ideas anyone?