September 2003
For latest veg box news letters, see below right column

Phew, what a scorcher! Just as the tabloids would say... but it has been a remarkable summer. We've had weeks and weeks of warm - often almost Mediterranean - sunny days with temperatures in the shade almost up to 30 degrees Celsius. That meant serious heat (around 10 degrees higher) in the polytunnel even with everything open. Happily, our drip irrigation system fed from stored tanks of rainwater was up to it and none of the plants suffered. If this summer has been a manifestation of global warming, then it suits us but not many others. Sadly, it's been disastrous for farmers in southern Europe where drought and fires have been legion - long predicted by the global climate models. Does that mean people are about to take global warming seriously? I doubt it. The fashion for gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and cheap flights to the Caribbean (aviation fuel is not taxed) continues unabated. Fiddling while Rome burns?

Veg box scheme success! I'm happy to say that our vegetable box scheme, launched last October, is building up well. We now pack up to 30 boxes each week and every Friday, just after 5pm, the rush begins as customers come to Mur Crusto to collect their fresh vegetables. What is really boosting for us is the support we get from our customers. Hardly any have 'dumped' us during the summer when going off for holidays, for they had made arrangements for friends or family to take on their boxes for them. And we get frequent and wonderful positive feedback about what good value we offer and how delicious the veg really is. What more can we ask? It makes it all worthwhile.

Mike's tractor and brushweeder

Cooperation really works! Our scheme is run as an equal and informal partnership between Mike and Jill at Ty'n Lon farm, and Val and Bry at Mur Crusto. We help each other out when needed and each farm supplies roughly equal amounts of veg to put in the boxes each week. The money we divide equally between us. And we haven't fallen out.

Animals: Jill has bought in many new hens and chicks recently because the demand for eggs has been so high. She now has over 50.

Our ducks enjoying the pond	New arrival at Mur Crusto

What's even more interesting is that she has a gander that lays eggs - her second. (It appears that it really is very hard to determine the gender of a goose.) At Mur Crusto, we now have three khaki campbell ducks. They're champion slug-hunters and we're expecting eggs any day now. Rather unexpectedly, a new calf arrived a few days ago. His mother has been here all summer, on holiday with three other cow friends. None belong to us but are owned by our organic farmer friend Ieuian. He also cut and made hay from four of our fields this summer and took away 450 small bales for winter feed. This is a requirement of our Tir Gofal agri-environment scheme, the aim being to reduce the fertility of some fields in order to encourage rarer wild plants back into the sward.

Plants: On the whole, most of the veg has grown well this summer, despite weeks without rain. There were some setbacks: the onions were, again, badly affected by that unpleasant fungal disease downy mildew which came in a brief damp spell. Fortunately, the subsequent sunshine and dryness meant that most of these recovered or at least dried out so that we hope they'll store well for the winter. We all had good potato crops because blight didn't get started until late July. Last year it came in June. We lifted the last potatoes a week ago at Ty'n Lon and they're all in store. For the first time, we've had soft fruit to offer customers, starting with strawberries and continuing with raspberries. The latter have been great and are still going (at Mur Crusto) because we have an autumn-fruiting variety (Autumn Bliss - well named I think) as well as the usual earlier ones. Curiously, the late raspberries don't seem to be of interest to the blackbirds which plundered the earlier crops. Some birds ate so many they couldn't fly off and learned just to scurry under the bushes when we came near. None of the bird-scaring systems we tried worked (CDs on strings and scary-eye balloons). The birds just laughed and carried on scoffing.

Shippon conversion: We've been working all through the summer on converting the semi-ruined shippon (old milking parlour and store) to an eco-holiday house. This has been heavy but interesting work for me (Bry) and Eddie Webb, the master builder who works with me most days. For a long period, we seemed to be knocking things down. Now we're building all the time. It's slow work because doing a conversion of this sort, involving raising the roof, is far more difficult than just knocking the whole lot down and starting again. Now we have the completely new roof watertight so as winter approaches, we can work inside regardless of the weather.

That's all for now.

Bry Lynas, 20 September 2003