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For the latest news from Llangybi Organics' two farms, click Llangybi Organics news. It's now in blog form, is frequently updated and replaces the old-style 'formal' (and very irregular) newsletters on this site. You can even add your own comments. Why the change? All's explained here.
The
last formal Newsletter: September 2006
Starting up again:
We'd seriously considered closing down by the end of last year. The amount
of work we were doing and the money we were making out of the work didn't
make sense. So we rather reluctantly decided to put up the prices for
the first time since we'd started the box scheme. Happily, hardly anyone
thought this too much for them and we once again have a healthy list of
customers hovering just below our maximum capacity of 40.
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| Andy and Jean Batten, our volunteers, beginning the Friday afternoon process of packing vegetables |
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Volunteering! We
re-started in mid-July, helped by two of our loyal customers, Andy and
Jean Batten who have been coming on Friday afternoons to assist with the
packing. Sadly, they cannot continue beyond September so we are hoping
someone else might be prepared to help out with our Friday afternoon packing.
The perks of the job are a free 'goody' bag of any surplus that we happen
to have left over after the packing is finished (you choose what you like)
and the 'crack' (as the Irish call 'good conversation') which is guaranteed:
lots of mirth and the sheer pleasure of working with friendly knowledgeable
people like Jill and Val. So far, our
volunteering system has been
quite a success, much more so than CSA where we've tried a couple of times
to interest our customers in the idea. So we're probably going to abandon
any further attempts to generate interest in the CSA
group. That's something which would probably work well near some big
town or city where people have no contact with the
land. Obviously that is not the case in our part of rural Wales.
The end-product
of all the harvesting and packing: the boxes stacked on the shelves
in the Swallow House, our collecting point.
Spring works: Since our shutdown in April, we have all been very busy. Jill and Mike at Ty'n Lon managed to get all their land ploughed and formed into beds, ready for the thousands of plants to get their roots into. We at Mur Crusto have reorganised the outside veg beds (and rotations) so as to make the production as easy to manage as possible. This meant grassing down a former plot and enlarging the existing ones. It seems to be working well.
Polytunnel:
New crops went in after the usual ground preparation
and many more will be going in over the next few weeks. The ducks are
allowed in at this time because they usefully 'harvest' any slugs that
turn up. There are always some, despite eternal anti-slug vigilance. I
sweated for most of a day applying an anti-condensation liquid with a
paint roller to the entire inside of the polythene cover. This, we hope,
will stop the dripping from the roof in the wintertime. The drips encourage
various types of disease, particularly on the lettuces which need their
foliage to stay dry if disease is to be kept at bay.
Inspection: In early
August, both farms had their annual Soil Association inspection to ensure
that we keep on the straight and narrow. We do, of course, and both farms
passed the inspection without any trouble.
Better than ever: One of the decisions we took when discussing Llangybi Organics' future was how to better arrange our production from each farm. The result was that Jill is now producing most of the summer and autumn crops and Bry and Val are specialising more in later autumn, winter and early spring veg, most of which will come from the polytunnel. So far, this is working well and Jill has produced a superabundance of everything. I feel justified in saying that the veg which goes in the boxes and bags each week is superb. It looks better than ever before and tastes good too. We are well pleased with our products and our customers echo that pleasure with many favourable comments. Chiefly, they're delighted to have a locally-grown source of high quality really fresh veg with absolutely no food miles involved in their production. In fact, we use very little machinery and so can justly claim to be doing our bit to cut down pollution and slow climate change.
Bry Lynas, 1 September 2006
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For earlier newsletters, visit the Archive.
Customers'
newsletters
September 06
January
06
November
04
Tachwedd
04
July 04
February 04
November 03
Tachwedd
03