Carrots and parsnips on Sunday and planted leeks and squash yesterday!

We have had a challenging week trying to make progress with sowing, planting and weeding in the field while dodging the showers.  Once again our light quick drying soil has given us a fighting chance whereas a heavier soil would have left us sitting in the kitchen.  I was able to drill a couple of acres of carrots and parsnips on Sunday and planted leeks and squash yesterday before the deluge today.  We cut lettuce and spinach in what seemed like a monsoon this morning into bags, which were filling with water as we worked.  It’s impossible to keep lettuce clean in these conditions so please forgive the extra soil.  The carrots that we are lifting are under cover so that’s a relatively pleasant inside job accompanied by the noise of the rain, hammering on the drum skin of the polytunnel.

It’s good to be slowly coming out of the ‘hungry gap’ period.  As vegetable growers it’s difficult when the fields are bare during May. We clearly have to rely more on bought-in produce in that period and have less control with regard to price and quality.  So it’s a real relief when it comes to an end!

You may remember that I wrote about our new marketing strategy.  New is probably the wrong word because it implies that we had an old one.  I mentioned that one of the things we are doing is developing a new website.  This is progressing well towards a ‘launch’ in September, which I will tell you more about as the time approaches.  We would like it to become something, which you will find useful and interesting.  I don’t think that many of you use our current site so we are hoping that this will change after the launch.

Farm walk

Please accept my apologies but I have decided to postpone the farm walk planned for 7 June and I will set a new date as soon as possible.