Cider With WWOOFERS

    WWOOF or 'Willing Workers on Organic Farms', is a loose network of national organisations that facilitate placement of volunteers on organic farms. There are placements available in 99 countries around the world, with each country's WWOOF organisation, responsible for running itself, to loosely similar standards.

     At Radford Mill Farm we rely heavily on 'WWOOFers' to keep our fields and polytunnels in good order, as well as making improvements to the facilities and buildings here. The current crop of 'WWOOFers' includes one American, one Welshman, two from England and 5 from France. WWOOFERS get to improve their English and have a cheap working holiday, as well a chance to learn a little about organic farming and food production.

Left to Right : Chris, Lou, Liam, Valentine, Caio, Ben, Leah, Mikael and Ben

    Here's the current motley crew, pictured shortly before returning to work after a hearty lunch. If you fancy a little time down on the farm, in a peaceful part of the beautiful English countryside, why not get in touch with us directly or through the WWOOF organisation. In exchange for 6 hours work a day (Mon-Fri) you'll get fed and be given a bed and you can enjoy a little community living to boot. Work includes planting, weeding and harvesting, a bit of painting and woodwork, garden maintenance and all sorts of other things and we try and tailor your skills to the work that's needed. We look forward to sharing a cider with you!

richardrmf@hotmail.com

www.wwoof.org

Attack of the Giant Gooseberries

    Another crop coming on nicely at the moment are our gooseberries. We have a 30m long row so harvest 50-100kg of fruit during the season. We recently cut back the undergrowth around the plants, which was starting to stifle them but they are still cropping really well.

    The rainfall and lack of sunshine of late, have had their effect and the fruit still has a week or two before it starts to ripen properly but soon we shall start picking. We wait patiently for the ripening fruit to start changing colour.

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    Some will be sold at the farm shop in Picton St. Bristol and some will be frozen or used fresh for the staff and volunteers on the farm. Did you know that some 19th and early 20th-century cultivators produced single gooseberries that weighed over 50grammes! I think we will stick with our lil ones and I look forward to some gooseberry crumble in a few weeks time!

Creepers, Comfrey and Cheering Spuds

    A while ago we told you all about our potato growing, up in Espalier Field. http://radfordmillfarmblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/crops-are-growing-its-been-while-since.html I thought I'd let you see an update of how they are doing now.

    As you can see the field is looking really good with only medium weed growth and lovely healthy plants. There are a number of invaders and you can see we have just this morning pulled all the thistles up.

    We leave them on the field to help suppress further growth, by denying light to the soil and eventually the nutrients from these weeds as they decay, will return to the soil and be absorbed by the plants we do want to grow. Now was a good time to remove the thistles before they seed.

    Here's a comfrey plant to the right, growing in amidst the potato crop. We like comfrey as it digs very deep and brings up minerals the other plants can't get to. It's important to weed out the comfrey in the potato patch as well, because it is a "hungry feeder" meaning it consumes nitrogen in order to grow. It is not "nitrogen-fixing", meaning growing little nodules on its roots that affix nitrogen in the soil as it grows, such as beans, clover, etc. However, the leaves are full of nitrogen, and once they are cut it is a good idea to get them back into the soil, either as a mulch or to line the trench when planting potatoes, or to make a liquid feed. Here is a bit more about our friendly plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfrey . At Radford Mill farm we have a small field dedicated to growing comfrey but I'll post more info on that another day.

    Here you can see a morning glory creeper climbing up a potato plant. We shall remove these shortly, before they get too established and the spuds will no doubt all cheer us on!

    As a long term established organic farm we pride ourselves on growing natural food so we do not use pesticides to control the crops. Over the years we have enriched our soil naturally and we reap the benefits of this with strong healthy plants that crop well and taste fantastic. If you are in the area of Bristol, why not pop into our very own farm shop and try our wares.

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Solar PV Workshop

    Here at Radford Mill Farm we are very keen on renewable energy and already have 2 solar PV electricity generating systems in place. These are mounted on top of a barn roof by the main farmhouse and have a rating of 4 KW each. We will shortly be installing a third system at one of our other barns but the new one will be quite innovative.

Our current PV roof with to four KW systems installed

    The new system is slightly out of the ordinary as we are designing it to replace a piece of old barn roof so it will become the new roof, instead of mounting it above tiles or corrugated iron. It will also be set up to collect rainwater that we can use on our crops and obviously it will produce electricity too.

The barn roof we will replace with the new system

  As you can see the corrigated section of this roof is quite tired and rusty so we will be replacing this with the new solar panels. sadly the elderflower trees have to come down but they will take a second harvest of flowers from them to make cordil and wone from, when we ct them down. We also have a lot of elderflower on other parts of the farm.

    With all this in mind we thought it would be great to offer a workshop so you can come and learn all about a solar PV system and help to build this system. Here are the details:

Solar PV Installation Workshop

Date : 21^st July 2012

Location : Radford Mill Farm, Timsbury, Bath, BA2 0QF
Join us here at Radford Mill Farm for a one day, hands on, Solar Installation Workshop. You will have a chance to learn the basics of how a Solar PV system is fitted and works and you can also help with the construction of a multi use installation, that generates electricity, harvests rainwater and is designed to become the new roof of our barn.

Our new system (the third PV installation here at Radford Mill Farm) will have a capacity of 4KW and will have an adjustable mount, to maximise generation potential year round.

Workshop Structure :

0900 to 0930 : Registration and tea/coffee

0930 : An introduction to Radford Mill Farm, our philosophy and a short tour of our current PV installations
1000 : Introduction to solar PV
1030 : Safety and site risk assessment
1045 : Introduction to our design and tea/coffee
1100 : Fitting of panels to new solar roof frame
1300 : Yummy lunch using organic food with home made apple juice, produced on the farm
1400 : Completion of panel fitting, wiring in of PV panels and raising of installation into position
1645 : Discussion and Q&A with qualified installer, about electrical installation, equipment choice and feed in tariffs
1730 : Turn on of system and conclusion

How will the workshop be run?

Through a series of short talks, videos and hands on practical sessions.

Who is the workshop for?

This workshop is for people with a keen interest in solar PV, who would like to get a little hands-on experience of actually fitting an innovative system to a roof. It is not designed to teach you how to design your own system but it is a good introduction for those with limited or no photovoltaic experience, wishing to learn more. It also enables participants to gain some confidence and experience in fitting a system. At the end, you will also have a chance for a Q&A session with a qualified installer to help you choose what’s right for your own system.

What will you get out of this workshop?

-          There is no highly technical content within this workshop but you will gain a knowledge and basic understanding of the principles and practice of photovoltaic systems
-          basic understanding of health and safety issues associated with PV installation
-          a chance to help install an innovative system that may give you some ideas for the design of your own installation
-          a chance to ask a qualified installer all the questions you are unsure about, regarding fitting solar PV. This may include evaluation techniques for the suitability of your roof, how to estimate how much energy and money your PV roof could produce and choice of equipment

This workshop has been developed by the staff of Radford Mill Farm and the maximum number of participants is 12.

Workshop Cost : £50 pp, including lunch, tea and coffee. To encourage car sharing there is a free bottle of homemade apple juice for the driver and 1 passenger, for cars arriving with more than one person. Let us know by email if you’d like to be matched with someone for a lift share when booking. Radford Mill farm will provide hard hats and gloves but you must wear reinforced toe shoes or very sturdy boots (eg. hiking boots) when on site.

To make a reservation : Please contact us at richardrmf@hotmail.com or by phone on 01761 479391 or 07908 088369. Payment should be made when reserving a place and this can be by credit card over the phone or we can supply our bank transfer details. All payments are non refundable. 

How to find us : Please follow directions here : http://radfordmillfarm.com/getting-here.html