What's Cooking Arnault?

    So what will you do if you come to volunteer with us, here at Radford Mill Farm. Well we do our very best to try and vary the work but when it all comes down to it, we have a lot of manual work in the soil (I'm trying not to say the 'W' word ...  weeding!). It's an organic farm so to produce great tasting healthy food, the weeds are a part of our life! C'est la vie :) 

    Sometimes though we change things around a bit. A snapshot of the tasks from today is as follows: planting leaks, picking gooseberries and blackcurrants (and weeding them), weeding out an invasive species (Himalayan Balsam) from our willow plantation, repairing a trailer, planning a rainwater harvesting system, doing improvements to the mill building, collecting a large number of old stone slabs and a used toilet for reuse (thanks freecycle!), more planning for our soon to be fitted new solar photo voltaic systems and of course everyone over the week, takes turns washing up and cooking. 

    Many people find it a challenge to cook for 10 or 15 people but theres always help at hand and once completed, you can enjoy a great sense of achievement, when you produce a nice meal for everyone. Don’t forget to cook something for the vegetarians though!!

    Here’s Arnault from Brittany, one of our long term WWOOFers, cooking us all pork chops, which were yummy! Arnault will also give you advice on anything to do with Cheese because everyday is cheeseday! Arnault is also a big fan of cakes and is a dab hand at making them.

    This chocolate treat graced our dinner table for nearly 2 whole minutes! You can't buy any of Arnault's cakes as we are guarding them with a high security fence but we will be selling our freshly picked, organic gooseberries and blackcurrants throughout July. You can get these at the Radford Mill Farm shop, in Picton Street in Bristol. Pop in if you're nearby and treat yourself! 

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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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