Rambling #171

Well, Manic May has certainly lived up to its name! The team has been working incredibly hard over the past few weeks to keep everything moving across the farm. From planting out tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, beans, peppers, and courgettes, to settling in strawberry plants and establishing a new asparagus bed, things are beginning to take shape. It’s physical work, especially in the heat: clearing old crops, shovelling compost, preparing beds, transplanting young plants, and keeping everything well watered. But, as our newest team member Ryan has been reminding us, “this is good honest work!”.

Alongside this, I’ve also been busy on the tractor between Mill Field and Allotment Field: ridging potatoes, flailing winter and cover crops, and preparing beds for planting. The rye and vetch cover crop is a bit of a balancing act. To ensure maximum fertility for the soil, it’s best to wait for the vetch to flower before cutting it down. Meanwhile, rye grows tall very quickly and, while this produces lots of useful organic matter, it can soon get so big that it then clogs up machinery as it is turned into the soil. It’s a brilliant combination, but can quickly become a bit of a headache!

In the mornings, we have been stealing moments to harvest mange-tout peas, which I hope you’ve all had a chance to enjoy in recent weeks. British mangetout peas are one of those things you almost never see in supermarkets — not because they don’t grow well here, but because they need careful picking by hand, so the economics don’t really stack up. We’re a Real Living Wage employer so I am sure that’s true for us, but I can’t resist the temptation to grow them. At this time of year, when there isn’t loads coming out of the fields, they feel like a real treat.

And despite all this, some of the team have somehow found the time to take part in “Making and Farming in North Aston”, an exhibition of personal responses to food, farming and everyday life in the village, hosted as part of Oxfordshire ArtWeeks (photos below). It was brilliant to see all the creative responses from our team and others, and to hear such thoughtful and positive feedback. There is already talk about trying to do something again next year.