Cute baby animal alert….and a salad of weeds

Had to open this blog entry with this little chick, learning from one of his mums how to take a dust bath in the sun….

First, we checked out the crop of squashes which are looking good! We planted these earlier in the year and it was good to check up on them and see how much growth they’d put on.

A closer look: harlequin squashes are starting to shape up

Can you tell what it is yet

Weeding them old squashes

I’ll not lie to you…. We’re getting so desperate to get rid of weeds here at CropShare we’ve resorted to eating them. Here’s Liz with fat hen (Chenopodium album), a relative of spinach, shortly before she made it into a tasty salad. It’s got a great flavour, I actually like it better than chard (sorry Paul- who’s growing a lot of chard this year). Nice one Liz!

Edible weeds- we love ’em!

View from the squash field

A great lunch outdoors, seated in luxury at the newly built CropShare high table- a.k.a. that one what Paul made out of old pallets. The table is top quality and just what our hungry CropSharers need, thanks Paul! Here’s a pic of the proud owner….

Paul’s 101 ways with pallets #1- sturdy table for CropShare alfresco lunches

And I don’t need to tell you that lunch was awesome as always!

Flowers for lunch again!

Only small plates left? No problem- this is the way to make a food tower

My dessert looks out at the lovely CropShare people enjoying lunch in the sun!

In the afternoon we got down to weeding the onions- a crop we’re very familar with from last year! They do a lot better if kept as free of weeds as possible, so we were on the case.

Taking a spin on the lay down weeder

The lay down weeder goes quite slowly over the crop, so it can be weeded accurately either by hand or with small hoes. The volunteers move at a faster pace, and get less tired than weeding with full sized hoes standing up. Also who doesn’t like having a bit of a lie-down in the sun? Win-win situation! Don’t forget the cool video Axel made the first time we had a spin! Here’s two video’s from today, showing the lay down weeder in action.