Harvest Party!
Finally the time has come to harvest our carefully grown onion crop. When we arrived at the farm, we could see all the onions we laid out on the soil two weeks ago were dried out, excellent!
Then it was up to us to remove most of the dead leaves and bag the onions into dayglow orange nets. We even had time for a few juggling tricks- thanks for the entertainment Isabel!
Our marvelous harvest was...
Onion lifting day!
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
Today was the day we lifted our sharecrop onions! It’s that time in the season where we need to stop the onions growing and dry them out in good weather to keep for over-winter storage.
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
First off, Paul topped the crop using a cutter. Removing the top of the leaves like this helps speed up the drying process.
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
Then it was up to our
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Animals at Waterland Organics Farm
I know we’re strictly only there for the onions this year, but in this blog post we’re giving you a sneaky peek at the animals we see every time we go down to Waterland to tend our onions.
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
This friendly ferret wakes up occasionally to say hello to us.
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
Where would a farmhouse be without a cat and dog? Sky the border collie gets really excited when all...
Weeding day 4: King onion!
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
Let’s open this blog post with a big photo of our well tended onions!
At the farm this time, our onions were looking bulked up and in full health. But what’s good for onions- plenty of rain and sunshine- meant the weeds weren’t far behind and needed knocking back.
This time round we learnt that red onions are not as vigorous growers as white, and we could see a heavier weed burden...
Views from the cycle ride to our farm
Every farm workday, a group of our volunteers cycle from Cambridge centre to our onion plot. Check our earlier blog post for our cycle route. Just thought I would share with you some views from our cycle ride, as its a lovely part of the day.
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Cropshare in Cambridge Newspaper
Thanks to Lizzy Dening and David Johnson for featuring us in Saturday’s paper here in Cambridge!
If you read about us and want to get in contact- why not leave a comment here, and I’ll get back to you....
Weeding day 3: success!
We had a great time at our latest meet at Waterland Organics Farm. Our onions are really putting on the pounds now, and as the days get shorter they will start to bulk up quickly. Just looking back to some of our first posts its easy to see how much our crop has grown!
From Cambridge Onion Cropshare Scheme
Alas, the weeds have also grown…thistles, charlock and persicaria (Redshank)-but we got straight onto them with our...
Visit to Oak Tree Farm
Joanne, head grower at Oak Tree Farm.
I visited Oak Tree Farm, near Ipswich, on a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) networking event. It was great to have a nosey round someone else’s place, and collect ideas for our own project. Lovely to meet everyone!
Polytunnel and green manure
Homemade cold frames keeping squash plants protected
Oak Tree has an immpressive expanse of comfrey, which is used to feed crops all over the farm
Peppers and tomatoes looking good...
Weeding Day 2: Done and Dusted
One of our youngest members helping her Dad with her very own mini-hoe!
Today at the farm we checked in with the onions. Coming along nicely- but so were the weeds!
Smartly dressed Paul shows us how its done!
Weeding team ready to go
We chatted about the life cycle of onions whilst working....
Thanks to Cambridge Sustainable City!
Just a mini post here to thank our brilliant sponsor Cambridge Sustainable City for a Project Grant!
What are we spending the money on?
We’re going to buy some posh Zynck-Lysbro (what a cool name!) hoes with the grant, to really get on top of those pesky weeds. These are especially light hoes, making work in the field alot easier.
Weeds here we come!!
Hoes at the ready!...