Another great CropShare – FoodCycle double act!
Here’s what happened when we visited FoodCycle again with CropShare vegetables….
So in October we provided a load of lovely CropShare apples to local food charity geniuses FoodCycle for their Saturday lunch. Click here to read about CropSharer Axel’s day helping cook up our apples, along with local waste supermarket food, into a healthy and tasty FoodCycle lunch.
Squashes travelling in style
This time round we took along what was seasonal and in abundance at the farm at...
CropShare Chutney hits the shelves!
CropShare volunteer Jacky supported CropShare by buying some fresh apples and onions from us- here she is with the fresh ingredients on the farm!
Apples were picked by CropShare volunteers at Farmer Paul’s orchard in Reach, see our blog post about that here. There were plenty more apples than we expected, so as well as charity donations, Jacky’s chutney was a great use for local surplus of seasonal fresh fruit.
Apple harvest
Onions were planted, weeded and...
Ways with CropShare wool
So you know about the sheep at the farm…
…well what have we been doing with the wool?
Farmer Paul shears his small flock himself, and back in May/June time he kindly gave me a load of fleeces to experiment with.
Ahem.
After beards (obviously) the next thing we tried was felting. This was easy to do – thanks to Jess for the inspiration! Here’s a good felting tutorial. It worked great, we made a wall hanging and...
Winter planting and exciting CropShare Chutney
Oh hi… we’re planting garlic!
OK I admit it! It was my bright idea in the cycle group going to this week’s CropShare to take the “scenic” route….. which turned into the REALLY MUDDY route. Sooooorry guys…..
Wasn’t that bad, right?
Bit of mud does you nowt but good! After that ordeal, and a cup of tea, we got down to planting crops for overwintering, garlic bulbs and onion sets were up first. These will both be...
A CropSharer does FoodCycle
Thanks so much to CropShare volunteer Axel for this week’s blog post about his adventures at FoodCycle!
Here’s Axel picking apples like a pro with a litter picker last week!
After last week’s great apple harvest, CropShare volunteers started distributing some of the apples amongst local charities such as Cambridge Cyrenians, Emmaus and Winter Comfort. Yesterday it was my turn to deliver some apples to the Cambridge branch of FoodCycle, something I was looking forward to immensely,...
What a lot of apples…..
And this was only half of them!
CropSharers had a change of scene this time round, and visited an orchard in Reach that Farmer Paul planted around 10 years ago. The trees were heaving with apples! Varieties included Spartan and an unidentified type of Laxton. Both very tasty eating apples!
We used all sorts of tactics to get at the crop. Of course we had a lot of fun climbing up the...
Bringing in the onions and rye
So it was finally time to bring in the onion crop again! This was one of the most memorable sessions for me last season and I have to share again Isobel’s juggling tricks…
Onions from the field were gathered onto the trailer.
Then the onions were unloaded into the polytunnel, where they will keep dry and the added heat of the tunnel will help dry them through.
These onions will be used in the farm box scheme...
Cropshare Harvest Party 2012
We threw a party to celebrate a successful season of growing together. Thanks so much Farmers Paul and Doreen for having us join you on the farm all year! Here’s what we got up to at the party…
Thanks to volunteer Axel for filming and editing this video of our Harvest Party! As you can see we had a great time!
Our video has also been featured on the community video site Video Connected, which showcases...
Much ado about scything
CropSharers had fun on the farm again scything the tall rye crop and stacking bundles of it into stooks. (Love that word! Will try to use as much as possible in everyday life this week…) Check out how we did on our first scything session here.
Andrew at Wimpole Hall Farm
This time we had more scythes on hand, Wimpole Hall Farm kindly lent us two more. Thanks so much guys! Check them out on the web here...
Bees move in to CropShare farm
As promised here is the video of Dave unloading the swarm of bees into the CropShare hive built by Farmer Paul from reclaimed wood. Enjoy!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItP5IW9vvpE...