Cafe Catch-Up: What’s new in the FarmED Cafe?
This week, the Cafe has been filled with beautiful flowers from the kitchen garden, with pink sweet peas and blue cornflowers decorating the tables. It’s feeling like summer more by the day and our picnic benches have been full of people enjoying lunch outside, soaking up the sun and admiring the view.
We also welcomed back our house band, D’Accord on Monday, who serenaded guests over a busy lunch service. The doors were flung open and the music filled the air. The band will be returning to the farm for our Summer Solstice event, which you can book tickets for
here. It’s set to be a magical evening with music, a guided meditation, a walk around the farm and a BBQ. Don’t miss out!
Garden Treasures: What’s been happening down in the kitchen garden?
This week, we’ve harvested the first of the sugar snap peas, green onions, coriander and tarragon for the FarmED kitchen. We’ve also welcomed six baby wrens who hatched in a nest inside our polytunnel, where they’re happily residing with their mum. Our polytunnels have been planted out and are now full of summer crops: aubergines, peppers, cucumbers, chiles, basil and tomatoes.
We’ve been busy weeding the caterpillar tunnels and carefully tending to the lettuce and onions in the field, making sure they have plenty of space to grow. We’ve also prepared our fertility building ley for a two-year rotation, which will soon be sown with a herbal ley mix. We’ll be using a modern seed-fiddle to scatter the seed over the plot.
One of the perks of working in the garden is nibbling on the first of our summer strawberries, which will soon be ready for harvest! If you have your own allotment or vegetable garden, you’ll know the taste of the first strawberry is a moment that’s hard to beat.
FarmED’s new intern, Henry, came down for his first day of volunteering in the kitchen garden on Thursday and spent the morning preparing the squash and sweetcorn beds in the sunshine. We also had some wonderful help from visitors from our CSA course. It’s always exciting to see attendees return, sharing their progress and dreams. This year, over a third of them have come back to visit, which has been wonderful! This week, we welcomed Fran, who now works at Asthall Manor Kitchen Garden with Tim Mitchel, and Stu, who is hoping to set up a smallholding down in Devon. They got stuck in and picked our brains for knowledge, engaging in all sorts of inspiring conversations from microbiology and entomology to global health.
