Field Notes: 18th - 24th March 2024
Mar 28, 2024
A pair of Boxing March hares signalling spring at the farm!
Welcome back to Field Notes. Each week we will be bringing you news from FarmED: from what’s happening in the fields and hedgerows, to updates from the farm to fork Café and the conference barn: a space where people from all walks of life meet to find out more about regenerative agriculture. Come with us on a one-of-a-kind journey as we ride the natural highs and lows of farming life.
Field Record: What's been happening on the 107 acres of Honeydale Farm?
This week marked the Spring Equinox: the arrival of spring. The word equinox comes from the Latin term for ‘equal night’: aequus (equal) and nox (night), and honours the day and night being of equal length. The overarching theme of the equinox is ‘balance’, and Pagans believed that at this time, the male sun was in harmony with the female moon.
A beautiful Yellowhammer sighted last week!
Cafe Catch-Up: What's new in the cafe?
We also have an exciting announcement…the Cafe will now be serving a mid-week meat dish on Wednesdays! Currently on the menu is locally-sourced venison from Ditchley Park Estate, and last week, this came in the form of venison burgers with homemade polenta chips, slaw and salad leaves from the kitchen garden. It went down a treat with Cafe customers and we look forward to supporting more local farms in the future.
Garden Treasures: What’s been happening down in the Kitchen Garden?
We bought in the Spring Equinox with cups of thyme tea in the newly built polytunnel and listened to the sound of geese flying overhead. Their sighting is a sure sign that spring has truly arrived.
Events Recap: What’s on at FarmED?
Last Tuesday marked an exciting date in our calendar as we hosted our first FarmED Book Club gathering! We welcomed a group of eight book-lovers to our cosy library space, and discussed Helen Rebanks’ ‘The Farmer’s Wife’ over coffee. We had a lovely group consisting of farmers, farmer’s wives, writers, mothers and grandparents, making the themes from the book very relevant and affirming for many.
In her book, Helen admits that ‘some days, I am just firefighting’, and conveys the day-to-day running of family life in a brilliantly honest and raw way. She paints ordinary domestic details with great richness and you are left with the feeling that choosing motherhood is just as important and valuable a path as any other. The book is filled with recipes collated over the course of her life, too, and many in the group commented that they were excited to try them out.
Hartpury Tech Box Away Day
Lunchtime Talk: Grow Your Own Veg
Tim also got into the nitty gritty of topics like water storage, lighting, weather management and worms. Like us, Tim grows his food to organic and permaculture principles, embodying the ethos of “Some For the Birds, Some for the Bugs and Some for Us”.
A group of 19 people attended the talk and left with the wisdom and confidence to start growing their own veg. The group were all treated to a delicious lunch in the FarmED Cafe afterwards, where they sampled the produce from our very own kitchen garden.
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