12th - 19th August
Field Record: What’s been happening on the 107 acres of Honeydale Farm?
Wheat harvest and farm visits
The farm is brimming with blackberries!
As we move deeper into August, apples are ripening in our heritage orchard, and our hedgerows are bursting with elderberries and blackberries. Now is the time for turning summer's abundance into preserves and jams we can store away for the winter.
This week, we made the most of the warm sunny days and harvested our wheat crop. Henry and Ian took to the combine, starting with the Crusoe wheat on Monday evening, and finishing with our heritage wheat on Tuesday afternoon. After harvesting, the wheat was sifted and is now in the grain store drying out. Soon, it will be taken to Bruern Farm and transformed into FarmED flour. You’ll be able to buy this in the Cafe to use for your own bakes, or enjoy it in the form of our ancient grain bread and cakes available from the counter!
Last week, we welcomed two work experience students to the farm - Josephine and Natalie. Josephine has just completed her first year of university, while Natalie is heading into her second year of A levels. Both have a keen interest in ecology and got stuck into everything happening on the farm. It was a joy to host them both!
On Tuesday, they helped to clean the wheat in the barn, meticulously hand-picking out bits of chaff left behind by the combine, before helping to lead a group of 20 children on a Minibeast Safari with Alex. They also picked blackberries for the kitchen team, looked after our sheep, and joined the market garden team in their beetroot harvest. We can’t wait to see where their passion for ecology takes them next!
Cafe Catchup: What’s new in the Cafe?
Breaking records and new additions
You can't miss us now!
It’s been a busy week in the Cafe, and on Friday, we broke our FarmED record for the most visitors in a single day! The counter was brimming with delicious treats, including a zesty Lemon and Blackberry Drizzle, Forest Fruits Brownies, and a Berry and Pistachio cake - all of which have been a great hit.
You might have noticed something new if you’ve visited recently - our long-awaited roadside sign at the farm entrance is finally up! We’ve had several new visitors stopping by after seeing the sign, so it’s safe to say it’s been a success so far.
Our pizzas have also been as popular as ever, with some fresh seasonal additions to the menu. The courgette, basil, and lemon pizza has been a favourite, along with the ratatouille pizza, topped with veggies, fresh from our on-site kitchen garden.
From field to table.
Garden Treasures: What’s been happening down in the kitchen garden?
Growth, harvests, and wildlife wonders
An elephant hawk-moth!
With the summer heat and recent rains, the kitchen garden plot has been bursting with life. Dan and Emma are back from their holidays and have noticed that everything seems to have doubled in height - from climbing runner beans to sprawling cosmos flowers and cucumbers. Even the weeds have joined in on the growth spurt.
Everything has turned a luscious shade of green, with cover crops thriving and not a patch of bare earth in sight. The land feels truly alive.
This year, the team has experimented with some exciting new crops, and now they’re ready to harvest. They’ve introduced huauzontle, a type of aztec broccoli, and summer purslane, a salad plant with thick, succulent leaves. We also added blackberries to our harvest list for the Cafe, and the team spent part of Monday afternoon gathering them while discussing autumn plans.
The cut flowers in the polytunnels are looking (and smelling) divine, including cosmos, delphiniums, dahlias and snapdragons. But it’s not just the plants that are thriving - wildlife is too. This week, there's been several magical encounters: a rare pink grasshopper appeared while Ethan was weeding the brassicas, a trio of baby voles nestled among the carrots, and a colony of common carder bees set up a nest near the vegetable plot. There was even an elephant hawk moth in caterpillar form spotted!
On Thursday, The Kitchen Garden People were lucky enough to have a group of eight volunteers join for a big beetroot harvest. Friday’s harvest for the veg-boxes was also a beautiful sunshine-filled day, with cucumbers, courgettes, tomatoes, salad, chard, aubergines and spring onions all ready to pick. They even figured out how to make a trumpet out of an overgrown courgette!
It’s lovely to have the team all back together and we’re excited to soak up the rest of the summer.
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