Garlic Harvest

Hello everyone, 

Glastonbury weekend has arrived. Summer is here. The two go hand in hand for me as Glastonbury celebrates the Summer Solstice. Bob and I have been to quite a few Glastonbury festivals and we always returned home with a renewed faith in humanity. The festival site becomes the biggest town in the south west with two hundred thousand people travelling and staying on the site of the festival. The site happens to be a working farm…Worthy Farm.

Farmers have a natural ability to ‘turn their hands to anything’. Obviously, Farmer Michael Eavis is an extreme example of diversification of Worthy Farm, but all farmers can ‘turn their hand’. Bob and I have a great amount of respect for the multi tasks farmers work at.

Not surprisingly all this multi tasking (I am not talking about doing more than one thing at the same time, I am talking about being able to be a shepherd, cow hand, mechanic, gardener, mathematician, tree surgeon, weatherman, bird watcher, tractor driver to name but a few abilities) has rubbed off on Bob. For a guy who managed people and projects for nearly forty years, I did not expect him, and probably neither did he, to be able to drive a tractor, attach all the implements on said tractor, design an acre of growing ground, rear pigs (don’t forget he is a vegetarian pig farmer), handle chickens, work with local trades people and establishing good working relationships with them and then use the knowledge of these tradespeople on his own farm, become more mechanical, grow fruit and vegetables on a large scale, learn about drainage, build raised beds etc., as well as doing the graft and running a farm as a business.

This is all besides the actual growing of the vegetables and fruit which is a complete ability in itself. The few years we have been farmers has meant that our knowledge has grown organically as well as we grow organic. A prime example of this is garlic. Garlic can be grown relatively easily. However, growing thousands is a huge investment and chance if it is to be successful. The land it takes is used for quite a long time…half a year. For all little attention and tending is required, it is not until the garlic is harvested that a good crop is seen. We have to rely on the ground being of good drainage, that the weather is not of constant rain and that the garlic is stored well enough to last for months. We seem to have got to grips with all the processes, particularly this year so far. As you can see from our first harvested garlic above…not bad and smelling like an Italian restaurant…in Italy. Our garlic is also from cloves from the previous years harvest. We keep some of the largest garlic and use the individual cloves for planting. We have been doing this for a number of years. Next seasons garlic we can name the garlic as Hexhamshire Organics Garlic…how absolutely brilliant is that!

Our organic garlic is on the website now.

The grandchildren are staying at the farm for this Glastonbury weekend while their parents and Uncle and Aunty stay at another farm…Worthy Farm. Little work duties will be completed these few days. However, this time spent with the grandbairns is priceless (but much more tiring than working the land!). We just hope the big children, away on the other farm, find it all Worth (Worthy Farm) It!

Our strawberries were really popular last week. We would like to be able to allow all of you, our lovely customers, to be able to enjoy them. We are limiting the strawberries to one box per person this week. We do realise that lots of people really enjoy eating them and we would like you all to be able to taste them as they really are delicious. 

Till next week, thank you for reading and for returning the boxes,

 Ann👩‍🌾