Easter Deliveries

Hello everyone,

As it is Easter next weekend, we will be delivering our Fresh Local Organic goodies a day earlier than usual. So that means:- 

          Thursdays deliveries will be on Wednesday 

           Fridays deliveries will be on Thursday 

Bob, the Crew and I hope you all enjoy the extended weekend. The weather is set to be dry, sunny and about fourteen degrees.  

The little chicks in this week’s photo do not belong to the farm. They were hatched in the daughter’s classroom as part of her class studies. Her children (aged four to five) were mega excited. Apparently, she takes them from the incubator and allows them on the ‘special rug’ to have a little play while the children watch on. The children seem to be more excited about the lack of toilet training…the chicks poo everywhere. Such fun!  

Our chickens are a little bigger but still lack the toilet training! They enjoy the freedom of our chicken runs and thank goodness we have the runs. Avian Bird Flu is still causing issues with many areas in the South of England and the Cheshire areas having restrictions placed on farms just this last week. 

Chickens throughout the country still need to be housed with strict bio security in place. These restrictions have been in place for over four months. This means that, as of the end of March, eggs may not be classed as ‘Free Range’ unless the hens are free to ‘range’. It would seem that there is a limited number of eggs, sold in shops, which can come under this class. However, our eggs can still be classed as Free Range AND Organic. The expense and time taken to erect our runs has definitely been worth it. 

We moved our hens from one pen to another of our three pens, two weeks ago. The pen the girls moved from was sown with a herb and grass seed. The seeds are now growing and a green hew is covering the ground. A few more weeks and we will move the girls once again. It takes them no time to consume grass, so, we are hoping the herbs will ensure that the greenery growing lasts a little longer. Our girls also consume a mighty amount of the green leaves we remove from our vegetables we harvest. For instance, the cauliflowers have a huge number of enormous leaves. These leaves are fed to the chickens (as well as the pigs). #nothinggoestowaste  

Greenery which isn’t fed to the animals, for instance any onion or leek leaves, goes into the compost. Neither pigs or chickens seem to like the flavour of onions or leeks. Speaking of which…we are still harvesting leeks from the overwintering crop. The thousands of onions we have sown and transplanted are coming along very nicely and it will not be long before we will be able to harvest some onions as Salad Onions. They proved very popular last year and we can’t wait to be harvesting our onions for salads. 

In the Pond Field, the shallots planted out over the winter are now showing signs of growth. The garlic shoots are now at least a foot in height. All we need is some good, warm, sunny days and the shoots will zoom upwards. 

Plenty of lettuces and mesclun leaves are growing in the tunnels. We have never been able to keep up with demand for our salads. More varieties have been sown with twice the amount of space being used to transplant this crop into. Fingers crossed we will have a constant supply of mesclun and lettuce to offer you our lovely customers.

We have an abundance of other crops to be planting out into the tunnels and the outside growing area of the Pond Field. The crops we do have growing need lots of TLC. So, that is what I am heading out to do now…planting and caring. 

Till next week, order you boxes asap and you take care,

Ann👩‍🌾