Planning for a wet Christmas
The Produce
With the boilers now off in the most of the heated greenhouses and the remains of summer produce now over; we are properly stuck into our winter brassica’s that are filling plates with bright and delicious crunch. This said we still have Sussex strawberries with us right up until Christmas.
The cold crisp morning last week had the kale, cauliflower and brocolli fields looking delicious and crunchy, but now with a lot of water on the ground, we are praising good cultivation and farming technique earlier on the year. This is low ground compaction by minimum tillage techniques (meaning for more open and free draining soil structure). We are also blessed on many of our farms by a good soil type allowing for free draining and nutrient holding soils, meaning a lot of our current crops in the ground can still retain condition pre harvest and be in good enough sted to have a reasonable shelf life.
The Plans
As we slow down with supply and start asking more from our root crop growers, we have the chance to sit down with our farmers and talk about what is going into the ground for next year! Planting plans for 2020 season see us looking at some exciting new more efficient variations of our classic salad and veg varieties. We have multiple types of radish, broccoli, tomato, garlics and berry varieties to keep us supplied with the best looking and flavoursome veg!
The Home Farm
On the farm at home, exciting time are ahead with not only the usual foraging treats to be had, but heritage breed pigs and possibilities of planting truffle habitat and kale rotations going in to work alongside habitat strips. Although it is unbelievably wet at the moment the grass is still growing so the sheep are happy and the pigs are revelling in being tucked up their Huts all cosy in the straw.
We are trying to build a sustainable circulating system of 0 waste and a transparent food chain to represent the farm to kitchen image but emphasis on seed to seed. By this I mean planting the right variety of everything to improve flavour for us but also the knock on effect on meat quality for the animals that will also be eating it.