I wish i got more socks and gloves from Santa

As I am writhing this, I am huddled up to a radiator, trying to regain feeling in my fingers after an hour of filming the ‘messiah’ of small batch, cold pressed Apuglian olive oil; Savino Gianella.

We have been battling the elements slightly on farms this week, with trying to get some of the jobs done that otherwise would be pushed to the side. We have been building structures, putting in new water pipes and clearing fallen tress; these are jobs that are good to get out of the way when we aren’t tearing around trying to plant, harvest and protect crops across the farms. We still have a fair few harvestable crops in the ground that have overwintered, these are predominantly hard brassicas such as kale, Cavolo Nero, broccoli, cabbages and cauliflowers. That said, we have still had some frost damage to some of our leeks, broccoli and cabbage outer leaves, which we try and trim off at harvest stage. That said we have lost the rest of our broccoli crop due to the lack of condition in the florets (they have gone mushy). Theres is still plenty in the ground and the lack of rain has been helping the harvest teams by not covering everything, including the crop, in mud. How very un-english. At this time of year kale, and brassicas generally, are our saving grace as not only are they a great cover for what would otherwise be fallow land, they provide a delicious, nutritionally rich crop right through winter.

We have Jerusalem artichoke coming out from under the soil which have been slightly annoying as the mud sticks to them when the ground is frozen solid, but with perseverance and some hardcore washing we are making it work.

Fact: Our weird and wonderful frost we had on Sunday last week, know as a ‘Hoar’ frost is something that many farmers around the world will try and imitate by blasting water over the top of crops as the frost is coming in. this adds a protective layer of ice to the fruit and prevents it from cracking. Very common in vineyards.