A very belated Happy New Year to all of our customers
We had a relaxing break but the weather since starting back to work on January 2 has gave us a few challenges, mainly fitting in enough harvesting within the small window of time when the crops are not frozen! And getting dressed in the morning takes some time with the amount of layers needed to keep warm, although I’ve just discovered rechargeable heated insoles, wonderful to have warm feet all day long!!
Our chard in the fields has been damaged by the frosts so there will be less of that available for a while, the spinach has fared a bit better and the green curly kale is still doing well with very little weather damage.
Our beetroot crop has done well, and is now a very popular vegetable, rather than the thing in the bottom of the veggie box that got forgotten! It has lots of health benefits and there are lots of delicious ways to eat it. My January menu has included grated beetroot salad, roast beetroot, beetroot kimch as well as beetroot soup. Adding grated beetroot to a bolognese type sauce gives it great colour and flavour and doesn’t need lots of cooking time due to being grated.
And some of our swede are enourmous, but that's a good thing as they taste great and keep very well, so you don't have to eat one all at once! My favourite way to serve is to make swede mash or puree, with butter and/or olive oil, salt, plenty of pepper and often garlic too. Roast swede/swede chips are very tasty too.
Another growing season begins with the first of our seed sowing into module seed trays. We have done the first of the lettuce seeding (which has to be done every 2 – 3 weeks for successional sowing throughout the season), as well as starting on leeks and kale. We have just taken delivery of 2 pallet loads of seeding compost (peat free, of course), which should keep us going for a few months.
We have now set up Instagram for the farm with the intention of sharing more pictures from the farm this year (and avoiding twitter). https://www.instagram.com/ripplefarmorganics/
