Storm Eunice took down quite a few trees and large branches, broke a few more panes of glass in the glasshouses, blew off an already damaged polytunnel cover and left us without power on one site for 48 hours and on another on and off for a week. The leafy greens got a bit battered too but we did make sure we did all the harvesting for the farmer’s markets on the Thursday so no-one had to go out in the fields on the Friday. Martin had to go out with his chainsaw to clear a tree on the road between Wye and Ripple so he could drive the Wye Market tents into Wye and he’s now cleared most of the fallen trees in the fields. It was sad to see some of the big old hawthorns blown over at the Ripple Farm site so we’re going to try and re-plant a couple of stretches there.
We've had some hedge-laying done on this site over the winter, which is looking great, and, as there is a double row of trees/hedge here, there are still plenty of tall trees next to the laid stretches, which makes for a varied wildlife habitat.
Borscht I made a beetroot and squash soup at the weekend (also included an onion and a veggie stock cube - delicious!) and Martin was reminded of a fellow student from Wye College who was from Ukrane and her borscht recipe, which included pork sausage, potatoes, carrot, onion, garlic as well as beetroot all cut up small or grated and served with cream. Looking online it seems to be one of those traditional peasant recipes that has endless variations according to regions and what was available at the time. Anyway, we’ve included beetroot in this week’s boxes, so you can try making some and if you’ve got any lonely leftover veggies from a previous week I’m sure they’ll go well in your own version of borscht!
Wild Garlic - Martin harvested a small amount of wild garlic on Sunday, it's still small, but there should be plenty in a couple of weeks. Look out for it in the salad bags and stir fry bags too.
