Wishing all our customers a Happy New Year and many thanks for all your Christmas wishes, cards and presents, always much appreciated.
We’re happy to have some mild weather to start the New Year but the 10 days of sub-zero temperatures in December damaged a lot of our leafy crops. Our spinach and chard were the worst affected and these will be in very short supply for the next couple of months. Kale is frost hardy and will be in the veggie boxes more often now that we don’t have spinach and chard. The outdoor salad leaves suffered too so salad bags will be in the veggie boxes less frequently, we do have some salad in polytunnels but we harvested most of this before Christmas and it now needs time to re-grow.
Here's a lovely piece by the RSPB on what we’ve done over the last few years to help Turtle Doves https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/b/rspb-england/posts/turtle-doves-ripple-farm-kent
Winter salad. With our salad leaves in short supply now there are still plenty of options for a winter salad. This week’s veggie boxes contain a hard cabbage, which is great for coleslaw. With the exception of potatoes, all our winter veggies can be eaten raw, the secret is to cut up small, so a grater, peeler or food processor all come in useful. Then, just get inventive with the veggie combinations and dressings. I particularly like grated beetroot and finely sliced red cabbage (can also use hard green cabbage) with a handful of toasted seeds thrown in, and maybe a few dried dates cut up small, and a dressing of olive oil, salt and pepper. Finely shredded sprouts make a good salad ingredient too (try it!), as do any of our kale leaves, black kale/Cavolo Nero works particularly well.
