The Christmas/New Year holiday period now seems a long time away, but we hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful time – we certainly did, a whole week off and we all felt this was much needed having been very busy in the run up to Christmas. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their turkeys and vegetables and if you missed out on the former don’t forget to order early this year – the book is open with repeat orders already taken.

On a gloriously sunny morning here at Bothen Hill, it is extremely muddy, following just over 30 mm of rain in the last 48 hours. Harvesting carrots has been somewhat laborious, due to the sticky mud on both them and our wellies, but they are now awaiting washing prior to going off to Modbury Farm Shop, together with parsnips, kale and other vegetables.

It has been amazingly mild over the last couple of months and as a result we are already seeing vegetables apopearing earlier than usual. Our white sprouting broccoli is in full flower already, normally we don’t start harvesting until the end of February or early March. This is certainly a lesser known vegetable but is extremely popular with our customers, sweeter than it’s purple counterpart and slightly more stalky, it’s very tasty and must be packed with lots of vitamins.

Amazingly we have also found several spears of asparagus peeping through, just enough for a quick taste in the field. Hopefully we will have some colder weather soon so it doesn’t wake up completely for a while – whilst we do enjoy asparagus, and it is extremely popular, the thought of harvesting at this time of year is a bit much!

This week we have finally managed to complete our squash harvest.  They make a wonderful, colourful display sitting in the poly tunnel where they are curing before being collected for sale at the farm gate, in our boxes and at the farmer’s market.  We have a good selection of sizes of Uchuri Kuri (red onion squash), Delicata, Butternut and the King of All Squash, Crown Prince.  All are delicious either roasted or in soup.

We have been busy planting both calabrese and cabbage seeds which  hopefully will germinate in the poly tunnel and then be planted out at the beginning of February. We have also been planting carrots outside and covered them with our own home-made cloche tunnel which, hopefully, will enable them to withstand the worst of the winter weather and enable us to have new carrots early next season.  Soon we will be able to sew more carrots in the poly tunnel having removed the french beans which eventually stopped growing last week.  Summer is really over now!

We have now completed the pumpkin harvest. Having cut them in the field several weeks ago and left them to cure they have all now turned a magnificant deep orange and have been collected together ready to go to Modbury Farm Shop at Burton where they will be sold for Halloween. We will keep a few here in case customers call by on the off chance, but they certainly make a very colourful spectical.

We have also been busy this week harvesting squash. All the Uchuri Kuri (also known as Red Onion Squash) are now curing in the tunnel ready for sale, together with the stripey Delacata. Whilst the majority of the Butternuts have been taken off the plants, there are still a few remaining which are ripening. The Crown Princes, which must be the King of All Squash, have cropped well and they are in the field awaiting transfer to the poly tunnel next week.

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With the weather being kind we have now managed to complete our potato harvest.  We grow three varieties of main crop potato, Nicola, which are a salad potato have been avaialble for some months, these are excellent with salad and also sauted.  Rudolf are our main-stay potato this year, red and excellent for mashing, producing a very white, fluffy mash.  White potatoes are Valor which are particularly good for baking, although they also roast well too.

The potatoes can be bought by the bag, either 25kg, 12.5kg or the smaller washed bags at 2.5kg which are proving to be very popular, come along to Bridport Farmer’s Market on Saturday 10th October, we’ll have plenty available.

Chip at Bridport Farmer’s Market earlier this year

Loads of tomatoes now ripening in the tunnels, we have hugh beefsteaks, standard and lots of beautiful juicy cherry tomatoes.  We’re also growing San Marzano which are plum tomatoes, great for cooking, and especially with our freshly cured bacon for breakfast.

The tunnels have also produced a good crop of French beans this year, but they are now over and we are picking outside.  Cucumbers are still producing well, hopefully they’ll keep going whilst we have sunny weather.

We have also experimented with some melons this year, too early to say whether they will succeed or not, time will tell so watch this space.