Last week we were fortunate to have at least two days when it didn’t rain so it was dry enough for the new potatoe bed to be prepared.  We then finally managed to get the potatoes out of the storage sacks and into the ground, just before the next deluge arrived!  However, they are now fleeced and hopefully, with the ground now around 8 degrees C, they will soon be growing. With Easter early this year it’s unlikely that they will be available then, but hopefully it won’t be too long afterwards.

With all the rain which we have had subsequently, nearly 4″ on Saturday alone, everything is extremely muddy and digging carrots and parsnips this week has been a real challenge. However, everything for this week is now safely harvested and we are looking forward to Bridport Farmer’s Market on Saturday, hopefully the weather will be kind.

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.

SONY DSC

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.

The asparagus season is well underway here at Bothen hill, where we grow 3.5 acres of the tasty spears. The season started in the last week of April when we began to harvest Gijnlim, our early variety; this has been followed be Ariane, Millennium and also Jersey Knight.

Being close to the sea gives the asparagus a regular coating of salt, which enhances the flavour. We harvest the asparagus daily – this year’s yields are as a result of last year’s hot and sunny summer.  To date, we have harvested well over half a ton and we hope that the crop will continue to yield well into June.  Once picked, the spears are hand graded, bunched, labelled and packed prior to being hydo-chilled ready for delivery.

Continue reading →

We are now in the throes of our busiest time of the year, with our Christmas turkeys and vegetable boxes all ordered and getting ready to be delivered across Dorset over the next few days. We will be closed between Christmas and the New Year but back to usual deliveries and opening times on January 2nd.

Our Christmas turkeys are reared as day old poults, arriving in the Summer, and allowed to grow and mature slowly over the months running up to December. Their feed is supplemented by our organic vegetable waste – we’ve found that cabbage is their favourite! – and they are allowed to roam free in the field during the day. We have a very loyal customer base who have been returning to us for years and are very proud of our reputation for producing what many customers describe as the most delicious turkey they have ever had.

On the vegetable front, winter veg is in full swing, with plenty of greens, including sprouts, sprout tops, curly kale, Red Russian kale, cavalo nero and purple sprouting to complement our usual range of root vegetables. One of the biggest challenges that we are faced with during the winter months is ensuring a continual supply of staple items such as carrots is possible; this involves planting the crop at intervals throughout the Autumn, including some sowings in our polytunnels for the latter months.

2014 has been a busy year for us, with the excitement of planting our own broadleaf native woodland and yet more asparagus, we are looking forward to watching our hard work grow! We’d like to wish all of our customers a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year – we look forward to seeing you in 2015.

Last weekend saw what signals to us the beginning of Autumn: potato harvesting. Here’s a brief explanation of how we get those potatoes from our field to your fork.

At Bothen Hill we plant our potatoes on the back of our tractor. We start planting the first early potatoes in January, with harvest starting in early May. The remainder of our potatoes are main crop varieties, with types such as Valour and Rudolph being planted in early April. These are allowed to grow all summer until they are harvested during late September or early October.

Towards the end of the summer, the tops are removed a month before harvest to allow the skins to ‘set’ which means the potatoes will store well. This is important as we aim to keep this harvest going all the way until we have new potatoes again in the Spring.

When it comes to harvesting, our potatoes are lifted using a tractor mounted harvester, which lifts the entire row, dirt and potatoes. The whole family are then involved to separate the potatoes from dirt which move along the machine on an elevator and in to half ton boxes for storage.

All of our potato varieties are suitable for all uses, but we do grow waxier salad potatoes which are particularly good sautéed once the summer season has passed.

We had a busy day at Dorset Farmer’s Market in Bridport this weekend, with a whole host of delicious veg available. The sweetcorn, which has continued to come on with the recent sunshine, was a best seller – over 100 cobs sold to happy customers!

We are fortunate that all of our produce is looking good – despite the recent lack of rain – we therefore have a whole range of vegetables which we are either harvesting now or looking to integrate into our boxes within the next couple of weeks…

Our runner beans, which we planted in one of the polytunnels, are flowering well and hopefully will provide us with a late crop of beans next month. Additionally, we are also looking towards the Autumn, having harvested a few of our earlier squash varieties. Uchiki Kuri, a round orange variety, is cropping now – having sampled it for ourselves we can confirm that it is rather tasty! The celeriac has grown well this year, and looks really good, as do the other root veg we have in our fields – swede, carrots and parsnips are all coming along well.

This year we have for the first time expanded our range to include white beetroot; they are deliciously sweet, and not as messy as their red cousins! We have found that they work well roasted in the oven and have had good feedback from our customers who have sampled them as well.