Artisan food - The on-line magazine for lovers of food in the Lake District and Cumbria

Location: Blogs On the farm at Howbarrow
Posted by: Paul Hughes	6/27/2006
The rain has freshened everything up, polytunnel vines now in full leaf with fruit setting, providing excellent summer shade. We have topped our thistles and dock and in the next week or so we will shear our sheep. and some pigs will arrive (so taking orders for fresh pork ready in October), We are waiting expectantly for our borehole to be drilled (but not holding our breath any more as we were assured the job would be completed by the end of May!) Composting Update Well the can-o-worms has started to come to life and one month in, the initial food waste has started to disappear. The challenge for us is that we have more waste than the worms can cope with! Luckily we have three other composting systems going here (A SLDC plastic bin for home composting, a cube made from old pallets, and a tumbler system) so all waste has its place somewhere. We also have 3 large, approx 20 cubic metres of composters that we use for weeds, grass and farm generated manure, which provide us with a rich soil conditioner for our horticulture. Having mentioned SLDC, what’s happening on the recycling front? – they now collect glass/paper and metal from the farm but all the glass, regardless of colour just gets chucked in the one skip. I understand that this condemned the glass to being ground up for road fill and never to reappear as a bottle again. Bug Hotel A Great idea - we saw this on the Cumbria Wildlife Trust Stand at the recent Holker Festival. In our orchard we have built a stack of old pallets which arrived with organic feed deliveries to the farm. In the stack we have placed a layer of old tyres filled with straw, and filled the spaces between the pallets with old egg boxes, bamboo canes, old timber floor boards and felt underlay, all designed to make habitats for minibeasts and bugs that will add to diversity on the farm and we hope attract bugs that will want to eat aphids etc. Great expectations? I have had several conversations with customers, which concern me. To set the scene ….The basic £7.50 veg box is aimed at a Single person and it gives them if combined with a basic £5 fruit box almost all they need for a ‘5 portions a day’ diet at a cost of £1.78 per day. However I know that many of our smaller boxes are purchased by families and so a family of 4 on these basic boxes is spending 45p per day per person on fruit/veg. The conversations that concern me are ones where it becomes apparent that the customer has an expectation that on 45p per day we can provide all their family needs in terms of fruit and veg for the week. Try a larger box, they offer more variety, greater quantity and get you closer to ‘5 a day. If pesticides were purple... A very interesting article in Organic Gardening Magazine. If all pesticides in use had a purple dye in them so that you could see them on food, in food, on the land in the rivers then there would be queues and riots in the streets to buy organic food and see action to reduce the amount of pesticide used in the UK. Conventional Agriculture spent nearly £200 million pounds last year on pesticides. It’s a bit like non organic chicken. If we put one hundred thousand puppies in a dark shed and made them live in their own excreta for 40 days and then killed them, we would be on the streets protesting at how inhumane it all was, but if we treat chickens in this way so that we can buy 2 chickens for £5 in the supermarkets. That’s OK……… out of sight, out of mind! Finally – what you’ve really all been waiting for - Why did the banana go to the Doctor? Because he wasn’t Peeling very well….. - Paul enquiries@howbarroworganic.co.uk www.howbarroworganic.co.uk

Comments (0)