Artisan food - The on-line magazine for lovers of food in the Lake District and Cumbria - A picnic, a borehole, Sundog and carcinogenic teflon.....

Location: Blogs On the farm at Howbarrow
Posted by: Paul Hughes	9/3/2006
It's organic fortnight and Howbarrow is 10 years old. We are having an open day and Bring your own Picnic on Saturday the 16th September. Do Join us if you can. What’s Happening: The Farm shop open from 10am as usual. To entice you a 10% discount when you spend over £10. Gathering for the picnic from 12.30am. The sun will shine………. A Storyteller will entertain and enthrall us (When not efficiently managing the customer order process at Howbarrow Dominic from our office, is a storyteller). Farm shop tastings. (If you would like to sample a particular products from the farm shop, let us have your ideas for tastings and we will see what we can do). A Farm walk – discover what Howbarrow does to support sustainable organic farming and environmentally work. On the farm – Suddenly late summer seems to have arrived, our eleventh as an Organic farm, how things have changed from when we had a small table at the farm gate and sold all that we produced it. The first years felt like swimming against a very strong current as the ‘sandle wearing greenies’ as one of only 7 organic businesses in the Cumbria in 1996. How things have changed – sustainability, local, recycling, organic, energy efficient, now the words of everyday conversation ………….With 9 employees, 3 delivery vehicles a thriving box scheme and growing internet farm shop and home delivery service, farm buiding brought back to life, 8 poytunnels in production and one of now over 70 organic farms in the county. Howbarrow now described as a pioneer…….. The Borehole has been drilled to 72 metres, and water gushed out of the hole! Level settles at 22m so we have a well with 50m of water in, all the pipe work is now in and working so we now have 3 bar water pressure. All the polytunnel sprinklers now work as intended, and if you turn a tap on in the house it sprays up at you – fantastic. Sadly too late for much of our tunnel production this year which has gone to seed early or has just not really established itself through lack of water. The grape vines are however doing well and will I hope - now summer pruned - produce around 150 bunches of eating grapes later in the Autumn. For those missing our locally grown mushrooms, they are back in production later in August and will be in the first box of September. Solar/Wind project - thanks to all who emailed with ideas on grant aid for this farm project, we are currently investigating them and working with a local company (with an international reputation) called Sundog who are turning the project from our ‘vision’ into a grid connected micro generation system for the farm. Exciting stuff. If pesticides were purple – continuing the theme…. how about if the known carcinogenic chemical teflon was fluorescent orange when sprayed onto childrens clothing (used to make them stain resistant, and easy to clean). We encourage our children to wear as much organic cotton as possible. Visit www.cleanslateclothing.co.uk for organic cotton school uniforms. Finally a joke or two - Botanists have developed a vegetable that eliminates the need to brush your teeth. Bristle sprouts. What is small, red and whispers? A hoarse radish. If a carrot and a cabbage ran a race, which of them would win? The cabbage, because it is a head. Paul

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