Summer News from Fanfield Farm
We hope you are enjoying the summer and you have been able to return to some sort of normality and enjoy some of the sunshine.
The summer is the busiest time of the year for farms like us, and we underestimated just how busy we would be, therefore we must apologise for not sending out any updates over the last few months.
We thought we would take this week, with a little bit of rain settling in to update you of what we have been up to on the farm…
Organic Vegetables are now available and being supplied for East Sussex
We are now in full growing flow on the farm, whilst we are only growing on 1/5th of what is planned for the next few years we are still able to produce 30 veg boxes delivered to customers around East Sussex.
We are also supplying produce to the wonderful Yew Tree Inn, Arlington and the Berwick Inn. Plus a number of boxes for a fantastic scheme in Brighton; A Share of the Crop.
As the summer is in full swing, we are now able to provide additional veg if you are local and would like to collect from the farm. We can email lists of what we have on Mondays and Thursdays for collection through certain days of the week. If you are interested in getting fresh veg directly from the farm then please do send us an email on hello@fanfield.farm and we will include you on the list of what’s available from next week.
You can also see what’s available and order for collection here: https://fanfield.farm/available-produce/
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Fanfield Farm on BBC Countryfile
This month we were delighted to be asked to be a part of a feature on BBC One’s Countryfile. The section looked at the impact of Covid-19 on the food systems and highlighted small farms like ours could be a solution. We were delighted to be featured and appear on the show.
We were also very happy to be able to show scenes of the village, as well as the local pub on the BBC.
If you would like to see the episode you can catch it on BBC iPlayer, it’s the episode from Sunday 19th July.
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Summer Turnover and Succession Planting
This week we are working hard to keep the veg coming for everyone. We are planting out seedlings of all kinds of crops and it’s probably the last chance we can for crops before winter.
This week we have put in a massive crop of spring onions, a row of cos lettuce heads, even more salad mix, two beds of fantastically bright beetroot and soon a whole host of autumn / winter crops for the tunnels.
Succesion sowing is something we haven’t done in this volume before. When you grow in a veg patch at home you plant your seeds, grow your plants, and have what is available when it’s available.
Growing for a regular veg box scheme, as well as other outlets means we need a continuos supply of some veg and it means we have to be consistently sowing seeds regularly, monitoring whether more / less is needed and planning months ahead.
The distractions this year of storms, climate, a global pandemic and a lack of water means we haven’t been as on it with our own succession planting as we would like. But we have learnt an enormous amount, and next year we are planning crops now for triple the growing space.
We think it’s important to not share only the successes but also where we are missing out and falling down. We will be continuing to grow into Autumn but have an exciting idea to keep our customers supplied throughout Winter.
Watch this space as we work on the idea and roll it out. It may well open up more space for our waiting list for new veg box customers.
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We hope you all have a great week, thanks for reading our update if you got this far. We will keep you more updated over the following weeks as the farm settles a little.
Best wishes,
Chris & Emily