🌽🍂September Updates from the Farm🌱🌞
|
Welcome to all the new members who have joined our fortnightly newsletter, we are pleased that you've found us and hope you enjoy what we do! And, to all the long-standing readers, thanks as ever. We've had a busy couple of weeks here at the farm, both on the land and in the office. We have been busy ensuring our packeting store is well stocked and new orders are fulfilled, whilst also carrying on with all the current farm tasks as the season changes. There is much to be harvested right now, and even more to be processed! This week we've begun the big squash harvest, which entails many kilograms of squash being harvested out in the field and carried up into the office, where they will rest for a few weeks to finish curing. As more harvests come in, we are in need of more space and time to process the crops that are ready. We have both a dry and a wet processing room here at Vital Seeds, with many different contraptions and implements designed to extract seed on a relatively small scale. The general process for most crops is a series of steps from harvest to packet, where the seed is threshed, winnowed, screened and dried. For some crops this is simple, for others a little more care and attention is needed. This week, the wet processing room has seen cucumbers, aubergines, peppers and tomatoes. We harvest peppers and tomatoes each week and process them as they come, whereas the cucumbers are left to cure for a few weeks and processed in one big lot. In the dry room, we've begun processing our 'Sonja' sunflowers, 'Tidepool' zinnias, 'Summer Berries' yarrow, 'Yellow' helichrysum, 'Wild Garden' lettuce and our first successful harvest of Chia seed. We were featured on Gardener's World!Last summer we had the pleasure of showing the team from BBC gardener's world around the farm. The programme went live on BBC 2 last week, and if you haven't seen it already you can watch the episode on BBC iPlayer. We've had wonderful feedback and many new followers since the programme aired, and it's been a real privilege to share more of what we do with a wider audience. Thinking about your next season of flowers?Autumn is the perfect time to sow your hardy annuals. Hardy annuals are flower varieties that are tough enough to survive winter frost, and thus get a head start on spring sown varieties. So, by sowing your hardy annuals in Autumn, they will produce earlier flowers the following spring. If you'd like to have a look at all the different varieties we grow, you can click this button and have a browse:
Happy sowing! Izzy and the Vital Seeds team P.s If you're following the tomato preserving recipe from our last newsletter, please note that the temperature should be 150°C, not 220°C. |
Vital Seeds Ltd
We are now nestled in our Sunday of summer. A moment that drifts back and forth between seasons; a time where harvests are still abundant, and minds begin to turn towards the months ahead - to preserving, reflecting, taking stock and thinking of rest. At this time of year, the land is rich with summer harvests and wild offerings, including all the crops that we have tended, and nature's own bounty of blackberries, elderberries, rosehips, sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts. With the abundance...
It's been a busy few weeks here on the farm, with everything seemingly happening at once - it is August, after all! We've been working hard to harvest all the seed crops that are time sensitive, and busily processing as much as possible to make more space for new entries. We've also now planted out all of our winter crops, and are prompted to remind you that now is your last chance to sow your second spring winter seed collections. By late august, it will be too late to sow many of these...
We've entered August, and the land celebrated with us this week as we welcomed a short burst of rain here in Devon. It lasted about five minutes, but more than one person on the farm managed a gleeful dance at the feeling of rain drops on skin. It's been long awaited, and it was certainly not enough, but it was something! Whilst we've been busily harvesting an abundance of seed crops, we've also been watching the skies for shifting weather - our soils need rain, but we can't harvest seeds...