June 2025

We are on our hands and knees picking broad beans. This tunnel is one we planted in the autumn, and it was ripped along the ridge line about half way along. So one half of the beans has grown quicker than the other, as one was more exposed to the cold than the other. Even though it is now covered, and we are stripped to shorts and t shirts in its humid heat inside, the growing pattern of the plants is plain to see. Jane works down one of the lines of beans, holding the stem gently with one hand and flicking the downward growing pods upwards to release them from the plant. Like this; four rows, 6 feet tall, two to three plants deep, we are immersed in them. I cannot see her on the other side of them, or her me. It begins to spit with rain and whilst the temperature doesn’t change, our mood instantly does- there’s a childlike joy at being warm and dry and in the middle of a rainstorm that we acknowledge to each other with grins through a gap in the dense foliage.

I love this harvest. It’s the first ‘heavy’ one of the year. Whilst we’ve been hauling in salad, chard, spinach and herbs for months, but this is the first one where we’ll crop hundreds of kilos of produce in a week and watch it disappear again. Stacks and stacks of green crates full of the soft beans in the cold store, chilling down and ready to go into boxes and shops, restaurants and cafes.

            I wish I could walk you all around the farm now. My husband describes it as looking ‘fat’- all that greenery, grass and flowers exploding in unruly hedges and edges. The plants taking root and putting on leaf in the field. The polytunnels spilling plants out of their neatly planted rows and into pathways and edges. Because of the hot spring the nettles, fat hen, docks, grasses and sorrel are all seeding already and it makes them top heavy, drooping over from the field margins as if the heat is getting to them.

            On a normal year we would do a farm tour around about now, but this year feels a bit too much like we’re still chasing our tail. As I type Torrin and Tom are covering the second to last tunnel, and there are tools and plastic and battens all over the place. There are trees and branches that still need clearing, windrows of compost to finish building. But perhaps later in the season, and definitely next year, we’ll open the fields again so you can see how we grow.

And whilst we’re on the subject of how we grow, we have our annual Soil Association inspection next week. I quite like it if I’m honest, it’s a nice opportunity to have a catch up with whats going on in the world of organics and check there aren’t areas in the business I’m neglecting!

To qualify for certification each year we have to keep a lot of details to show where every kilo of produce is bought (and grown) from, whether it is split into boxes or sold in the shop, or whether it’s moved as a whole unit via the wholesale side of things. Every plant we grow is recorded from the seed supplier, to the time it’s sown, then transplanted, then harvested, then sold.

Everyone we buy from needs to have their own certification too, and I have to hold copies of them. We spend a morning going through paperwork, auditing whichever fruit or veg item they choose, looking at planting and cropping plans, going over seed invoices, watching how we pick and process everything. And then we walk around the fields to check that everything we’ve written is correct.

That the blueberries are doing what they need to, that the sheep are in good fettle, that the veg isn’t glossy and perfect!

My parents have been certified organic for 40 years with the SA, and for the last 12 or so I’ve been doing these inspections, and whilst they are thorough and time consuming, there is something very reassuring, almost satisfying about it.

Knowing that the way we grow works, that we’re feeding people good, nutritious food, and we’re building soil and a more resilient food system at the same time makes the stressful times feel very worth it. Thank you all too for being such an important part of making it work.

Great right now: Greens and beans! Coming from us at the moment- spring onions, spinach, chard, salad, basil, broad beans, French beans, bunched beet, thyme, sage, lettuce, the first cucs and courgettes! Toms and cucs are cropping too slowly, but that’ll increase with a bang very soon!

Fruit: Soft fruit is still just excellent; the cherries are French and utterly fantastic. Green grapes are good, apricots, flat peaches, nectarines, plums! I could quite happily lock myself in the cold store and eat nothing but fruit for a month. We’re looking at Canari or honeydew melons soon too! I love summer fruit season :)

Veg: New potatoes have dropped in price which is great- and we’ve got speciality Charlotte potatoes from Awen organics, and Hispi cabbages too. Broccoli and cauliflowers are sometimes good and sometimes not so we’re not putting them on the list unless they’re great- get them whilst you can!