…farming would be easy. Potatoes, lettuces, cabbages, and broad beans are all being planted in perfect conditions, into fine and warming seedbeds. The cows are enjoying an early turnout onto fresh spring grass, after a winter in warm barns, monotonously chomping their way through ten tonnes of sileage (pickled grass, like sauerkraut for cows). Even the more elderly manage the occasional buck and double rear kick in celebration, before settling down to graze.
Some grass and veg crops are looking a bit ‘pinched’. With longer days and rising temperatures, they want to grow – but the emerging leaves are small and pale, suggesting that they are hungry for nitrogen. Ideally the cool and dry east winds that we have enjoyed for the past month will soon swing to the west, bringing some warm, damp weather with them. This would help soil microbes to recycle the manure and compost we have spread – releasing soluble nutrients that plants’ roots can absorb, to boost their growth and swell their leaves.
Our two new varieties of purple sprouting broccoli are producing the best quality and highest yields we have seen for several years. This is the final flush of this true seasonal star. Order some while you can; in a couple of weeks, the crop will finish for the year. After a difficult winter, cauliflowers are also flourishing, with heavy, solid heads. They should be available until the end of April. Similarly, leeks are making their last push before running to seed. We try to harvest them before they send up their triffid-like flowering heads, borne on tough, telescoping central stalks – but if you halve yours lengthways (which helps with washing anyway) and find a stalk of more than about 10cm, remove and discard it.
Our experienced and hardy team of foragers have been picking wild garlic for the last month. With careful management, the impact on the garlic plants and the wood ecology is minimal – making wild garlic the most sustainable food we sell, and providing an income to help us manage the ancient, broad-leaved woodland where it thrives. It will be in some veg boxes, and available to add as an extra item, for another two or three weeks. Grab it while it lasts, before the emerging leaves in the tree canopy above shade it out. Wild garlic is wonderful in omelettes or light spring risottos, or can be made into a fragrant pesto to enliven pasta, sandwiches, and soups.
Our News from the Farm posts come from Riverford. They are the digital versions of the printed letters which go out to customers, every week via Riverford’s veg boxes. Guy Singh-Watson’s weekly newsletters connect people to the farm with refreshingly honest accounts of the trials and tribulations of producing organic food, and the occasional rant about farming, ethical and business issues he feels strongly about.
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