A Note from the Grower

Hi there veg lovers, my name is Lucy and since January I’ve been working with Sam, under the watchful eye of our experienced grower Richard, to produce the glorious bunches of bright orange baby carrots that are in all the veg boxes this week! Growing early carrots is no easy feat,

and Richard assures us that ending up with such a lovely crop is something we should be proud to add to our spiritual CV’s! The first job was to build permanent raised beds in the polytunnel using 3 year old manure from the cattle wintering pens. We then had to leave the beds to dry out and warm up before raking furrows, filling them with compost, carefully sprinkling seeds down each furrow, then covering them and watering them in. For the first few weeks we had to take great care of our delicate bunny-food, covering them with fleece at night to keep warm, then uncover­ing them in the morning to warm up through the day, and keeping a constant look-out for early slugs who might be after the tasty seedlings. Despite our best efforts, some things are always prone to go wrong with veg growing, and after a few weeks it was clear that an entire bed of the carrots we’d planted weren’t sprouting and weren’t going to, because of a dodgy batch of seeds! Luckily we’d planted two varieties, so we already had some seedlings developing well, and had enough seeds, and just enough time, to replant the rest.As the weather warmed up and everything started going faster on the farm, the carrots were no excep­tion, and soon we were wondering when we’d be harvesting them. After a few more weeks of keeping them well-watered, watching out for slugs and bunnies, and thankfully avoiding carrot fly, we’re now chuffed to see glorious bunches of orange and green bursting out of every veg box and on the shelves of the farm store. Seeing the young carrots makes it feel like Summer’s come early, and tasting them is even better – they’re brilliantly sweet and crunchy. We hope you enjoy this rabbit (rare bit!) of tasty nibbling...

Lucy :)