A Note from the Grower

I’ve been away on holiday. For most people this conjures up images of a hot beach and bikini.

A Note from the Grower

Hello my name is Fanni and I have been working here at Church Farm for the past 6 weeks on the Horticulture Team. I am here on university placement as I am studying Horticulture.

Culinary Crusade - Part 1

“I’ve dwelled on the all-but-forgotten ideas of people like Weston Price and Sir Albert Howard – ecological thinkers about the human food chain – because they point us down a oath that might lead the way out of the narrow, and ultimately unhelpful, confines of the nutritionism: of thinking about food strictly in terms of its chemical constituents. What we need now, it seems to me, is to create a broader, more ecological – and more cultural – view of food. So let us try.”

To mulch or not to mulch

A question: how does one reduce weeding, while naturally maintaining soil nutrients and moisture for plants and cut down on manual labour? The answer is mulch. On church farm the Horticulture team combine traditional methods and 21st century sustainable technology to create this.

Five go Lambing

Spring is in the air and lambs are starting to be born on Church Farm. It was all hands to the deck this week on livestock as we officially had the first lamb of the year born on the last Sunday of March.

Real Farm Festival - the summer festival with a heart, art and animals!

Real Farm Festival is a people-powered hands-on farming weekend. Come on down and meet the farmers, discover the secret life of vegetables, herbs, fruit, pigs, chickens, sheep and cows, and unwind in the music and food hubs back at farm camp.

Set in the gorgeous green fields and woodland of Church Farm,

From Crouch End to Church Farm

Church Farm offers weekly/fortnightly Farm Boxes to the local area and drop off points further afield. Because we are more than just a box scheme, one of the benefits of being a customer of ours is Farm Membership. This entitles you to free events at the farm and Experience Days when you get to see first hand where the food you receieve in your box comes from. One of our drop of points is at the Haberdashery Cafe in London every Thursday evening linking Transition Crouch End and Church Farm.

Our official Experience Day was held this last Saturday gone but a small number of very enthusiastic young Crouch Enders couldn't make it then so we were delighted to see them up on the farm the weekend before.

The day, lead by Richard Grimshaw, started off with a walk round the farm ending up at the pigs. The kiddies enjoyed seeing them so much that they even wanted to feed them. Then it was off to the Farm Cafe to indulge in some farm produce meals.

Sufficiently fed and watered we walked over to the rare breed Lincolnshire Red wintering pens to see a newborn calf. Then it was time for some real work. We made our way to the Kitchen Garden where all Church Farm Vegetables are grown. As its coming up to Spring, all the beds need planting for the coming year's crops. We were faced with a very long, very straight bed and 2000 broad bean plants to put out. Could we do it?

Well 2 hours later, alot of earth stained hands and clothes, alot of smiling faces, alot of dibbing, alot of compost and we had! Great teamwork by all those involved and many who left telling us they'd be back soon to see how their plants were growing. But of course they don't have to come back to see them, they should be in your boxes in May.