Roots News Apr 26th
Roots News – Sunday April 26th 2020
Tonight, we are writing in between preparing a feast – one we’ve been looking forward to all weekend. We’re going to start with freshly picked and poached local asparagus, a little butter, salt and pepper. Then it’s roast beef with baked onions, steamed carrots, new Cornish potatoes, lightly boiled. For dessert sticky toffee pudding, farmhouse vanilla ice-cream – we won’t be going far afterwards!
We want to make you hungry! Hungry to try some new things – take the opportunity of time to think about what you could eat, question what might be in season and available locally. Prepare together, talk about your food, plan a meal.
One of the first fresh tastes of the new growing season is delicious Worcestershire asparagus, available for just six weeks, maybe eight this year with the early start. Asparagus spears rise up from the mounded soil beds as the earth begins to warm in the late Spring and early summer. Traditionally cut from St. Georges Day (23rd April) to the Summer Solstace (June 21st), harvested daily, by hand and tucked into neat bundles or ‘rounds’ as they are known, ‘gras’ is picked sold, cooked and eaten within a day or two of rising from the soil, packing a punch in flavour and leaving a lingering reminder for those who consume it with gusto (know what we mean?!)
News from the farm this week includes the preparation of the soil for our early crop of beans. Carefully preparing it now at the same time as sowing the beans in pots means that the two will meet in about three weeks’ time when the beans are transplanted into the prepared beds and take off at a rate of knots up the bean poles, providing wonderful fresh beans by late June. Before then the broad beans will be ready – our resident flock of ladybirds are bracing themselves to gorge on the black fly that attempt to take the tasty shoots of the crop, but not on this farm! We hope to have young beans and asparagus together at the same time for tasty early summer risotto in just a few weeks.
New Tamworth piglets have arrived from our organic farming friends in Wiltshire. They have settled well but if it doesn’t rain in the next couple of days we will need to make them a wallow – a job that we all love and judging by the grunty squeals of excitement that the piglets make as they root around in the their muddy paddling pool, one that they appreciate too.
Just one more week of beautiful tulips, the end of a fantastic tulip season this year. Armfuls and bucketful’s in many colours, shapes and sizes, they have been a treat that has defined these early weeks of ‘Lockdown’. But there is much, much more to come – walking the flower garden this evening the ranunculus are trying their best to impress but better still the delphiniums are just budding up, the first signs to us of early summer.
Another busy week lies ahead. The revised ordering system is working well, thank you for taking the time to re-jig your orders. We have updated our privacy commitment on our website this week, more information is available at the end of the homepage. The good news is that we were able to help twice as many people this week as in the week before by refining the way we take orders and with the help of our brilliant volunteer delivery drivers, Simon & Jeannie in Rushwick and Andy over the rest of our rounds. We are so grateful for their support.
Last of all a message from our team to say a heartfelt thank you for the many, many kind words, messages, cards and even extremely delicious chocolate brownies that have found their way to us from you. They are very much appreciated.