Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Job Vacancy At Norwich FarmShare

Norwich FarmShare, our brand new Community Supported Agriculture scheme based on 2 acres at Hewett School and 5 acres in a field near Postwick, is looking for a part-time grower to join us, producing chemical free veg for 100 members and the Hewett school kitchen every week.
The role will be a supporting one and involves working with the head grower and volunteers. Experience of field scale veg production, both outdoors and in protected cropping, is ideally preferred. Drivers license essential.
The applicant will need to be flexible with their time during the week and throughout the seasons. Hours are negotiable but 3 to 4 days a week will be required from March until October dropping to 1 to 2 days a week in the winter months. £6.08 per hour (with a view to increasing this over time).
Email Laura at lauracreen@gmail.com for more details and a full job description. Application deadline – May 6th. Interviews pencilled in for 11th of May to start mid-June or as soon as possible thereafter.

Please pass this on to anyone you might think would be interested.
Laura Creen
Farm Manager

Friday, April 22, 2011

Latest news round up

Sun 17th April

Rabbits like to eat baby plants. Great for them, not so great for us! Today we 9 dug a trench a spade head deep, a spade head wide, 120m long between the polytunnel and the wooded area on the North side of the site to join it up with the existing fencing at either end. The fencing wire will be curved along the base of the trench and back-filled with soil to make it really hard for the little critters to dig under it. The fence itself will be assembled this week.


More asparagus crowns were planted and some of us even got to take a couple of left overs home. Thank you very much to all that came down in the hot hot April heat. As Laura’s boyfriend Dave would say a good Job jobbed!



Friday April 15th

Today Laura has sown Carrots, Beetroot, Turnips, Radish, Rocket and Peas! These here packets are all the seeds left to sow.

The broad beans and onions are sprouting!






Tuesday 12th April

Asparagus crowns planted today! We bought crowns that are quite advanced( in their growth, I’m not sure they could do an IQ test…) You normally can’t harvest asparagus until its 2nd or 3rd year but Laura thinks we might get a cheeky taste of our own this time next year! So when you’re tucking down into this years steamed asparagus with butter melting over it, just think about how good it will feel to have and taste fresh from our farm next year.

Asparagus if you’ve never tried it has a similar flavour to mushrooms and is good as soup, risotto, in pies or on its own as a side dish or starter.



Thurs 7th April

Greetings FarmShare campers! The plan for today was to skin (put the plastic on) our polytunnel but when we opened the package we found it to be white rather than clear nooooo!!! The company had sent us the wrong plastic! So we instead cracked out our tool belts and tape measures and complete with pencils behind ears, made a start on the door frames.



We decided to make them stable door style so they can open at the top to allow air to circulate whilst keeping the heat in out or open completely to allow anything big to be brought in or out. And any combination in between! Air flow is especially important in the summer otherwise the poly tunnel can get full of condensation and mildew can take hold of our precious plants.

Our polytunnel allows us to start crops early in the season before they are planted out to give them the best fighting chance outside and grow lots of yummy salad throughout the year by harnessing the sun's warmth.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

More fun on the farm

Saturday marked another milestone: Our First AGM. No suits and flip charts for us, we had a lovely picnic in the middle of our workday (in the middle of our field) and then discussed a few pressing matters. More to come on that from Tully soon...



We hadn't planned to have a work day, but as I sadly have to report (sob) that our poor tractor isn't very well, Laura decided we really needed to make the most of lots of lovely people coming to the farm and set them to work planting. Between us we sowed 3000 broad beans and then planted 3000 onions. By hand. It's more fun than it sounds.