The latest from Jock, down on the farm

17 AUGUST 2010
It's raining today so I'm taking the opportunity to update the website with details of our new delivery area which now takes in Elgin and Lossiemouth.  We can now say the area extends from Evanton to Elgin which is nicely alliterative for putting on the flyers!  Our van can cover the greatest part of the population of the Highlands within the hour from our farm here at Auldearn. This is probably the limit of our delivery area though, if we go any further afield it will become uneconomic in fuel, besides which, there must be a limit to what can be termed 'local'. The definition is open to debate but I think within a 30 mile radius of the farm (as the crow flies) seems reasonable. 

30 JULY
The polytunnel we erected last summer coped well with the weight of the winter snows but a strong north wind in the Spring ripped the cover in two. This was inconvenient to say the least as we needed it for propogating the young veg plants. To cut the risk of this happening again I decided to re-site the tunnel in a more sheltered position nearer to the steading.  This was not a big a job as you might think as this type of tunnel is designed to be moveable, having auger type flights on the tunnel legs which screw into the ground.  It's much handier for watering in its new position, right next to the pump controls for the irrigation system. 

11 JULY
This is the best time of the year for me, seeing all the different crops coming on strongly is very satisfying and as I walk around I get to eat as many strawberries and raspberies as I want!  

It's also the time when my earlier mistakes show up, such as the trial plot of chicory I sowed as seed in the open field. It took so long to germinate in the dry ground it is now almost completely overrun with weeds. I've not grown this crop before and I have to decide now if it's worth hand weeding it or not.  It's such a costly and time consuming operation we'll maybe do half and write off the rest. 

14 JUNE
After a cold start most of the veg plants are now doing well.  The large courgettes and squashes which we sowed as seeds in module trays were planted out by hand in the open field on friday.  Brassicas such as cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli are in smaller modules and can be planted by machine. 

Our Italian made Checchi & Maggli planting machine does two rows at a time but still needs to be fed by human hands.  It is a much quicker operation and it takes the 'back breaking' element out of the job for the operators but it's not so much fun for the tractor driver, which is usually me. 

It's difficult to concentrate on keeping the rig in a straight line when it takes about 15 minutes to cover 100 metres and any small wavering of the steering wheel seems to result in exagerrated swerves in the rows of plants left behind.  Of course, the evidence of any such lapses is there for the life of the crop and makes the unfortunate driver the subject of much merriment over the season.

MAY
The organic wheat turned out to be not very profitable last year. The downturn in the economy has meant that consumers are not prepared to pay the premium for organic chicken and pork so the price of wheat which makes up most of their feed, fell dramatically.  

So instead of a cereal crop this year, Derek of Peter Smart Contracting came and sowed out a large area with a grass and clover mixture.  This will be down for two years as fertility building break in the rotation.  The nodules on the roots of red clover fix nitrogen in the soil naturally - to my mind a much better way of getting it there than having to buy-in expensive oil based fertilisers.

17 APRIL 
The over-wintered organic leeks are one crop that has benefited from the unseasonably cool spring. Usually by this time they are sending up a shoot from the middle which makes them uneatable but this year they are holding up well. There are too many for our own boxes and we need to get the ground cleared for the next crops so I have been lifting half a tonne a week for other box schemes. The job has been made much simpler by the use of a tractor drawn under-cutter which Ewan, the blacksmith at Lethen recently constructed to our joint design. It works a treat and instead of the usual hauling to release the roots from the ground it is now simply a matter of picking them up. As there are very few organic leeks left in the country the price is good too which makes the job almost enjoyable!

The ground is still too cold for sowing many of the seeds outdoors, we do have peas and beans just about to come through but the early tatties which I somewhat hopefully planted two weeks ago are not doing anything at all. I must be more patient with the main-crop. Surely, the ground will warm up soon….

6 MAR
This is certainly the hardest winter I have experienced at Broombank but hopefully spring is coming now and I'm looking forward to getting some seeds in the ground soon.  We have Duke of York potatoes patiently chitting in the shed ready to be planted as soon as the ground has warmed up and the risk of hard frosts is past.

The A96 has taken an awful battering from the frost and contractors have been out planing the tar off long sections between here and Brodie prior to re-laying the surface. The contractor is keen to get rid of the old stuff nearby so we have been buying lorry loads of the planings at £100 a time to repair the farmyard. 

13 FEB
Due to the risk of exposing our own potatoes to possible frost damage during the hard weather in January we were using Kerr's Pinks and Roosters from near neighbours who have better storage facilities.  But now that the weather is improving we've started using our own Maris Piper potatoes again.  They're not very beautiful but they're very tasty - and they are our own!  

When the snow was covering the ground the pigeons got so hungry they even devoured the leaves of our leeks - which is why we're having to trim the tops so severely.

 27 DEC
The farm has been covered in snow since about a week before Christmas and there seems to be no sign of it shifting yet.  It does look lovely but it brings a few problems. Our purple sprouting broccoli proved a great attraction to the Nairnshire pigeon population, the plants are a couple of feet high and were about the only edible thing sticking up through the snow.  Eric now has a dozen pigeon breasts in his freezer and the broccoli is safely covered in netting.

It's difficult to tell by looking at the potatoes if they have been affected by the frost, some I took into the house were dark inside when we cut them open and so we'll have to dump a lot of them. I hope none like that have got into the boxes but if you have experienced problems with them, please let me know and we will replace them. 

Although we do have some stock of veg in store we'll have to get out in the fields to harvest some more before New Year.  We've plenty cabbages, carrots, swedes parsnips lifted already but the leeks are as slippery as eels, a coating of ice on the shanks makes them difficult to get a hold of when pulling them out of the frozen ground and the result is often a stripped plant and a cricked back.  We'll see tomorrow if we can persuade enough of them to come out out of the ground for the boxes later in the week.  If not, we'll have to resort to bring some stuff up from the south.

20 NOV
It's certainly been wet here, making expeditions into the fields a muddy adventure but it's not half as wet as it is down south.  I've been noticing that the TV weather all week has been showing rainstorms creeping over most of the country but they usually stop just short of us in 'sunny' Nairn.  If we had the amount of rain other farmers in the country are suffering I don't know how we could operate.  As it is, tracks to the fields are getting churned up and we're going to have to do something about the hardstanding around the packing shed as it is getting covered in mud from the tractor wheels.

NOV 2
We were very busy last week getting all the produce ready for an increasing number of boxes as well as making sure we had enough for the monthly Saturday market outside Tesco Extra.  This had a Halloween theme with all the stall holders dressed appropriately.  

Eric was a convincing Lurch from the Adams Family, Stuart frighteningly like the bloke with long blonde hair from Rocky Horror Show and Christine some strange figure I couldn't recognise. I was rather more restrained, limiting myself to dark clothes and a modest cape.  

We did a brisk trade in pumkins but our humble neeps hardly sold at all and seem to have been totally ousted in the lantern making department by the ubuquitous pumkin. 

A lot of people asked me why on earth Tesco allows us to be there.  We are hardly likely to be competition and I always assumed it was simply for PR purposes but apparently their own sales actually increase on market days.  Evidently, we are attracting in a different type of consumer who is interested in fresh local food and who cares where it comes from.  

Whatever the reason, we are grateful to Tesco for allowing us to be there and glad of the opportunity to meet some of our customers face to face.

OCT 16
Returned last night from a short break just in time to help pack the veg boxes this morning. Can't quite make up my mind if it's a good thing that Eric and Stuart managed without me - between them they had everything organised and everything seems to have carried on smoothly in my absence!

In Italy it was great to see people buying local seasonal food from traditional shops and markets just as they have done for centuries.  Chestnuts are the thing in October and in our travels through the foothills of the Apennines we came across many old mannies picking sackloads of them.  In the hills they grind them up into flour to make pancakes and in the evenings on the streets of Bologna and Modena there was the enticing aroma of roasting chestnuts. 

OCT 4
It was good to meet some more of our customers at the third outing of the Highland Food Market on Saturday 26th September at the Tesco Extra car park, Inverness Retail Park.  It was a tremendous boost to discover that this time we were allowed to move from our previous position at the furthest end of the car park to right next to Tesco main entrance!  We've been closely involved in getting this new market up and running and we're hoping it will become a regular event.  This seems more likely in the new location and we'll be there again, alongside about a dozen other local food producers, on the last Saturday of each month.  

SEPT 20
We were fortunate with the weather and managed to harvest the wheat on friday in ideal conditions.  The grain is safely in store at the neighbouring farm of Penick and the farmer Neil Campbell is going to dry it for us in his fancy new drier. 

We co-operate with Penick quite a bit  - on saturday Gavin came over to bale the straw which they take for bedding their cows in the winter and which we'll eventually get back as dung to add fertility to our organic land.

SEPT 15
We have a potentially valuable crop of organically certified Paragon spring wheat.  As it was spring rather than autumn sown, which is the norm up here, it's a bit later to ripen.  It was a wee bit frustrating seeing combines operating in ideal conditions on my neighbour's fields last week but ours is nearly ready to harvest now.  I hope we will still get some nice dry days as that will keep the moisture content of the grain down and will save drying charges.

The heavy rain on 3rd and 4th September caused severe splitting in our plums so we were unable to put them in the boxes, as intended. Fortunately our other crops are not so susceptible to rain damage.

We rely on our own hives of bees to pollinate many of our crops. It's been a good summer for them and they've made enough honey to see themselves through the winter.  We were surprised to get a visit from government bee inspectors on 28th August.  Apparently there is the notifiable disease, American Foul Brood, in the immediate locality and they are going round checking hives and destroying them if they are infected. Fortunately, we are in the clear, the inspector said our bees were a very healthy stock. Let's hope they stay that way.