This year our farm has seen a wonderfully long summer and prolonged harvest season, it's already November and we still have leeks and onions in the ground ready for harvest! Most of our vegetable produce has now been preserved to last the winter; our apples have become delicious dehydrated snacks for our on-the-go workers, our chillies are drying strung up on the windows, our tomatoes have become passata, our plums have been turned into jam, our basil has been made into pesto and what we couldn't eat or use in our cafe has been frozen!
Due to the warmer weather we have also managed to delay lighting our wood-fuelled boiler (which provides ALL of our central heating) to the start of this month. We are now in the process of maintaining our wood supply; so some of our daily tasks now include wood splitting, stacking, and feeding the fire of which all family members are involved. This is one of many ways we strive to be as environmentally-friendly as possible, as our central heating uses no fossil fuels and wood burning is a renewable energy source and carbon-neutral!
As we are close enough to the season, we can now mention Christmas! Although we aren't rearing geese this year, our turkeys have been available to order for a month now. We rear slow growing, traditional, heritage bronze turkeys. They have been enjoying the mild weather to explore the woodland. Reared over six months our turkeys have an unequalled taste and are worlds apart from the bland factory reared turkey which most of us are used to.
We expect to sell-out by the beginning of December so if you haven't ordered one yet, go online NOW!