It was all Jack Frost - the cheeky little bugger!
On the night of Saturday 4th December, the mischevious Jack Frost paid an extended visit to Longfield and left us with a record low of -13°C. The previous week’s boxes had been postponed due to the snow, but with such a severe frost it was hard to imagine us pulling anything out of the bag, let alone the soil, last week either!
Our apologies to Chagfood members who have now forfeited two weeks’ vegetable shares on account of the particularly seasonal weather. Members we have caught-up with this week have however been extremely understanding and accepted that this is an example of how the “risks” must be carried along with the “rewards” of a CSA scheme. The forecast suggests that we can expect a couple of days of warmer weather in the middle of this week, before another bout of winter weather is on its way. If this is the case we will obviously do our uptmost to get your carrots, parsnips, leeks and turnips out of the ground as soon as possible. We can also confirm, weather permiting, that we will be doing a veg-box delivery on Thursday 23rd December to ensure that your Chagfood veg plays a starring role in your Christmas dinner!
In the meantime we have been occupying ourselves down on Longfield with all the jobs we’ve been too busy to get around to before now; sorting out our propagation tunnel, PT3, so its ready for springtime, contructing our compost bins out of locally sourced Chestnt, and even finally installing a wood-burner in the office – toasty!
On a sad note we have unfortunately lost all our remaining squashes to the frost. Without an insulated store room there was simply no way we could keep them from becoming frost damaged so unfortunately there are no more squashes for this season. We are however hoping to remedy the situation for next year as John has kindly offered us some storage space in the cow shed which we can insulate with straw. On the bright side – pretty much everyting else is holding up remarkably well in the arctic conditions and we are confident you will recieve a bountiful share of the harvest, as and when the soil lets go of it all!