Home Grown & Home Reared Produce

Last season we had a local farmer come and plough and rotovate a new area of land to enable us to grow more fruit and vegetables for the kitchen. Whilst this means a lot more work, we have managed to secure the services of Melissa James to help us plant and keep the gardens, polytunnel and vegetable areas under control.

Our polytunnel is now producing spinach and some salad leaves for our menu. Whilst the vegetable patch has been devastated by the local rabbit population last season we still produced loads of courgettes, marrows, potatoes of varying varieties, broad beans in profusion plus beetroot and carrots.

Raspberries did well, following on from  the crops of rhubarb, redcurrants (galore) and blackcurrants. The orchard produced a good crop of greengages, victoria plums and opal plums along with some early apples. Pears, dessert and cooking apples have cropped fairly well considering it is only their third season, though we sadly lost a plum tree to the dry Summer.

Our team has been busy making chutneys, jams, sorbets and relishes from our home grown fruit and vegetables along with cordials from hedgerow produce. This year we again  plan to bring in a small annual flock of black welsh mountain lambs to do their work keeping our grass down.

We were grateful to several of our locals for donations of apples. We have also managed to arrange for the supply of surplus vegetables from an allotment in Brampford Speke to supplement our own.

We are always looking for more local suppliers so please contact us if you find you have surplus, quality produce.