Treddafydd Organic News Autumn 2022
Hello All,
It's been a very busy and challenging summer here on the farm, both with growing and harvesting.
Our volunteer force has disappeared following Brexit, then Covid 19, so we have been very much plodding on as best we can!
However, we are very grateful that the long hot summer has given us our best apple crop to date, lots and lots of tomatoes, beans and cucumbers, and that the strawberry crop was amazing! The apples are very sweet and intense, due to all the sunshine!
The winter storms,(remember those?), destroyed the older of our two polytunnels, the one with the peach tree, so we have been peachless this year. As soon as we can raise the funds to repair the tunnel, we will get back up to speed!
The worrying financial climate has led us to make some difficult decisions, one of which is that we will no longer be keeping hens commercially; the cost of organic feed and the fuel needed for delivery etc... has made it no longer viable. This also means that we will no longer be producing our organic curds, as we use the eggs to make these. We hope you understand.
Our bee hives are now back up to strength, and we had a good honey harvest. We managed to catch a swarm or two as well, so will be keeping an eye on these young colonies through the winter, and feeding them to supplement their foraging. We have honey on the website...have you tried it yet?
With the Autumn/Winter fast approaching, our thoughts turn towards next year and propogation around now, and compost is high on the list.
Here at Treddafydd we recycle all our vegetable waste, and green manures via the compost heap, but we do buy in organic compost for seed propogation. And it has to be peat free.
DEFRA has introduced a ban on sales of peat in England in the garden from 2024 and Wales is to follow suit. But what of the professional sector?
The Soil Association say that we really need to improve the affordability and availability of peat free alternatives ahead of a ban across the organic sector.
What are you using?
How To Make Your Own Peat Free Compost:
on how to make your own, and we couldn't have put it better ourselves!
That's all for now.....off to make another batch of our Organic Beetroot Chutney!
Sharon And Vince
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