Nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda!
Hello and welcome to the Christmas and New Year edition of the Hooma Hu newsletter. First off we really need to give a big and heartfelt “Diolch yn fawr” to each and every one of you for choosing to cook and eat the vegetables that we have grown this Christmas. It really does make us feel all warm inside to know that so many of you will be gathering around with your friends and family and feasting on the veg that we have lovingly grown all year just for this moment. Thank you for choosing us and thank you for choosing to support local naturally grown veg production, it really does make a difference.
The Parsnips, Sprouts, Leeks, Salad Leaves and Carrots you find in your veg box this week have all been grown by us in the field here at Hooma Hu. Oh and to the one person who ordered Spinach, yes, we grew that too! Its been quite a journey they have been on to get to your plate this Christmas. The first ones to start off the journey were the Leeks, sown right at the beginning of March. Almost 10 months ago these Leeks started off as tiny little round Leek seeds, they got just the right temperature in the soil and then a small amount of water and, pop, the tiny single leaf of the leek plant uncurled out of the seed and reached up hoping for sunlight. The rest of the outdoor veg was not too far behind and since then they have been sitting in the soil in our field, gathering nutrients for you and growing in to the unique vegetable plants that they have become. They have been through the year in the field with us all summer. Stressed in the drought of June, just like us, Tired of the endless rain in August, just like us, and then finally picked last week for your Christmas dinner, not quite like us.. We hope when you sit down to eat you will appreciate the journey they have been on through their taste and feel good knowing they are grown only a few miles away.
We have been busy as always here at Hooma Hu this December. As well as tending to the winter vegetables we have been putting the final touches on to our new polytunnel frames. They are now all ready to be “skinned” and we just need to wait for the perfect day weather wise for this to happen. We need a dry sunny day with little breeze so that the massive pieces of polytunnel cover don’t go sailing away in the wind before we can nail them to the sides of the tunnel! The next step is to install an irrigation system within the tunnels as of course the rain will not get through the cover. The water will be coming right up from our own borehole we have in the field (100 metres deep!) and fed on to the soil in the tunnels via a system called “drip irrigation”. This is an irrigation system that uses tubes with lots of tiny holes in to gently water just the soil rather than the plants leaves. This helps reduce rot and mould on the leaves of the plants. Especially important with crops like Tomatoes, it really helps reduce fungal diseases like blight from happening too early. When the covers are on and the irrigation is in place we plan on testing our tunnels out with a first crop of New Potatoes, we will let you know how we get on.
With January just around the corner it is as much a turning point in the vegetable year as it is in our day to day lives. New plans, new begginings. We sit down around the very beginning of January and write up the big plan for the year; what will be grown, where it will grow, when it will start. Its important to learn from the mistakes of last year and tweak the plan accordingly, it’s also important to try things we have never tried before, new vegetables, new varieties, new companion planting possibilities. It’s a time of planning and we try and get it all done early on as it really does happen so fast from January onwards, for example the first Tomatoe seeds will be getting sown in about 3 weeks time already.
The sunlight is now slowly starting to reclaim small amounts of day length each day but not really enough to make much difference to the crops. The leaf crops we have in our tunnel; Spinach, Rainbow Chard, Salad Leaves, Spring Cabbage are now sort of frozen in time so to speak. The leaves that are there we can pick but we won’t expect them to grow back anytime soon. Luckily we have a good amount to keep us going. The Broad Beans we have in our polytunnel are looking good too, only about 6 inches high at the moment but poised ready to shoot up when the daylight and warmth allow. Many of the other vegetable beds now lie dormant, covered with a layer of fresh compost for the winter to protect the soil from rain erosion and also to suppress the weeds whilst adding nutrients. We will come back to these beds in spring when it is time to plant the new crops out.
It does feel quite symbolic, the veg growing at this time of year. The old crops are coming out, being enjoyed by us for the journey they went through as we turn our actions and thoughts to the seeds of a new season and of what it might hold. Thank you for being the last link in these vegetables journey, we hope they give you a nutritious and delicious boost to propel yourselves in to the new year on all of your own wonderful journeys.
Thanks for reading our newsletter, we hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting. We wish all of you a great Christmas and a Happy New Year full of positive energy. 😊
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