Stats: 460 hours of volunteering by 31 volunteers over 17 sessions.
4 new volunteers joined us.

Tuesday 2 January was cold and wet yet we had a full house of volunteers, keen to get on with the winter jobs. Christmas festivities over, we had a busy programme of activity from the very beginning.

We have been going as fast as we can to get our shop moved into the two shipping containers (cabins) that have been with us since 11 December. On new year’s day the farm manager was digging up the concrete outside the barn for the cables to carry electricity to the cabins. On 2nd January we were laying the cables whilst Henry (a local builder and volunteer) didn’t have any work so came and spent all day designing and fitting the shelves for the new shop using wood reclaimed from pallets. Over the next few weekends he also built our beautiful veg display shelves.

Out on the land we moved on from Christmas, shredding Christmas trees returned by customers and taking down our extensive collection of Christmas lights. The farm was bare again, but still producing leeks, watercress, Jerusalem artichokes and some salad greens for the shop. The ducks loved getting out and about and always seemed to find rewards for their persistent foraging.

We sowed onions and planted out some elephant garlic we had been given.

We also sliced the last green luobo winter radish, and kept the top to grow to flower and seeds:

Our winter maintenance jobs were underway – harvesting compost from last year’s hotboxes in the polytunnel and beginning the cycle again, filling them with compostable materials. In the compost yard we did the next turn on various batches of compost and began a serious refurbishment of the compost bays. This was possible because we had been given a quantity of large pallets saved by our neighbour from a hotel refurbishment in town. We also made a new culvert below the blackcurrant patch, as the surface water in that area was becoming a problem.

We began pruning currants and gooseberries and our apples and pears. This was early for us – it’s good to be organised.

Our water supply comes from a spring which has started giving out a lot of fine sand, especially after heavy rain. We have added to our maintenance schedule the clearing of the spring box and irrigation lines of sand.

In a new job for us, we started cleaning bricks from the old shed on the farmhouse that had blown down in the autumn. We hope to sell them to a reclaim business.

On rainy days we spent a lot of time stapling 10% off vouchers on shop leaflets, ready to encourage new customers for Jan, Feb and March. These were delivered by friends and volunteers, including the very enthusiastic guys from Good Gym:

Mid-month it was very cold at -5C in the barn on 18th January. Yet in this time our duck and chicken eggs were fertile and the first batch went off with Cari, our volunteer animal lead, for incubation.

In the background the farm manager was busy with budgeting and funding applications, taking time out from practical work. To facilitate this Liz took on an extra day of leading the volunteers and Eddie took Tuesday afternoons in the shop.