Whether you’re tossing together a fresh salad, roasting a tray of seasonal veg or just munching on a carrot, July’s boxes are bursting with colour and goodness. The team is working tirelessly to keep up with the fast pace of the season and it’s wonderful to see once empty beds now heaving with promise. The farm’s sunshine bounty is almost here but, despite our energy, there’s no rushing it. Our crops enjoy the lazy days of summer but for us, a second for suncream and then it’s all hands on deck!
Notes from the field
Our first three beds of tomatoes are showing real promise and we’ve another to plant this month, hopefully seeing us right through until the end of the summer. The outdoor cucumber bed is looking good and we’ll continue to have plenty of delicious mixed salad, French beans, spring onions and basil - a highlight of summer harvesting, with the scent on our fingertips. The celery and fennel beds are bulking up and the rapid growth of our bright yellow and rich green courgettes still catch us by surprise, even after all these years of growing them. We can’t pick them fast enough - miss a day of harvesting and we have marrows galore! Sowing successions of leafy greens is now key and then we begin to focus our time on transplanting established seedlings, particularly brassicas. It’s hard to imagine that we’ll be harvesting these in the cooler months when the sun is so wonderfully warm right now but we know we’ll be so happy to see them when they arrive! That is the true beauty of growing and cooking with seasonal, local produce; once one crop is finished, we’re excited to see a new variety to experiment with!
Farm closed for summer holiday week
We’ll be closed for a week’s summer break from Monday 28th July to Monday 4th August, with no deliveries during that week. Our last deliveries will go out on Friday 25th July, and we’ll be back up and running from Tuesday 5th August.
New products
New to our Essentials range, is champion of UK farm produce, Hodmedod’s. Their smoked quinoa is a real find; traditionally smoked over oak and beech, just open the packet and the waft of smokey grain hits you. It really is a secret weapon in a chilli and instantly livens up your grain game. Their organic blue peas are excellent in spiced dishes with a firm bite and nutty flavour and the flamingo split peas, so called because of their distinctive pink-orange hue, make a delicious dahl or hummus. The fermented fava bean paste is a spoonful of pure umami. Similar to miso, it adds real depth to any dish or dressing or stir through soup, stocks, stews or beans. Why not shop our Hodmedod range and cook up a bean umami feast!
Supplier spotlight
Fermento
This month our spotlight falls on Fermento whose stone ground heritage and spelt grain flour we now stock in our ever expanding Essentials range. We first discovered Fermento at Tablehurst farm, Forest Row, where Daniele Panzarino was building a reputation for excellent sourdough bread using biodynamic UK grain, baked in a wood-fired oven. They now have their own premises in Piltdown where Daniele mills his own grain on site in order to preserve nutrients. His team bake the most delicious pizzas, breads and pastries with an outstanding wood-fired flavour. Heritage wheat and spelt grains bring a rich, complex flavour, carrying the character of the soil and the season. Baking this way is quite different from using standard commercial flours, often requiring a gentler hand, more hydration - a deeper understanding of your dough. Daniele certainly has that; his food is so full of flavour, nutrition and provenance and he draws on his own Italian heritage, where sourdough tradition is rooted in regional practices and closely tied to local ingredients.
4 ways with our bunched beetroot
Beetroots are so happy in our soil and we’ll have them all through the summer. Earthy and sweet, they’re one of our most versatile veggies, working well raw or cooked, any which way. Pair it with a salty cheese, a tray of roasted veg, in a cake - these little purple babies work hard in our kitchens. Our '4 ways with' feature is a real mixed bag of dishes, two of which you don't even need to cook at all! Visit our recipe archive for lots of ideas to keep them fresh on your table each time they’re in your box.
July's recipe: beetroot cornbread with feta and chilli
Our recipe this month is a beetrooty take on a cornbread. Made with Fermento's spelt flour and cornmeal, this is the ideal summer brunch. Wonderful with fried eggs, a simple salad or as part of a Mexican feast. You can even slice it in to wedges and finish it off on the BBQ for a bit of charred goodness. It's great in packed lunches too and will keep in the fridge for a good few days. Try it this month and let us know what you think!
That's it for July. Happy hosing, harvesting, grating, baking, slapping on the factor 50 and generally having a great summer! We'll be back next month with lots more fresh produce, new recipes, exciting products and all the tales from one very hardworking farm. Thank you for making it all possible! Bye for now.
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