To parody that great Welsh drama, "The League of Gentlemen", local food for local people is becoming a bit of social slogan these days.

I notice with great interest that supermarkets are trying for all they are worth to show their support for Irish produce. The fact is, they are supporting it; this is making such a difference to farmers and producers up and down the country. They are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts or because they love Irish food, they are doing this because you and I the consumers are opting and asking for Irish produce over imported cheaper alternatives. This is making the difference;  people power it does work!

Back to basics, we are working away here on the farm getting everything ready for the first lovely dry spell that will soon arrive and will allow us to go out and start the serious work of ground preparation. In your own garden  now is the time to get out there and start soil preparation work.

If you have had mulch down over winter you can lift it now, and add some fertiliser (manure or chicken pellets) and start digging this in. If you are low in minerals or other nutrients (You may have noticed some plants didn't grow very well last year (yellowing of leaves or stunted growth) then you will want to add a soil conditioner such as basic slag or some other such organic mineral fertiliser). Once you have broadcast this over the surface get your spade out and give it a good digging over, this will mean the preparation of seed beds a little later on is much easier and a lot less work.

One word of caution though if the ground is very wet or sticky then it is better to wait and let it dry out, you will cause more damage than it is worth digging and trampling over wet sticky ground.

We have also put together a little 1min 30sec video of some of the work we are getting on with at the moment, you should find it helpful if you are thinking of planting anything yourself, but also interesting if you would just like to see a little more of what we do.

New products! We are now selling a selection of other healthy organic stuff in our online shop --------> click here for more info

Anyway, thats it thanks for reading and watching and thanks for supporting us.

Happy munching

Kenneth

Over the past few week we have had two new recruits join the farm, Declan (some of you may now know from the market and the video on salad harvest) a Donegal man who joined us back at the start of the month. Sean a local (so local he walks to work!)  lad joined us 2 weeks ago. We were joking the other day that the average age of the people working on the farm has nearly doubled since before Christmas. Well maybe not quite but not far off it! It then struck me that sometimes it is tough going and a lot of hard work is involved. Have a look at our parsnip harvest video below taken earlier last week to see what I mean.

            Having said that, anybody can get stuck into a bit of gardening, and as I mentioned last week, each newsletter will let you know what we are doing right now on the farm and a tip for what you could be doing this week.

            January is definitely the month for planning and now that it is coming to an end, I am a little panicky that I haven’t achieved all I set out to do. I always like to have my seeds chosen and ordered, the rotation planned and the crop plan for the year drawn up. Without careful planning the year becomes chaotic.

            So in your own garden, now you should have chosen what it is you want to grow, and the seeds you will need. The next step is to figure out what you can fit into your limited growing area. This is easily done. Firstly, you can’t grow everything so just focus on the things you like and the things that are easy to grow Salad is a yes, cauliflower is a no.  Fresh peas are great and they grow upwards and fix nitrogen plus you virtually can’t get them anywhere.  So armed with this info, make a list and put at the top the most desirable crop and at the bottom the least. Any good gardening book will give you the details on spacings required for each plant etc. So aim to have your seeds in and a plant finished by the end of the month, then we will get down to business! 

I am delighted with the way January is turning out we have had one of our busiest months ever, Thank you to all who have been ordering giving us feedback and telling your friends about us. It makes a huge difference to us.

I always find January an interesting month; I know the common feeling is oh God January such a long depressing month. But for some reason to me it really symbolises the start of the whole season, the days are getting that bit longer, the weather is generally bad, but that’s fine for January (incidentally not fine for July!). On the farm, despite the perception that it is a quiet month it is far from it. This is the month of planning and harvest.

            So if you are planning a garden what can you be doing at home. Well, over the next few weeks I will tell you exactly what we are doing and if you can replicate that then hopefully you will have some nice crops to be tucking into over the summer and autumn.

            I always start January by looking back on the year gone by. Looking at what we harvested and what was popular, this tells me what we need to improve on and what we need to grow more or less of. So armed with this information, I start planning the new seasons planting. This starts with choosing the very best varieties of seeds for our crops. This year we will be sourcing all our seeds from a company based in Dublin called Europrise (01-8438711, www.europrise.ie ) and they can also supply small quantities of organic seed to anybody, so give them a call, you will be delighted with the seed quality and you will not get many of these top varieties in the garden centre.

            To give you a specific example, we want to grow loads of broccoli this year, so we look at the first possible planting date, say the 03^rd Mar (by this I mean the time for transplanting into the field) so in order to have these plants ready we need to sow the seeds in modules in our tunnel on the 1^st week of Feb. Therefore I need to know now what variety I want to plant and have them on order.

So there is the first little gardening tip of the year, planning is everything!

I have uploaded a new video below and this gives you a good idea of what is happening in a few of our tunnels at the moment, it is only 1min 30sec so it won’t take long! It is well worth a look. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks again and all the best

Kenneth