Thursday 26 April 2012

Bennison Farm Blog is GO!

Hello!

Bennison Farm Blog is go.

We've been living in Essex since Valentines day which at the time, while lugging boxes around, I thought was a bad idea now seems rather apt.

We would like to express our huge thanks to all those who have been so welcoming and enthusiastic about the plans for the CSA. Our mailing list is growing and we are having a meeting next week, Thursday 3rd of May to bring together people who are interested in taking an active role in shaping the scheme through the Steering group. The meeting will be held at  'Your Space' in Wivenhoe at 8pm, thank you to Bob Mehew and Sarah McCaskey for allowing us to use it for the meeting.
If you are interested in getting involved with the steering group or would like to join our mailing list to find out more about the project please email Meg at info@bennisonfarm.co.uk.

The land is now officially in Organic conversion with the Soil Association! Danny had a inspection with Rob Usher last week and once we have the certificate from them proving we are in conversion we can move forward plans to join the land stewardship scheme which looks to improve biodiversity on farm land.
It will take 2 years to achieve fully certified Organic status and for the first of those two years non of our veg will be able to be classed as organic, however from the second year we will be able to sell them as organic conversion.

I grew up in Essex so was aware that our rainfall in comparison to Devon where we used to live would be very much reduced. This is of course true and highlighted by the drought that has dogged the area for the last two years and may yet become the way of things to come, but it has been a real surprise to have enough rain to bog the tractor down in mud to the point we had to dig it out 2 day ago! The rain has been so heavy and constant that all our seed potatoes arrived this week but Andy a local farmer who is kindly going to turn over the first 2 acres for cultivation this year has not had a long enough dry spell to get over here to do it for us.

Our latest red letter day came today with the water connection! Which seems a little bit ironic coming straight after the last paragraph but it is a huge step forward in getting the farm up and running.

Now I have got to grips with the blog I hope to keep it updated so you can see how we are moving things along.