Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

It is most definitely harvest time in the polytunnel. As mentioned previously, it's fabulous to be able to take the veg straight from the plant the day we want it but there comes a time when we need to harvest and store. There are three main reasons: one is to create room for autumn/winter planting; the second is to preserve the produce in case of frost, damp or mould; and the third is because we usually try to sell surplus veg via our local shops in order to cover the initial cost of the seeds. So this week we will be putting crates of butternut squash (first picture), cucumber (second picture) and marrow (third picture) into the car and hopefully both our village shop here in Minions and the farm shop at St Cleer will happily sell them for us. We won't be selling the potatoes though as the hope is we can store those to take us through the winter. We will also store a fair few of the other three for our own consumption. How and where to store them are crucial considerations: one year we lost all our squash that we had stored in an outside shed due to a particularly severe frost. More on this another day...