Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

As we move towards the middle of the calendar year our polytunnel is producing food faster than we can eat it! The onions and garlic are no problem (see 21st May) as they are drying slowly in the garage with an occasional move into the fresh air when we know it is going to be dry all day - when dry enough they will be plaited and hopefully last until spring 2015. However, we are now overrun with salad and the goats, alpacas and sheep are enjoying evening treats with the plants that have gone to seed or have gone past their best - it has got to the point where the pygmy goats wait by the end of the polytunnel when we go in, ready for any treats that might appear when we come out!
One of our favourite vegetables is almost ready to pick - the courgettes in the first photo will be the first of the season and will be harvested when they are about the size of one's finger. Lightly fried in olive oil and served with salad and new potatoes, they will make a fabulous meal. We have six courgette plants, each of which will give up to 50 courgettes - we will leave some of the courgettes to grow into marrows (a marrow is basically a large courgette) ready for making soup to freeze for the winter months - others will be picked when about 15cm long to be served with our evening meal.
The beans and peas will be ready to harvest in a few weeks' time - at the moment we are tying these to the netting to keep them upright. They are quite fragile plants and do benefit from being in the polytunnel out of the wind and heavy rain.
One of the issues with living at 300m above sea level is that our growing season is behind near neighbours who live lower down in the valley. Our friend Craig popped in yesterday to have a chat and his house is about 50m vertically down from us, and only about 1.5km as the crow flies - yet he has been eating courgettes for some time now! It is not just the height above sea level that makes a difference to vegetable growing, but also the latitude - the north-south position of a point on the Earth's surface. In the UK there is a vast difference in growing seasons - in Northern Scotland (at a higher latitude) the long summer days are quickly replaced with long winter nights, here in Cornwall (at a lower latitude) the difference is less marked and we are able to grow vegetables well into late autumn.