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thegrangehomefarm

Restoring a 19th Century model farm to regenerative land management and food production techniques - see the adventures, struggles and decisions here

19/10/2022

Home Farm on Tour!

Now many of you may not be interested in the holiday escapades of our farm manager but we can say with certainty: if you haven’t been to Italy and you like food / farming, you need to get yourself out there!

Just look at those Pocini mushrooms and the last picture is of some pasta that apparently ‘changed’ Fred it was so good!

17/10/2022

The only Lamborghini one actually needs…

Lamborghini is originally an Italian tractor manufacturer but how they came into making sports cars is quite the story.

The year is 1963 and Ferruccio Lamborghini, a successful tractor manufacturer, buys himself a Ferrari sports car. However, the expensive sports car does not satisfy him as expected, so he travels to Maranello (the home of Ferrari) to speak to Enzo Ferrari directly and offer some advice on how he could improve his cars. Enzo, instead of listening to the constructive criticism, tells Ferruccio: “The problem is you don’t know how to drive a Ferrari. Let me make cars. You stick to making Tractors.” Insulted and angry at being so rudely rejected, Ferruccio travels home and vows to make a sports car faster and better than a Ferrari. And so the Lamborghini sports car, as is more commonly known, was born.

05/10/2022

So what’s with a few holes?! Well, at Home Farm we never use any chemicals, pesticides or synthetic fertilisers which means we have a healthy, thriving and well-balanced community of critters who every so often like to have a nibble on some of our veg. Although some people see these holes as unacceptable imperfections, and if there were lots we’d agree, a few holes for us is verification that we’re farming in a way that doesn’t exclude nature from the process. If it’s good enough for them - it’s good enough for us!

Some items may on occasion however, slip through our quality control procedure, so if you’re ever unhappy with any of our produce, please do let us know as we’d be happy to exchange it or give a refund.

******er

29/09/2022

This week we’ve really felt the shift from summer to autumn and have been cracking on with some maintenance work in the garden! This bed ☝️ needed a reset as summer weeds got the better of us! Putting down a layer of cardboard and covering with compost was a much quicker approach to weeding everything individually.

At Home Farm we use the no-dig approach to market gardening, by which we try to minimise soil disturbance. This keeps carbon locked in the soil and allows the complex web of soil organisms to carry out their work of breaking down organic matter and releasing nutrients into the soil without being disrupted. The only things we ever add to the garden are compost, cardboard, wood chip or well-rotted manure. If you’d like to know more about the no-dig approach we highly recommend watching the videos of - the guru of no-dig.

13/09/2022

These lurking beauties are coming along nicely…

The Uchiki Kuri variety is a safe bet on flavour, a slice of summer sun with some autumnal nutty notes wrapped up and stored for winter. I for one am looking forward to roast and soup season with these around.

12/07/2022

Coming to a corner near you…

21/06/2022

Chard, Beets & Lettuce - now in stock 🥬

Have just discovered an absolute hum-dinger of a recipe for your next chard procurement!!

SPAGHETTI WITH CHARD, CHILLI & ANCHOVIES

300g (or more) - Chard
8+ - Anchovy fillets
3+ Garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon Chilli flakes
250g Spaghetti
As much freshly grated Parmesan as you want!

Put the spaghetti on to boil whilst you…

Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the anchovies and cook until they melt into a goo

Add chopped garlic and chilli flakes and cook for a couple of minutes

Add in just the stalks of the chard, chopped up and cook for a couple of minutes before adding in the rest of the leaf. (You may also want to add in a splash of water here for extra steaminess ☁️)

Add in the cooked pasta with a splash of its cooking water and toss it around. Grate over as much Parmesan as you fancy, some black pepper and tuck in!! Simple but a banger!!

14/06/2022

Climbing for a peak at the new roof
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The old milking parlour roof is now finished. The trusses have been wire brushed and painted with red oxide and the plan is to white wash the boarding so that the grain of the wood still shows through. Quite like the red oxide colour, think we might just leave it for now…
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31/05/2022

Many hands… and a kubota make light work!

Thanks for the help .leaf.spaces

We love our little Kubota, it gets some jobs done in a fraction of the time it would take to do things on our own. We don’t use it often but when we do it’s great!

24/05/2022

The Milking Parlour 2021…

This will be the central congregating space for the farm. Once the main area of production, we’re turning it into a productive space once more for people to appreciate, meet, eat and celebrate. We’ll be working with our local partners, putting on events to delight and amuse. Stay tuned.

19/05/2022

Earlier on in the week we moved one of our beehives. This was a local swarm caught on an apple tree next to the farm last year (many thanks ) and was happily nestled amongst the derelict farm. However, as the works have progressed, the construction has moved ever closer to the hive and we thought best to move them before aggravating and someone receiving a tail end! It was decided to move them to our farm managers garden, but there was a problem, this is only 1 mile, as the bee flies, from the farm…

The rule when moving bees is that you can only move them less than 3ft or more than 3 miles. The reasoning behind this is because bees orientate their hive around and according to local land marks. Moving a hive less than 3ft, bees are be able to get back to within 3 ft of their hive using these local features, but once finding their original location hiveless, they would be able to find their new hive location by seeing and smelling it very close by.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have to move a beehive more than 3 miles because the maximum foraging/flight distance of a bee is a bit less than 3 miles. Therefore, if the hive is moved more than 3 miles away from it’s original location, all of the familiar landmarks will have disappeared and the bees would not be able to fly to any of these and make the mistake of recognising something and returning to their original hive location, only to find it empty! When moved 3 miles, bees completely reorientate themselves to their new location and surroundings.

So, to move the bees 1 mile away from the farm, we’ve had to laboriously move them 3 miles away first, and then after 3 weeks we can move them to their intended resting spot. The life of a foraging bees is a hard one and they only live for 3 weeks, so by the time we move them back near the farm, all the bees that know the surroundings of the farm will have parted this life for the hive in sky.

And don’t forget - tomorrow is so get outside and take a moment to watch and appreciate the bees on the flowers, tirelessly collecting nectar, pollen and other useful ingredients for their colonies.

Address

The Grange Home Farm
Northington
SO249TG

Website

http://www.thegrangehomefarm.co.uk/

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