Articles and reports | Canalside Community Food - Part 2

It’s that time of the year when the words “I’m just not sure what to do with it” reverberate around the collection space: the first kohlrabi share of the year. The first piece of advice is to ask a German, as our central European friends adore this bizarre vegetable; otherwise enjoy it raw, grated in a ‘slaw or cut as batons like carrot sticks, perhaps with a dip. Alternatively you can thinly slice it for a stir fry or steam together with perhaps squash or carrot. It also works well in a stew. Lexicographically, the name means ‘cabbage turnip’, and botanically, it is the swollen stem of the plant, analagous to the stem part of a head of broccoli.

On Tuesday of this week we were delighted to pick 3 new crops on the same day: the first courgette, sugar snap pea and cucumber all made their appearance. As production increases it may be a short while until you see all of these crops in your share but they are certainly on their way!

We are deep in the spring glut, that abundant period when leafy greens in particular grow faster that we can cut them. Leaves are most prolific in spring and autumn, with demand outstripping supply at other times of year! It’s an ideal time for blanching and freezing some ready for use later in the year – we’re heading towards the leaner spell in May and June when some veg in hand will be a bonus. Spinach, chard, spring greens, kale and purple sprouting broccoli are all good contenders for this.

On Thursday the growers took advantage of the sublime spring sunshine and got our 3/4 acre of potatoes planted! This is nearly a month earlier than last year, which highlights the contrast between super-sodden March 2018 and the super-sunny one this time around. We have a large surplus of a red variety called Robinta which will be available for members to take for free, though the tubers are on the small side.

In other news our onion sets have beaten Brexit: they arrived from Holland despite warnings from the suppliers of Brexit-related delays! So we are all ready for the Onion Planting Day/Members’ Social on April 6th. It’s a great activity to kick-start the growing season for kids and adults alike, with a bring and share lunch to boot!

It is with great pleasure that we announce that Canalside Community Food Limited now owns our land!

After a lengthy period of dotting i’s and crossing t’s, the solicitors have finally exchanged contracts, bringing an end to the process that began with our share offer launch and successful fundraising drive last year. This is really a beginning rather that an end, as the purchase safeguards our land in perpetuity and means it will be owned and stewarded by this community from hereon!

Take a walk around Canalside fields and you will notice something unusual for the time of year: freshly ploughed earth. Normally we plough in early spring, but this can be tricky where there is a lot of rainfall – in fact 2 out of the last 3 years we have had to postpone onion planting as it has been too wet to prepare the ground. So the exceptionally dry start to 2019 provided the perfect opportunity to try doing things a little differently, and thus the area earmarked for the earliest plantings – potatoes, onions and early brassicas – were ploughed on Wednesday morning just in time before the rain came.

Please see the link below to the Soil Association’s website for details of a report (featuring Canalside as a case study) into the impact of CSA projects such as ours. You can also download the report from there.

http://www.soilassociation.org/news/newsstory/articleid/3080

As part of the Big Lottery funded ‘Making Local Food Work’ programme reports, mapping local food webs in 6 locations in England, have been produced by CPRE – the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Kenilworth was one of the locations studied and Canalside features in a case study, with quotes from our two Kenilworth veg members.

This is the summary of the report. To download it as a PDF, copy and paste the link below to go to the CPRE website.

Kenilworth, a small, relatively prosperous market town, demonstrates a promising, yet not too extensive, food web. Recently, redevelopment of the town centre introduced the first Waitrose in Warwickshire alongside other national chain shops and food outlets. These co-exist with a variety of small, traditional outlets including a butcher, greengrocer, baker, delicatessen, farm shops and a weekly retail market, which offers some local food. Over 30 outlets are servicing public demand for locally sourced food coming from over 75 producers. Many of the independent outlets selling local food were found to help raise awareness among customers of where their food comes from and how it is produced. Food outlets provide valuable local jobs with, we estimate over 175 jobs at outlets in the study area and a further 580 at local suppliers supported by sales into the town. Local food sales in Kenilworth amount to an estimated £3.2 to £7.5 million annually.

http://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-do/farming-and-food/local-foods/update/item/1660-our-new-research-shows-the-value-of-local-food-webs

Canalside member and fellow blogger, Elizabeth, recently forwarded on the below link about the new ‘Food Safety & Modernization Act of 2009’ that was introduced in the USA in February this year. This new proposal (as it still is) seeks to set in place heavy bureaucratic hoops for small producers to jump through, leading to the very likely destruction of small-scale and truly sustainable food production systems such as farmer’s markets and CSAs. Cynics will certainly pick up on the point that the woman behind this Act, Rosa Delauro, is married to a political consultant who has worked with Monsanto in the past – need I say more?

We are not in America, so this may well not affect us now, but who’s to say this draconian proposal won’t find its way across the pond at some point…?

HR875 – The Death of Farmer’s Markets, CSAs and Local Food