News | Canalside Community Food

Recently we’ve been asking our members what they enjoy about being a produce share member at Canalside. Here’s what some of them have to say:

My family and I have benefited immensely from Canalside over the years.  There is something hugely ‘grounding’ about being at the farm, hanging out with people around the fire pit and getting involved in the growing. It is a great antithesis to  working life on a PC. The veg is tasty and I have learnt how to cook seasonally from what is available. I notice that my teenagers have a broad knowledge of vegetables and eat them willingly!

Annie, April 2024

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Collecting our Canalside shares is a high point of the week. I love the the way the vegetables change with the seasons. Eating food that was grown right here, in Warwickshire, helps me feel connected, rooted, in the here and now. Thank you Canalside.

Rebecca, April 2024

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I cannot recommend Canalside highly enough. As a member for some time I can say it has been different things to me at different times:

– Always a consistent provider of lovely seasonal veg, grown on site, that supports local employment.
– An opportunity to escape from the daily ‘busy world’ by strolling round the land.
– A chance to get some exercise and fresh air by volunteering in the fields.
– The ability to meet pleasant people from a wide range of backgrounds.
– And, it has broadened our cooking skills as we have tried new recipes to suit the veg provided in any given week.

We feel very lucky to have Canalside on the doorstep.

Martin, April 2024

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Today, was like any other Saturday for us.  A drive over to the peaceful, lovely farm to pick up our small share.  We have done this for years now and still the magic is there for us!  It is a community that we love being part of.  The current problems of weather, harvest, rodents are just part of the cycle in our minds. Sometimes we have a huge bounty and other times less.

Please do not get discouraged by this….our community is strong and full of good intentions and I think love for the earth and each other.  Everything each of you do to contribute to this gem of a place is so valued.  So a heartfelt thanks from us.  On we go!

Liz, February 2024

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You can read more testimonials as they’re added here.

It’s been a busy January on the farm as we work to get the new season underway – our tunnel potatoes are now planted in tunnel 1 into the remnants of last year’s hotbeds spread over the bed thanks to a great couple of volunteer mornings.

At the same time a new load of muck has arrived from a local farm plus we’ve supplemented it with a load of chicken muck from Skye Orchard Eggs (the egg scheme for anyone who gets eggs from the egg shed)  to make our new hotbeds this season so we can generate some heat and sow our first seeds next week.

Despite the challenges we’ve harvested lots of lovely veg from the fields – our carrots have been great this year and we’re still trying to add as much diversity as possible to your share with things like black Spanish radish, cabbages and Jerusalem artichokes. It was great to get a share of fresh claytonia (winter salad) thanks to some serious weeding that we did on the last day before we closed for Christmas.

Meanwhile, rest assured the orchard is thoroughly wassailed (!) as we had a great turn out for our social and orchard work morning, pruning lots of the soft fruits ready for re-growth and abundance later in the year. Many thanks to everyone who came along.

Eleanor, grower

(All photos Eleanor Brown unless credited otherwise)

It’s feeling very autumnal on the farm at the moment as we’re in the thick of the main crop harvest season. The last couple of weeks have had some real ups and downs. After a great morning bringing in our squash and pumpkins to cure in the tunnels as usual, unfortunately rodents really went to town on some varieties in the space of one night. This is extremely upsetting after all the hard work to produce them and we are sorry not to provide Jack o’Lanterns this year for Halloween.

The good news is our maincrop squash – Crown Prince, the tasty blue/green one that see us through many months – thankfully went undamaged and we’ve now moved them into storage sooner than planned, so as to protect them. The other good news is our apple harvests have been great and maybe higher than ever. We’ve moved lots into storage and still have more to bring in so do come along next Wednesday morning to help bring in the remainder of the harvest – a good job for all ages.

Eleanor, grower

(All photos Eleanor Brown unless credited otherwise)

We’re happy to be harvesting the new seasons crops for the share. As plants develop slowly you will see you’re getting small amounts that will build up over time. We’ve heard a few people asking why the shares of certain things are so small at this time of year and the reason is because we only harvest according to the speed at which the plants produce. We were very happy to have tomatoes ripening as early as at the end of June, for example, and so you’ve been getting the very first taste of what the plants are capable of. They will be increasing over the months and last year we gave out the last tomatoes in November!  

Likewise with the early potato and carrot shares – they’ve been growing in tunnels 1 & 2 since February, one of our earliest sowings, which we see as a bonus before the main potato and carrot harvests happen. The shares are smaller because there is only so much room in the tunnel and we want to space out what we have coming in and allow for some bigger carrots and potatoes to grow. The tunnels are hugely valuable growing space and we maximise their usage to be growing all year round. This week for example we are planting New Zealand spinach as soon as a bed was cleared where the potatoes had been harvested. The same goes for the carrots, as some fennel and dill have now been planted as soon as space was available.

CSAs are unique in this way in that we share as fairly as is possible whatever we have growing to all our members. This time of year is one of the most complicated to work out, compared to when we have bulk harvests later in the year. Truly, I wish I had listened in maths class all those years ago because it is actually useful now!

Eleanor, on behalf of the growing team

We’re opening our gates again for our annual summer open day with Open Farm Sunday.

Come and join us at Canalside Community Food, Southam Road, CV31 1TY

Sunday 11^th June 2023, 11.30am to 3pm

• Tours start at 12 and 2pm – look round the fields and polytunnels
• Find out how our community supported agriculture scheme works and what vegetables and fruits we grow
• Bring a picnic to enjoy in our social area
• Children’s activities and play area

Buy your summer party tickets now! Click here to go straight through to online ticket sales.

Full details about the event here and on the poster below.

We’re coming into the time of year for the earliest crops and, especially where they are roots, the young tender leaves can be as much an ingredient as the root veg. This is why we include them in the weight of the share – you will take the roots with any attached leaves in the weight for your size of share and get 2 share items in one!

Here are some insights about what might be coming in the share and ideas for how to make the most of all the edible parts. As a general rule, they all work well added to/as a basis for pesto, and in hummus, as well as like other greens in soups, stir fries and smoothies.

Radish tops:
As appeared in the share this week
The slightly rough/prickly texture on the surface of the leaves is lost with cooking
Try:
Chopped and used in stir fries, soups etc, as for any other green
One of the 5 ways suggested here

Carrot tops:
Will be in the share on the first baby carrots
Try:
Carrot top pesto
Roasted baby carrot and grain salad with carrot top dressing
More ideas and recipes here

Beet tops:
Similar to chard
Come with the first baby / early season beetroots
Try:
Braised beet tops with lemon juice
A number of ideas from Oddbox

Fennel tops/fronds:
Basically dill, and always plentiful on our fennel bulbs!
Try:
One of the 10 ways suggested here including in a pesto and salads, as a herby flavouring, in juices and curries

Celery tops:
Full of flavour and a great ingredient for a variety of uses
Try:
One of the 5 ways suggested here including in soups, to flavour salt and in a pesto

Ideas from Ali
 

Spring greens are a member of the brassica (cabbage) family of vegetables and are essentially the first cabbages of the year. As such they form an essential part of the Canalside veg share during early spring – as you will have seen from having them in your veg share for the past few weeks. Their leaves don’t form hard hearts like other cabbages, instead growing as loose leaves that are plucked from the plant. This allows more leaves to grow, meaning leaves can be harvested from the same plant over a period of weeks.

As a leafy green vegetable, spring greens are rich in iron, as well as a great source of vitamins C, E and K, and calcium, potassium and fibre too! They are delicious steamed / cooked as you would cook Savoy/white cabbage, brussels sprouts etc. and served generously seasoned with salt and pepper and a dollop of butter. Don’t discard the stems – just slice them a little more thinly than the leaves. As with all brassicas, it’s best to avoid overcooking to enjoy the best flavour.

Why not try other ways of cooking them:
As the star attraction with extra nuggets of deliciousness:
– Fry pieces of bacon or pancetta until browned and then add sliced spring greens and continue cooking until tender
– Stir fry with chopped garlic cloves and fresh chilli then add a dash of soy sauce before serving

Added near the end of cooking to your favourite recipes, as an addition or in place of cabbage, spinach or chard:
– Stir fries
– Risotto
– Stews and casseroles
– Pasta dishes
– Juices

More culinary inspiration here:
BBC Good Food
Olive Magazine
BBC website food section

Ideas from Ali

It’s been very heartening in the last couple of weeks to be harvesting an abundance of fresh greens again alongside seeing our polytunnels bursting to life. There’s nothing quite like the green of new growth to lift the spirits and we’re now into our spring glut which is always a welcome addition to the root vegetables that have seen us so well through the winter.

We bring you as many greens as are possible to grow locally and seasonally during the winter, thanks to a good crop rotation and our polytunnels. We overwinter certain plants like spring greens, kale, salads, spinach, spring onions, chard and more which means they get planted in the autumn, grow slowly over winter where we harvest occasionally but as soon as there is more light and heat we can get them in the share more abundantly. As we’ve been banging on about for months, there were crops that really suffered this year – brassica greens that would normally supplement the roots all winter like oriental salads, cauliflowers, purple sprouting broccoli and cabbages were massacred in the frosts so we have been working hard to eke out what we can. I don’t think we’ve actually had one week all winter where there’s been nothing green in the share which is to be celebrated more than ever this season. We were so happy to get some caulis and cabbages to everyone despite them being on the small size, and now our later variety of PSB is finally harvestable.

And in celebrating the greens, I also want to give a shout out to the roots that have seen us through the winter so well. I’ve noticed how easy it is to bemoan our root veg as we have become so accustomed in our culture to having whatever we want whenever we want. There would have been a time when the root veg was all that was available during the winter. For the winter share and beyond we always grow potatoes, carrots, parsnips, swedes, squash, celeriac, red and golden beetroot and jerusalem artichokes alongside a steady supply of alliums, which when you list it all together it’s actually quite diverse and nutritionally rich.  

So all that being said, we hope you enjoy the last weeks of these roots, alongside the abundance of the spring glut!

Eleanor, on behalf of the growers