December 2025

Turkeys:

Plucking day is hard work but also a social event when the farm team are joined by volunteers from the community, some of whom pluck in exchange for their turkey. We eat lunch together and are also sustained with mince pies. We sell our turkeys locally, in Bristol and all over the country. We have several regular customers in London for example. We have a few turkeys left to buy along with lamb, hogget and mutton. Please contact us if you are interested. 

Farm Shop:

The Farm Shop was a key contributor to the Picton St Christmas market, proving food and selling a range of consumables and other gifts. They were very busy this year and their window display attracted much attention. A lot of work is going into updating the shop so go check it out to see all the changes!

Fruit & Veg:

December was still a busy month for us preparing all of the order for Christmas. Our wholesale customers need to stock up for the period and the veg box sales are always strong with people using our veg in their Christmas meals. It's a special time for us to be included in so many people's celebrations.

Besides the harvests we are focused on less urgent and more long-term project for the winter. We're expanding our market garden in 2026 to add a new block to the rotation. This will help spread out the plant families and reduce the pest and disease pressure for those growing areas. We're expanfing into a small field that has an overgrown hedge so we've been working on clearing that. It's prickly work since it's mainly bramble and blackthorn! But we usually save that work for sunny days and the field has a good view of the valley so it's enjoyable work.

We're also working behind the scenes on the veg box to improve our systems and create marketing content for the rest of the year. Posting on Instagram and writing the veg box flyers are definitely not top of the mind for us growers in June!

November 2025

Jams and Chutneys: 

We have been busy making organic jams and chutneys to sell locally and in our farm shop. Please contact us if you would like some - they make excellent presents! 
Green Tomato Chutney and Blackcurrant jam are old favourites with our regular customers. These are all made with excess fruit and veg from the Farm!

New this year are Mirabelle Plum Jam and Orange Marmalade. We also have a limited stock of Damson jam which makes a delicious sauce over puddings, ice cream and chocolate cake! 

Turkeys:

Our Norfolk Black organic turkeys are becoming bigger and bonnier by the minute. They are reared outdoors in Paradise Field. They can be ordered on this website for Christmas. Don’t delay - we always sell out! 

Fruit & Veg:

Work is starting to slow down in the fields, but we are still keeping busy harvesting as all of the winter veg becomes ready. This is the time of the year when the brassica family really shines. They thrive in the cooler temperatures and are able to take temperatures below zero. We're harvesting lots of kales, cabbages, turnips, & radishes, and Brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, & Kalettes are still to come. And our stores are still full of apples, onions, potatoes, and squash.

Our first hard frost came at the end of the month. This killed off some plants that are not frost hardy at all which we expected to happen, but it doesn't affect a lot of the winter veg. As long as it doesn't get too cold or the frost doesn't break for a few days. Then there are some plants that can only take some frost. For these we have to cover the beds with fleece that blocks some of the frost and keeps the plants a bit warmer. It's hard work to get these out and cover all these plants, but it keeps us warm!

Compost:

One of the big projects this winter is working on our compost and fertility systems. As our operations expand we have an increasing need for fertility to feed all of our growing plants. We will be trying to source as much material as we can from the Farm to compost on-site. This would be from things like manure from our chickens, horses, & turkeys, wood chip from coppicing and hedge-laying, and plant material from the gardens. We will still need to import some material from local sources to meet all of our needs at the moment, but will work to decrease that over the coming years.

Avian Flu: 

Unfortunately there is now a national Avian Flu housing order in place. This is because there has been a surge in Avian Flu cases with the arrival of winter migratory birds. The disease is spread by wild bird droppings. It is not dangerous to humans but can spread quickly through poultry flocks killing them. Therefore, although we have no cases in this area yet, the government has instructed everyone in England to house birds indoors for the time being to reduce possible contamination. This will continue until the number of cases across the country drops. 

Our birds have been relocated to large barns or placed under cover in marquees to ensure they are protected while still having space to move around freely. We will also be providing them with extra organic food as they will not be able to forage. This is a precautionary measure to ensure the minimum number of cases nationally. 

October 2025

Events:

Despite the wind and occasional rain we had a great Harvest Festival thanks to Katy’s excellent organisation and Cordelia Carrot’s publicity efforts. Profits supported The Dairy House which helps homeless people back into housing. 

Sheep:

Our new prize winning ram, Kaiser Chief, has been given a harem of 13 ewes and we look forward to lambs in 21 weeks which is around the 3rd week in March. Just to provide some competition the old ram, Cadwallader (Welsh for “battle leader”) has a small group of 5 ewes to see if he can continue to produce twins and triplets as he did last spring. 

Turkeys:

Our Norfolk Black organic turkeys are becoming bigger and bonnier by the minute. They are reared outdoors in Paradise Field. They can be ordered on this website for Christmas. Don’t delay - we always sell out! 

Fruit & Veg:

October is the month when we clear the summer crops like tomatoes and cucumbers from the tunnels and make way for winter salads and leaves. The timing is crucial for this switch over to ensure the crops get enough sunlight to get some decent growth before the sun is too weak. Growers call it Persephone Days when the length of sunlight dips below 10 hours each day and plants don't put on much growth. This lasts from mid October to mid February here in Britain. If we get the timing right then we'll have a good crop of salad and leaves to supply the shop and veg box for most of the winter.

We're also spending a lot of time planting green manures, or cover crops, as crops finish. For the winter this is usually a mix of ryegrass, vetch, and phacelia. These aren't crops that we grow to sell but grow to help add fertility, keep the soil covered to reduce erosion, and feed the soil life. The crops grow quickly and put on decent growth over the winter, and when spring rolls around they are very lush. We'll then mow them and incorporate them into the soil before planting crops. We grow these on all of our beds and fields and are one of the main ways to add fertility, especially in the field scale crops.

September 2025

Events:

Unfortunately our music promoter felt he had to cancel the Jazz Festival this year due to low take up but we felt it was important to keep the momentum going and so we offered a Jazz Supper instead, which quickly sold out. Ruby Jazz performed each side of a 3 course meal and we had a campfire afterwards. We think we have another promoter for next year’s festival so please hold the date - 5th September 2026. 
Congratulations to Adam and Sarah who were married here with the largest wedding of the year! We finished the month with a lovely camping party to celebrate Karen’s birthday. We provided a paella for the festivities. 

Sheep: 

It is important to change rams frequently to ensure there is a good diversity of genes, especially for rare breeds like our Wiltshire Horn Sheep. The WHS society runs “Checkmate” which is a dating app for sheep to ensure breeding is done appropriately, avoiding close family relations. 
We sold 3 of our rams to other breeders this year and we bought a new ram “Kaiser Chief” who has been winning prizes for his previous owners all summer so we expect great things from him! 

Fruit & Veg:

We had some of our big harvest days in September. We harvest all of the potatoes and squash and put them into storage. We are partly mechanised for these harvests but it still require moving tonnes of crops by hand into storage. So we've all got strong arms now! The potatoes will be put into our brand new clamp, which is rodent and frost proof and doesn't require any electricity. The squash was cured in the field for a few weeks and put into our regular storage container. These need a bit more care as they require a certain temperature and humidity to store well. These storage methods should keep us in potatoes and squash for our veg box and the shop until spring.

We're still harvesting apples and pears and have done our first round of juicing. We try to sell as many apples as we can fresh and if there are still a lot left on the trees we'll harvest them for apple juice and apple cider vinegar. It's also a great way to make use of any small or misshapen fruit that wouldn't sell well. The juice and vinegar is available to buy at the shop or to add on to a veg box.

August 2025

Events:

August was a particularly buzy month for events at the farm. At one point we had 3 festivals and a wedding in 14 days! Ellie and Nick and then Jess and Ben both had delightful weddings at the Piggery and we wish them all the best in their futures. 

Jack Bird organised his last and very successful Blues Festival and we wish him well in his new teaching career. All the acts were fantastic and the headliners, Errol Linton and his band, went down a storm! It was a pleasure to see many old friends again and, do not worry, the festival will continue next year albeit under new direction. 

New friends were made when Blyth Power Ashes came to Radford Mill. They comprise the fans, friends and families of the rock band Blyth Power, a British Rock band, who have been meeting annually, and playing music and cricket since the 1980s. We are delighted that they have decided to make the farm their new permanent annual venue and look forward to seeing them again next August. 

It was also the first year of Wildlings, a festival aimed at small children and their parents, providing both with age-appropriate music, activities and food. Initially crowd funded by Maya and Sam and their supporters, it proved to be a big success and very popular with parents and children alike and so they have also booked again for next year.  

Fruit & Veg:

The rains have finally come and the fields are all greening up again. It's amazing how quickly the plants react to the moisture and come alive again. And also how different they react to rain compared to irrigation. Water from a sprinkler just doesn't compare to the real thing.

We've planted out the last of the outdoor crops in the market garden. These are mainly spicy and bitter additions to the salad mix. The autumn and winter mixes are our favourites on the farm with a lot of interesting flavours. You can expect multiple varieties of lettuce, buckshorn plantain, radicchio, endive, mizuna, mibuna, and rocket!

The tunnel crops are starting to slow down. We're not getting as large of harvests of cucumbers and tomatoes, and we're on the last beds of french beans. The harvest for the salad tomatoes have been especially good this year and we've had to work on finding new customers to take them. We've started putting in salad crops to extend the season deep into the winter.

The apple and pear trees are starting to ripen in the orchard and agroforestry fields. We're harvesting Discovery, Early Worcester, George Cave, and Grenadier apples as well as the Williams pears. All of the fruit and but trees on the farm are loaded. We're not sure why but we think may have something to do with the extra dry summer.

We are also working on clearing out one of the unused barns to create an ambient store for our root crops over the winter. The barn is slightly underground so should be able to keep the frost from affecting the crops. The main challenge will be keeping out the rodents! This storage will allow us to stock our veg boxes throughout the winter and early spring.

July 2025

Events:

We were delighted to host Ben and Luna and their families for camping parties and congratulations to Dulcie and Matt who were married here in July We also hosted Better Futures a charity who had their annual celebration in the Piggery. 

We were invited to visit the Dairy House Farm which runs a charity we support. We were shown round their vegetable and flower growing fields and met some of the residents who stay there while transitioning from homelessness to their own homes. 

We had a good turnout for the walking tour on the 19th. There wer around 20 people that came to see all of the different things we are doing on the farm. We took a look at the flower tunnels, the veg field, the orchard, saw how this year's lambs were getting along, and visited the laying hens. Everyone then gathered at The Piggery for a delicious farm lunch.

Fruit & Veg:

July is the month when the balance of work starts to tip into more harvesting than planting and weeding. All the summer crops are ready and we've started to harvest the first of the apples as well. Potatoes, onions, carrots, calabrese, kohlrabi, kale, chard, spinach, salad, french beans, tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, and more are all items you can expect in your veg boxes.

We still haven't received the rain we need to we are continuing to irrigate the fields. We can water everything in really well but it just doesn't have the same effect as rain. It also costs us and takes a lot of time to move all the irrigation equipment around the fields. But we're fairly well equiped to keep everything watered and happy.

We had the Timsbury market at the end of the month which started out rainy but the sun eventually came out. The markets are fun for us since we get to chat with people about the produce and see how they have been using it from last time or in their boxes. Our sales are still mainly wholesale so it's always great for us to hear how people are cooking and enjoying everything.

June 2025

Events:

 
Congratulations to two couples, Emily and Matt and Pippa and Hugh, who were married at the farm in June.  It was a pleasure to meet their lovely families and friends and be part of their special days. Our Polish friends returned again for a wellbeing festival for which we provided vegetarian meals throughout the weekend.  A member of the catering team even tried their fire-walk and survived. We also hosted our annual Folk Festival organised by Jack Bird which included some terrific bands, both local and from round the world. Lovely to see so many old friends returning.  There were lots of compliments for the fantastic food produced by our wonderful catering team. Our favourite comment was, “This should be called a FOOD and Folk Festival!” Watch out for the Blues Festival 9th August, Parent and Child Music Festival 23rd August and the Jazz Festival 6th Sept. 
 

Animals:

 
One hundred baby turkeys arrived and will be kept indoors until they are big enough to be released safely into Paradise Field to mature until Christmas. Five young runner ducks are now ensconced on the pond – Holly, Polly, Molly, Bert and Fred (names to be reviewed after 5 months when their gender can be accurately assessed). The twenty seven lambs born in April are now fully weaned and extremely healthy: best year ever for lambing! The good weather helped but mostly down to our resident shepherd, Josh. 
 

Workshops: 

 
A lot of building renovation was completed in June including making a beautiful duplicate stone arch to match the one already in situ in the ground floor workshops by the Mill.  This meant the new tenants could move in: a furniture restorer and upholsterer will be joining the sliversmith. 

Fruit & Veg:

June was a busy month of planting and weeding. Most of the field plantings have been finished as well as the first successions in the market garden. With the high light levels this year and the long days, everything is growing quickly so staying on top of the weeds is very important. Some crops like potatoes are weeding totally by the tractor, but most require at least a bit of hoeing. The main goal is to not resort to hand weeding!

The harvests are starting to get bigger as well. Salad and other leaves are being harvested in large amounts, the new potatoes and onions are ready, and the tunnel crops are starting to ripen.

The rainfall has been very low for the last few months so we've started to have to irrigate a lot of the crops. Especially the newly planted ones. It's looking like we're going to be running the irrigation a lot in the coming weeks.