Crooked End Farm Organic Blog

The wait is finally over and we have received a decision on our Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) grant application. After months of hard work, reams of documentation (diligently prepared by Brenda) and many questions back and forth, last Wednesday we received a thumbs up. While we did not receive all of the funding we had requested in the application, we did receive the majority, so are now looking at how best to proceed with the project. Stay tuned and hopefully before too long we can have a ground breaking ceremony.

On the market front, we have made a decision to begin attending Leominster market every Friday from 09:00 to 16:00, so as a result will no longer be attending the Chepstow market. We will continue to have a presence at Hereford on Wednesday, Hay-on-Wye on Thursday and Skenfrith on the second Saturday of the month. Additionally, we will be at the annual Skenfrith FunDay and Festival of Real Ale on Saturday 17 July. We hope to see some of you at the event

Courtesy of Lottie, we now have a name for our new sow. Given the many black spot markings, Lottie has officially christened her Blackberry. As summer is progressing we are picking more redcurrants, blackcurrants and strawberries. Additionally, we have brought in our first beetroot of the season. And finally, we have pork sausages back in stock!

Anyone want a pig, part of a pig, sausage, bacon, trotter…………small or big you are welcome to a pig!

We are fed up with them. They have spent the week escaping, they go through, under and over the fence. Mostly through, resulting in us all getting big electric shocks, when we rebuild the fence. However they seem immune.

They have had great adventures, in the polytunnels, in our market garden, in our gardens, in the pond, in the feed store. You name it, they have been investigating it. They are taking the phrase “free range” to the extreme

I keep threatening them with sausages but they just snort and wander off.

Anyway, the result is that we will have some fresh, delicious Gloucester Old Spot Cross Pork at the end of the week (shame that the sins of all must be borne by one!)

Crooked End loves WWOOFERs – that is, members of the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) program !
We have enjoyed hosting a constant stream of WOOFERs  for over 2 years now – some for a few days and some for months.  WOOFERS have so far helped us catch pigs, feed lambs, plant veggies, sell pies at markets, build carnival floats, pick salad, build feedstores and chicken houses amongst all the other daily farm tasks.   We hope they enjoy being with us, learning about organic farming the crooked end way, as much as we enjoy hosting them !

Having said all that we have no idea what kind of hosts we are…  we hardly ever meet other hosts and have no idea what it is about Crooked End that WOOFERs enjoy or dislike .  most of the time they are too polite to say anything but nice things but it’s really frustratin not to know.
Sometimes we get a mention in the odd travel blog from WOOFERs on their journeys – reading them can be very inspiring although this one from Crytsal and Bjorn who stayed with us in Summer 09 just makes me so envious of their world tour of WWOOFing !

Anyway – if you are a WWOOFer and have some comments on good and bad hosting it would be great to hear from you.  We have a WWOOFER comments page on our website if you have stayed with us or you could comment anonymously to this blog.  It would be great for this (slightly paranoid) host to get some feedback !!