Village Greens turns white!

Village Greens has turned rather white recently, with January’s record snowfall. Our overwintering plants don’t seem to have minded the snow at all- broad beans, kale and leeks are all hardy enough to survive quite happily- but the frames and supports we’ve erected around them haven’t proved as robust. John took special care to build a strong netting frame around our broad bean patch to keep the birds off, and I didn’t realise it had been damaged until a customer remarked ‘I didn’t know you bred pheasants’. When I told him we didn’t, he looked puzzled and said we had a whole cage full on the field. Ah. Well fed on broad bean seed, no doubt!

While customers have been coming in with horror stories of queues and shortages in the supermarkets during the snowy spell, our suppliers have made heroic efforts to keep us well stocked and we have been particularly grateful for our most local producers, who have been able to respond to emergency demand without having to trek far through the snow. Homemade soup has been coming in from Holmwood, freshly ground coffee, biscuits and fresh bread from Capel. In this weather, keeping down the food miles isn’t just environmentally friendly, but makes life much easier, too. Perhaps white is the new green!

10 January 2010