We have managed to supply one more restaurant with our produce, starting next week we will be sending vegetables to Berkshire on overnight delivery to a great chef – Chris Slaughter, a friend of mine who has opened a food pub down there.

We had a very busy day at Vallum Pick Your Own Vegetables yesterday, nice to see local people harvesting with there kids and getting great feedback aswell! we also had a special order to harvest on Saturday for the Pavillion in North Tyneside to be delivered by 5 oclock for the Chefs to prepare the Veg for a 5 course meal event with Mordue Micro Brewery – matching food with real ales.

Winter Squashes are growing fast in one of our polytunnels at the Walled Garden.

Finished cutting the grass at the Walled Garden.

Leafs next – Cavallanero, Chard, Rocket, Spinach and Lettuce.

Next job for me is to get myself off to the Walled Garden at Little Harle to harvest  some Courgettes, Baby Leeks and the first Celery of the season leaving the rest of the team to finish of at Vallum.

First Cucumber of the season ready to harvest, and plenty more on there way!

Winter Squash looking very good this year, and a good size for this early in the season.

And on a final note – We raised over £2000 at the  Vallum Farm charity event yesterday in aid of Horse power for Ability.

Everything is growing so well at the Walled Garden and with the rain in the past week so are the WEEDS! It’s a never ending job but just part and parcel of Organic growing!

We are now harvesting large quantities of Veg from the Walled Garden for our Box Scheme and North East restaurants and getting such good feed back.

Above is a row of Courgettes which we are harvesting at the moment, we have 4 varieties growing here – Parador – Eight Ball – Zuchini and One Ball.

Cucumbers are growing well in one of the Polytunnels and are forming fruits now, we have around 160 planted here and should be harvesting soon!

Winter Squash is growing well in tunnel no2 and lots of fruits appearing on the plants.

Our days seem to be getting longer as the weeks pass, Myself  Tracy Mark and Alan are working so hard at the moment harvesting, packing and delivering our Veg to the Box Scheme customers and Restaurants around the North East.

We are all working this Saturday at Vallum Farm and The Walled Garden, a bit of weeding and tying up the rest of the Cucumbers at Little Harle and I’m at Vallum manning our Pick Your Own Vegetable scheme.

Myself and Tracy have been harvesting all day today at Vallum Farm ready for our deliveries tomorrow, our list of vegetables ready to harvest is growing by the day! at present we are harvesting Courgettes – Spring Onions – Onions – Beetroot – Radish – Rocket – Spinach – Carrots – Kale – Chard – Sprouting Broccoli – Lettuce – Salad Leaf – Micro Cress – Summer Turnip – Baby Leeks – Celery – New Potatoes – Broad Beans and Peas.

Some of our harvested vegetables ready for North East Chefs

Summer Sprouting Broccoli and Courgettes

More Vegetables ready for tomorrows deliveries!

The work days are becoming a lot longer now, I often start at 6am just to get some harvesting done before the rest of the team start work, our new system of harvesting guarantees that our Box customers and restaurants get there Vegetables the same day as it’s picked.

We still managed to get some planting done this week! Monday and Tuesday we planted Savoy Cabbage and January Kings at Vallum Farm and sowed more Purple Top Milan Turnip, Today Tracy and Mark finished planting the last of our Winter Squashes and Courgettes at the Walled Garden and I finished sowing Rainbow Chard – Rocket – Turnip and Micro salads at Vallum.

Today was the first day of our Pick Your Own vegetables at Vallum Farm, It started slowly at first and then picked up later on! so good to see people with there kids enjoying there time here at Vallum and walking away with fresh veg!

Digging potatoes at Vallum today.

Harvesting at the Walled Garden early on friday morning, 6.30am!

Courgettes looking good at the Walled Garden, starting to harvest this week!

Our first Pick Your Own customers at Vallum – Matt and Julie and little Samuel with there harvest, good freinds of mine!

Another great north east chef – Dave Kennedy of the Black Door restaurant in Newcastle who champions local produce within his menu’s,

The dish above is Hand Dived Scallops with Pork Belly and some of our Micro Cress harvested at Vallum.

Veg I picked this morning at Vallum, prepared and ready to cook for today’s dinner!

Another busy end to the week here at North Country, so much to do and so little time to do it, harvesting is in full swing now at Vallum and the Walled Garden and we are now delivering our veg to the restaurants around the north east.

Our box scheme customers are now enjoying lot’s of our locally grown veg in their boxes and they look so good!

I took this photo of our carrots at Vallum at 7pm tonight! we are harvesting them now for the restaurants ( baby carrots ) and some for dinner tomorrow!

The last of the Winter Cabbage seedlings in our polytunnel at Vallum waiting to be planted! next week we hope.

Some of our Micro Herbs and Salads ready for deliveries next week.

Red Amaranth Micro Seedlings!

We are now at full capacity regarding the supply of veg to the restaurants here in the North East, we simply can’t take on any more! it’s so important to make sure we don’t let anybody down and keep the quality of our veg supply just right!

Thanks to everybody who takes time out to read this Blog! we really do appreciate your support.