Castlefarm Shop Newsletter

24-Mar-2009

Castlefarm Shop newsletter, March 09

Castlefarm Shop newsletter, March 09 Email jenny@castlefarmshop.ie to receive this newsletter by email Castlefarm diary for March · Saturday 7th 3.30 Castlefarm Shop is offering customers a free talk on how to improve digestion with healthy eating with local nutritional therapist, Hilda Crampton. According to Hilda, “My talk will specifically address the issue of how to get the maximum nutritional benefit from the foods that we eat and I will also answer people’s questions regarding diet and nutrition. By the way Hilda and her husband Dominic of Castleruddery Organic Farm also supply us with a lot of our organic vegetables! · Sunday 8th 10-2 Jenny attends Athy Farmers Market · Saturday 14th 10-11am Farmer for a morning at Castlefarm. Children can come and help Michelle and Peter feed and bed the calves, shut out the cows and collect eggs. This will take one hour and will cost €10 per child to include the ½ dozen eggs they collect to bring home. This will be a small group so please book asap (€5 deposit required to secure place) · Saturday 21st 10-11am Farmer for a morning at Castlefarm. Children can come and help Michelle and Peter feed and bed the calves, shut out the cows and collect eggs. This will take one hour and will cost €10 per child to include the ½ dozen eggs they collect to bring home. This will be a small group so please book asap (€5 deposit required to secure place) · Saturday 28th Allotment growing course 11am and 2pm · April 18 and 19 Cob building course at Castlefarm…You can provisionally sign up and details and costs are on the way! Castlefarm organic angus beef sold out but more likely in the autumn. Those of you on our email database were first to know about our organic angus beef boxes. We were delighted to sell our 3 animals through this box scheme and were sorry that some of you were disappointed that we sold out so quickly. However we hope to be finishing more organic angus in the autumn so please keep in contact with us regarding this. Spring rhubarb in season in the Castlefarm garden? In the Castlefarm garden we have begun to pick the first rhubarb of the season. We also continue to harvest carrots, lettuce and rocket. I have been planting leeks and lettuce in the polytunnel. I will transplant these early next month into the soil outside. I also have cucumber and tomato plants growing in the windowsills of our house and these will be transplanted into the poltunnel in early summer. Castlefarm school tours Michelle our tours and education manager recently hosted information days for teachers regarding Castlefarm School tours. The Castlefarm school tours programme offers a mix of education, fun and support to teachers and educational leaders who want to teach their pupils about where food really comes from. If anybody would like information about our education programme please contact Michelle. She will even send information directly to your child/s school if you would like her to. Michelle can be contacted by email tours@castlefarmshop.ie or by phone 086-3736420. Castlefarm allotment news Our third allotment class will take place on 28th of March. There are still some allotment/tuition packages available at €350 for 12 months. Allotments are also available without the growing course. We may have some places available on the growing classes in the future for €35 per person per class. Incidentally anyone wanting to read some behind the real life experiences of an allotment holder should pick up a copy of the Leinster Leader where a certain Ciara Carrot is writing a monthly column describing her learning experience at Castlefarm. On the farm Calving continues and the majority of our calves have now been born. Calf feeding now takes about 2 hours a day. Our herd of milking cows are grazing outdoors by day but grass growth has not increased enough to be able to keep them outside full time. Once the grass growth picks up we will graze our cows outside full time. This will mean less work bedding the sheds and feeding silage and less cost buying straw. We are preparing for the arrival of some new wooden sheds. One of these will offer our allotment holders shelter from the elements, another will house our new ducks and the other will hopefully house our new goat! Cob building course at Castlefarm this April! We are delighted to be holding a cob building course on the weekend of 18-19 April. This will be a two day course taught by our neighbours Christian and Louise. We are still putting together costs but do have a provisional list of attendees so please let us know if you are interested. On this occasion we will be building a pizza oven in the anticipation of lots of outdoor pizza baking this summer!. Castlefarm barter board Just to let you know that in our efforts to address the big R we have put up a barter board in the shop. My thinking is that we all have skills that we can barter for instance computer lessons for painting. I would like to barter some help in the garden for Castlefarm food vouchers. So keep this in mind! Local news for our local newspapers Michelle is now writing the local notes for the Leinster Leader and I would like to know about what is happening for the Kildare Post so please let us know about local events happening around the county! (michelle.hourihan@hotmail.co.uk, jenny@castlefarmshop.ie ) Recipe of the month Parmesan baked potatoes Wash, dry and rub six baked potatoes with salt and olive oil. (I normally double the amount some for today and some for parmesan potatoes tomorrow). Bake in a moderate oven for at least 40 minutes or until cooked. Scoop out the potato, mix with 3 handfuls of Parmesan (or one handful for 2 potatoes), an egg and some salt and pepper. Add this mixture back into the potato skins. Bake for half an hour until golden brown. Opening hours Friday and Saturday 10am-6pm Sun 12-5pm To receive our newsletter and news of new products on line please Contact Castlefarm Shop, Narraghmore, Athy, Co Kildare, Telephone 059-8636948, jenny@castlefarmshop.ie, www.castlefarmshop.ie