Tuesday 18 September 2012

Fruitful farming - Parkside

The last days of summer must be here since I’m wearing a scarf to work now, and I see girls in stockings. On Sunday we were fortunate enough to have a sunny day and a group of us went for a drive to Parkside farm in Enfield to “pick your own” fruit and vegetables. I recall going to look for peaches at a peach orchard in country NSW as a child, but I haven’t seen anything of this kind of scale before where the public are allowed free reign to explore.

It certainly made a great change from staring at bricks and mortar and much fun was had by all. The website had stated that the produce up for grabs included sweet corn, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, marrows, courgettes, beefwood, French beans, spinach, swiss chard and onions. Fortunately for us, Miss E had been there before so she knew exactly where she was going.

My favourite part was looking through the strawberry plants - I have only ever seen strawberries grown in the ground and my back was certainly happy that these “tabletop strawberries” were in containers at a convenient shoulder height. I think everyone’s favourite was the strawberries though as the crop was fairly light on and you had to dig through the strawberry plants to get nice ones.



The blackberries were really out in force though, I love how they change colour over time and how picturesque the farm is in the late afternoon. I made blackberry coulis when I got home to go with cheesecake flavoured ice cream – method and results to come.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The corn was the most fun to pick but I did feel bad that so much of the plant disappears when you snap off the cob. We also came away with some beans, giant courgettes, and Miss E had a giant marrow as well. I really wish my fridge is bigger than a bar fridge!










Time to go home after a hard day’s work! Since I’m obsessed with raspberries I’ve been checking whether there are any late season autumn ones available. Today the Parkside website said they were available so fingers crossed that it’ll continue throughout the week and I can convince Mr T to take another trip out there this weekend…




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