Rhubarb, Rhubarb!

One of the things we look forward to on these cold dark January days is the start of the Rhubarb season. And today is the day that the first cut of the English Rhubarb hit the market place and James was well chuffed to have grabbed himself a box this morning for the shop. Rhubarb has been enjoying a bit of a revival in recent years but it's popularity really soared last year after Delia was seen on a TV advert promoting its virtues on behalf of a certain supermarket. Watch this space for some of Sarah's scrummy ideas!

Pictured here with this morning's Rhubarb is our lovely Emma, a familiar face in our farm shop. Unfortunately for us Emma has decided to head off for pastures new. Now her children are both of school age Emma will be rejoining the career ladder and is going back to project management.

By the way, can anyone remember the hilarious 1980 TV comedy "Rhubarb Rhubarb?" The all star cast included Eric Sykes, Hattie Jacques, Charlie Drake and Roy Kinnear and during the entire 30 minutes of the programme the only word muttered by the entire cast was "Rhubarb!"

Another new year crop that's now got into full swing is Purple Sprouting Broccoli. Every morning James heads off down the field to cut as many fresh spears as he can get his hands on and almost every day the entire cut has sold by the end of the day. With fresh greens fairly sparse at this time of year sprouting broccoli takes centre stage now among the veg. We in fact grow 4 different varieties of this crop in order to get a succession to harvest over the next few weeks. The earliest variety gets planted in the early summer and we started to cut it just before Christmas. This is in full swing now and the next variety is now coming on stream; this was planted late summer. Hopefully we'll be cutting until April.

The second new arrival in the farm shop this morning was a brand new range of specialty breads that we've begun trialing from "The Pye Baker of Norwich". Today's delivery looked a real picture with a gorgeous looking selection to tiger loaves, sour doughs, foccacias and many more. Sarah straight away bagged the only mature cheddar cheese and melting onion bread for her tea tonight whilst the red onion marmalade and rosemary was also snapped up straight away.