Rush Farm Blog

In our usual tradition, we'll start with the weather. Variable is the word that springs to mind here! Biblical amounts of rain, then gorgeous sunshine, gale-force winds, then snow in the forecast for next week, it's hard to keep up really. While the warm sunshine was nice, we're really quite pleased to see cold weather in the forecast considering the time of year. We need cold weather and frosts to help manage the pests and parasites which are spreading more and more across t

Before we begin, we would just like to remember Farmer Adrian, who passed away three years ago today, and who (amongst many other things) started the Rush Farm 'blog' many years ago. You would never know which new topic would arise in Adrian's notes, but along with happenings on the farm we would be sure to be treated to an exploration of his latest ideas and readings. We will always miss his wit, intelligence and guidance. On the farm we're starting to wind down a little for

Once again, more time has elapsed than intended between blogs - some significant events in the farm calendar took up quite a lot of our brain-space!  The first was the Autumn Fayre, which we briefly mentioned in our last blog. The forecast for the day was projected to be 12C and raining, but in the end we had glorious sunshine from start to finish. Huge draws included the tractor rides around the farm, apple pressing and tasting, live pizza demos, and the local fire brigade b

Well it’s been a while since our last post here, but gosh have we been busy! Firstly and most importantly we need to say a belated thank you to our amazing volunteer Tom, who moved on to an exciting adventure in the north of Scotland at the beginning of the summer. Without Tom we wouldn’t have been able to get the Pantry going, not to mention all his help on the farm! We wish him the very best of luck and are looking forward to seeing him again when he comes back down south.

To keep the tradition alive, we shall start this blog post with notes on the weather. We are farmers, after all! While we've had the odd shower here and there over the last 2 weeks, the West Midlands have had no significant rain since the final week of March. What we mean by this, is that while there has occasionally been a few drops, because the ground is so dry, we need plenty of rain over an extended period of time to first soften the ground, then to penetrate down into th