7th november

Last week we had our soil association inspection.

We get inspected every year, and they go through every detail of what we buy in.

We must have certificates for any produce we buy, in that we haven’t grown.

All of our seeds for the season get checked for being organic.

They go through all the invoices for seeds bought, then check against the records we keep for dates and amounts we have sown, when we plant them, then how much of that produce we have harvested.

All the produce we harvest then gets checked against what we have put out in the netts.

For example if we have ordered five thousand Craflex spring cabbage seeds.

They check the invoice for these seeds, then check my sowing dates and amounts, making sure the invoice amounts match the amounts sown, not an issue if i have sown less, but there would be if i had sown more.

Then we have a book that we write in daily, what we harvest, this is good for my own records, for looking back on how plants have performed.

The amount of Carflex seeds ordered, sown and harvested all gets checked against what has gone out in the netts.

So we do need to keep a lot of records daily, on all of our organic veg, going out in your deliveries.

It is a good way of proving, if you do buy anything with an Organic symbol, it has come from somewhere that is following all the organic guidelines. 

It does sound like a lot to get through on the day of our inspection.

But it usually only takes half a day, and it is well worth having that organic symbol at the end of the day.

As I was walking round the tunnels with the inspector, he was amazed at the growth in the tunnel.

And it is for this time of the year.

But last week we had a few days when it was 15 degrees outside, in the tunnels it felt tropical.

Usually going into November we have already had a few days of hard frost.

And the water pump that we use to water all the tunnels is usually disconnected and in the shed, just incase it gets frosted and split.l