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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So… we managed to grow some massive watermelons! Largest one we’ve harvested so far is 9.5kg but we have a lurking behemoth that’s likely double that!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

It’s sweetcorn and melon week. We’re selling them to our veg bag customers this week and any corn left over by the end of the week will get cut into rounds and frozen for our own use over winter. The yield is down this year due to the drought but we’ve still managed an ok yield

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

They look like good cobs. We’ve been enjoying ours although they’re a bit smaller and sorry for themselves this year

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I will keep notes and share!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

We’ve harvested out our flint corn (var. Fiesta). It really is stunning. Our plan is to nixtamalize it in order to make our own corn tortillas. It’s our first time trying this, so it’ll be a bit of a process of trial and error I’m sure.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

First ripe watermelon! We’ve got about 20 more on their way, including some absolute monsters.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

We’ve finished the final clearance of our glasshouse. This section adds 500m2 to our covered growing space. We’ve begun sowing and planting autumn crops - spinach, Chinese cabbage, pak choi, mustard greens, spring onion and lettuce. We’re excited to see how this space evolves

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Look at this absolute beauty of a melon! Prescott Fond Blanc.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Locking down the harvest. Tomatoes for passata and chillies for hot sauce and chilli flakes

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

We had one a few years back, squeezed in through a few mm gap between the wall and air inlet on our stove. Made multiple trips per night to outside. Have even trapped them in our loft. Tenacious little things

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Happy to send you some to try? They’re funny beasts. Stay quite hard and are super sour. Very similar to physalis but grow a lot larger. Need at least two for cross pollination. They thrive inside but need space and fertility. They do grow outside but can suffer in damp and yields are a lot lower

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Struck gold yesterday in Cambridge! Tree was heaving with ripe figs

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Early morning harvest. Tomatoes going strong, but cucumbers starting to finish now. This year we had Tamra and Gergana cucumbers that have been excellent. Anyone have any later open pollinated cucs they’d recommend? Or we just do a second later sowing next year to extend season?

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

New variety for us this year. A parched corn. Parched corn is an old variety that is similar to a popcorn but doesn’t fully pop when roasted. Looks like we’ve got some more kitchen trials to do…

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Lentils! Our first trial on the farm. 300g off 1m2 bed. Need to work on our threshing and winnowing process a bit, but all-in-all a big success!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

A morning haul of tomatoes, with an extra one for our breakfast!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Badger had a good go at wasps nest hidden in one of our wood piles. Glad the badger got to it before we disturbed it with a hay fork!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Courgette flowers headed out for a local event, looking beautiful in the morning light.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I think it might be a bridge too far this year. But we have a smoker and def want to do some. Next thing is chilli powder

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

This year we’ve grown, picked, dried and ground our own paprika. How cool is that?!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

We have some gigantic tomatillo plants this year that are just beginning to fruit. We’re making up salsa verde packs ready for people to make their own. Tomatillo, chilli, onion, garlic, coriander, all from the farm.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

We have a farm WhatsApp group for anyone local interested in buying produce as well as taking part in work parties and events on the farm. chat.whatsapp.com/Lakn1IB7GtRF...

chat.whatsapp.com

Briar Farm

WhatsApp Group Invite

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Turtle doves! We’d started to lose hope in seeing any on site this year as it’s quite late in the season. However, this week we’ve seen them multiple times, even sighting a group of three today! Fantastic news. Shows we’re on the right track with our habitat creation efforts.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Bramble cake! It’d be rude not to.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Harvest 2026! It’s only a small trial plot of wheat this year. Next season we hope to increase this to more of a field scale and hold community planting, scything, threshing, winnowing and bread baking sessions. Watch this space!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

An evening meander harvesting berries for breakfast. Raspberry, redcurrant and loganberry

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Yes we will. Making the most of this heat to see how much we can dry naturally. Will get us a decent amount of t of the way and then we’ll dehydrate. Very much looking forward to trying this as we use loads of paprika and it’s difficult to buy in organic

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Just one peach on our tree this year because of a late frost. We’ve been keeping an eagle eye on it and today was the perfect day to pick. We ate it while still warm off the tree in a suitably reverent manner! Absolutely delicious.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

We’ve not had lots of success with sweet peppers but this year with the move to the glasshouse they’re doing really well. You’ll need to trellis them as they’ve been top heavy. Also doing Slovakia and Sweet Chocolate

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

We’ve got an excellent new sweet pepper variety this year. Zitava is proving super early and productive. We’ve been eating it fresh but our main intention is to dry it as a paprika variety. We’ll dry the pods on racks for a few days then finish off in the dehydrator.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Yeah I get that feeling. We feel it’s our responsibility to be more frank with issues like this we’re dealing with as it’s such a central part of our lived reality. We’re doing what we can but it’s tough at times

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Oof. Not much OSR here but have been shot through with flea beetle. Got nothing saleable. Having to wait out the kales to recover later in season. Same type issues here, surrounded by large scale wheat. When that goes, wood pigeons descend on ours in droves

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Absolute scorcher today. Still a few more days to go. We’re managing to harvest and send out veg but the growing, harvest, storage and transport conditions are challenging to say the least. It’s hard to convey sometimes just how hard this is becoming. Worrying times.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Harvesting some padron peppers today. Jalapeños not far behind

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

We do a similar thing to this and it’s sooo good. Having this tonight

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

These look incredible. Definitely gonna try these out, right up our street

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Yeah they’re finicky things. We use clemsons spineless. We oversow under lights with heat, repot way more than we need on heated mats and plant out more than we need. It’s a high attrition rate. Often they only grow the first few leaves then bail. Saving seed from strongest plants has helped I think

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Ha yeah. We’re scraping through with a punnet or two a day right but soon it’s going to get out of hand!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

We’ve grown ourselves a bit of a melon grove in the glasshouse. It’s a triffidy chaotic jungle. If we play our cards right we should get 100 melons out of this space. If you’re lucky I might not eat them all myself.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Yeah think the heat helped. Also frost time we’ve grown under glass instead of poly. Third year saving seed too from the best plants so a combo of that helpful I think

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

We’ve all had those days. Go get your hands dirty, never fails to make you feel better!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Proud moment. We’ve persevered with okra for four years now and are finally starting to get a decent crop. We have four plants all beginning to produce. @smallholderific.bsky.social 👀

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Early morning harvest. It’s exciting to have the tomatoes back in the mix!

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Chattin in the cornfield kinda vibe

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Really lovely work party today. Great to welcome some new people to the farm. We mulched beds in anticipation of more hot and dry weather, planted out comfrey and harvested shallots.

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Briar Farm @briarfarm.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Bramble time! Just a trickle for now, but it’ll soon be a deluge.

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