Welcome to The Rockwell End House Farm Website
The Emmett family have been at Rocwell End since 1936. As well as an acreage of wheat, the farm also produces free range eggs, new/ salad and main crop potatoes, tomatoes, asparagus, sweetcorn, Free range pork and more! All produce is available on-farm in the farm shop as well as at Farmers Markets in London and locally. For current farmers markets we attend please go to the farm shop & farmers market page.
This website is constantly being updated so please come back regularly!
Whats happening on the farm?
16/5/12
Well once again, its been a while since my last blog- appoligies! Well although we are still in a drought area, since it has started raining about a month ago, we have had about 110mm of rain- more than some but less than others. This rain, once again came just in time, our wheat crops, although having had enough fertiliser had not taken up enough for effecient growth as the soil was too dry to absorb the much needed fertiliser. We managed to get our main crop potatoes planted just before it started raining - so they were nicely washed in! Sweetcorn still needs to go in which should take place this week. The tomato plants, are all in the soil and are doing well, although as its so cold they are not growing as fast as we would like. The story is the same for the asparagus, in that it due to the cold we have only picked very a minimal amount. My pigs are doing well and i have had 3 litters of piglets born in the last fortnight- 2 while i escaped to Italy for a few days! You may have also read that The cumberland Sausage is now an award winning sausage. Which we are all very proud of. The prize giving of which took place at Marylebone Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago- photos to follow. More news soon!
8/1/2012
Happy New Year! There are no Farmer's Markets from 19 Dec - 7th Jan; so it has been nice to have a bit of a breather, and gives us a chance to catch up on a few jobs. Of course over the Christmas period the chickens and pigs still need feeding etc- and the chickens still produce eggs which need collecting every day- we don't tell them about Christmas and Bank Holidays! As we all know it has been been a very mild winter (so far!) and so the wheat is still growing, albeit at slow rate. The poly tunnels are all empty and we will have our work cut- out prepering them for this years crop of tomatoes, not to mention recovering two of them and finishing erecting another. The potato seeds are ordered ready for delivery in a couple of months time, ready for planting in the spring. The pigs are steadily working their way through the fodder beet which they happily graze and forage for most of the day, which helps to keep my feed costs down! My new years resolution - to update this "whats happening" section more often!
9/5/11
It has rained!! We have at last had some very much needed rain, over the past couple of nights. This is desperatly needed by all of our crops which are not under plastic- mainly winter wheat, asparagus, and the new and main crop potatoes. Our main crop potatoes have been in the ground about a month now, and have started to peep through the soil. We will be starting a new farmer's market in St Johns Wood this Saturday- have a look at
www.lfm.org.uk for more details and come and see us there!
9/4/11
The new potatoes have been planted, and have been in the ground about 3 weeks now. We will plant the main crop potatoes this coming week. We have a pair of Red Kites nesting in some of the trees in the farm yard, and they can often be seen flying around with twigs etc with which to build and furnish the nest! We have started cutting out asparagus which we have to do every morning and evening due to its fast growth- it will be available in our shop until early/mid June (depending on the season) why not come and try some?? The early sweet corn varieties were planted this week- the crop is planted under plastic (a cling film - like material) which helps keep the crop warm as well as keeping in the moisture, in order to get the crop off to a good start.
Drilling sweetcorn under plastic. New potatoes and winter wheat in background.
