Snail Farm Open

What's behind the door? To find out you will have to come and see for yourself. The snails started moving in on 29th May as planned and we have had lots of visitors wandering down the the end of the garden centre to find out what's going on. I was musing on the concept of freedom food and decided it really couldn't apply to snails. The bird netting, metal barrier sunk into the ground and electric fencing are essential if I want to find the snails still there waiting for their breakfast each day. So far I have managed to keep the free range chickens out but a sparrow blundered in by mistake one hot afternoon. It sat for a while looking round with amazement and eventually worked out where the door was.

The ground has been seeded and with last night's rain it should start to green up soon, though the thistles, dock and bindweed are doing quite well. I hope the ground is green soon as we have TV cameras coming in a couple weeks time.

The snails will be visiting Sandwich for a couple of days for Le Weekend 12/13 June: http://www.open-sandwich.co.uk/events/leweekendl.htm so Slow@ Grow will be closed for those days.

The next events on the Brogdale calendar will be Soft Fruit day on 27 June and then the Cherry Festival 10/11 July. I am planning a cookery demonstration for the Cherry Festival. Then the following weekend is the county show so I will be in Maidstone for three days 16/17 and 18 July and Slow @ Grow will be closed for those few days too.

Building the farm

Chris and his team from Willow Landscapes have made rapid progress with building the farm enclosure, though the lovely warm weather has probably helped.

We had half a page in Your Swale this week:
http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/ see page 8/9.

KM online want to make a video when we are open and Great British Food Magazine plan to publish a piece about us too.

I will be running Slow Summer Snail Farm on my own which means that I will not always be there. However I will need to go there at some point most days to feed the snails. I will fit that in with my other work commitments but I am most likely to be there in the afternoon during the week but longer at weekends. There is a phone number if visitors want to check when I will be there: 07811395974 and I would like groups to book. The 50 p per child charge reflects the focus at this stage of the year on providing an educational experience for children. For this introductory period I will charge £1 for anyone over 16. Children under 3 would not be charged for.

The snails will be particularly pleased to see you if you come bearing gifts. They like the stalks of cabbage, cauli and broccoli - the bits you throw away, along with that apple that has been sitting in the fruit bowl too long or the odd carrot. When the veg growing season really gets underway they would be delighted if there was a glut of courgettes or your lettuces bolted. Whatever it is in the waste fruit and veg line - bring it along and find out what they like best.

Slow Summer Snail Farm

We're making progress at Slow Summer Snail Farm. The ground has been cleared and rotivated ready for construction work to begin on Wednesday. Press releases and leaflets are going out and attracting lots of excitement locally. It's a nail-biting time with the opening planned for Saturday 29th May.

The Real Food Fair at Earls Court was a fascinating experience last week. It was like a big farmer's market with several stalls from local Kent producers.

The website is coming along now so watch this space: www.snailfarm.org.uk.

Life in the slow lane

http://www.pressup.biz:80/clients/ten/canterbury-times---life-in-the-slow-lane.html

The local papers have all picked up the story about our trip to Belgium.

There was a Family Fun Day and Hog Roast at Brogdale yesterday, so I was able to tell lots of people that the snails are coming. The children were having their faces painted and riding up and down on the mini railway. A wet bank holiday Sunday is no surprise of course, but we've been promised a fine day tomorrow. So I'll be back out meeting the public and spreading the good news. I'm planning to offer a snail cookery course soon, to show people how good snails can be when you cook them slowly in plenty of Kentish cider.

Publicity snakes and ladders

April has involved us in a lot of press activity. Last week the Kent Messenger newspapers in the Canterbury area featured an article with pictures covering our visit to Tavola XPO, a big trade exhibition in Belgium. (photo (c) jules serkin www.Pressup.biz) I went with Simon from Rough Old Wife Cider and Jane of Canterbury Cheesemakers, with the support of Natalia at Canterbury City Council. The aim was to explore the feasibility of exporting Kentish products across the channel. We learnt a lot about the markets in Belgium and France and the publicity was very welcome. Although we found Welsh lamb and Irish butter on display there was no great enthusiasm for English products.

This was also reflected in the piece on BBC TV last night where a local French chef tried to demonstrate that tinned French snails were superior to fresh English ones. If he had cooked them properly of course the story would have been quite different. When I went to France last year and met Emmanuel Brasseur at his well respected snail farm near Boulogne, he told me that he meets many French people who have suffered badly cooked snails. Like me, he cooks his snails slowly for a long time in a well flavoured stock. He uses French wine and I use English cider but otherwise our recipes are very similar. The snails of course are the same and the truth is that if you cook them properly you get a good flavour and soft texture, whether you cook them in France or in England. If you get them out of a tin of course, who know how they've been cooked! What a pity the TV programme did not show a more balanced view.

Slow at Grow

Great news! This summer the baby snails will be outside in the fresh air at Brogdale near Faversham. We have been lucky enough to be offered a site for the snail farm in ‘Grow’ the garden centre at the back of the plant centre next to the community allotments.

This is the 'before' view of the site.

The chickens seemed to think I was moving the bark chippings just for their benefit. We still have to take down the old hen house but they’ve already moved to smart new accommodation a few yards away. Today we started clearing the site for construction work to begin and look forward to opening to the public at the end of May. By then we hope frosts will be over so the snails can live happily outside.

So raise your glasses to Slow at Grow: the only open snail farm in Britain!

First Day of Spring

1 March certainly feels like the first day of Spring on the snail farm. We're keeping our fingers crossed for the first batches of eggs to be laid this coming weekend. On Saturday we started setting up the enclosures in the barn so the babies will be able to go into their new home at the end of April. As soon as it is warm enough they will be living outside this year. For the first time we’ll try out the rearing method used in Northern France and Belgium. Keeping birds and rodents away will probably be the biggest challenge but we’re looking forward to reducing our human labour input. Meanwhile we're relying on our workforce to put lots of labour into laying.