Ready now and at their best are gooseberries, black and redcurrants, raspberries, shelling, sugarsnap and mangetout peas, broad beans and strawberries. You really will not get a better time to pick any of these fruits than this weekend with the exception of strawberries, which are getting a little lighter in crop - not helped by our white fly 'visitors' that have since moved onto the tomatoes! However, help it as hand with our biological friend Encarsia Formosa, who we buy as a pupae stuck to little cards. These are hung around the crop and hatch to go and forage our little pests...clever!

Crops ready- picked from the farm are also starting to flood in and, having beaten the rabbits this year, we are already picking our own runner beans! Also our own cucumbers, nicely curly and out of shape...great! Plus spring onions, lettuce, pak choi, herbs, carrots, beetroot, radish, tomatoes (just starting), courgettes in all colours and shapes, purple sprouting, early potatoes, salad rocket and lots more. This really is such a great time of year when yet again we get away from foreign imports and into shelves packed with the freshness of produce growing just hours before.

The farm kitchen is coming into it's own and a quick meeting and recipe storm with the chefs today will start to see a wonderful new array of sweets using all those beautiful fruits and salads that are so so crisp and full of flavour.

We really have had huge crowds out to pick this year which has been a great pleasure to see, with so many children running around. Remember that now really is the best time to forage all those fruits for jam and freezing down for the winter.

James and Ryan will be out on the patio creating smoothies galore to taste and buy to wash down that succullent pork, such as our blackcurrant smoothie with banana, apples and yoghurt. Blackcurrants are at their absolute peak at the moment, massively rich in Vitamin C and their deep colour shows they are high in anthocyanins which are the important disease fighting antioxidants. Come along on Saturday to learn much more about how these fruits can help with your diet and health as well as tasting so damn good ! For those that don't want to go out and pick, they will all be available in the farm market - feel free to mail back if you would like to place any orders.

We are fortunate to be able to keep such a slow rearing rare breed with commercial success, due to the fact that we are able to sell to the end user, but all too often at cheaper prices than the supermarkets remember! This breed has been kept by the family since the 1860's and today we have over 150 pigs on site at times. This has certainly helped with our showing stock as we have had more to choose from.

As I arrived at Devon county I quickly settled our pigs into their pens and went to check out the competition. I felt quietly confident but you never know! The showing turned out to be very succesful with Breed Champion with our August born gilt that took the judges eye along with Reserve Breed Champion with our September boar, Champion Male, Champion Female and the highlight was when we went up against all the other breeds for the class of Best Pair. Out I went with our slighly misbehaved September boar and September gilt and after much summing up by the judge we were awarded with Reserve Champion Pair... oh and a vacuum cleaner, which is now being tested to the limits in the Restaurant! Then it was off to Royal Cornwall and some stiffer competition from our freindly adversary, Julian Collings - I think even Julian was slightly worried this year as the seemingly new boys on the showing circuit of the last 3 years turned out some good stock but, yet again, he pipped us to some, but not all, of the prizes! We ended with several firsts and a generally good outing and one lucky boar being sold and winging his way straight up to Wales to get to work!

Back on the farm, we have recently had a lovely little litter of 12 piglets who are out bounding around their pens and have another 3 litters due in the next 2 weeks, so plenty to see if you are taking a stroll that way after some summer fruit picking or even just walking off that summer fruits pavlova!

Keep your eyes on your shopping bags in the forthcoming weeks as we are running a whole range of voucher promotions in an effort to convert some of our summer fruit picking visitors into the larger ethos of the Market as an affordable option throughout 12 months of the year...we thought you, as our regular customers, should not miss out on this either.