We Picked-Our-Own at Roundstone Farm

The start of September marks our annual trip to Roundstone Farm. This year my lovely friend Mock Duck and her charming family joined us on our rural adventure.
   England's early summer floods and continuing rain have meant that the only successful fruit/vegetable crop in my garden has been my daughter's tomatoes - grown from seeds found in her box of Innocent smoothies - so it was a real delight to see the abundant harvest at Roundstone. It's an ideal place to visit with children, but you don't have to be 7 years old to get a kick out of riding to the top of the farm in the tractor's passenger trailer, or from digging and pulling carrots out of the ground. The biggest cheer from me came when we found the orchard of Victoria plums - hundreds of trees heavy with large red, gold and dusty pink egg-shaped fruit. I picked as many as I could carry.

     We returned home with long stems of rhubarb, punnets full of berries, huge beetroot, bags of onions, fat ears of sweetcorn, carrots, cauliflower, red cabbage and beans, and our lungs full of sweet country air.
    We travelled there by train - the nearest station being Goring-by-sea, then it's a 20 minute walk (alas along a busy main road) towards the farm. Leaving Roundstone with a heavy load of delicious produce we caught the (expensive) 700 bus from just outside the farm back to Goring-by-sea station.

North by Northwest of Worthing

On what felt like the last real day of summer, windfree and sun shining we took the 700 bus to Roundstone Farm. Spent three hours picking berries, pulling carrots from the ground, played hide-and-seek in the forest of sweetcorn and lay down in a field of monumental bright orange pumpkins.

We rode to the furthest reaches of the vast farm in a trailer towed by tractor in the company of a Slovak family with pram full of produce. The driver announced the next stop ‘Red Onions’ on his tannoy system.

Returned home with three carrier bags of fruit and veg including four courgette flowers worth their weight in gold and it all came to less than £10. The Soup Bible beckons.