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Lewes Farmers' Market
- Strawberries & Cherries
Lewes Farmers’ Market has been blessed from the start
with a good old-fashioned fruit farm, Maynards at Ticehurst.
Everything the owner Tom Maynard does is geared towards flavour.
Rather than the ubiquitous El Santa, he has five types of
strawberries chosen for taste, including this week’s
dark-fleshed Florence. Instead of constant irrigation, plumping
up the fruit with water, Maynards usually let the sun and
rain do the trick. If the fruit does need a drink, it comes
from water in the farm’s own reservoir rather than drawing
heavily on the mains or from digging a borehole. They rotate
the crops to control disease rather than sterilizing the soil
every year.
This week also sees the start of the cherry season. Maynards
sells seven kinds of sweet cherries at the market. From around
mid July, jam makers may want to go to the farm itself to
get the rare, fleeting and delicious Morello cherries, the
slighter sourer fruit that is especially good in preserves
and sauces. I’d recommend a trip to the farm in any
case. It's a bountiful, family-run affair, with a hand-painted
map showing you around the 50 acres and a croquet set on hand
should you want a break from picking. Lewes Farmers’
Market is this Saturday morning. Maynards, Windmill Hill Farm,
Ticehurst, is open for PYO from 9am-8pm, or dusk until October.
For the latest on what is ripe-and-ready for PYO, contact
them via the details shown below. HE
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