Welcome to the Mid Kent Growers Website

Nullam id dolor id nibh ultricies vehicula ut id elit. Aenean eu leo quam. Pellentesque ornare sem lacinia quam venenatis vestibulum. Nulla vitae elit libero, a pharetra augue. Integer posuere erat a ante venenatis dapibus posuere velit aliquet. Integer posuere erat a ante venenatis dapibus posuere velit aliquet.

Archive for January, 2011

Welcome to Pomona!

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

At a recent meeting of the Mid Kent growers, Chairman, Nigel Bardsley unveiled a new database that will revolutionise the way the co-operatives orchard data is collected.

Pomona, a custom built data base designed by Ether Creative will allow members of Mid Kent Growers to enter all their farm and orchard information into a web based system. John Evans, Vice-Chairman said “this will be a wonderful tool for all our members and will help move the grower co-operative into a stronger and more streamlined P.O.”

For the first time the member growers’ will be able to submit their planting, grubbing, crop estimates and picking figures directly via this online system. This unique solution will enable them to plan forthcoming crops more efficiently and make their farm business future proof. Ether Creative were delighted when representatives of the group approached them to come up with a solution for the co-operative. Alex Collins, Ether Creative Director said “The first step of the project was to build the front facing website with a full Content Management System, enabling the Mid Kent Grower administration team to easily update the content” he continued, “The second and more difficult task was to design and build the database”.

The database built using PHP and Msql, provides a secure login area for each individual member where they can access specified information and allow input of crop/yield and storage figures.

It also has the ability to generate a report across all members to show the data from each member as one document that can be exported to Excel as well as generating reports specific to each member.

At the meeting on Wednesday 26th January, members were able to discuss both the website and database and had some very useful feedback and were looking forward to the new direction the grower co-operative are taking.

Posted in news | 7 Comments »

Top Chef discovers Rubens!

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

The Neaves family were hosts to the celebrity chef James Martin who first appeared on television in 1996.  Over the past 15 years he has been seen in such classics as Ready Steady Cook, Junior Master Chef, The Vanessa Show and most famously BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen.   His latest venture is called Great British Food Revival, a series of 12 programmes that have been comissioned by BBC on classic British foods with each episode being hosted by a different celebrity chef.

James Martin at AR Neaves & Sons

The apple programme is about the potential role for heritage varieties in a modern market place and examines whether their flavours would overcome any reservations with their appearence.  James and the team visited Brogdale, The Rough Old Wives Cider company and AR Neaves & Sons to look at the apple variety Rubens. The visit to Neaves was to look at this modern variety which had heritage parents (both Gala and Elstar’s parents fall into this category) an apple which had good flavour, commercial status and would suit the modern consumer’s palatte.  James took fruit into Faversham town centre to ask the public their opinion, he also took Rubens apples back for studio filming and made an apple charlotte with the fruit. There will be a book to accompany the series which features an additional recipe for Rubens and Rosehip jelly, rich in vitamin C and antioxidants.

Will Dixon was interviewed about working with Supermarkets, modern farming techniques and a grower’s relationship with their customers.  Sarah Calcutt, of Norman Collett Ltd, was interviewed on behalf of Tesco about the demand for British apples, the consumer and retailers response to the UK season and the demand for heritage apples.

The programme will be aired at 9pm with the series starting in early February.

Posted in news | Comments Off on Top Chef discovers Rubens!

EKFS Orchard Competition

Saturday, January 15th, 2011

Three judges took two very long days to determine the best of the 76 entries for the East Kent Fruit Society’s (EKFS) orchard competition.

Kent was impressively represented, one such representative was Simon Mount of New Barn Farm, Stourmouth, East Kent, who won awards for the best new entrant, the best young orchard and the best orchard with more than 1,000 trees per acre. In addition, his Conference headed the pear class.

The judges considered that Simon Mount’s Rubens orchard, which won second prize in the “any other dessert apple” class, was of a very high standard and, according to Guest, “fantastic for the evenness of the trees and the right spacing for the soil type”.

The judges were retired growers Jack Martin and Philip Charlton and former grower and Worldwide Fruit technical director (procurement) John Guest. Their steward was the Farm Advisory Services Team’s (FAST) James Shillitoe
Thy were also very impressed by Bruce-Lockhart’s Bramley’s Seedling, which won the hotly-contested culinary class and was entered by farm manager John Harper. “It was very, very good because it was a big, mature orchard with very uniform trees whose management was superb,” Guest explains.

He says all of the entries for the pear class were pretty good. Mount’s winning orchard was of the traditional bush type that had been well pruned and was cropping exceptionally well for its type. It proved that an orchard did not have to be “super modern” to win.

extract taken from Brian Lovelidge
Horticulture Week
27 August 2010

Posted in news | 7,240 Comments »