Harvest

It has recently been a special time of year for us. This is the time when we harvest our oil seed rape crop. It is a time that can be very frantic for us as we worry about the moisture levels depending on whether we have had a very wet or dry summer.

We never use any glyphosphates, such as round up on our standing crops of oil seed rape. Some farmers use them to speed up the maturing of the crop so that it dries quicker meaning they can harvest earlier. We don't agree with this method, so we use a Swathing machine, which is essentially a mower which cuts the crop and leaves it in rows (swaths) which then dry out naturally. Once the crop has reached the optimum moisture level we then “pick up” the crop with a combine harvester.

Although the sprays are “safe” we don't like the idea of spraying the standing crop just before we harvest it, we also don't use any pesticides on the crop as we have some bee hives on the farm, and the bees forage in the oil seed rape when it is in flower.

After we have harvested the crop we cold press the seed that has been collected. Cold pressing is the simple and traditional method of producing oil. The seed is simply pressed (or squeezed) at a low temperature, which means that the oils natural rich golden colour and nutrients are preserved. Once the oil has settled, it is filtered and then bottled. It really is as simple as that. No heat, no chemicals just pure and healthy home grown oil. We only press our seed once, this ensures that we only produce the highest quality, undiluted cold pressed rapeseed oil.