It’s that time of year again when summer fruits and veg are ripe and ready for the picking.
After toying with where to go as a family for a few hours one day in the summer holidays, my mum suggested Mitchell Fruit Garden for a bit of pick your own. And what a good idea it turned out to be.
Despite it being mid-August, the weather wasn’t fantastic. We originally planned to spend the day doing something else, but in the end decided not to venture too far from home, on The Roseland Peninsula. The holiday traffic, and the volume of people in Cornwall this summer, has been insane. It’s meant many locals, like us, haven’t ventured far, choosing to appreciate what’s on our doorstep.
About Mitchell Fruit Garden
Mitchell Fruit Garden, or Farm, is just off the A30. If you’re heading west, it’s not far after the Fraddon services at Hamburger Hill. Being the first turning after coming off the A30, it’s easy to find and well signposted.
The fruit farm has a good website, giving some idea of what’s in season each month. Even though it’s not far off the main road, it’s a pretty peaceful place to visit.
Parking’s fine at Mitchell Fruit Garden too. The website explains that it can be tight, but there was plenty of room when we arrived near midday.
What’s Good About Pick Your Own?
Aside from coming home with some delicious fruit and veg, pick your own is just one way of supporting local businesses and farmers. The food travels less miles from plant to plate, and ultimately, it saves money. By visiting local pick your own farms, we’re stocking up on seasonal produce too.
Pick Your Own at Mitchell Fruit Garden
Arriving at Mitchell Fruit Garden, we could see a list of available fruit and veg. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, all ready to for harvest. We eagerly picked up a few punnets each, ready to go.
We headed to the strawberry polytunnels first. Rows and rows of carefully tended strawberry plants lay ahead of us, there was no shortage of strawberries to pick. We found plenty of ripe, plump strawberries to choose from, but found some proper big ones when we hunted a bit, and looked amongst the leaves.
We easily filled up 4 punnets between us, and could’ve picked more. After a successful strawberry haul, we decided to head to the raspberry tunnels. On our way we could see gooseberry bushes and rhubarb, sadly not quite ready for picking. I love rhubarb and custard and if it was ready, I’d definitely had some.
There were fewer raspberry tunnels compared to strawberry at Mitchell, and even though we had to initially look for ripe raspberries, we filled up a punnet. That’s a fair amount of raspberries! We found the further up the tunnel we went, the more raspberries there were available.
We actually managed to come away from Mitchell Fruit Garden with a decent amount of berries. One of the benefits of pick your own is it’s cheaper than buying from a shop. I couldn’t believe how much we garnered for our money.
Recipe
Once home, I realised I forgot to pick up some Roddas clotted cream to go with my strawberries and raspberries. I put that right the next day and also decided to make a wheat/grain free strawberry flan with an almond and lemon base.
Credit where credit’s due, it was delicious. I hasten to add it didn’t last long either!
If you like cooking and baking, why not try making a traditional Cornish pasty?
Henry enjoyed picking fruit too. For someone who’s previously claimed he doesn’t like strawberries or raspberries, he tested a few just to make sure!
As a morning out for 3 generations, visiting Mitchell Fruit Garden for pick your own, was a great idea. One I’d certainly recommend.