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Thu 19 Jul 2018 9:28PM

2018/9 crop updates

GH Grahame Hunter Public Seen by 50

This is the place to post pictures or comments about what is happening on the farmed field now .

TA

Tony Allan Tue 13 Oct 2020 7:43AM

Dear Darren

Very many thanks for drawing attention to the comments by James Rebank on the BBC Food Programme. Thank you for circulating them. He has become a very significant figure on the UK farming scene. His first very readable book was on sheep farming in Cumbria. It is a real page turner. Over the last three years he has earned a place amongst the food and farming voices on sustainable farming in the UK. He speaks as well as he writes and his contribution last week was exceptional. He has just published another book which I look forward to reading. Best Tony (Allan)

D

Darren Mon 12 Oct 2020 3:59PM

Hope everyone is keeping well in these unusual times.

Nice to hear all the updates and comments. Thanks for everyone whos been involved.

Good to hear seeds are in the ground and we are all set for our second year of no input grains.

Agroforestry is certainly an exciting development, nice theres potential for a local producer to take fruit we could produce. I'd also be interested in being involved in tree planting. From a covid perspective I think as its work and outside theres greater chances we could organise things safely and legally, but guess we'll have to see how things are come the time.

Just listened to a farmer on the Food Program chatting about the state of agriculture in the UK & how we got here. Think he stated things well - would recommend a listen https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ndb8

TA

Tony Allan Tue 6 Oct 2020 7:05AM

DearJohn

Very many thanks for letting us know that you had the time to make good use of a planting opportunity. It is very good to hear that you successfully sowed the heritage wheat. Tony (Allan)

JC

John Cherry Mon 5 Oct 2020 3:35PM

Thanks for your kind comments.

Quick update: we grazed the top half of the field last week, the cattle munched the clover and some of the weeds down nicely, we were going to repeat the process on the bottom half, then I saw the forecast for horrible weather coming, so we moved the fences off and brought the seed drill in and have now planted 200kg/ha of John Letts's heritage landrace wheat. It all went in a treat. Both halves look well flattened by the drill.

To answer your question, @Rosy Benson , about how clever it is to grow continuous cereal crops...time will tell. There will be weeds, but I'm hoping that by drilling in good time, that the wheat will grow away from the other vegetation and stay there (if it grows to five or six feet). The biodiversity of the under-story is the equivalent of growing break-crops, so a rotation of actual crops is not so important, if you see what I mean.

We are waiting to hear back from the Woodland Trust on which trees would be available, will let you all know when to turn up with your spades!

John

RB

Rosy Benson Fri 25 Sep 2020 3:26PM

Thank you @John Cherry for the updates. So sorry to hear e5 pulled out of getting the last half of the YQ harvest and the mice getting in. I'm having problems with weevils, turns out grain doesn't store well forever! I actually asked Laurent (e5s miller) on Tuesday what happened because interestingly he came to Gothelney to look at what Fred is doing here in terms of grain diversity (on a non organic certified farm) and he said it had come from the Directors at e5 not to use non-organic grains anymore, I think partly because their packaging for e5 retail flour has Organic written on it, and they did also have a big drop in sales over the last few months as the their wholesale bread market went through the floor. It is a massive shame after all that hard work at the beginning to persuade them to take it and you getting it cleaned and saved for them. Not sure how we could have negotiated that better, maybe more of a contract of sale, someone on the ground to keep the grain flowing! As to planting trees, yes! here to to help. Maybe we don't need to vote on the specifics? If @John Cherry you decide what species? Also quick question (perhaps big question..) we've had at least 3 years of cereal harvests, albeit which have been undersown with other species but do we need to do more of a swap to something else in the rotation as surely the annual weed seed level is creeping up and the soil be lacking because of this? or did we decide to try continuous cropping of the John Letts Heritage populations? What is the long term plan? On a side note; if anyone wants to book on a day learning about sourdough baking using regional grain I'm running workshops down at Gothelney Farm in Somerset www.fieldbakery.com Your all welcome, but just 6 at a time! All the best to everyone.

TA

Tony Allan Fri 25 Sep 2020 6:38AM

Thank your Abby for your comment. I agree we should attempt an on line session.

Best Tony (Allan)

AR

Abby Rose Thu 24 Sep 2020 4:31PM

Even though I’m slow to respond, every time an OurField update comes through from you @John Cherry and any responses, it puts a big smile on my face - good or bad news! So thank you for always keeping us in the loop and keeping the momentum going.

Planting trees in OurField is super exciting! How can we best help in making that happen? Do we need to raise funds to support this?

And sounds like we need to make a decision about what to do with last years harvest. Maybe it’s time for an online collective meeting somepoint soon, or if not definitely a vote...

TA

Tony Allan Tue 15 Sep 2020 7:45AM

Dear John and Stephen

Very many thanks for the report, comments and discussion. 2020 has been an extraordinary year with perverse weather in every season.. Thank you John for making 2020 an innovative one on OurField. We appreciate your giving attention to the project. Thank you Stephen for the comparative information on agronomy and marketing. Please share more if you have time.

I am totally supportive of what you are doing on OurField. Have you worked our the costs of any investment?

Best Tony (Allan)

SJ

Steven Jacobs Tue 15 Sep 2020 6:45AM

Thanks for the update, John.

I know from farmers I work with that this season has been particularly difficult, with floods during the autumn and winter then a spring drought making it ideal for nobody, except maybe for some fruit growers.

I wonder how things have been across the rest of Weston Farm?

A tonne an acre isn't bad, considering. I don't recall what was done for fertility in the end, did they get any N?

Wakelyn's is beautiful, isn't it? When Martin put the trees in rows it was all about biodiversity and his alley cropping design was novel, in the this country it was unique. But yes, wider rows is sensible. Stephen Briggs at Whitehall farm, near Peterborugh, has his at 24 metres, I think. Whatever suits the equipment you have for managing the arable crops.

Stephen was talking about root pruning too, that his trees are managed above and below the ground enables him to gain crop advanatages almost right up to the treeline, otherwise the pay off is that the trees take away from the crop more than woul dbe ideal. And of course the ideal is the shelter and nurture of the trees but still leaving room for the cereals.

He was reporting on twitter that while he too has suffered with the extreme weather he saw benefits from the buffering the trees gave to the crop.

Exciting times ahead. How many trees and will we be able to come and see things, maybe even put some in the ground? I appreciate with the pandemic that might not be possible with this number six law now in place but if that gets lifted maybe we could think about it.

Seed will be limited this year for certain crop varieties due to poor harevsting. If you've not yet done so maybe get seed orders in now if you can.

And thanks again, John. Looks like progress at Our Field.

Steven

OR

Oliver Rubinstein Fri 25 Sep 2020 12:22PM

For me sustainable farming systems are all about balance. However, as we all know, discussion about all too frequently turns into simple binary arguments about what the land should be used for, often ignoring the food production element.

I think that agroforestry is an incredibly exciting way of solving many of these problems, by allowing multiple ecosystem services and land uses to be combined. It's a fantastic example of how we can balance the need to sequester carbon, whilst also providing mutiple food crops in a resilient system. Agroforestry systems feature in pillar 2 of the NFU's Net Zero by 2040 blueprint as an effective means of increasing on-farm carbon storage and I'm sure interest is only going to increase in the coming years.

The pioneering work done by Martin and others has shown that these systems are viable although it's still early days and as Stephen mentioned, things like optimum row width are vital to get right, if it's going to be viable in an agricultural sense. At the Organic Research Centre (which Wakelyns used to be part of) whilst I was there, they had an agroforestry trial in a field across the road. Unfortunately, they planted the trees in an extremely dry winter and spring, which meant that establishment was really poor.

10 years+ on, last time I saw the trial, it resembled quite a patchy hedgerow, with many of the trees struggling to get going. Whilst there's not much you can do about the weather, it just goes to show that factors out of our control can affect the viability of these systems. In this case, it simply wasn't viable to irrigate the saplings and I'm sure this is the case for most farms too. However, given the experimental nature of this project, I think it's the ideal setting to give it a go and would be incredibly exciting to see how it progresses. I'm sure that the Our Field members would be more than happy to lend a hand with the tree planting (within the limit of restrictions).

Regarding this year's crop (or what's left of it), I'd be in favour of turning into flour. Perhaps we could vote on it? A group call would be good as well.

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