@grahamehunter having talked about this with the coordinating team, some interesting ideas were raised about using the collective's combined marketing skills to come up with an engaging story and branding for any flour, as well as using the combined selling power of the members to 'crowd sell' the flour. We may not have the farming skills and knowledge within the collective, but I'm sure that we have plenty of communications, marketing and graphic design experts amongst us.

Yeah I'm happy to bake a deck of say 12 spelt loaves, just send over the flour. About 8 kg would be enough for a test or two then a bake. I'm pretty sure head baker Luke did do a tinned spelt with Abby Glencross at some point... Maybe I could bake it for the upcoming meeting? (date unconfirmed) then those that come could take home some bread. If its got a low hagberg it may behave weirdly...e5 has a good organic spelt flour provider at the moment so we are fine. Whats the price? I can pass on the details to the miller Ed, but no promises. Is it clean and dehulled? Where was the plan to get it milled?

Rosy - any chance of a test bake at E5?
There are many bags of beautifully milled Spelt from Weston's "OurField" 2017 harvest.
So far 7 of the 2017 members have elected to take their "free" samples, and 2 of the 2018 members have bought flour. However what we have not had is a chance to get the flours tested by a professional baker in a commercial oven. With all your travels around the bakerhood of UK, do you know of any who might like to try this product? (after all, we do have 4 tonnes more ready to be milled!)
And so, perhaps, you may have contact with bakers who could be interested in a 2018 crop which will be harvested in Autumn 2019?

One of the options which has slightly gone into limbo because of the difficulties of moving last year's harvest, is to grow Spelt AGAIN, since John has Spelt on hand that could be used as seed. It is true the crop had a poor technical rating for bakers - unsubstantiated in practice - but it is also likely something was learned about handling and growing Spelt which was in that year a new crop at Weston.

I have a slight inclination to stay with a product and get better at it rather than cycling on to a new exciting crop-of-the-moment (which this year seems to be a heritage population) . At least we know the problems of selling Spelt; they might be surmountable.

There are lots of advantages of heritage wheat not just the possibility of outcompeting weeds (this is usually to do with longer straw lengths). Big one is Flavour. Nutrient scavenging ability. Digestibility (if long fermented). I've seen first hand this year some of the heritage population crops coping much better in the long hot summer than the modern monocultures as diversity in the field has meant whatever the weather some varieties have thrived and held more moisture in the ground. Maybe the yield won't be high but we could be potentially be helping to produce actually good food!

where does the premium for specialised wheat lie?

As Rosy Benson has pointed out above . .my reservations are that we would have difficulty selling it for flour to small bakeries as its not going to be grown organically, especially with the recent media around herbicide use. There are other farmers growing the Waklyns YQ around the country in an organic system (lots of cultivations though) that bakers would be able to get hold of easier.'

I fear this may be the case - if the premium attached to heritage wheat is intricately co-resident with a desire for organic product then there seems scant reason to grow such a crop within the Weston "Conservation Agriculture" system in hope of a higher price; so that leaves the possible advantage of an older variety just one of being more weed resistant?

Unless of course the OurField group can work out how to develop a different story to help the sale for a specialised product that is not organically grown..

This is the Heritage Population grown this year down on the Dartington estate, we could probably get the grain from Holly at Grown in Totnes as the project is winding up, they've harvested this a few weeks ago.

Yes the seed idea is a sound one I reckon. Seed royalties are due to breeders of varieties so with John Letts’ heritage population it’s he who would be due any recompense.
The idea of a feed mix for @johncherry also a sound one. The Wakelyns makes a good feed I’m told, what do you think John and what price would you give?

Hello OurField!

Thanks for the update John C, nice to hear the cover crop is pleasing the walkers and the bees!

Apologies for being a bit quiet on the airwaves, I’ve been busy working my way around the UKs best bakeries! Its been a very delicious journey so far! The Angel Bakery, Small Food Bakery, Wild Hearth Bakery, The Almond Thief Bakery as well as my actual job at e5, and visiting farms (Stuart Roberts at Hammonds End, John Letts farm, Fred Price at Goltheney Farm, the Grown in Totnes project, Mark Leas Farm) to see this years grain growing. Lots to report on that maybe in a separate post.

My thoughts are that I would like us to plant very soon a Population of Heritage grain, possibly the one developed by John Letts. Its ideal as a grain after a previous grain harvest as it doesn’t require a high nutrient soil. I’ve emailed him today to scope out whether he’d be interested in this idea. Not necessarily for us to process into flour or sell to a distillery but for this year but to help bulk up his seed to then be sown elsewhere around the country. (This could be potentially less processing work for us to deal with, clearly we are not that quick on that side of things, sorry to say). But maybe we are good at using our network to shout out about what we are trying to do to the public?! We would need to understand a bit more about seed law and legacy payments, Steven do you have any thoughts on this? We could then have a much bigger impact and use our project to help launch the environmental and political principles behind this grain. This crop ticks lots of boxes its; diversity in the field, requires low-input methods, produces high value nutritious grain with real flavour over cheap food etc. I can see the heritage grain market growing by speaking to bakers, and by using Johns Population we can keep its label from being misused as he has developed this population over several years and really has the knowledge and ethics behind its development. We have allot to learn from him.

I like the YQ, having baked with it, understood its development and worked with Kim at Small Food on it but my reservations are that we would have difficulty selling it for flour to small bakeries as its not going to be grown organically, especially with the recent media around herbicide use. There are other farmers growing the Waklyns YQ around the country in an organic system (lots of cultivations though) that bakers would be able to get hold of easier. The customer doesn’t tend to ask past the organic label, so far anyway.

My second option would be to plant a diverse forage mix for the herd and tie the field into the farm system John Cherry is currently practicing. Any option that thinks about improving the soils health by thinking long term and creating a better system gets my vote.

x

Thanks for all the kind comments and suggestions. We are cracking on with harvest, which has been ridiculously easy this year, as everything is so dry and there are hardly any weeds (like we had in the spelt last year) to slow things down. It is also very early, but perhaps not as bountiful as we hoped a month or two ago, especially the spring crops which basically didn't see any rain from the day they emerged till the day they were harvested. The cover crop on the field is growing a bit and drawing appreciative comments from people using the footpath through the middle. Two people have stopped me in the shop and admitted to stealing sunflowers...obviously just the tip of the iceberg!

As to next year, I'm all for a heritage wheat. The fertility won't be too high that it'll fall over. We've got a year to find a market and I'm sure something will crop up...there's a choice between the whackier Einkorn types or something like Wakelyn's population wheat which is easily saleable into the normal wheat market if a specific #ourfield market doesn't open up.
John

Any luck with this Andy?

I certainly can. It's worth a shot. Any

I like this idea a lot Andy. Can YOU contact someone and report back?

Has anybody contacted any of the UK flour suppliers (Marriages, Doves, Shipton-Mill) to tell them about the OurField project and ask whether they would be interested in us sewing a crop exclusively for them? Something that they might see a future market for, or something that they are having trouble sourcing in the UK?

What were the reasons for growing Spelt last year? Was there something in particular you were hoping to achieve?

I'm aware that the quality of the Spelt for bread making isn't great so can we presume that other grains would be of a similar quality? Does this rule out grains for breadmaking completely?

Andy

Thanks Tony.

Hello StevenThank you for the very useful comments.
Best Tony

Thanks all for the comments on this thread, very interesting.
I’d like to make a point about heritage wheats —
Heritage in terms of grains is a loose term.
As to which older varieties are to considered ‘heritage’ can depend on a range of factors not all of which are clear.

I think the chap @johnanthonyallan mentioned hearing on the radio is Stuart Roberts, certainly Stuart was on Farming Today on Radio 4, yesterday or the day before. Stuart, and his father, have a lot of experience with older and more modern varieties, the one he was talking about on the farming programme was einkorn, but they are also experienced in farming organically and the set of challenges that comes with that approach to food production.

And with older varieties they can tend to lodge (fall over) if fertility in the field is particularly high. So, that must be taken into account. Sowing rates can be different, older varieties may not need high sowing rates as they can be weed competitive. But not always. Depends on the soils, the pH as much as the NPK, and it depends on the weed profile in a given field. And then there’s the weather.

I am and have been for some time a firm believer in the value of older cereal varieties but there is a gap between the knowledge in the farming community now and the knowledge in that community when such varieties were prevalent.

I suppose that begs the question, what would you want to/be happy growing, @johncherry ?

Cheers,
Steven

Hello Christine, Wendy, Oliver, Andy and Grahame
Vey many thanks for all the information. The link to the guide on heritage wheat was very useful indeed Wendy.

I like the very much the idea of heritage wheat but marketing is again going to be a serious challenge. On the basis of our experience so far - and our non-organic product - I would vote against going down the heritage wheat road unless John is very keen. Despite the fact that a farmer on Farming Today in the past few days reported that he had much better yields with his heritage harvest than his modern wheat.

I would like to suggest that until we know how to sell non-organic heritage grain we should regard the OurField activity as an association with the innovative Cherry managed farm where their big project is the adoption of conservation agriculture - abbreviated as CA

The adoption of CA is going very slowly in the UK. It is still not much beyond 10% of arable farming. The Weston Farm is nationally significant in this adoption and promotion of the approach nationally and internationally. The annual Groundswell event at Weston is a phenomenon. We have privileged access to the CA experiment at Weston.

Mob grazing by cattle is also being adopted.

We could align the OurField activity with the Weston Farm strategy by seeing the OurField link as a way of contributing to the adoption of CA and mob grazing. When we have useful expertise on marketing other grains and on other activities beyond the farm gate we could share them with the Cherry family and Richard the agronomist.

It will be very interesting to have from John and Richard the options for the 2018/2019 year. I would very much like to hear about the options for rotations FOR THE NEXT TWO OR MORE YEARS

Comments welcome from the membership and from John. How was the harvest John?

Best Tony

Thanks for the prompt Grahame and for laying out some options Darren and Christine.
Until we get any further guidance from John and Richard my preference would be for an autumn sown heritage wheat for the following reasons:
- it seems to me that autumn sowings have a better chance of getting established in order to deal with the unpredictable (too wet, dry, hot, cold) weather that we seem to be getting most summers now. Both this year’s cover crop and last year’s spelt (and fava bean companion plant) did not do that well after being planted in spring.
- as we are not able to grow organically at the moment, heritage wheat would give us a slight differentiation in the market, which I think we should aim for. Selling into the commodity market feels like the last option we should aim for, but useful to have as a backup if all else fails.
- we have tried companion and cover planting for the last two years and although they didn’t do as well as hoped, hopefully they have passed on some benefit to the soil to allow for a full field of grain this year.

If I remember rightly there are also not many heritage spring sown wheats (or they are hard to find) so if we want to try heritage variety/ies we will need to sow this year.

I don’t think it is realistic that we will find a buyer for a crop before the end of the month. One of the reasons last year’s spelt remains unsold is due to its low hagberg falling number which we didn’t know until harvest but put buyers off (even though it seems to be fine to bake with). I think we can only go with best chance to sell for now.

I’m sure we will be able to source some heritage seed. John Letts, his new Heritage Grain Alliance (I think you’re a member @abbyrose?) or Chris at the Real Bread Campaign could be a good places to start for suppliers. Unless our John knows of a source already or @rosybenson the grower we heard about at the Harvest celebration event at E5 in November can help us?

And Andy, you asked “I'd like to be more involved but I'm not sure how to!” I am just a home grower with an interest in where my food comes from and no farming or grain knowledge but the internet and phone have been my friend over the past year and half of this project. I have found people who I have emailed (mostly mills to try and find a way to dehull the 2017 spelt) to be very helpful if I have asked for advice, as they are all quite keen to hear about our project. The more of us that carry out a little bit of research or contact people to ask for help the wider the market we can cover between us, so please just jump in and see what you can find out :)

p.s. I found this article interesting when having a general google about hertitage wheat https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/grain_and_mills/#heritage_varieties

Hi Christine,

Thanks for the link.

Heritage Grains is just something I wanted to throw into the pot for discussion.

Andy

Hi Andy - not sure if we can consider heritage grains, John can advise but re: interest in heritage grains do keep an eye on Scotland The Bread who have 3 types of heritage grains in production and many community outreach activities - link below

Hi, I agree that ideally I need some guidance on what sort of crop we should be considering. Are there any crops that we shouldn't consider?

I joined this in the hope of gaining access to some heritage grains so from my perspective I would like look at those options - but I have no suggestions on what! Like others have said, it needs to be commercially viable and we need to line up potential buyers before we plant so that we don't end up with an other crop without a buyer.

I'd like to be more involved but I'm not sure how to!

Andy

Graham - in summary re discussions on planting: we are very keen to get John, Richard and your views on what would work well for a crop and taking into consideration the state of the field and impact of the dry weather. We were keen to try and find someone to buy lined up - at least to consider the 'beyond the farm gate' aspects in more detail before we planted which is a reflection that we are still struggling to find a solution to 2017 Spelt. We had talked about beans, wheat, barley and oil seed rape - good to get your views on these and if they can offer a suitable choice. Personally I think an Autumn planting would be good unless there are better reasons to wait until next Spring.

oh good!

thanks for the prompt Graham - we have been discussing this and I will add in some detail very soon.

crop decision required

We re close to the time when seed needs to be ordered, and time planned for drilling.

To avoid running out of options, I will put up a choice in a few days - but I need some guidance /input from Cooperative members what you would like to see in the range of choices offered to the Cooperative to choose from. otherwise it will just be John Cherry and Richard Harding and me sitting down for a coffee and coming up with a few options.

so please chip in here any ideas which you would like discussed, ready for me to put up a vote around 18 August 2018 for the crop you would like to have planted later this year, (or optionally as a Spring crop in 2019)

agro-forestry

I think it is a really interesting idea; but it is outside the remit or funding of OurField which was described to investors with a fairly specific set of parameters. I would suggest that if there is a lot of interest in Agro forestry, with ancillary costs of fencing and tree purchase, and much longer term commitment to seeing any returns from cropping trees, that this would be a separate group (which might or might not include some OurField members) , perhaps funded in a different way - fewer investors putting in more money on a different time scale. For which reason I would like to limit extensive discussion of Agro-Forestry here, please and to really emphasise the need to decide a crop to plant this year on the existng OurField site..
x

Dear Darren
Very many thanks for all the information and suggestions. I agree we need to consider options. The agroforestry idea is interesting but the deer precautions need to be researched and costed. And it would be good to know if we have the option of farming another field which is better suited to the approach.
John Cherry is very hard pressed managing the harvest and will not be able to give the idea much consideration.
Do we know anyone who has experience of agroforestry. If John is keen on an agroforestry experiment the option is worth considering. But is he is not then we do not have the financial and other resources to under-write it.
Many thanks Tony (Allan)

Its getting to the time where we need to decide what we are going to plant this autumn and how we are going to grow it.

Theres been some comments over the course of the year about what we may now want to grow.

There was the suggestion of growing some autumn sown wheat. If we are going to do so we need to weigh up the benefits of growing a modern wheat, for which there is a huge commodity market into which we can easily sell, against a more robust heritage wheat, which could crop well without requiring fungicides, but for which there may not be a ready market. The majority of our spelt from last year is still sat in the barn, and we've yet to discover where we can sell it.

The limited demand for heritage grains and other less widely grown crops appears to be largely for organic certified crops, which leaves us in an interesting situation. Its been suggested we shouldn't plant anything without having a buyer lined up. Can we find a buyer now who would be prepared to buy the heritage wheat we could be sowing next month?

Some other things we could put in as an autumn planting are field beans, or we could try another cover crop, with an eye to improved soil health and weed control.

Maybe we could do some kind of companion/combined crop again?

Has anyone got any suggestions?

The other thing thats been recently mentioned, is the possibility of setting up an agroforestry system on OurField. This would be planting rows of trees across the field, wide enough apart to still allow growing a field crop with a tractor between the rows. We could grow trees that would provide a marketable crop (hazelnuts, eldersflower/berries, apples, wood or ???), but there would be a new set of logistics to consider in taking and marketing the crop, and possibly tree care.

Having trees on the field offer great soil health benefits, their roots encourage a healthy soil ecosystem, by being permanently present, feeding soil micro organisms. We could select trees to maximize soil health benefits rather than with a focus on a marketable crop.

I had a chat with John Cherry and he is happy for us to explore this idea on the farm. There are significant costs involved in obtaining and planting the trees, the field would need fencing against deer and if we had another summer as dry as this one, there's the possibility that we could loose a significant number of trees. There are however grants readily available that could cover, at least, some of these costs. The novelty of OurField may well improve our chances of attracting other funding to help cover some costs. John pointed out that OurField has a bridleway running through it. This would increase the costs of deer fencing, and make laying out the field more complex. We could move onto another field where there wouldn't be these issues.

Yes thanks so much for the photo @grahamehunter - looks like there is lots of diversity!

Dear Grahame

Very many thanks for sending John Cherry's 16 July 2018 photo and your comments. Tony Allan

John Cherry took this in the field 19 July 2018

photo

This is at the low end of the field where the soil is poorer, but has more moisture. At the top of the field, the clover has come through more strongly, and there are fewer flowers.

I understand he is considering grazing this field later; this requires fencing and arranging water, but adds fertility to the soil for next year.

As can be seen I think I am correct to say that there is no harvestable crop, so a fallow year.