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It was lovely to meet all of you who came up here on Sunday and I look forward to getting to know the rest of you over the course of the season, either in person or via loomio.

We talked a bit on Sunday about what to plant on your behalf. I'll try to put some flesh on those suggestions. The three crops on offer are:

1) Spring Wheat, a variety called Mulika (which we happen to have in the shed), which when grown conventionally should yield 2 to 3 tonnes grain/acre (5 to 7.5t /hectare). On the farm last year we spent about £170/ha on fertilisers and sprays and it just about made 5t/ha yield as the spring was dry and cold (and a host of other farmr excuses that I won't bore you with in case you worry you've invested in a dud). It tends to produce high protein (14%) milling grain and consequently is sought after by the millers and sells at a good premium to 'feed' wheat. We're hoping for £150/t for last years crop.

2) Spelt. You probably know more about this than I do; we planted our first field of spelt last autumn and we're very pleased with how it looks. Most spelt is grown organically in the UK, but as more people demand it, one or two mills are now buying non-organic spelt, so we'll be able to sell it. I'll talk about organic a bit later. I really have no idea how spring sown spelt will yield or behave, but it will certainly be interesting. The costs should be lower than Mulika, the yield certainly will be,but the price should be much higher.

3) Spring Oats. Oats are pleasingly robust compared to wheat and more competitive against weeds and diseases (on the whole). They are thus cheaper to grow, but should yield much as spring wheat. If we hit the human consumption standard, which is to an extent weather dependant, they will make porridge for someone and money for us. But a lot of farmers seem to be growing them now, so the market could crash...my oat dealer says this is unlikely. We're moving last years oats now at £134/t.

The next decision is whether you want to plant a companion crop in with your cereal. This is uncharted territory for us, though we have grown peaola before (oil seed rape and peas) with mixed results and we've grown various unintended companions with cereals (weeds). This is an enormous and very exciting subject which I can't begin to summarise here. Really keen people can look up my friend Andy Howard's recent Nuffield Scholarship Report, which goes into it in some depth (96 pages iirr). I think it is the future of farming. Or one of the things anyway...

The last decision that needs to be made now is: how 'organic' do you want to be? As Richard the agronomist pointed out on Sunday, if we were properly organic here, we would have built up the fertility in preparation to the growing of wheat or spelt, ie we've have had a legume or herbal ley in the ground the year before. The field we have chosen had a crop of wheat in last year and now has a cover crop of oats and blackgrass, so there won't be a huge amount of natural fertility available to grow a crop without some additional omph. As we aren't bound by organic rules, we can put a bit of nitrogen fertiliser on and this might well mean we have to add fungicide and straw shortener (especially if we go for spelt, which gets to 6 foot high without artificial fertiliser). Again this is a massive subject, which I'm not going to elaborate on here, but trust to the wisdom of the crowd.

In short we can grow the crop without inputs, but we won't get much back and what little we get won't be sellable as organic as we are not registered. It will be cheap and interesting for all that. The reason we need to know now is: if you think we should use at least some inputs, we'll probably add some fertiliser at seeding time to get the plants off to a flying start.

Abi Aspen has provided a reading list for those who want to delve further into all these options.

Hi team!

I'm Abi Aspen, one of the resident scientists who loves to research the bejabbers out of everything :)

Please find below the reading list we've pulled together. I've tried to make it balanced in terms of papers, articles, reputable, maybe not so reputable, organic favoured, conventional favoured. But please be aware we always carry a bit of bias, and encourage you to have a dig around to see what you can find too :)

If anyone can't access any of the documents please just let me know as I believe I have access to some others do not.

Happy reading! And if anyone wants a bit more in depth, or a point in the right direction I'm more than happy to help. Just drop me a line :)

Grainy love

Abi Aspen

Purely on the basis of deliciousness, my vote would be for oats. But that's just to get the discussion going.

When you talk about fertilisers John, is there a choice between industrial NPKs and animal muck? Apart from understanding the chemistry, I'm completely ignorant about this kind of thing.

In answer to your question about 'artificial' fertilisers and farmyard manure, we haven't got a big supply of well-rotted FYM/compost to apply and even if we had, we'd have a job to apply as much N with FYM as we might need to get a decent conventional yield.

Thanks John, great answer.

Thinking about the grains - I will want to vote for something I can make bread with so for me it's between Mulika and Spelt. Mulika looks a good grain from what I can see but we need to take advantage of the added value from @ourfield and the shared risk - John would probably grow this anyway. Spelt looks good from the growing interest in it and we could demonstrate growing non-organic Spelt. The shared risk and collaborative decision making down the line may be the part that is important and we have additional innovative marketing from anything that comes out of this project whatever the outcome - so still not there with my voting choice but I am sure whatever we choose will be fine.

My apologises for not being at the first meeting but have every intention to be at the next. Look forward to meeting you all I must admit I am leaning towards the Spelt. John's point about not knowing about the yield makes me want to find out. I think it would be interesting.

Tony Allan
I am finding using multiple sites - Ourfield and Loomio - very frustrating indeed. One can go round and round and then not be able to find one's way back to the page where there is some information needed in order to make a contribution on the decision. I also have not fathomed how

I am not clear whether we are using the field with black grass - and as I say I cannot find my way back to the place where JohnC set out the position. I judge it would be interesting to use the field with black grass as part of the 'experiment'..

My preferences
Approach - experimental and learning to be prioritised over profit(?)
Crop - Spelt, possibly in combination with a legume.

Many thanks John and the team at the farm.

You have said you find switching between multiple site time-consuming. I sympathise.

The intention is to use Loomio Group threads, especially this one to the exclusion of any other sites. I am not checking the Our Field web site, and I don't think John Cherry is either.

So, if you want to exchange information with the others, this is the definitely place.

Remember, these are public threads anyone can look at, but only the paid-up members can contribute and vote.