What we can plant and what we wish to apply to the crop. Discussions up to Nov 2017

Many thanks for your sympathetic reply. One does not like revealing one's on-line limitations. I appreciate your leadership on how to communicate if it makes communication easy.

QUESTION FOR JOHN CHERRY
I would also like to ask John Cherry whether there are significant additional transaction costs in 1. SEPARATING the outputs from a combined crop strategy, 2. MARKETING spelt and legumes compared with marketing spring wheat.

There will be a modest extra cost in separating legume seeds from a cereal crop, but I'd hope the extra value of the bonus crop would more than pay for the hassle. We have the technology to do this on farm, we pass a lot of our crops over the sieves to clean them up before selling anyway. I don't know how easily the spelt or legumes will be to market, but I don't think it will be too difficult as long as the quality is there. I suspect by harvest time there will be a disorderly queue of buyers jostling with each other to get their hands on what we've grown!

I would like us to grow spelt and lentils but am also interested in mulika. How expensive are the mulika seeds?
You can buy spelt flour easily and it sells at over twice the price of regular bread flour. I couldn't find any 'mulika' wheat for sale for bakers, the name isn't used as it is for spelt. So it might be a market opportunity: 'Mulika, the new spelt!'
I wonder what lentils can be grown on 'our field'? It would be great to offer British lentils.

Sorry, I didn't explain what Mulika is very clearly. It is an ordinary spring sown wheat variety, one of a dozen or so commercial varieties that farmers will sow this spring. It happens to produce good quality grain that the commercial millers like, so is easily sold.

Hi, wonderful to meet so many of you last week. I look forward to meeting the rest of you in due course & via Loomio. 


Before getting on to the crops I wanted to share my thoughts on the trade off between making a profit and experimentation which was highlighted last Sunday. 

For me, a key reason for joining the collective was to learn more about the reality of farming and the challenges faced. Likewise I feel that OurField's model holds a deal of potential to make farming a more appealing career through reduced financial risk for the farmer. I would like the results of Our Field Weston to encourage others to do the same. Therefore I think it's quite important that we don't all end up at a huge loss. I feel that being able to say that we broke even, along with the other benefits of the co-op would be enough to encourage others to see OurField as as viable model with appeal for investors and farmers.

Like many of you, I'm keen to experiment with the crops and see what we can achieve without masses of chemical inputs, but am cautious of us taking on too much and think we should seek a middle ground. As Abby stressed last week, the process of FOW was much more complex than she anticipated. My heart is with companion cropping with a legume but I feel this might be best as an endeavour for a hypothetical year 2. - Should John or another farmer take us back. 

This leads to my vote for oats or spelt. I’ve seen spelt cropping up everywhere over the last few years (forgive the pun) and if there is a miller that we could use, I’m hopeful that we could find a buyer. As Christine says we should have the added value of ‘OurField’ on our side. I also heard rumours that there were some bakeries interested? In short, I would like others to see OurField as a successful, replicable model and for our crop to help transition the field so that the next crop would need less chemical inputs.

Thanks to John and family for having us!

Hello! We just read Tessa's post and we just wanted to say that we are very much in agreement with the points she raises around ensuring a degree of success to make the project an attractive model for future uptake.

With regards to what to grow, our initial thinking is a preference for spelt, potentially with a companion crop as increasing diversity appeals to us. It would be great to be able to take this project through to completion, ergo marketing and selling the final outputs ourselves vs. selling to a wholesaler. Thoughts?

Hello,
After a lot of consideration I would like to suggest growing spelt with a companion crop of lentils..

Hi All!

This is a fascinating discussion, and I concur with those that advocate for a middle-ground here: I do think that financial viability should be an important criterion in our decision-making. Moreover, I agree that our collective work through #OurField can serve as a valuable source of information for 'future farmers,' and that this is an important consideration in our decision-making -- though with a small addition that future farmers will only be successful if they can live profitably through their farm work. My vote as it stands is for spelt, though I'm open to considering a small companion crop along with this.

Would like to suggest we could consider splitting the field into half with one half with a companion crop and one half without if not too much labour. I also think a good injection of fertiliser at seeding time seems very sensible, why make it harder. Also just to check that I remember from the discussions that sieving companion crops did not easily make them okay for human consumption - the grain would be but the companion crop would be for animal feed due to sieving mechanisms. Great to have this discussion here - I agree with Tessa on the wider debate but feel excited to give a companion crop a chance - hence the 50% option. We cannot though fail or others will never follow.

I feel very undecided and that there are good reasons to choose all three. Really enjoyed reading all the thoughts from the group so far. Re-iterating the thoughts of others in the group - I think it's important that profit plays some bearing in our decision as John has the largest stake in the field - so he has the most to lose financially...I feel we must acknowledge that farming is a livelihood. On the other hand what's exciting is we are sharing that financial risk so we can be a bit experimental. So I feel we are in a strong position for our decisions to be driven by effect on planet and profit. I am very excited about John's suggestion of companion crops and although it is somewhat unchartered territory in the UK - My understanding from John is that he thinks there is little to lose financially . Quick questions @johncherry - Is that correct? And if yes are there any benefits to the soil/earth of a companion crop? If we use a companion crop - as there are two crops, would you ordinarily apply more chemical inputs?