Very interesting reading through so far. I'm in two very different minds about the direction and hopefully writing it all down will lead me to an answer! I really like the idea of companion cropping but I think for me, I'd like to see this as more of a long term project that sets a framework and baseline to encourage the uptake of this model.

I think taking an element of risk and learning within this project is vital, otherwise, what do we share to others once we reach the end of our first season. For me I think the first year (I'm hoping for more...) is a great means of a proof of concept, that collaboration and community investment can prove to be an "ecomonic" and sustainable model for the future of farming, especially in light of the challenges we're going to face over the coming years with policy upheavel and what the future of farming in the UK is currently looking like. So in that respect, I see this as an opportunity to show that other means of farming are viable, and in so, think an element of calculated risk that proves this concept works with the notion of this model potentially being a long-term one seems wise.

I think especially in terms of some of the points John has raised about the separation/processing and the trails they are doing too - I think we could take this time as an opportunity to take a calculated risk that has more opportunity than threat and then research and plan toward a companion cropping method for future rounds. I think if we were to do the latter now it could be rushed as it seems like we won't have the time or knowledge yet to really fully know how we can maximise what we're doing and how to shape it.

So, in longwinded terms, perhaps parking companion cropping this time and seeking a strong foundation through something that's still ultimately an unknown, because it hasn't been done here, but has a lower risk associated with it. So spelt for me.

This is a difficult decision, so I would like to make the reasons behind my vote as clear as possible.

In an ideal world, with the benefits of sharing the risk with forty people, I would be in favour of growing food in a way that is least damaging to our environment. For example, I would love to be growing organically. This however only feels viable if we were thinking long term and had time to prepare the soil, and if we had the field for over three years so that we could actually sell organically for it to make sense financially. So while I know what I stand for, I feel that voting in line with that isn't necessarily always an option for me (but happy to consider spraying less than the amounts usually sprayed)

Similarly, in an ideal world I would be in favour of experimenting with companion crops as an alternative to mono cultures. While I am attracted by the potential benefits to the soil and potential for weed suppression, I am put off by the dangers of ending up with a crop that can't be sold for human consumption. I am, however, delighted that John will experiment regardless of our decision here, and perhaps it would be good to observe that experimentation closely and let that influence #ourfields to come (here and elsewhere hopefully!) Given John's willingness to experiment, I'm feeling less inclined to experiment with companion cropping on our particular field until we have a bit more experience with it.

While there is so much that has brought me here - more than anything I would love to be a part of a movement that challenges a farming system that disrespects and undervalues the land and those who grow our food. I would like for our experience to encourage others to connect to their food and food growers and present a viable model for the farmer's usual or expected risk to be shared. So while in my own food growing at a smaller scale I would perhaps decide differently and jump straight into experimentation... on this scale, and with the opportunity we have here to be at the beginning of something, I am currently leaning towards growing high quality spelt, keeping an eye on John's experimentation, and learning as much as I can as well as keeping my fingers crossed that we have more years ahead to experiment as we gain more experience and knowledge!

It's a hard decision but I hope this clarifies where I stand at this point on our journey - even though I do feel that I am swaying between options inside me still!

I'm finding this simple approach to decision-making a challenge, but I can go with it. Is a good test of my ability to stand back from my inner control freak.

The challenging bit is that I don't know what John has in terms of equipment when it comes to drilling and then maintaining the crop, harvesting and storage and how any crop or crops would fit within his whole farm system. Apologies that I didn't make it to the first farm visit, I would have if I could.
So, considering that I don't have all of that information I'm in favour of companion cropping because of soil care while still producing what I'd like to think are acceptable yields and reasonable quality of a crop or crops.
Crop choice? Oats and beans would seem appropriate but I would be swayed also by drilling and harvest dates. I'd suggest that they'd need to differ between the two crops or John will struggle to successfully manage all that he has to do with this one field let alone across the rest of his farm. A companion cropping system can be relatively straightforward, but it needs planning. The economics of oats and beans is that they are appropriate to both human and animal consumption so depending on quality the markets are potentially available but again this would perhaps be best planned ahead of harvest. So, to investigate buyers and specifications quite early on, I would suggest.
And I'd like to see this as a step on a path rather than an end in itself. By which I mean I'm happy to accept a series of challenges to overcome as long as we learn along the way. We can learn by only applying what John would normally. For some of this group that might suit. And I can go with that if that is what people would prefer. I'd like to be more adventurous. But I work in the food and farming sector and I'm also here to learn how people who are not my usual circle see and feel about food production. My vote will be to agree with being adventurous. And what will be the next step? Do we have a list of steps? Sorry, have looked but not seeing that on here.

If there's a poorer harvest that results from doing a more ecologically friendly approach, are we sure this means it would have to go to livestock feed? My understanding is that the grading system for wheat determines that bread wheat has to have the desired 11+% gluten content; if a harvest fails to meat this specification its only market in the UK now is either biscuit flour (which is limited), or for the most part livestock feed. However, it was not always the case that we are leavened bread in the UK, and it is leavened bread only that requires the high gluten content (for structure etc). Are we able to decide that farming this crop in an ecologically optimal way is an absolute requirement, and that whatever the harvest is we will find a way of making sure it ends up being consumed directly by humans in a delicious and nutritious way. Flat breads, gruels and porridges, pancakes, dumplings, puddings - all of these traditional peasant dishes did not require (or have the luxury of imagining) the kind of high protein bread we expect now... For this reason I vote for the livestock feed crop but with the hope and dedication to making sure it does me end up with livestock but with humans. Please forgive me if I have misunderstood one of the parameters of our operation (eg realistically how will we market our "substandard" crop for human consumption!)

At a meeting this morning of the ourField organisers, it was agreed to extend voting until midnight __ tonight __ and all members of the group are urged to read the many interesting comments and _ please cast a vote. _

Tony Allan
I have tried - but failed to have recorded - a YES vote - for Spelt with companion crop (legume).

The vote would have been made VERY VERY easy if John were to be sowing another field to Spelt.

At our local Tufnell Park (NW5) artisan baker this morning we bought some Spelt bread and a Spelt 'croissant'. They are both very good to eat indeed.

Finding this decision really hard. I do not want to compromise the crop for the sake of experimentation - I really want to aim for a quality end product that provides great quality food. However, I'm really excited by the possibility for a companion crop to be nurturing the soil, sharing minerals and water, increasing biodiversity all whilst growing our 'cash crop'. I know there are safer companion crops like clover, so although I wouldn't vote to grow lentils, I really hope we can choose a less risky companion crop. So I'm hoping that we can experiment a little but at the same time not take a massive risk :)

I have also found this a really difficult decision because there are compelling reasons for and against both options. I've been swaying between agree and disagree.

In light of the various risks that have been outlined, and that John is also planting companion crops on the Groundswell project, for me one of the key attractions of this option is that it would enable us to minimise inputs. However, I'm not clear by how much as it seems that we would still need some, especially if we want human consumption grade.

This issue of human grade consumption seems really important, but would we only be able to achieve that with a lot of inputs? This also seems a shame if one of the ideas of our field was to spread the risk of trying something new.

I guess I'm also trying to work out on which side of the fence is my middle ground I'm most comfortable with:

Either mono cropping with fewer inputs than would usually be applied, and likely have a grain people can eat... I like the idea of spelt for the reasons others have also pointed out.

or

Experiment a little with companion cropping but not take massive risk (as Abby just said in her comment) in terms of having a good crop, and continuing this as a viable farming model in the future. There are still so many unknowns, but it's come to the crunch time so I think I'm going to have to go with this option.

OK, we seem to have got a result from a turnout of just over 50%...you want a bit of adventure.

This makes the next choice, which we need to get on with, a matter of what to grow and, by extension, how to grow it.I've been mulling over the companion choices and talking to people who've had a go and these are my suggestions:

1) Spring wheat (var. Mulika) grown with a crop of beans. These should ripen at the same time and complement each other fairly well and be relatively easy to separate post harvest.

2) Spelt and an under-story of legumes, probably a mix along the lines of white clover, alsike clover, yellow trefoil and black medic. These will grow much lower than the spelt (which can reach 6 foot apparently) and provide a tiny bit of nitrogen without competing too much. I've no idea how it will work...

3) Oats and an under-story as well. Or oats and beans, but I think the oats will be fit too soon, before the beans are ready.

Adding legumes means we are going to be restricted with how much nitrogen we can use and that might mean we get a thin crop. As it is a cereal crop with legume companion, we could argue the point a bit and give it a decent starter dose of N and see what happens. The options I've chosen should, I hope, not compromise the quality of any grain produced, I had been fretting that growing a bean with the spelt was going to be very tricky at harvest and result in a delay which might involve harvest rain spoiling the grain. This way we'll be cutting above the legume layer and not having un-sievable seeds in the harvested grain (the clovers and trefoil seeds that make it into the combine can be removed easily and possibly used for next years cover, as long as there aren't too many weed seeds in as well...).

There's a lot of 'mights' and 'maybes' in there I'm afraid, but I suppose that is what having an adventure is all about.

John, if we are growing a legume companion crop I'm not sure it makes sense to apply any N fertiliser - this negates the benefit of the legume as it will likely replace any N fixation... and i'm not sure of the legality of applying N to legume assuming you are in an NVZ? However, i agree it could give both crops a good start if soil N levels are low - can you say what the soil type is and what level of soil N you'd expect?

I don't think the spring wheat & beans option will stack up for us - I've seen wheat-beans intercrops grown at Reading Uni and in various EU research projects - past results show the beans alone won't provide enough N to give sufficiently high protein content for the wheat ... and if we apply a decent dose of N fertiliser it really defeats the point of the legume companion crop in the first place, as the beans won't then nodulate and fix N themselves.

I therefore feel that oats or spelt would be a better bet as have much lower fertiliser N requirement and we could grow without any N fertiliser and hopefully still have passable quality. Agree that oats will mature before beans, and too big a risk from lodging, brackling, sprouting, rotting etc of the oats if have to wait for the beans to come fit before harvesting - could be a disaster. An understory of clover, vetch, lucerne could work well, especially if you can keep it going til next season and derive some further value from it. So question then is which of oats and spelt is likely to do best in this situation and which has the greatest marketing opportunity. Given that spelt would be low yielding in any case, and price should be higher i think spelt may be the best option. It also gives the best opportunity to create a good marketing story around the product, especially if members of the collective have good ideas on how we could sell the spelt grain or flour innovatively, rather than as a commodity. Whilst we can't label it as organic, we could claim it to be 'ecologically grown' or similar.

Interested to hear others views.

With the group having made the choice for companion crops and accepting this probably means the outcome ends up as animal feed I thought the next decision would be easier but I am very far away from knowing which option I will support. I value everyone's contributions to the discussions though and know we will get there! My initial thoughts were that because the output will probably be for animal feed maybe Spelt was wrong as it is developing as specialised bread making, then I thought what a strange thought that was - good protein is needed for all food chains. Now I think all options are going to be interesting in their own way. I do think an initial boost of nitrogen to give a good start may be helpful so that we can reduce additives later. Looking forward to the next set of options. Would be good to know in advance the timelines so I can make sure I don't miss any deadlines.

@christinelewis in terms of timelines I think that the next proposal will be started this evening and the vote will close Sunday night at midnight.

Just to be clear, the options I've outlined above should all result in decent human-consumption quality grain. It's just that with the latter two, we will probably only harvest the cereal half of the partnership to avoid spoilt grain. The first one, wheat and beans, should be separable post harvest and both crops perfectly edible, though not many people in the UK eat the Faba beans we grow (the best are exported to N Africa for human food, the rest animal feed). Marketing oportunity there...we've got a few tonnes in the shed from last year (grown as a monoculture) if anyone wants to work on recipes...

Hi everyone,

Just posting some of the reading list for 'choosing the crop' in the main thread so opening the word doc doesn't seem as daunting.

Happy browsing, and good luck!

Abi Aspen

SPELT

Northern Grain Growers
All about spelt!
http://northerngraingrowers.org/wp-content/uploads/SPELT.pdf

OATS

SARE (sustainable agriculture research and education): OATS
All about oats!
www.sare.org

WHEAT

Senova - Mulika Spring Wheat
http://www.senova.uk.com/#/mulika

Farming Forum thread on Mulika (2013)
https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/mulika-spring-wheat.13492/

GRAINS

The Real Bread Campaign
Amazing guide to all things bread!
www.sustainweb.org

NO-TILL

Conservation tillage ‘no-till’ (2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20080620032531/http:/www.monsanto.com/biotech-gmo/asp/topic.asp?id=ConservationTillage#mid

Groundswell Agriculture No-till conference and movement
http://www.groundswellag.com/
Event overview: https://youtu.be/LjLyuJr0W2Q

INTERCROPPING

Andrew Howard (2016). The potential for companion cropping and intercropping on UK arable farms
The potential for companion cropping and intercropping utilization on UK arable farms and to understand the benefits and limitations of such systems.
http://nuffieldinternational.org/rep_pdf/1474016405Andrew-Howard-report-2015.pdf

University of Manitoba. Intercropping with Organic Spring Wheat (2005)
Experiments and results
http://www.umanitoba.ca/outreach/naturalagriculture/articles/wheatintercrop.html

Oxford Real Farming Conference 2017. Companion cropping PODCAST
http://orfc.org.uk/companion-cropping/

This is amazing! Thank you Abi!

Here is also a really nice article about one farmer in the UK, Ian Wilkinson, who has been growing companion crops for a while: http://www.agricology.co.uk/companion-crops-are-farmer%E2%80%99s-friend
if you would rather listen then there is also a recording of the talk with Ian Wilkinson and Andy Howard sharing their stories and ideas at Oxford Real Farming Conference a few months ago: http://orfc.org.uk/companion-cropping/
(just saw Abi posted that link above as well! :) )
@johncherry have you ever been in touch with Ian? It would be great to hear his thoughts as well!

@danielkindred Sorry, I never answered your first questions from 5 days ago, so here goes: Soil type...glacial discharge mix, really a chalky boulder clay overlying chalk, but we get thinner patches and heavier bits. Soil tests, the last one we did for this field was 2011 and it was a conventional Mg/P/K/pH test which showed that everything was index 1 to 3, pH 7 to 7.5. Unfortunately no SOM %age, but actually most SOM tests are unreliable and, although we haven't put any P, K or Mg on most fields since 2011, our indices are creeping up as the soil biology flourishes and extracts more mineral from the clay.
Typical winter wheat yield...7.5 tonne/ha (average, rather than typical). Grid ref, RPA sheets O/S sheet TL2529 field 2256 if that means anything to you.
I agree with your points about applying N to legumes being a waste of N and legume both, but there is evidence that a dose early on can give the legume a good start before it forms its relationship with the N-fixing rhizobia on the roots. Too much and the rhizobia won't bother. As for the legality, it's a grey area, we are growing a cereal crop, the legumes are companions. We are giving the cereal an N boost. I'd love to drop N altogether, but it might be a painfully thin harvest, especially as this was wheat last year, so soil N levels likely to be low.
In answer to your other question about soil N testing, we do sometimes do this and levels are higher than you might expect. Can't now find any paperwork which would tell me what that actually is...you'll just have to believe me...

Thanks John, If I can get a soil analysis and sorted and paid for are you OK to take a sample from #OurField? Would be good to have estimate of SOM% so get an idea of likely mineralisation.
Agree starter N worth considering. Also agree naked oats are another viable option.

We'd be delighted. Who will do the test out of interest?

@abiaspen Just while I think of it...the link you posted above wrt Conservation Agriculture is very much the Monsanto line. They have taken over a chunk of the (North and South) American CA acres with their GM glyphosate resistant crops. It works ok for a year or two, but cracks in the system are appearing where farmers neglect two of the three the important strands of CA: constant soil cover and diversity. The third strand, minimal disturbance of the soil is more easily met by the GM growers. This hijacking by Monsanto hasn't done the CA movement many favours, but hey...
Sorry, this is probably off-topic. Whoops.

To mix things up a bit more, I've been thinking about @harryboglione 's idea of growing naked oats. We've not grown them before and people who have, give mixed reviews. But I think they are worth offering to you as a fourth option. They are allegedly good aggressive growers and swamp weeds to an extent, but yield 25% less (when salesmen tell me that, I realise it means half, in my experience) than normal 'husked' oats. But they sell for twice as much and, as Harry says, they are much in demand from people who mind what they eat.

Ive been thinking it would be good to get an idea of what we might do with any produce as I feel such information will help guide us in our choice of crop.

I see a lot of interest in spelt, I'm quite excited by the idea of naked oats and have been doing a bit of research.

If we are to decide by Sunday we have very little time to explore potential buyers, which I find slightly discomforting.

I guess Gails Bakery may be interested? (@romymiller ?) But maybe only in wheat or spelt?

I wondered about the three big wholefood co-operatives Infinity (Brighton), Essential (Bristol) and Suma (Leeds - IIRC). They're likely to be interested in the Our Field project/story, as it is really a novel co-operative initiative, and in turn stocking our produce.

The volumes we are likely to have, I imagine, will be in the region of what they may be able to handle?

I'll try and call them tomorrow.

Anyone else got any ideas?

Ive made a stab at starting a collaborative spreadsheet so that we can get an idea of the financial implications of our crop choice.

There are quite a few boxes empty and I've maybe made some wrong assumptions or misunderstood some stuff.

I've used data from this thread and from the discussions we had on the Our Field site visit. If you didnt make it to the visit I think everything should be in the youtube video that was circulated after the event - I made brief notes of the figures etc. https://board.net/p/OurFieldVisit

The editable spreadsheet is at https://ethercalc.org/OurField some of the cells have notes - just put your cursor over them.

Ideally we would have a few more of the missing values completed before we make the decision. Possibly some things I've added there arent relevant and some more things could be added.

Ethercalc is like a GooogleDoc spreadsheet, if you know what that means, if you dont it means the text is saved as you type and anyone viewing should be able to see it appear live. There is no need to save after any edit. If you do a load of editing it may be wise to save it to a spreadsheet on your computer (select all the cells and then copy and paste into your spreadsheet program)

If you want to look at an uneditable version (print version?) you can go to https://ethercalc.org/OurField/form - but then you cant point and read notes or edit.

Darren, All. I've added to the spreadsheet. Figures are just guesses off top of my head so need to be improved. Guessed yields with the companion crops and guessed prices. Not sure about seed costs, nor input costs, rent or John's operations costs.
You can play with the prices, costs and yields with this - don't take my figures as being accurate. I currently have with wheat & beans giving best return, but I doubt we would make milling quality without N fertiliser so price likely to be ~£20/t lower.
My vote is for spelt if a reasonable yield and price can realistically be achieved.

I rang around the wholefood wholesale coops and didnt have much luck. The bulk buyers at both Infinity and Suma are not working today but will be back on Monday & Essential Trading wouldnt put me through by phone, but gave me an email address of their head of purchasing.

I also tried Doves Farm to check what interest they would have for things other than Spelt, but everyone there who would be able to help is away at a trade fair in Glasgow till Wednesday.

I'd like to propose delaying this decision for a bit if possible (if that's not happening already?)

I wonder about the energy people within the Our Field group have to take on work organising sales, processing or marketing. There have been some mentions of interest in this sides of things and I'm happy to get involved. To me it feels like this would have good potential to make the project more viable / successful / interesting. Not sure exactly how that would work - maybe we need to open a new thread that can be joined by people who are interested in getting involved in that kind of stuff?

Hi Darren, thanks for taking the time to put together a spread sheet and make some initial calls. It might be worth us getting in touch with Sharpham Park re spelt. I'd be interested to join the potential marketing thread/ team & try and support. Although I'll be upfront in saying that I have zero experience.

As facilitator I am persuaded by Darren's @darren4 argument that it could be interesting to gauge the possible market for the end product; and that if others in the group have time and energy to put to this research, they should have longer than the days until Sunday.

The choice of crop is probably the single most important decision the group makes, and since there is now a rising interest in the matter, _ we should hold off the vote to allow more voices to be heard, and with more evidence. _

There will be a deadline by which John needs to research the availability of seed, and he needs sufficient lead time to place the order in good time for Spring planting - but for now let us assume the deadline __ will be held back at least 7 days.__

If anyone wishes to comment on this decision to delay the vote - please do so on the admin thread, not here and for that reason I will copy this message there.

I've just lost a long and detailed comment somehow. So, I'm going to be more brief now. Brevity is probably a better way to go.

Bakeries will source flour from a mill who get the wheat mainly from a grain merchant.
Large bakeries will demand a minimum of 13% protein in their flour.
The UK climate prohibits such levels without the use of a lot of nitrogen and normally this is using artificial nitrogen.
Who would be your local mill and or grain merchant @johncherry ?

Smaller bakeries, especially those using sourdough with longer proving of their doughs, might be interested, Ben at E5 in London Fields can also mill his own grain. I'm in contact with Ben and can ask if he's interested. His demand is mainly organic but I can ask. He will want to know quantities.

Essential, Infinity and Suma will not use much raw grain, though they will take some but normally through an existing supplier and at a certain specification.
I'm in contact with these businesses fairly regularly so let me know if you get stuck finding the right person @darren4

Modern cereal breeding has resulted in higher yield but other qualities have lost out. There are ways forward however. From sourdough to cross composite populations and even naked barley.
Here are links -

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/apr/16/recipes.foodanddrink

http://www.organicresearchcentre.com/?go=Research%20and%20development&page=Plant%20breeding

https://andyhowardnuffield15.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/dr-martin-wolfe-wakelyns-agroforestry-suffolk-england-7th-december-2015/

https://mobile.twitter.com/naked_barley

Its occurred to me that I may have made a slightly dubious assumption with regards to yields - if I understand correctly a companion crop is likely to reduce yield of the 'main' crop so wheat yield would be down if grown with faba beans? (faba are broad beans with small beans). I think possibly in the other cases theres likely to be less of an impact as the companion will be smaller/less light competitive?

@stevenjacobs you appear to be mostly talking about wheat/spelt - the expected quantity should be somewhere around 25 -55 tonnes - although these figures may need some adjustment when considering companions.

I might have said before - I'm really interested in the oat option.

Thanks @darren4 & I too favour oats ideally, however the processing of oats is specialised and we may struggle to get an oat mill that will take our relatively small volume, but I'd take guidance from @johncherry on this, I don't know his local markets or even what he may know of further afield..?
We could consider approaching European Oat Millers? They have an oat milling facility in Bedford.

I welcome the opportunity to spend more time thinking about the end product and what an Our Field product could be marketed as - what the values are and how to position this. From the ourfieldproject.org website we have already captured some of this: Living the farmer's journey, reinventing farm economics & sharing farmer risk, but I think we would need to do more. We also have the problem with ourfield.org (parks in Costa Rica) and ourfield.com (footballing app). So we could focus on the product meeting values of either an ourfieldproject (OFP) benchmark or establishing a community supported agriculture (CSA) benchmark - see more about CSA's here: https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/what-is-csa/

Hopefully others know much more about this than me. A bit of a brain dump on a possible benchmark, meeting OFP:
* sharing farmers' risks: allowing a more innovative approach
* collaborative decision making: in depth consideration and general consensus
* focus on sustainability: to ensure better and longer term outcomes
* natural production mechanisms: reducing additives
* building on long term soil viability: focusing on healthy soil
* resisting large scale commercial pressure: not being driven solely by commercial price or yield

As far as outlets go:
* Wheat: bread making
* Spelt: artisan bread making
* Oats: wholefood shops
* Naked oats: specialised wholefood and artisan outlets
I buy special flours from bakery bits http://www.bakerybits.co.uk/bakery-ingredients/flour.html
Also to point out the Scotland the bread standard and assurance system for certifying grain see http://www.scotlandthebread.org/growing-and-research/ and they are also bulking up Scottish heritage grains.

Many thanks @darren4 and @stevenjacobs for your foresight and work on production costs and marketing. What we normally do, once we've established that there basically is a market for a product, is grow it and see what we end up with in the shed. We can then test it for protein/gluten or whatever and sell it on that basis, when we know how much we've got. We sell most of what we grow through a farmer's co-op here in the village, they have a good relationship with local mills, though a lot of these are grinding animal feed as much as anything. We are moving oats at the moment into European Oat Millers. I suspect, Steven, that you're right and that they'd be a bit sniffy about taking an odd lorry-load and treating it specially, but it's worth the ask. Anyone want to buy a little mill and grind and bag what we grow?

Meanwhile I'll get some prices of seed etc and try to fill in Darren's spread sheet, but I know from experience that, come harvest, the figures might well be out by a large percentage...

I like the idea of growing something for people to eat, rather than animals, and in particular, it would be a shame to end up feeding animals destined for being eaten. Would be nice if the Our Field brand (however that turns out) was identified with quality food for those who do care about the ethical sourcing of what they eat, as well as the environmental and health related issues. I looks like others have a far better grasp on the technical issues than me!

Hi Every one. I tend to agree with Johns approach to marketing a corp. As there are so many variables in producing a crop that it is relay hard to have any idea of quality or quantity. Especially when we are going to be experimenting.

What i do think is worth considering is weather or not we would like to do some value adding processing to a % of the crop or not. If we process some of our crop it gives us the opportunity to make a higher profit off the processed crop by direct marketing it to relaters and consumers. This will require more work tho but i think could be done well with such a divers group of us. Or alternatively we could just process some for the groups use which could save every one some money. If we where to Grow naked oats we could role them for porridge or muesli. In order to do this We just need a role mill which are very easy to come by. Alternatively if we grew another grain we could get some milled into flower.

We have a roll mill at home :) I also really like the idea of naked oats. We have been looking into growing them at home too.

Thanks for the spreadsheet (and thinking behind it) @darren4 - I do love a good spreadsheet :)

As I have more of an interest in flour - wheat is now my preference as we are companion planting - I have emailed a few local and/or potentially community minded mills I am already aware of to test the water and see if they might want to work with us on the project. There seem to be many more we could contact once we know for sure what we are growing and rough quantities.

So far I have contacted:
http://www.brixtonwindmill.org
http://www.wrightsflour.co.uk
http://www.nationalmillsweekend.co.uk/pages_wind/wicken.htm
http://www.wessexmill.co.uk - this one has already called me back to say they only take grain from within 40 miles of the mill (we are outside of that) and 1 lorry (I guessed our quantity to be around 30 tonnes based on Darren's ss) would be too small for them to process. Emily was very nice (and offered to give a tour if I or anyone wanted to look around the mill) but she suggested we look for a very small local mill or we would likely end up with our grain mixed with others to ensure it meets quality standards.

Added since original post:
https://claybrookewatermill.co.uk
http://talgarthmill.com

I shall update this post if I hear back from the others but it seems a bit catch 22 without much info to offer people.

I have not given any though as to what we might do with any sell-able companion crop. Although this may only be beans (in what % of the output?) as I think the under-story suggestions from John are not crop giving plants.

Wendy

Wendy - a great idea to contact some mills. There is a small water mill close to me, I haven't been there yet but use their flour which is very good - maybe you could email them in a similar way. Their email is info@claybrookewatermill.co.uk and their website is www.claybrookewatermill.co.uk - otherwise I can do it.

Thanks Christine - I've sent an email to them. It would be good to try direct contact with the mills used by John's farmers coop too, if you know who they are John?

I'll find out

Hi Wendy, hope you're well! I have been looking at this mill too: http://talgarthmill.com/Milling/milling

They supply Golden Valley Food Assembly with flour and all the milling is done by volunteers.

It sounds like an amazing community organisation, I've been meaning I contact them, just had a very busy few weeks!

I am still quite undecided, I'm swaying to spelt but also very interested in naked oats but worried there is more risk attached.

Hi Annie - I am walking in Brecon for a week in early May which is close by and could certainly visit Talgarth Mill if it helps. We should know what we are doing by then.

Just a heads up on voting..john and I will identify the choices which now seem appropriate based on the group's comments and interests. This round of voting will start later today and my suggestion is that __ the voting will end on Sunday 19th March at midnight. __ Comments to this, in the admin thread please.