No additional outlay this year. We have plenty of money, and probably for next year too. There is an investment cycle and there will be no new members except on terms agreed by the current membership..

Hi John,

Thank you for the information.

As a new member who knows nothing about this I think it would be useful if you could just list the options and maybe we could all go away and do a bit of research before we vote? So just a basic list of crops that do well on our soil, or might do well but would be a risk?

At the moment I feel like I don't know enough about it to offer an opinion.

Andy

Hi, Andy
The list will, it is hoped, emerge from this discussion; and be incorporated in the vote later next week.

Members too may care to note, to bring a comment to someone's attention, then you can do this with @name - however, there is a fine line here, the tendency being to direct all questions to John Cherry.

However we have 62 members, many farmers and other colours of cultivator, so it is better if John actually stands back from this debate now, except for very specific questions about the Weston land, and lets members engage as they can.

John Cherry is NOT a member of the farming group, so burdening him with too many questions goes beyond his remit..

@johncherry @gingerbreadbakery

Dear Grahame, Cliff and Andy

It is very good to have engagement from new members. And thank you Grahame for showing consideration to new members and their expectations.
I welcome further engagement with new and original members.

It would be good to share some background on the new and original members.
Could we share on an email list our:
1 Name
2 Town/village/postcode
3 Reason for engaging in the activity
4 Expertise

It would be very interesting to hear about the visit of Abby to the Weston Farm yesterday.

Best 1 Tony (Allan), 2 London NW5, 3 For the privilege of gaining insights on how consumers can engage with and understand the risks that farmers face in producing nutritious food and in stewarding the ecosystems of soil, water, the atmosphere and biodiversity, 4 An academic focusing on the political economy of food-water and on global and local food supply chains.

Sharing information

There is an issue here, that this is presently a public forum, so anyone - __ literally anyone __ - can see what is posted, and email addresses etc could theoretically be harvested if disclosed on the Forum pages.

It is possible to make the Forum private to the invited members, but some appreciate the "open access" aspect of the OurField project. This could also have some advantages when members wish to discuss what could be commercially sensitive information eg what price we wish to sell out product for!

I propose to let members vote on this matter (open vs closed access) after the first, and more pressing, vote about what to plant.

Hello to all! As a new member, I posted an intro over on the appropriate thread. Here are my initial thoughts on this topic. Buckwheat doesn't seem to have much going for it, crop wise. I am interested in trials at Abbey Farm re suppression of cooch grass, but that doesn't seem to be an issue on ourfield. Does anyone know how organic producers grow beans successfully avoiding bruchid beetle damage (I'm thinking Hodmedods, Martin Wolfe over East Anglian way?) Perhaps at field scale/monoculture its not possible. I'm less keen on the pumpkin idea, as I feel they can be grown easily as part of a polyculture/smaller scale horticultural enterprise as opposed to machine-based arable (which is what we are focusing on here?) As for lentils, I saw Hodmedods (https://hodmedods.co.uk/blogs/news/tagged/lentils) sent some to market in 2015, with advice and help from Wolfe at Wakelyns. I guess maybe it is a tall order to expect @johncherry to learn lentil growing from scratch?! Cover crop - I'd be interested in this. Would it be a herbal ley or just a mustard or something? My understanding is that there isn't much benefit (in terms of carbon sequestration and soil structure) if its not managed/grazed for a minimum of about 4 years. And how would you kill/incorporate in a no-till system - deep rooted species wouldn't die from a crimp/hard graze would they? Nutrient cycling, soil science and fertility building is fascinating isn't it! I've such large gaps in my knowledge. Very excited to have this opportunity to engage with knowledgeable people!

Lots of great information and ideas thank you! In terms of the positive effect of grazing on a field - I have no science to back this up right now but from people I’ve spoken to and photographic evidence shared at Oxford Real farming Conference this year it seems that mob grazing combined with mixed herb cover crops can have quite rapid effects on the soil really encouraging the soil biology and plant-soil nutrient cycling mechanisms even within one season. I will double check that I understood this correctly and get back to you!!

As far as I know @johncherry has a herd of few 100 cows that he mob grazes across the farm. They are very beautiful healthy and happy animals! If John were to add OurField as one of the fields in his mob grazing setup then we could probably find some form of agreement for ‘renting’ the pasture from us or something along those lines. It’s something we would have to agree with John.

Sorry, a bit slow to respond about the grazing potential...all the cows got out the other night and we've been a bit busy sorting them out as they are calving at the moment, so trying to re-mother them up has taken longer than we thought. As Abby said though, we have a happy herd of suckler cattle (ie cows and calves running together) who normally graze on permanent pastures but would be thrilled to munch on a multi-species cover crop. We have sown some 4 year herbal leys on other parts of the farm, these are quite expensive seed-wise (hence leaving them down for four years) but they regenerate the soil by dint of being comprised of lots of diverse species all rooting at different depths and forming different associations with our soil micro-flora and fauna and provide nutritious and health giving food to our cattle.

The idea of a multi-species cover crop would be to get a similar, but shorter burst impact on the soil, lasting one summer, and also providing a few days grazing for the mob (assuming we can rig up some suitable fencing and water supply). We could calculate the value of the grazing by working out how many animals of what weight last there for how long. I suspect it won't match a good spring arable crop cash-wise, but the residual fertility and weed suppression for the next year might make it a good bet. There are a lot of 'mights' in this I know...I'll try and get some realistic figures for all the alternatives before we ask you to vote.
John

Hi all and welcome to our new members :-)

Sorry to start with a question to @johncherry but I wondered how the spilt spelt from harvest fared over the winter? If it survived we toyed with the idea of leaving it to grow to see if the full year, as it normally gets, helps to get a better yield. Or maybe it’s done ok but you still think it’s best to remove so there’s not a third year of wheat in the field? Or maybe the weeds in the field are too much of a problem?

Thank you for all the other ideas on your list of suggestions. I won’t comment on them all but these are the areas that stood out for me:

I like the idea of a cover crop and resting/grazing the field over the spring/summer so that we can get an early autumn planting. Our companion clover from last year should help this too, shouldn’t it? Maybe the autumn crop shouldn’t be wheat though, to give the field the break it needs. Might it also be good to try and agree the next couple of years’ plantings now, to aid the rotation process?

I do think we could be successful at trying a single spring crop this year too, maybe rapeseed (I just googled to see it was in the brassica family) or linseed. Oats and barley were discussed options last year. Neither were that popular but that was because a lot of people wanted to try and end up with bread flour. I remember skim reading this report at the time (it’s about organic growing, which we’re not doing (yet!) and it’s old but it helped me to get a grasp of some of the issues and has some good info on soil fertility). I think these options are worth considering again this year.

By chance I opened a packet of buckwheat flour (apparently in the same family as rhubarb) this week, which is recommended for pancakes and pasta. The pancakes were good, the pasta was not, and I’m not sure people eat that many pancakes outside of Shrove Tuesday! The fact it’s a tricky grain to process is not appealing after our struggle to get the hull off the spelt.

I read an article about growing hemp last year but annoyingly I can’t find it now. I do remember it sounding like a bit of a faff though, ie you need a licence and DBS check which could take some time to come through. This article talks about the benefits though so I’m not totally put off the idea.

On the squashes I think Tony's question about the soil health is important as it's an especially hungry crop. Abby’s app may help figure this one out or the cover crop option may help prepare the soil for next year but it’s not my favourite option.

Finally, and sorry for all the links, but this may be useful for new members - at the top of one of our discussion threads from last year Abi posted a reading list. Our polls might also make interesting reading.

Finally, finally, a question for the farmers out there. If we can get away without needing to remove excess crops and weeds with glyphosate like I think we needed to last year would the last year count as the first towards the three needed to apply for organic certification? Or does that need to be done on a farm wide basis?