Vegging In Stroud

CSA farmer Mark

Many years ago as a student at a very traditional agricultural college, I went to an meeting of an organic group somewhere near Cirencester. This was in a time when organic farming was most definitely not considered real farming, but also when I had been working on a farm that had been hit by the lead in milk scandal where contaminated feed meant pints of milk had to be tipped down the drain, calves couldn't be sold and a group of farmers in the South West suffered badly through no fault of their own. As a naive youngster I could not understand how you could feed concentrates to an animal and not know what was in the bag, There seemed to be no thought that it would have a direct link to the food that you were eating. The meeting was my first realisation that farming did not have to be as prescribed by ADAS and a more sustainable future was the vision of a group of mainly young enthusiastic farmers and growers. It was also the first farmer meeting that I had been to that had lots of women and even tiny babies. People in the room were not waiting for their lunch and dozing in their chairs, but were buzzing with energy and ideas.
After leaving college I worked with Helen Browning who started to convert her farm from a successful intensive barley farm where her Dad had make serious money to a risky mixed organic set up with livestock enterprises that had no market. Not good business idea but a vision that luckily did stack up and although the farm has had to get a lot more focused and efficient, one that is still successful today. The first years of the organic vision were full of bold decisions and having a go to see if it worked. Some of the people have dropped by the wayside but many of the first new pioneers in the early 1990's before organic conversion grants are still surviving.
This type of farming was a natural home for me, not being concerned for figures but recognising a system that gave us an opportunity to farm by taking risks and connecting with the consumer. It has been great, but the supermarket dominance has hit the organic sector, driving down prices and changing people's perceptions. In the last year organic poultry sales are down 40%,(ours are not that bad thankfully) and increasing regulation in the food industry have driven our costs up.
So what next? Now old and cynical I have been enthused with my visits to CSA's in America where having no subsidy support has given a hunger to make something work. In the UK many CSA's are starting and a lot have had very considerable support from local food grants and other agencies.
Yesterday I went to Hawkswood College to Stroud CSA to an event run by the Soil Association, There was no babies but again that same enthusiasm for something new that made me feel CSA's definitely have a future.
It was a great lunch, well presented talks and a visit to the farm. It gave me a chance to learn about Teikei (CSA) from a visiting group of Japanese farmers. One farmer was growing 1 acre of veg and 2 acres of rice as a Teikei. His produce was delivered by the very efficient Japanese delivery systems up to an hour from his farm and as bought mainly on taste and quality. He had the same concerns: was there anything for the children that wanted to farm, consumers in a recession and price of land. Teikei is well established in Japan and has been going since 1970's with now over 1000 farms.
We also learnt how the Stroud CSA, that started in 2002, worked and that it is making a small profit each year even after paying a reasonable wage to the 2 growers (Better than most 4o acre farms).
We discussed lots of different options for financing and legal structures. Luckily the Soil Association have done the ground work and have a project officers, funded by the lottery, that will help setting up schemes and will provide templates for membership and finances. These are all available on the Soil Association Website, but if you were contemplating a CSA I would recommend a help from the very professional and enthusiastic Kirstin or Jade that seem to be the kind of girls that would make things happen.

And the main thing I learned, CSA's are all different and its a completely vague term that can cover all sorts of project and definitely not just organic, but the aims are to provide a fair return and secure market for farmers, even the most hardened conventional farmer wouldn't disagree with that.
Cattle for meat sales at CSA

Child labour scandal in Devon

It's a busy time of year at Higher Fingle, but then it is pretty busy all the time. Nevil is feeling his age and as I keep going off on jolly Nuffield jaunts, we took the decision back in August to employ a more permanent farm worker. Already we have a few workers that are in the butchery and employing people is not a skill that we have found easy. The paperwork and regulations are cumbersome and the responsibility for these workers and their needs takes a lot of time and energy. I think we are fair employers and treat them with more respect than many jobs that I have had, but employing is a serious step that doesn't just have consequences for one life but maybe a whole family.
Previously we have had self employed farm workers that although are more flexible they have been poorly skilled and unreliable, but had the advantage that you only paid for when you needed them and We have had French agricultural students which have been great at times but now come with very little agricultural knowledge and require a great deal of supervision.The problem is that on a small farm you don't really need and can't really afford a full time worker but there are times that you really do need some help. Of course in the old days the children where kept off school at peak times to help out and it is very tempting as Elsa at twelve is a lot more useful then recent students. Fortunately there are now rules to prevent child labour so I meet up with Sandra who runs a project called Moor Skills. This project was set up as it was recognised that Dartmoor needs farmers and farm workers with unique traditional skills that were being lost. How it works is a group of farmers employ apprentices, these apprentices follow a training that is moorland based. the interesting thing is the apprentices moved farms each week, this increases the experience of the trainee and the farmer. The farmers work together and have the support of Sandra to sort any personality clashes out, she organises training and the wages are paid by an accountant. The Farmer pays by direct debit each week the minimum wage (AWB) required for an apprentice in to a central pot and can request extra help at busy times. This all sounded great and Sandra was keen to include our farm to give the students a chance to see some diversification, however as most students didn't have transport (some are only 16) and were based the other side of the moor the logistics just didn't work out. But it set me thinking that it could be an easy solution in areas where like minded farmers could share out an apprentice giving then a good broad experience, but without one farmer being burdened with all the responsibility. If a group of maybe three farmers took on a trainee and had them at their farm for one week in three, would everyone get a better deal?
Next step I approached Duchy college who have been really helpful, guiding me through the advertising process. But after leaving it until the end of August all the apprentices have already been snapped up.
So back to the job centre and although not allowed to say I wanted a fit strong 17 year old I did specify it was a job that would suit a trainee. Within 1/2 hour the phone started ringing as farm workers from around Britain and Ireland wanted to move to Devon. Some were poorly qualified, quite a few where redundant council workers, but mainly were well skilled and capable workers. This has made me think about the whole new entrants thing. Does farming as an industry really need any new entrants? There seems to be plenty of people out there that want to farm for themselves and plenty that would love a job on a farm, maybe instead of talking about where the new workforce is coming from, farmers have got to work out what they want. Anybody fancy doing a Nuffield Scholarship ?
So what have we done, well we have employed Andy who is not 17, he has a family, lives about 25 minutes away, has his chainsaw ticket and worked for the council cleaning the beaches. He is reliable and clean and polite, he uses his initiative and most importantly gets on with the work unsupervised. Hopefully having him will improve efficiencies and make savings which will allow the business to continue to expand to keep him on as a full time worker and maybe Elsa will be allowed to finish her schooling in peace.

Beautiful Devon and lunching with landlords

A visit by Michael a Scottish Nuffield scholar has made me realise that I need to speed up this blog writing. Michael has visited Australia and New Zealand trying to mend the farming ladder and because he has not yet found the answers he was looking for, he decided to come to Devon. Now this is obvious to all of those that live in Devon as we all know that there are plenty of exciting new entrants doing amazing things down here. Some are food centred businesses, a lot are based on organic and many include direct selling. After realising that Michael wrote everything down (swotty or what) we made sure that his whistle stop tour didn't give him a chance to pick up his pen. We visited Poultry abattoirs, chicken farmers in temporary houses and chicken farmers that had built mini mansions (although still surrounded by caravans). Lot of figures for adding up but the message which I think we have to deliver in Devon is small can be big. Intensive farming in the form of adding value and being innovative means that you can live of 50 acres. It was a shame we didn't have longer so I could have shown him robot milkers so the farmer could bottle the milk, Fancy chicken breeder selling to smallholders and so many other businesses I admire. These are all genuine new entrants that haven't loads of money to start off. Then of course we have lots of new entrants down here that have had other careers, the ones we think aren't real farmers but bring other skills like marketing and media skills that we can learn from.
Just so Michael could write about somewhere really exotic we also went to a meeting in Cornwall with a group of land agents discussing 'the farming ladder'. Michael got very excited as he finally understood the county council farms system and he has written a great blog on it. As usual the best bit was the lunch and conversation. It seems that feeling was that under 250 acres was not a viable unit and should be taken back in hand. The priority was maintaining the estate value, especially the tidiness and that although the big estates understood that farming tenants needed help to retire and bring new blood in, they just didn't feel that it was for them to help. A tiny glimmer of hope when a National Trust agent admitted that on a Bodmin estate they had made a change and let land to young couple because the other large farmer tenants that had rented bare land used large machinery and farmed too efficiently to fit how the general public expected the land to be farmed.
Maybe one way of mending the ladder would be making some of the landowners realise the benefits of new innovative tenants and opening their minds to something beyond just profit. Could be a big job, but as Michael didn't seem to fancy chicken farming perhaps he's the guy to do it!

Picking Peppers in Cherry Valley

A chance 5 minute conversation back in March led to me turning up at Stroudsburg PA bus station hoping that Heidi was going to let me into the secret of the CSA or community supported agriculture that is becoming an exciting opportunity for new entrants in the states. Thankfully she did collect me and with her husband Gary, welcomed me into their home for a week. Here I learnt that there is more to the American diet than burgers and that although we sometimes talk a different language, problems are just the same. It quickly became clear that Heidi could do with out a house guest during a busy garlic festival season and two days after her worker had left. So I had a chance to earn my keep and was set to work learning how a CSA worked from the bottom up. The weather was very hot in the day and cool at night, I got fit picking tomatoes and came back with a great suntan. I also came back being reassured that I could still work all day without the constant interuptions that happen at Higher Fingle.
Community supported agriculture (CSA) an interesting idea that seems to have great support. A CSA is a project which is often vegetable or produce, but can be meat or eggs, that the customers sign up for in January giving the often young farmer the capital to buy seeds and inputs.

Cherry Valley CSA had around 80 customers that paid $600 in January and started collecting their vegetables in May through to October. In September when produce was abundant they were receiving around $40 a week in squash, garlic, potatoes, carrots,tomatoes, peppers and wonderful fresh veg. The farm was also able to sell surplus produce at a local farmers market and attended a number of garlic festivals each year to sell the high value garlic crop. The customers that I talked to thought that paying early in the year guaranteed that they would get the produce and the were keen for the farm to continue operating. In 2009 early tomato blight had destroyed the crop, but this year abundant tomatoes meant they could take home basket loads. Although many were disappointed in 2009, they understood that the value of the CSA was being able to share in the bad times as well as the good, reconnecting people with the reality of food production. During my time in the states I saw many variations on the CSA themes which included buying clubs (paying $40 a year for privilege of buying from the farm stand) internet buying clubs and chicken shares. Although had a fantastic level of commitment from the customer to support the young farmer to make a living.

Like any farming, margins were tiny and the work was hard. Heidi in common with many new entrants had a passion for farming and was living her dream. Heidi, from a non-farming family finished a business degree then worked for the Peace Corp in Mali. On returning to the Sates in the late 1990's she decided that she wanted to farm and set about getting experience working for growers. Seeing 47 acres owned by Stroudsburg township not being utilized she approached them with a business plan in 2005 and managed to rent the land on a ten year lease for $1 a year. Through determination and hard graft she has cleared and fenced 5 acres to produce the vegetables. That leaves the other 42 acres of woodland and scrubby overgrown land that has so much potential but needs so much more than 10 years to do it in. In the UK Heidi would have been able to apply for an environmental grant to help maintain the biodiversity and provide educational access. But in the states that support is not available so each step will be only be taken when the money allows.
Heidi's wish list was to install some irrigation (hopefully this winter), get her customers more involved with the physical work, find the money to build a classroom and have time to have more fun. Her husband Gary had recently started working full time on the farm and his extra support,I hope will mean that she can a little more. Yet again I had met a new entrant that was determined against the odds to farm and worked tirelessly to make her business work.
I left Cherry valley when the weather turned to rain, but I left with having made some great friends that I hope will do me the honour of visiting my home one day.

Little Farm In The Big Woods

Mary Jean with her goats in the woods

When I was six, my Mum read my Brother and I the classic children's tale Little House in the Big Woods. Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder (February 7, 1867 – February 10, 1957) was an American author who wrote the series of books documenting her pioneer childhood. In the 1860's her father cleared woodland and farmed both crops and livestock near Pepin in Wisconsin. When Laura was six the family moved west to better farm land and opportunities. Their tale is a lesson in how hard farming can be and how resourceful the pioneers were.
In the Pocono Mountains in Northern Pennsylvania similar wood clearance occured and productive farming produced food for the urban populations of the East coast. Nowadays the area is woodland again, regenerated in the last 65 years as farming become uneconomic and the areas mainly residential.
On a scorching hot morning I hitched a lift to visit a 100 acre farm near Henryville. This was farmed by young couple Jeff and Mary Jean who inherited the farm from Jeff's grandfather. Here, where there was little soil, abundance of rocks and many trees, they were trying to recreate the fields that would have been cleared in the 1860's. Through the trees there are vast heaps of stones that form the field boundaries, these are the rocks cleared each year as the extreme frosts bought more to the surface each winter.
For the last 4 years they have been selling free range eggs and vegetables locally, but were yet to make a living. To make the farm viable they had invested Jeff's 'trust fund' in a building that included a goat milking parlour, cheese preparation room and a cheese cave. It really was a lovely building clad with wood from the farm and with a wood furnace to heat the water. They are just milking 12 goats to start the enterprise and were waiting to receive the final inspections to allow them to sell raw milk. Then they will increase the numbers to 48 females.
The milk sold in the US is pretty poor and there is a great interest in raw milk for health reasons. Mary Jean was determined that she was going to get her license, both from the economic reasons but also she believed it to be healthier.

I would love to have shown some of the grass obsessed Nuffield Scholars the tiny fields surrounded by tall trees and littered with large stones and I was impressed with young farmers taking an idea, that many would regard as mad and working hard to make it work.

Their wish list included an understanding vet ( they had a certain amount of resistance to being organic) and low cell counts.Veg Field & grass

During my travels in the US a theme seemed to appear of young farmers that were taking risks on marginal land and supplying direct to a customer produce that was unique.
However modern this farming was I still couldn't help feeling that at last, I was living the little House dream that many six year old girls love. How I covert a wooden house with a porch and rocking chair, but i'm not sure Nevil would be happy with black bears wandering around the farm.

Stunning new Goat milking barn and cheese dairy