An app for all seasons

Down on the farm august 20^th

The turkeys are now settled up in the pig shed, with a short walk out to pasture in the morning and back at night.  It’s a routine which the average cow would pick up after a few days but from now till December the turkeys will continue to be amazed by the novelty of the experience.  We finally managed to get  count of them all settled on their perches just before dark and it’s a good tally with the number we started with take away sales and deaths.

Unlike the airlines, we can’t really overbook with turkey sales and hope a few customers don’t turn up on Christmas Eve – so we keep a margin of 20 for foxes, badgers and other mishaps, and another 20 for the Christmas menu.

Luckily, the management has just acquired an i-phone with the Gobble™ app – designed specifically for turkey producers, this can take a photo of a turkey flock out at pasture, count the numbers and estimate the oven ready weight.  Gobble Plus calculates the gross margin using real time data from the wheat futures market between now and Christmas.

I had thought that the phone was simply a designer accessory but now realize that it will simplify all sorts of farm jobs.  With the ingenious Go to work on an egg™ app, eggs are rolled down a chute over the i-phone which twists one way or the other for large and medium and flips sideways for extra large, throwing them neatly into the box.

Once we have the electronic tags in the sheep and cattle the I-phone will not only keep track of them but Ready or not?™ will text photos of them down to the butchery so Robert can draw out the fat lambs without having to change out of his whites. And of course with the new Where on earth?™ app the phone can not only find itself when it’s lost but can also track five other items including the car keys, the stapler and Jamie.

Meanwhile the wheat and spelt crops are still a couple of weeks away from the combine so plenty to go wrong yet – but looking forward to a test bake. Plans are moving ahead for the community bakery and mill, and if we can produce even a small part of the flour from the farm then we should be able to source the bulk of it from sunnier climes like East Lothian.

What looked like a mysterious crop circle in the spelt was not in fact a message from another planet but from a bunch of Tamworths who had nipped through the electric fence.  We’ve moved the dry sows up to the woods where they can’t do much harm, and today we’ll move the three sows and thirty piglets out to the field.

This means readjusting the nose height of the electric fence – too low and they bury the bottom wire with earth so it shorts out, too high and they limbo under and take the shock on their back which doesn’t hurt as much. If only they were as smart as turkeys.

Apres Mai, la deluge

That’s it – after four wet Julys in a row we are giving up trying to grow strawberries in the open and joining the rest of the world under plastic.   The strawberries that do survive the rain are amazing – there seems to be something about growing outside  that improves the flavour – but it’s heartbreaking to be throwing out half the crop because it’s just too damp.

The Soil Association were out last week to consult on their standards for protected cropping.  The seemingly inexorable drive for scale means that organic growers are starting to build field-size greenhouses for tomatoes – and with that sort of investment and specialization they can’t afford to grow anything else… so some of the basic organic standards  like crop rotation and growing in soil rather than substrate are coming under pressure.  Organic producers can’t use fumigants like methyl bromide to kill soil pests, so there have been calls to allow soil sterilization using steam – something an organization set up to defend the soil and its small inhabitants will be resisting vigorously.

The drive for scale and specialization in food production fits well with the current pattern of giant food retailers and large distribution networks.  On this model, producers have to get big or get out –  and this is what the industry body Scotland Food and Drink wants to see.

But the roots of scale and specialization go back further. As colonial powers found land (or sea) which could yield more than the local inhabitants needed to eat, they could start producing purely for export.  And if the local inhabitants weren’t happy they could always be cleared off through force or disease to make room for sheep or sugar.

Cheap food imports not only put pressure on traditional mixed farming but also allowed cities to expand over the land which used to recycle their waste into food and vegetables.

We’ve just got hold of The Winter Harvest Handbook, the new work from Eliot Coleman (who is the Jimmy Page of vegetable growing).  He draws inspiration from the Parisian market gardeners of the 19^th century who in turn learned from the London market gardeners of the 18^th century, producing an extraordinary range and volume of crops from a tiny land area worked with hand and skill.

Lots of ingenious techniques for using fleece inside polytunnels and moving tunnels along rails to protect crops at different times of year, so we are already thinking about how to use the strawberry tunnels for winter salads once the season’s over.  But he does admit that there’s more light and heat in their winter sun despite the freezing temperatures – while he’s growing south of Bordeaux we are up with the polar bears in Hudson Bay.

Talking of Bordeaux, the Tour de France is passing through today – and in its honour Didier is putting the finishing touches to his gastronomic Tour de France  special menu for our evening opening on August 5^th.  If there are no fraise left, let them eat framboise

Black gold

July 30

Just back from an interesting three days at the One Planet Food summer school, part of the Big Tent at Falkland in Fife.  We were learning about the new food economy and the way farmers and consumers both need to change if we want a fair and sustainable food system by 2020.

More questions than answers by the end, but one group went away to set up the city bread club to link local organic wheat growers with artisan bakers and a bicycle delivery service to provide club members with their daily bread.

On the way home I shared a car with  Craig Sams, founder of Green and Blacks and serial organic entrepreneur and Kirtana Chandrasekharan, food campaigner with Friends of the Earth.  Craig’s new venture is Carbon Gold, a company which is making farm scale kilns to produce biochar.

Biochar is a form of charcoal produced by burning almost any sort of biomass – wood, straw, cardboard, manure – to create a stable porous material which is incorporated in the soil.  This technique was used to create the terra preta soils in Amazonia where tests show that biochar has remained intact in the soil for 7000 years.  As well as locking up carbon from the atmosphere in the soil, biochar increases crop yields, sometimes dramatically,  through better water retention and providing habitats for soil microbes.  It also appears to help reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soil.

As the UK Biochar Research Centre at Edinburgh University comments, the technology can be small-scale and adopted by farmers and communities in both developing and developed countries.  It has the potential to take gigatonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ground, and make a significant contribution to reducing climate change.

So we have ordered our kiln, along with some bags of Craig’s soil improver with biochar wormcast and kelp so we can run some trials at the farm next year.  Pallets, cardboard boxes and hedge clippings will soon be black gold under the cabbages.  What could be the downside?

As Friends of the Earth point out, there’s nothing wrong with the technology, just the way it’s used.  Because it’s a verifiable way of storing carbon, it can be used to offset emissions by individuals and companies.  From being a farm scale technology using biochar from low grade biomass to improve soils it can become a big business cutting down forests to sell carbon offsets on the world market.

We would have needed a longer car journey to sort it out, and maybe it’s another Green and Black’s story.  While the original brand is now owned by Kraft and part of the corporate world, along the way it created the supply chain for organic cocoa which allowed artisan producers like our local Chocolate Tree to come in behind them.  We’re hoping that in the new food economy a lot of little Chocolate Trees will grow, and that every family farm will have its own little biochar kiln, whether or not it gets carbon credits for its new black gold.

A shaggy cow story

July 2

Great relief to have some rain at last, though can’t help wondering if the summer will now descend into a soggy mess like last year and the year before.  The weeds have perked up straight away and with luck the grass will follow soon.

Maybe the rain will galvanise activity in the farrowing shed, where the most enormous sow finally delivered a set of triplets when the bookies had her down for ten to twelve.  The rest of the maternity ward has been given a lecture on earning their keep but they have little respect for authority.

The last group of sows to be weaned are in with JP the boar and once they’ve been through a cycle they can go up to the woods for the summer – but by then we need to fix the quad bike to take their feed up.

The young stock are starting to look a bit better and should finish off grass but we’re still undecided about which cows to sell.  Someone wants the old shaggy ones to help manage a bit of moorland, and that would mean we could give the reluctant heifers a second chance with the bull… but the shaggy beasts were here first and are invoking the last in first out principle.  Maybe we need a Big Cow phone-in..

A busy week for visits, with three groups of farmers from Norway, the Czech Republic and SAC.  The Norwegians advised on apple varieties to use here, while the SAC students suggested converting the roughest ground to woodland and managing the water better for irrigation and generating electricity.

We’re getting some help from Glasgow Caledonian University to measure and reduce our carbon footprint – simple things like covers for the chill cabinets in the shop and making biodiesel for the van from waste cooking oil.  They can also help with the zero-carbon beef question – how much woodland and permanent pasture do we need to balance the methane emissions from our cattle.  Not sure if the budget will stretch to damming the stream for a mini-hydro scheme, though.

The observation hive is ready and waiting for the bees which should arrive next month, and the phacelia we’ve sown to welcome them is growing well.  The fabulous tipi should be arriving in mid July so we’re planning some fun and education activities for the holidays.

And then there are the turkeys.  Yes, one did lie down and drown in an inch of water while another one which was in rehab in the kitchen managed to jump out, walk through to the shower room and die on the tiles – but the 90% who inherited the will to live gene are looking great.  Next week they move out of the ring and get the whole shed and a couple of weeks later they will be ready for the pig shed… so the lingering sows need to get on and produce.

Counting chickens

Exit, pursued by a piglet has been the story this week as the kitchen has turned into a nursery to cope with the abandoned litter.  Baby piglets would be a great educational resource for exposing teenagers to the realities of parenthood – cute to look at but demanding, noisy and lets face it a little smelly.  Though unlike their human contemporaries, they very considerately climb out of their box to go and do their business in a corner – so no organic cotton nappies to wash.

The Chinese proverb says, “Never judge a sow till you’ve spent a week with her piglets” – but the orphan-maker went a step too far when she bit another sow’s piglet.  Stitchy as he is now known does a great impression of Kevin Spacey in the Usual Suspects and will always be one gigot roast short of a prime pig – but his mum has taken him back and he’s recovering well.

The bad besom is now in solitary and will be going to Whitley Bay on the next bus, sadly not for a holiday.

The Cheviot gimmers are getting into the spirit of lambing – mostly singles which they will manage better and will fatten quicker.  Counting to two does seem to be a challenge for them, unlike newly hatched chickens who can do arithmetic up to five. 

On the other hand, sheep can recognize up to fifty different sheep faces and remember them for two years. Not my gift: I can’t really tell the sheep apart until I’ve sprayed a big number on their side, and would probably have to phone a friend to get to fifty humans. 

Interesting discussion with a community group in Fife this week about dairies and how their local milk had disappeared over the last few years.  We wondered about what it would take to get a doorstep delivery going again by setting up a partnership between the community and one or two local farmers. 

A town of about 5,000 people would need about 80 organic cows to keep it in liquid milk and according to recent research would benefit from fewer childhood allergies as well as a much lower carbon footprint.  The current  system which trucks milk to large homogenization plants and back again takes nearly two thirds of the 70p cost of a litre of milk, and leaves 25p  for the farmer.. but crunching the numbers to see if a community supported dairy could do better would be a job for the chickens rather than the sheep.

A week is a long time in farming. The spell of fine weather has transformed the ground conditions so we have been able to finish the muckspreading and landscaping.  The cattle have gone out to the field for calving and with us weaning the calves so late there hasn’t been much roaring.   We managed to put a new skin on the polytunnel – only challenge now we’re not open to the sky is to fix the water pump. Onions should go in next week and then the potatoes.

Rock dust

Down to the dilatory dozen in the lambing polytunnel – and the ewe with the cute but poorly premature twins who will probably never make it despite endless attention.  Our vet student has got everything organized and the bunch that has gone out to what passes for grass is doing well.

The three bottle-fed piglets are still sleeping next to the lambing pens in their house of straw which despite Lily the sheepdog’s efforts is surprisingly hard to blow down. This weekend they move back in with their own species where they can go in the piglet creep and try their luck with the sows. 

Stitchy got an infection in his wound, mainly because the other pigs wouldn’t leave it alone, and has gone to a better place where pigs with three and a half legs don’t get picked on and are valued as individuals. 

Pentland Plants turned up yesterday with an artic load of woodchip for the outdoor pig run.  We’ve scraped off the topsoil for landscaping round the new shop and now we’re spreading the chip to give the pigs in the shed a place to go out and root during the winter.  It will also be their designated smoking area.

Onion sets all planted and the rooks have left most of them where we put them.  On our scale this is a time-consuming crop to plant, harvest and dry but at least the ones planted through the plastic mulch shouldn’t need much weeding.  Latest plans for the community bakery include an onion drying area above the wood-fired oven just in case the September sun at Whitmuir isn’t enough to bake them outside.

Potatoes to go in next – though we are still getting ice on the chicken drinkers most mornings the frost won’t do them any harm now – and then the carrots, swedes, beetroot and parsnips.  The Ford 3000 which we use for the vegetable work started without fuss after the winter, and we get by without satnav and a cd player in the cab. 

Busy evenings next week, with the talk on sustainable fish rescheduled for Monday and then a planning meeting for the community bakery on Tuesday.    On Wednesday we’re talking about the bee education project and the community veg garden – the more people we can get to grow their own, the fewer onion sets we need to plant ourselves..

Good that people have finally been able to get home after that volcano, but the fall-out will last a lot longer.  After bird flu and swine flu, people may assume that government always exaggerates the risks – and is doing the same with issues like climate change and food security.  Or maybe more people will holiday at home this year rather than risk getting stuck.  Perhaps the case for investing in rail rather than air travel will get a boost.  But let’s hope that a light dusting of micronutrients brings a little magic to the onions.

Feeding the five million

Five beautiful calves born last week, and time for the cows to move out of the bare field where they’ve been getting silage on to some fresh grass.  We had hoped to keep the two best fields shut up for an early silage crop to see us through next winter, but we’ll have to use one of them for grazing as there’s still no grass further up the hill. 

It’s better to buy in silage later than set the cows and calves back now – much like the conversations about when to cut public spending without damaging the green shoots of recovery – but getting the balance right needs good judgement and a few seasons’ experience.  We’re still learning how many cattle and sheep the farm can carry sustainably while making room for woodland, wildlife, pigs, playing, cereals, turkeys, chickens, fruit, vegetables, buildings and cars.

The Scottish Government is talking about the same issues on a bigger scale in its land use strategy – trying to balance food production, greenhouse gas reduction, fibre and timber production, biodiversity, recreation, landscape, renewable energy and development in a small country where only one acre in a thousand is Grade One land.

We had the loaves and fishes talks this week.  Crick Carleton from Nautilus Consultants gave us the big picture on world fishing stocks and then brought it close to home by looking at how we could source local sustainable seafood such as herring, mackerel, nephrops and haddock as well as mussels and crabs.  So we will be offering fresh fish on Friday and hoping for frequent firm orders. 

Interesting to learn about the process for Marine Stewardship Council accreditation – both the transparency of assessment and scoring and the way all the people involved in a fishery have to work together to manage the stock and the environment.  Perhaps there should be a Terrestrial Stewardship Council which could accredit Scotland’s land management and provide a seal of approval on all our food, timber, fibre and energy products… but that would mean rethinking our view of land management as a duty to produce public benefit rather than a right to extract. 

Andrew Whitley from Bread Matters took us through the practicalities of getting a community bakery to wash its face.  It’s starting to take shape as a mutual enterprise, with the bakers, customers, apprentices, wheat growers and miller working as a partnership.  A small mill will mean we can bake with and sell freshly-milled flour – a bit like making coffee from freshly ground beans.  We don’t plan to be thirled to the mill, though – if the miller starts any funny business we’ll feed our wheat to the chickens.

Next week we should have the vegetables all sown so we can finish off the new woodland up around the pond.  As well as keeping stock away from the watercourse to reduce soil erosion and pollution, this will provide a wildlife habitat and some coppiced timber for the bread oven and charcoal-making. In time it will also help with water management, slowing down the rate at which water runs off the hill and down the burn past the shop – but it does mean an acre less for summer grazing – so better sell a cow and calf ..

Making food miles better

At last we have salad, spinach and spring onions – not much to fill the hungry gap but a very welcome splash of green to liven up the last of the leeks and potatoes.

The cold spring really shows up the difference between the old and new grass, with last year’s reseed much more productive than the older fields.  Next year we’ll have to put in some arable silage and undersow it with new grass and clover.

For now the grass is only just keeping ahead of the cows and calves and we’ve opened the gate into the woods so the young stock can find some grazing under the trees.  We’re still hoping that like in 2006 a cold dry spring will flip into a barbecue summer.

Disappointing news this week for the Whitmuir Initiative, the charity working with the farm to provide education on sustainable food and farming.  We were turned down for a grant towards our sustainable food production centre. Because we are in a rural area, the funders reckoned people would produce more greenhouse emissions getting here than they would save. 

It’s difficult working out the numbers. Some people already cycle here, while most people would combine a trip to the shop or café with a couple of hours weeding in the community veg patch or learning how to make better compost.

The main savings don’t come from people growing their own vegetables rather than buying them, but from eating more local seasonal organic vegetables, choosing organic milk, eating grass-fed organic meat and using all the cuts, wasting less food, and making compost.  We are still hoping to start the project this year if we can find a ‘veg doctor’ to teach new growers and composters.

Cutting down emissions from transport is a real challenge in this area. The cost of cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will be met initially from BP’s £2 million per hour profit, but we will all end up paying for it at the pump.

Soaring petrol prices have made us all think about how to get more done with each car trip, and the local energy reduction project Village Green is offering to help people cut down on fuel by planning and sharing journeys better. Meanwhile we are saving up our waste oil from the kitchen to make biodiesel.

The shift to electric cars will change the way we think about travel.  Before long the power companies will supply the cars just like Orange throws in the cost of the phone, and we will be offered a range of tariffs per mile depending on how much we drive. Photovoltaic panels on car roofs will generate enough power for 10% of our annual mileage.  In rural areas, community managed charging stations using local renewables will swap batteries for people on longer trips.  

And maybe the forecourt shops will sell local seasonal produce rather than all that stuff we end up eating in the car…

The oregano of species

This week we take a deep breath and get ready for the turkeys.  It’s worse than lambing – they need constant attention for the first week while they think up ingenious ways to die.  All-round favourite is drowning in 2 inches of water in the drinker but the mass suicide last year was caused by them all jumping on top of each other in panic when someone started a chainsaw in the yard.  Once they are big enough to go out of the brooder and on to pasture the challenge is to stop them escaping into the trees and becoming badger breakfast.

Our comfort blanket is oregano essence in their drinking water.  This seems to defend them against all sorts of turkey runny nose ailments and is safe to eat (but a bit strong for pizza).

Sound science in the news this week with the Reith lectures and a high profile resignation from the Food Standards Agency’s steering group on GM food. Brian Wynne’s view is that the cards are stacked in favour of GM because of the way the FSA is defining the issue and managing the process.

GM is what social policy people call a ‘wicked’ problem, because people don’t just disagree about the facts.  They disagree about what the problem is and what facts or values should be part of the discussion.  So for many people the question ‘is GM food safe to eat?’ is simply the wrong question, while others think that questions like ‘who controls the technology?’ or ‘do we have the moral right to cut and paste our collective genetic heritage?’ are irrelevant or incomprehensible. 

Not surprising then that the Food Standards Agency with its ‘no-nonsense nanny’ approach to the world is struggling to see what it’s doing wrong.  It wants simple answers when what wicked problems demand is what’s been called the ‘collective puzzlement of society’.

Good to see the NHS in Nottingham getting to grips with a much simpler problem – how to use local food in its menus for patients and staff.  A bit of imagination and flexibility means it can now but all its milk and meat from local farms.  It also puts chef’s specials on the menu every day using the fruit and veg which are in season – giving producers an outlet, reducing food miles and probably improving taste and health.  It would be good to do the same here.

Meanwhile we really could do with a bit of rain as long as it stops before silage time.  The reseed on the top field could do with a good soak so the grass and clover get going before the couch and the redshank.  But the first flowers on the strawberries are out and the potatoes are peeping through – no thanks to one particularly stubborn hen who works her way down the row scratching them out.  Maybe there is some ingredient in a greenish sprouting potato which she can’t get from the very expensive organic chicken feed or the two acre paddock she’s supposed to stay in.  Could try oregano..

Tough on broccoli, tough on the causes of broccoli

Gogol’s best-known work tells the story of a small village awaiting the arrival of the powerful government inspector.  When a stranger arrives they treat him with fawning deference and offer every hospitality, only to find that the real government inspector arrives the day after the impostor leaves.  

This week we had our Soil Association inspection of the shop and butchery, a 10 hour marathon of checking that we are meeting every organic standard.  I don’t think a bacon roll and a cup of coffee really counts as fawning but as far as we know she was the real thing – she certainly knew her stuff about livestock.  It’s a useful process but we’re still glad when it’s over.

Meanwhile the cabbages have all been planted and are mostly still with us despite the dry spell.  The water tank is slow to refill with only the spring to feed it so the pigs get water during the day and then the vegetables at night.  When it’s hot, the pigs need water for a wallow as well as drinking so they deliberately tip the trough up to make a muddy puddle. 

The indoor pigs have quickly got the hang of going upstairs to their outdoor run, and have now learned to flick the little gates off their hinges so they can escape – in the end, it always comes down to another bit of baler twine. 

The cows have paused half way through calving, with none born last week – it really does feel like they are waiting for the rain to give the grass a boost.  It’s striking how the cocksfoot ley has shot ahead of the ryegrass, perhaps because its massive root system is more drought resistant, or maybe just because the chickens were on it last year and have left a lot of fertility behind.

At a food policy conference yesterday where the most striking statistic was that the  value of food wasted in Scotland last year was £1billion – not enough to pay off the national debt but still £200 a year for every person.  Over 60% of this is preventable, with a lot of food going from the shop to the fridge to the bin unopened too much at one time. 

Apparently most of us think we are better than average when it comes to wasting food, and this can’t be true – so there is an interesting project running locally called Kitchen Canny where each household becomes its own food waste inspectors and works out how to do better.    Cutting food waste to zero would have the same impact on greenhouse gas emissions as taking one car in four off the road. 

We’ve been getting better here at reducing waste especially with vegetables now we have the kitchen – but the displays rely on natural ventilation and shading rather than refrigeration so last weekend was tough on the broccoli.  Still, the pigs don’t mind the odd bit of yellow  and the chickens are just below staff in the pecking order for stale bread.  But the onion skins and the coffee grounds head straight for the compost.