Author: britishseabuckthorn

As the Devereux farm sea buckthorn project has progressed each year has achieved some milestones. From 2012 to 2014 the Siberian sea buckthorn plants were imported and established. 2014/2015 disease became an issue and solutions were found following the principle that the project was to be organic. 2016 the Soil Association started the three year organic accreditation process. 2017, non lethal anti-bird measures to protect the crop were installed and the first crop developed.

Having found a stage where there is a crop of up to 10kg on some varieties there are two clear objectives for the next twelve months. The first of these is technical. Investing in facilities that pass Environmental health inspectors, and pursue quality accreditation for our product to add to our Soil Association application which will make us organic by 2019.

As farmers and growers we are a primary producer, producing a simple berry product the only processing being put into a punnet for market. As such the Environmental Health regulations are not tight, but if we are installing processing equipment this winter so the regulations will have to conform as to full food manufacturing standards. In the long term this will be worth it, but this adds a significant learning curve to the project at this stage.

Alongside this the other objective is to really get to understand how to grow Siberian sea buckthorn here in the UK. It is one thing to grow the plants successfully. Achieving a good pollination has shown that we can produce a significant amount of berries. The next stage from that is growing a consistently larger berry.

In siberia berry size varies, but for some of the varieties we have a target of over 1 gram per berry is achievable. So this has to be a target. Currently we are seeing berry size of an average of up to 0.85gm. Soil type has always been an issue as our clay soils are the direct opposite of the soil that sea buckthorn likes. To improve our soils we have to improve the organic matter and moisture retention in the soil and ensure that all the nutrients that are key to developing good fruit are available to the plant.

Soil samples taken earlier this summer provide guidance, but as a new crop in an unfamiliar environment success will come from more exacting trials. The taste of the berries we are producing is superb, but perfecting taste, size and nutritional quality will take time.

As this harvest progresses we are starting to understand the way each of the varieties ripens. So far Etna started the process with small sweet berries, slightly red in colour. Klaudia – having given an impression that this was still maybe two weeks from maturing has ripened incredibly quickly. The berries are long, but not filling to a size that was anticipated. Thick clumps of berries are ripening at different rates on the branches, making picking a difficult process. Next year we need to start earlier and it is clear that picking Klaudia will require multiple picking visits over a period of time to make harvest effective. Chuiskaya is ripe now, but Elizaveta is also very close.  Chuiskaya berries are rounder and full, which is how one would expect other varieties to present themselves. Some Chuiskaya plants have bigger berries than others indicating that maybe variation in soil in the field is an influence.

As these factors need to be considered and a program developed for next year to focus on improving berry size across the crop.

With this melting pot of ideas we are picking all varieties, but trying different approaches with different varieties trying to find the most effective way to hand pick quickly, accurately and without damage. We are picking some of all varieties and freezing them down for processing trials this winter. Without full Environmental health inspected facilities we will not be selling this year, so picking is down to the family. But we are confident in perfecting growing method, picking, storage, processing and that is a huge leap forward.

One of the first things that attracted me to sea buckthorn as a new crop was its potential for so many uses. The ancient texts that promote its health benefits both for humans and animals evidence that for over 2000 years this plant has been respected as a great natural resource. When it comes to being a food however, health attributes may be seen as little more than a bonus. As with all foods it is taste that is the most important issue.

Taste comes in multiple layers. On a personal level there is the instant sensation of like and dislike. Our taste develops through early life and we all recognise how it changes and the foods that we like and we might have rejected as children.

Accepting that we like a food is a natural process. One can analyse the reasons and understand which taste sensations are driving our desires, but it is normally an instant process. It is this fact that is the current focus for our sea buckthorn crop as Devereux farm.

Including all German, Finnish, Latvian and Siberian plants we have 19 female plant varieties on site. The berries of each and every one of these provides a different taste sensation. The taste of a food changes and matures as it ripens, therefore understanding the ripening process is critical to how we grow and produce our berries.

This year we started analysing the soluable solids in the berries from early June. This is providing data on how the berries of each of the varieties are maturing. This indicated a good constant development pattern indicating up to a 15% increase week on week. Colour change is obvious, moving from green, to yellow to orange with Etna showing an additional shade of red, indicating higher carotenoid content. Understanding the final ripening process is more of an art than a science. Finally firmness to touch and the gloss on the berry skin gives another visual indication of condition.

This year the weather started with a dry winter. This has developed into a warm to hot summer, which is very different to our normal cool overcast mild climate.

Information from our plant suppliers in Siberia indicates that the sea buckthorn varieties we have should mature through August and September. In the past two year Etna has already shown this was going to vary, as it ripens in early July. Klaudia, with its habit of breaking dormancy in January, is likely to have different to normal characteristics. As Etna ripens so early here, I had concluded that our harvest would be through July and August, maybe going into September.

With this in mind and looking at the way the Soluable solids figures where changing over June and into July, I had formed a concept of which varieties were going to mature and roughly when. I built into this the idea that each variety would be ripe for around 15 days. 15 days meaning that the optimum ripeness is at about day ten, the taste holding for a few more days before the fruit starts to become over ripe.

The first indication that this concept might not be right, is coming from tasting trials. Every day we taste each of the varieties that are maturing.  It is becoming clear that several varieties are maturing closely together. Furthermore it is becoming clear that having an original concept of a harvest up to 90 days long, may well in fact be closer to 50. This means that picking becomes more focused and opportunity to supply fresh berry into market is reduced to a short season.

Whereas I had hoped we would be picking to sell this year, this will be the most important year of learning how to manage our crop. The berries appear on different varieties either in tight clusters or individually on the branch. They mature at varying rates. They are achieving different sizes. All of these impact on efficient and effective picking. As the crop is going to have to be handpicked, finding the best method to maximise speed of picking is essential. Speed also has to be balanced with care so that each berry is picked without damage.

All of this is down to observation and until these issues are fully understood we are not going to be in a position to sell. This is disappointing but it is all coming back to the concept that the sea buckthorn being grown at Devereux farm is a trial, and that there is realisation that it will take 20 years to bring that to full commercial success.

A long time – but worth it.

The anticipation for picking berries grows daily. As this is our first crop of a fruit that I last tasted in 2009 the issue of deciding precisely when our sea buckthorn berries will be ripe is teasing. We now have a whole month of Brix and berry dimension measurements.

As with all crops, breeders declare the optimum yields and quality values of their varieties. On this basis our Siberian sea buckthorn berries will have a berry weight varying from around 0.65g to over 1 gram. A weight of one gram might sound small but in a fruit that has small berries this could be a giant. This of course sets aspirations which might be misplaced. I have to remind myself that the plants have come to an alien soil and climate. They might – or might not achieve their genetic potential.

Every Thursday berries are weighed and measured and results are showing steady progress. The objective of this is to indicate the varieties that are ripening soonest. At the beginning of June it looked as if Augustina; Etna; Elizaveta; Chuiskaya led the pack, with Inya;Klaudia;Altaiskaya and Sudarushka offering those that are going to push harvest through into September.

This week the order is hardening up with Etna way out front. The issue though is that the berries are quite small currently at 0.5gm, with some indicating they should go larger. The brix however is racing ahead, having increased 2.0 in a week to 12.5. The largest berry at the moment comes from variety Elizaveta and is 0.75gm. These have a much lower brix so I suspect will not be ready for picking for a month.

Taste is another experience. These will not be the intense sharpness of classic foraged or European sea buckthorn.  It has the same intense burst, but is definately unique. It has an apple tingle to it and is less citrus. I suppose this is why these berries are called the “Siberian pineapple”.

Taste is king as a food item, but sea buckthorn has its health atttributes. Nutrient quality matures as fruit ripens. It is influenced by the nutrients in the soil, the weather, hours of sunlight, temperature and rain. Again growing Siberian sea buckthorn in the UK will have its own unique outcome, but looking at other research papers, some research shows key nutrients change in different ways through the ripening process.

The maximum oil content in the fruit and seed develops right through the ripening process. Other nutrients are different.  Sea buckthorn contains 24 different minerals including iron, calcium, manganese, magnesium, silicon, boron and others. Calcium levels are expected to be highest before the berry becomes fully ripe. Magnesium builds through the whole process. Vitamin C  follows the Calcium.  This is to be expected as vitamin C – ascorbic acid is after all an acid with a sharp taste. As our berries ripen with the sharpness is mellowing this indicates a slight fall in vitamin C when the berry is fully ripe. As I have said many times – we should not however be concentrating on single nutrients. It is the total nutrient package that gives health benefit. It is the total nutrient package that matters and the way each nutrient synergises with others to combine that delivers the health benefits we look for.

I am taking sea buckthorn oil capsules, three times a day because I firmly believe that they provide the stamina I need to manage the site. Every day needs strimming, mowing otherwise the weeds will rampantly take over and having reached by 60th birthday some time ago I see as stamina is an essential. Each month the plants need spraying with foliar feeds – over 1000 plants in a day.

As harvest approaches there are a million new things to think about. picking will start on Monday with Etna but this will be to start to learning curve. First issue – how long will they last in the fridge; will they ripen in the fridge and at what rate? Developing the best picking method. Designing the best picking tray. Understanding the difference between fully ripe and ripening berries. Creating a specification so that customers are sold a punnet with berries offering best taste, similar size and uniform colour.

One job that has become a morning and evening routine issue this summer has been looking after sea buckthorn plants in pots. These are kept as replacments for plants that die through the year. As these plants get bigger they really do not like the restriction of being in a pot. Leaves yellow with depressing frequency. Alongside the sea buckthorn there are edible honeysuckle plants. These have tended to brown and show their dislike of being in pots. Now I think I have cured with a simple solution.

In the garden we are told some plants favour being watered with rainwater, not tap water. This is fine except in a very dry year when there is little rain. I have started to use water from my compost tea brewer to water my potted plants and that seems to have made a radical difference. The brewer aerates tap water, allowing chemicals like chlorine that are put into the water. The honeysuckle particularly has responded really well, so although pot watering is tedious every day, it is at least rewarding with healthy looking plants.

The other innovation this week might not look professional but is part of looking to produce sea buckthorn with a low carbon footprint.

Compost tea spraying has moved forward from a backpack sprayer to a sprayer trailed behind the Westwood mower. As a petrol machine it uses a surprising amount of fuel as it idles which spraying the orchard of 4000 plants. All the tractor does is tow the sprayer and provide the battery power to run its pump.

The builder who is creating our processing building watched this process and offered the use of an old electric mobility scooter he had in his store. The result might look novel, but it has cut out another use of fossil fuel. It does not use fuel when idling beside the plant being sprayed. It also is completely quiet and allows the operator to get off and spray it difficult parts that was not possible with the old tractor.

This might sound an eccentric choice, but minimising energy and use of resources is an objective that will be on-going as we develop the crop of sea buckthorn at Devereux farm.

As this week saw the coming of mid summer day it is odd how we perceive the seasons. August maybe the time of school holidays and when many people take their annual leave, but it is the end of summer and also its weather is often unpredictable. June however feels more as if it is the start, not the middle of our favoured season. This year June has clocked up the hottest temperature since the early 1970s. With it, the Siberian sea buckthorn plants at Devereux farm have been basking in weather that they would take as the norm in their native climate.

Plants should behave to a normal growing cycle. In Siberia the sea buckthorn plants would come out of their winter dormancy in April. With a multiple number of varieties available harvesting goes through from early August through to October.

As I have often recorded our plants at Devereux farm break their winter dormancy in January and February with the variety Klaudia leading the pack. All the others will have joined the early riser by mid February.

So when it comes to ripening I should be expecting berries to be ready for harvest in August.

In order to assess how the berries are developing each week, a random sample of 20 berries are being measured, weighed and having their Brix ( soluable solids ) assessed. Results from this indicates that ripening is happening earlier than in native Siberia. This is definately the case for the variety Etna which looks as if it will be ready for picking by the first week of July. Chuiskaya is colouring up as if to be the next in line for harvesting. In Siberia these would be ready in the second half of August.  As this is the first year of being able to record these figures they are our best guide as to how the crop is developing. The immediate issue is the variation in berry size. I am expecting ripe berries to weigh between 0.6 – 1.0 g each. Currently Etna weighs in at 0.5g as an average of 20 berries. It seems to be adding about 0.1g per week.  Chuiskaya is larger at 0.55g but expected to ripen at around 0.9g per berry, whilst Augustina I am hopeful will crack the 1.0g/berry in size. As these all are changing colour to bright orange the varieties Altaiskaya and Sudarushka have berry weighs of 0.35g and are still a full olive green in colour. These variations indicate that the eight varieties that we will be picking will give an extended harvest season of early July through into September.

If Brix is the value I should be following to assess ripening then Etna is again way out front at 10.5, with Chuiskaya close behind at 10.6 falling away to the very unripe “Altai” and “Sudi” at 6.8 and 6.5.

The brightest orange Etna berries have lost the sharp characteristic sea buckthorn taste, which reflects the concept that Lisavenko have been breeding “dessert” varieties of sea buckthorn. Of the varieties at Devereux natural sugar content may vary in berries from 5% to 10%. In taste this will be offset by the natural anti-oxidants and high vitamin content dampening the sweeter flavour. High vitamin C levels are characterised with sea buckthorn. In their native Siberia our varieties deliver levels around 90-120mg/100g

Other quality aspirations will include the fruit oil content varying between 4-7% in the varieties we have at Devereux. It is the oil that fills the supplement capsules that are the popular means of accessing the benefits of sea buckthorn. The berry also of course has its seed containing the omega 7 which is often defined as the primary beneficial content that differentiates sea buckthorn from other plants.  I think that as with many natural products, it is no one particular nutrient that should be isolated as the primary focus of interest. Health benefits come from a whole complex of natural compounds within the berry. Recognising that they all synergise together delivering multiple benefits is more important than singling out high profile nutrients which is a common marketing practice.

I digress, because the focus now is on harvest. Hand picking is to be a new experience. Looking at the plants as they are now, within any plant the berries are at different stages of ripeness. Picking has to select those at optimum ripeness and remove them without damage.

Devereux farm is a trial site. Rows are laid out with different row spacings; different spacing between plants; rows with a single variety and rows with multiple varieties. Harvesting needs to be planned so as to chose the ripest plants on the site and ensure that the correct plants are picked so there is no mixing of berry varieties. With varieties ripening at different times and having different berry sizes and tastes it is essential that this works 100% accurately. With some rows planted with plant varieties in random groups of 12 plants, this will require a failsafe management system.  Being able to maintain quality and trace berries back to the plants they came from is an important part of forever improving our knowledge of growing sea buckthorn.

Hand picking will be time consuming. With high summer temperatures once the berries are picked they could start to deteriorate. To minimise this, berries will be collected into chilled boxes in the field within minutes of being picked. Maintaining a constant cool temperature is an aspiration that will follow the whole harvested berry as it travels from the field to the customer.

So it seems as if we have finally arrived at the time when Devereux farm can send  UK Siberian sea buckthorn off to market. When will that start precisely? It looks like within three weeks – it is difficult to explain the emotion attached to having finally reached this point.

Embarking on a new idea, a novel or innovative concept means going on an unpredictable journey. There have been many plans for the sea buckthorn at Devereux farm. The first plants from Germany and Finland arrived back in 2009. There were seminars and consultant meetings. Business plans written, meetings with marketing companies; and visits to food exhibitions – all with a belief that a crop would be forthcoming within three or four years.

Now, eight years on and the excitment builds each and every day. Ben walked the rows two weeks ago counting the berries on sample plants from different varieties from which we have calculated a potential crop yield.

Each week now a randomly collected sample from all varieties are being picked – size, weight and Brix measured. Berries are colouring up, The 300 Etna plants are racing ahead with most berries now yellow and possibly 10% a classic orange. Strangely Klaudia – the variety to break its buds in January looks as if it will be fourth in line to be harvested out of the eight varieties we have.

The problem with all new ventures – particularly with those that are self funded, is that development reacts to successful achievement. Without a crop, we could not practice and develop harvesting skills and systems. Without a crop investing in post harvesting  processing equipment was not viable. Now of course we have the crop so all the concepts and ideas that have remained dormant over the years have to become real in a matter of a few weeks.

Producing a food crop needs to fit with regulations. Complying with hygiene, packaging, labelling, processing rules. Having registered with the Soil Association last year the sea buckthorn is on the road to becoming organically certified, but the process takes three years. This will become the crop’s principle certification standard but not until 2019. This conversion process is provides  a period of time for there to be no doubt that our methods, the soil, our plants and the resultant crop can have any trace of previous activity that might have happened on the field.  As we do not use any chemicals for pest or disease control this process could have started years ago, but signing up for accreditation is expensive. Developing a new project with limited resources means having to prioritise spending. Up until last year accreditation was just not viable.

Now with the crop on the way accreditation has gained that priority. Along with the organic conversion, we are now to register with SALSA – the Safe and Local Supplier Approval scheme. This is recognised particularly for use for micro-businesses such as ourselves. Gaining accreditation is more than just gaining a piece of paper. It focuses the mind on ensuring that all our systems – as we develop them will deliver a safe, quality product. Focus is all important as the momentum to produce our first crop has emerged a credible happening only since last month.

Creating the first UK fresh Siberian sea buckthorn berries is a very exciting prospect. Pulling together all that is needed to bring them to market is a culmination of years of ideas. We know how special these nutritious little taste bombs of berries are – now we can share it.

It has been a historic month and no escaping the election. Those who will look back on this period of our history will have the benefit of knowing how the actions that we have taken will have impacted on our country.  Voting is a valuable right. The choices we make as individuals may not end up with the outcome we want but it is a powerful process sending a strong message to those that govern us to reflect the will of the whole population.

As with politics, the decisions we take in life shape our future. Each one is made depending upon the information available at that time. Sometimes this is based on true fact. Sometimes the facts might be based on opinion rather than credibility. Probably all decisions are made on a mixed of what comes from the heart and the mind.

In saying this I reflect on the decision to plant sea buckthorn at Devereux farm. When conceived as an idea in 2006 it was a strong contender against many options. The fact that it was new was seen as a positive. The fact that there was no market in the UK was an issue, but entrepeneurial passion can drive a confidence for success to overcome all obstacles.

Now in 2017 our sea buckthorn has matured enough for many plants to be carrying a harvestable crop of berries. The obstacles of fungal diseases, aphids and caterpillars, fruit hungry birds, invasive weeds are part of history.

Fruit appearing is a success but the promise of Siberian varieties should be yields 12 kgs per plant and berry quality with high levels of vitamins ,anti oxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds. Berry quality being a health cocktail which provided the inspiration to grow the plant in the first place. This year will finally provide the opportunity to to understand our UK  quality and develop both this and the yield for the future.

Finding solutions is not about inventing the wheel. Growing sea buckthorn organically may be seen as presenting limitations, but seeing is believing. Last month an inspiring visit to the UK prize winning Mole End organic apple farm in Kent illustrated that a dedicated team, intense focus to detail and use of innovative solutions deliver the package for success.  Intensive management delivers but all farming is under pressure with an uncertain future following Brexit.  It is encouraging however that the issues are recognised and technology is developing as a way forward. Fruit quality being managed by better systems delivering plant feeds. New hyper efficient irrigation systems to combat longer periods of dry weather that may be a consequence of climate change. Automation in field work,harvesting and controlled environment fruit storage systems will all delivering consumers with both quality and affordable produce.

This month has also finally seen the dry weather broken.  Our clay soil bakes hard when dry and this is not good for shallow rooted sea buckthorn. The rain also gives a new lease of life to other plants so weed control has been relentless. A Stihl battery operated strimmer has provided an excellent tool, allowing up to four times sessions a day to keep on top of weeds without using chemicals. It seems that each single battery use is saving 1 litre of petrol in my old pack pack strimmer. A useful cost and environmental saving.

Rain must have been welcome for wildlife. Living next to a nature reserve has the benefit of working in a great environment but it brings the trial of birds who love the sea buckthorn berries. One section of the plantation has wires strung over every row can be netted but we now have a technological solution – an audio scaring system. Targeting scaring rooks and jackdaws the effect has been remarkable. Its speakers randomly broadcast distress calls which can be programmed to disperse ten different species. It can only be described as a 100% success.

Having a solution to birds has secured the berry crop for harvest. The next question is now – when will harvest be?

Having brought Siberian plants to the UK they have to acclimatise to our mild weather. As they start to break into leaf in January this must impact on their whole growing cycle. In Russia these varieties are harvested in August and September. In order to understand how the berries are developing we are trying a digital refactometer to record changes in the berry. Changes in colour from green to orange clearly indicate this process, but being able to  monitor development with a systematic process will give a consistent and hopefully accurate determination. For those interested the readings indicate the varieties devloping in the following order : Augustina; Etna; Elizaveta; Chuiskaya; Inya; Klaudia ; Alataiskaya; Sudarushka. As varieties have different levels of berry sweetness the refractometer will offer an understanding of each variety rather than the order in which they ripen.  This might work, it might not, but it all will add to the process of developing a consistent and optimum way of growing a successful crop for the future.

Producing a crop is one thing – harvesting it, preparing it and delivering it to market is another.  Now with a crop, this summer will start the process of perfecting this and providing the opportunity of delivering the first fresh Siberian sea buckthorn berries in the UK.

Our family has farmed here in North East Essex since the 1880s. In those early days the focus was on sheep, with my great grandfather developing a flock of pedigree Suffolks to graze the extensive marshes that made up most of the farm. The flock was dispersed in 1926 as part of farm re-organisation. A herd of dairy short-horns provided a milking herd at Walton hall farm through the 1940s and 50s, which my parents then evolved into freisian cattle herd. This herd moved to Devereux farm in the mid-1960s, which is where is was when I joined the farm in 1982. Sadly, as with the sheep, the dairy herd was finally sold in 2002 leaving the farm without livestock.

From 2002 the farmland has developed in two directions. Half has been devoted to growing crops of wheat, barley, peas, beans, rape and tares. The rest has been set aside to provide habitat for the wildlife associated with the neighbouring Hamford Water National Nature reserve. Habitat does not just happen, it evolves and nature evolves with it. The term biodiversity is banded about often, but a broad stable biodiversity only happens given an existing viable ecosystem being given time to expand. Our farm has had some traumatic events, such as the 1953 flood.

An uncontrolled flood drowns everything in its path. It contaminates the soil and if not dispersed back to sea, sea water is toxic to terrestrial plant life. Following the 1953 flood the sea walls were rebuilt both by digging clay from the fields closest to the walls, but also by bulldozing the topsoil from them. Before the flood many of these marshes were un-improved grazing marshes with a mix of plant species and microfauna that had been there for possibly centuries. This would of course have sustained a vibrant biodiversity. Many locals lived off plentiful stocks of fish and huge flocks of wildfowl. After 1953 all this changed. The farmland was first planted with grass and took ten years to come back into use. But the traditional grazing marshes had gone and this presented the opportunity to grow arable crops – at a time when both the UK and Europe were still recovering from the war. The early cereal crops would have yielded 2 tons an acre, which rose to 3 tons by the 1980s. But this transition from extensive grazing marsh and and its natural habitat degraded the ability of many species to remain viable in the area. This is not to say that cereal growing on the marshes removed all habitat area. Hedges remained. Wide creeks and ponds provided freshwater areas for breeding waders. Skylarks, grey plover, grey partridge could still be found, but diminishing habitat will also have an impact.

The moral of this story is that farms are not static businesses, they evolve. Over ten years ago the farm started to change again reducing its cereal growing land and returning it to become habitat. The advent of EU based agri-environmental schemes provided a choice of approaches but for our farm developing larger areas of habitat rather than just providing margins around fields seemed the right approach.

One radical project included breaching one of our sea walls to create an intertidal habitat extending a 50 acre area of mature salt marsh within Hamford Water onto our farmland. Crucially it will reduce the impact of a repeat of the 1953 flood as the sea can now flow through the breach in the sea wall and spread out across the land at Devereux farm. It has been a great success and what was once farmland has developed a biodiverse salt marsh.

Why is all this important?

This blog has been focused on the sea buckthorn crop that is developing at Devereux farm. The sea buckthorn project could not have developed if the rest of the farm was not able to support it. In time it will be the sea buckthorn which as a new enterprise will support other new projects that will drive the future viability of the farm. But what drives all of this is the appreciation of how special the working environment of a farm actually is. It grows on you and you become it. The fact it is possible to make a living from this environment is important, but it is valuing the environment as a key resource that makes the business and that will make it sustainable in the future.

This year the lack of rain will impact on all our harvest – both the sea buckthorn and the arable crops. Next year that position will hopefully be better, but if we are really seeing climate change driving different weather patterns then we will have to adapt to meet the challenge.

To a large extent though this farm has never stood still and has for over 100 years been continually changing and adapting – so whatever the weather – and maybe whatever the politics of the time, we will just carry on moving with the times.

April used to be the month for showers there has now been 42 days without any rain. The sea buckthorn field at Devereux farm has had 101 mm of rain since January 1st, this being almost 50% of last year’s total and 40% less of the average over 33 years since 1984.

What does all that mean? The sea buckthorn looks well but there are some odd plants under stress with leaves dessicated and potentially looking as if they might die. This will not be due to lack of rain but more likely these plants are in areas where the soil is predominantly  rank clay. This would put the plants under stress and allow disease to get the upper hand.

I still believe that the compost tea application has a beneficial effect under these conditions. To test the case the Siberian plants will be split up so some will have an application every month, some every six weeks, and some every two months.  This is not necessarily a scientific study but with the plants under stress it will be an indication as to which areas have more/less plants with disease or other stress symptoms.

One of the issues with farming is that every year is different as this season’s weather conditions are indicating. With sea buckthorn there is the added issue that there are no guidelines as to how to manage the crop here in the UK. As the crop is also being grown organically the options are limited. In past year’s the overall weed population has been allowed to grow both between the rows and in-between the plants. This has become a real problem, particularly for weeds like creeping thistle which has spread across the site to such a degree that this year a zero tolerance approach has started. Mowing between the rows every two weeks to a very tight sward height together with striming between the plants.

Striming up until now has been with a Stihl petrol backpack strimer. A great tool, but in the long term reducing the carbon footprint of producing the crop is important. I believe that within 10 years carbon foot-printing will appear on food labels. Apart from that it is only right that we should make every effort to reduce use of fossil fuels – and every small bit counts. So this month a Stihl electric strimer arrived. Its battery is still a real constrain as one battery charge allows striming of about 75 plants only. It then takes 2 hours to recharge. All this means is starting every day with striming, then planning the day so that other jobs fit in-between up to four striming sessions a day. Technology still has a way to go before battery power becomes a fully convenient option, but for now the opportunity of not having to be reliant on the petrol station feels good.

Standards are part of what develops quality. Quality is often a subjective issue and it is made up of many factors. Choosing to be organic fits with the desire not to be using chemicals, which may impact on soil health and product quality. Proving these issues is difficult, but there is certainty in as much as – if you don’t use chemicals, you can be certain that neither soil nor product will have any form of contaminant. Interestingly as Brexit gathers pace, last week, on April 19th the EU established a new electronic tracking system for all imports into the EU of organic products. This aims to further ensure that organic means organic and that food products can be traced back to the grower. Memories of the horse meat scandal in Europe is just one area where fraudulent product labelling tried to pass off substitute product onto consumers.  It is in the best interests of both growers and consumers that there is confidence in standards and this EU system sounds like a positive move to further close loopholes.

Carbon foot-printing has been discussed in terms of food miles, but this is often confusing as sometimes low energy production methods in warm climates can be beneficial against UK production  even with the inclusion of air transport. We have become so used to exotic foods becoming the norm and there being no reliance on seasonal foods that understanding what food miles are acceptable and what are not is difficult to assess. That said the individual producer can influence production methods to reduce energy reliance and use. This is fine but it is only when this is benchmarked against other products that the efforts of the individual can be assessed objectively by the market and the consumer. Carbon foot-printing is just one other standard awaiting acceptance in the marketplace. If climate change is going to be managed then these standards might be one means of ensuring that food production is accountable and able to identify the means to limit its impacts upon the global environment.

As the president of the US has remarked that climate change is a hoax one needs to consider the evidence. As a farmer the weather that we are growing used to is no longer consistent with seasons. As a coastal farmer the seas are becoming more threatening with flood risk from surge tides now becoming a five yearly occurence rather than a once in a lifetime event. The problem with ignoring these issues is that time is not on our side and it is a supremely selfish attitude to think that the problem will not be an issue in our lifetime.

All one can do is do your individual best and hope that collectively enough effort is made that our children and theirs will not have to suffer the consequences of our lack of taking responsibility for these issues.